c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Most people limit seduction’s meaning to sexual matters, but seduction takes many forms.

The recent election was a corrective for conservative Christian leaders seduced by the aura of political power and easy access to Congress and the White House. For the past six years, such leaders abandoned spiritual integrity and independence for supposed influence on the ruling authorities in Washington.

The Rev. Ted Haggard, the now-disgraced former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, was a proud participant with other Christian conservative leaders in weekly Monday teleconferences with White House staff.

When the president nominated White House lawyer Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court last year, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, boasted of a phone call from a White House official assuring him Miers was a genuine conservative.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has frequently spoken of his influence in both the West Wing and Congress.

Haggard, Dobson, Land and other religious right leaders are no longer riding high, like they were following the 2004 presidential election.

Haggard is gone from the NAE and his Colorado Springs, Colo., pulpit. Dobson, who two years ago nearly blocked Sen. Arlen Specter’s candidacy for Judiciary Committee chair, must now confront the grim fact that the committee’s gavel will go to Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat.

Gone is Sen. Rick Santorum, the Pennsylvania Republican and the most prominent religious right leader in Congress. Also defeated was Rep. John Hostettler, the Indiana Republican who mocked “the mythical wall of church-state separation” at a 2005 congressional hearing and said, “Democrats can’t help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians.”

Gone, too, is former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who powered the Terri Schiavo bill through Congress. An ecstatic DeLay declared, “One thing that God has brought us is Terri Schiavo to help elevate the visibility of what’s going on in America.” But DeLay quickly learned “what’s going on”: Most Americans rejected the federal government’s heavy-handed intervention in a private family bioethical matter.

Also defeated was Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, whose aggressive investigation of abortion clinics became a major campaign issue.

Faced with the shift of power in Washington, Dobson, Land and others blame the GOP, and not their own extreme political positions. Land said Christian conservatives “are fed up with the Republican leadership, particularly in the House. … They’re disgusted that Republicans came to Washington and failed to behave any better than Democrats once they got their snouts into the trough.”

Dobson said: “Many of the `values voters’ of ’04 simply stayed home this year. … (The Republicans) consistently ignored the constituency that put them in power.”

But Dobson is wrong, and Land seems to have forgotten the old maxim that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Most Christian conservative voters did not “stay home.” They still constituted about a quarter of the American electorate, but this year they reduced the number of votes they gave to Republican candidates.

Voters in seven states banned same-sex marriages, bur Arizona voters rejected such a measure. In South Dakota, a harsh anti-abortion ban was turned back, and in Missouri, Democratic Sen.-elect Claire McCaskill supported the successful passage of a stem cell research proposal.

Dobson, Land and company forgot the biblical teaching that the proper role of spiritual leaders is to stand outside the palace as ethical critics, and not move inside as cheerleaders. They should follow Nathan’s example in 2 Samuel when the prophet courageously confronted an erring King David with these words: “Thou art the (sinning) man!”

In the Mishnah, the ancient rabbis urged “caution when dealing with the ruling authorities. … They may appear as friends, but will not stand by you in the hour of need.” We shall see whether religious right leaders have learned these lessons.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

KRE/PH END RUDIN

Editors: To obtain a photo of Rabbi Rudin, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.

Editors: Phill in 10th graf is CQ