Religious conservatives have, to varying degrees of controversy, been issuing online voting guides for “concerned Christians” for a while now, but this past election saw something new: a national “Judeo-Christian Voter Guide.” The guide’s homepage, which features a map of all fifty states and a ‘note to clergy’ urging them to “Please click on your state to find a voter’s guide that will best fit your congregation,” connects the seeker to like-minded organizations who’ve already drafted area-specific guides. The presence of links, exclusively to conservative evangelical organizations like the ACLJ and Liberty Counsel, make the guide’s politics self-evident (though there’s no identifying or contact information and the site was registered with a service that conceals the identity of those who registered it).
As one who identifies with the “Judeo” part of Judeo-Christian, I felt invited to click on my home state of Georgia to see whom I should vote for. The links directed me to Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and the American Family Association—a major player on the Christian right whose issues with racism and abuse Sarah Posner recently wrote about on RD. These groups, and numerous others, have moved from describing the values they fight for as “Christian” to “Judeo-Christian”—which is intended, presumably, to sound more inclusive.
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