Berkley Center

Picking up where we left off yesterday, here are the most important Faith and Values stories of 2008:

5. The rise of Progressive Evangelicals in triumph and glory?: All year long observers of American religion (myself included) have been predicting that 2008 would be the coming-out party for centrist and progressive Evangelicals. Unlike their conservative co-religionists, these new kids on the block would focus on issues other than abortion and gays. And by all accounts they were kids; it was the younger Evangelicals who many of us insisted were rapidly changing the face of The Movement.

So the prevailing wisdom compelled us to renew that subscription to Sojourners Magazine, write a check to Oxfam, and wear those "Jesus Was a Community Organizer" T-Shirts with pride 'cuz a new type of Bible-believing Christian--a kinder and gentler type--was about to rock the vote!

The narrative was not so much incorrect as it was overstated. There was, in fact, a shift away from the GOP among Evangelicals last week. But it was not as large as many of us would have expected. McCain's numbers nationally among Evangelicals decreased by 5% compared to those of Bush in 2004 (and even more in some swing states). Evangelicals, unlike let's say Jewish Americans, are a massive constituency so these few percentage points are quite significant in electoral terms.

Still, this suggests that the Democrats have more work to do here. My own hunch is that the president-elect's inexplicably awful performance at the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency did not help his cause. On the other hand, Obama has room to grow insofar he doubled Kerry's support among younger white Evangelicals aged 18-29 (and nearly the same for those aged 30-44).

4. The death of the Christian Right: Greatly exaggerated: This was not, at first glance, a good election for White Conservative Evangelicals. Many of their problems have been chronicled in this column but if I had to identify the three biggest, I would point to: 1) their inability to cash in on their service to the GOP in 2004 and field their own home-grown candidate for the presidency by early 2007 (Mike Huckabee, as you will recall, only piqued their interest last fall, and tepidly at that), 2) a crisis of leadership which saw the Old Guard graying or diminishing or dying while younger leaders jostled for control, and, 3) the base's inability to get excited over McCain or any GOP aspirant until Sarah Palin came in, to use a soccer metaphor, "studs up."

But even with all that it can't be denied that, to invoke soccer again, conservative Evangelicals held their shape. They did, after all, give 74% of their vote to John McCain. Over the next few years their contours will be stretched even further as younger and more liberal Evangelicals prowl the corridors of power, consolidate their gains and set off a battle for hearts and minds among those who acknowledge Christ as their personal savior.

3. Secularism: a re-building year: If American secularism were a football team, then let's just say that it went 1-15 in 2008. The Quarterback disappeared off the face of the earth, the entire linebacker corps quit midseason to pursue doctorates in Art History and the franchise has been evicted from its stadium.

This was the year in which secularists were compared to Jihadists by Mitt Romney: in which the Democrats would not pronounce the word "secular": in which the accusation of being "godless" was vehemently denied by an accused North Carolina politician (kind of like the way Obama vehemently denied he was a Muslim); in which Barack Obama doubled down on George W. Bush's faith-based initiatives.

I have spent the better part of the last 18 months trying to convince secularists that: 1) they were going to be shunted aside by Democrats, 2) the believing component of the team and the nonbelieving one were dangerously uncoordinated, 3) the Movement lacked effective leadership, funding and grassroots infrastructure, 4) anti-religious polemics were a political dead-end, and, 5) their numbers in the United States were far smaller than they liked to claim.

I have rarely met people as incapable of thinking critically about their political plight as secularists (they are rivaled only by pre-World War II Jews as described by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism), especially the non-believing wing. So I have nothing more to add, other than that I am now conducting my own draft for young talent to help re-think secular culture.

2. Values Voters free to glance at the value of their retirement accounts: By now we know that the economy trumped "values" as the issue most on the minds of those at the ballot box. Religion was not the defining story of the 2008 election. But by the same token this campaign revealed that a successful candidate must have a very carefully constructed strategy geared to specific faith-based constituencies.

The American people preferred Barack Obama's economic policies. But had Obama advocated the same policies while maintaining a John-Kerrylike apathy towards Faith and Values politicking things might be different. Obama's advances among Evangelicals were significant, as was his seven-point improvement over Kerry with the nation's largest religious denomination, Roman Catholics. So look at it this way: insofar as Obama did not threaten their values, he made it easy for more Catholics and more Evangelicals to vote their pocketbooks.

1. The Democrats solve their religion problem: The new religion-friendly Democrats are in power. Over the next few years they will be so inside the Beltway that they will be contracting Lyme's disease in Rock Creek Park. I wish them well. But I hope they recall that we have had no wars of religion in this extraordinary country of ours. In this respect we are a light unto the nations. That has much to do with a commitment to keeping religion out of government--a commitment which both Democrats and Republicans are in the process of undermining.

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Dear Readers. That's it. Basta cosi. I am taking a break from blogging. I want to write a book. Heck, I want to read a book and that's been hard to do in the year and a half that I have had the honor of writing for washingtonpost.com. I want to thank Hal Straus and my co-star Sally Quinn. Professor Tom Banchoff of Georgetown University was the visionary who hatched this whole, crazy professors-as-bloggers thing. David Waters, editor of the "On Faith" page, is the most decent man on earth and A Writer's Best Friend. I want to thank my research assistant, Ms. Quint Simon. And let me express my gratitude to the readers (more than a million of you) who have faithfully clicked. I love blogging. I really do, and I hope to be doing it for this page some time soon. But right now, I just want to read a book, ideally one not about politics. As Cynthia Ozick once put it: "Work is Work, and Thought is Thought. Politics tries to mix these up...."