Election ’84 / Part 2 What the Democrats Believe: Evangelicals Who Agree with the Party on Issues of Poverty and Peace May Not on Abortion and Gay Rights

Commentators are agreed that the election of 1984 offers the clearest, starkest choice since 1964. Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale are not twin brothers. “The choice is regional, ideological, social and personal—nothing is blurred,” writes Newsweek. Reagan, this election’s heavy favorite, is strong across the country, but he and Bush are strongest in the prospering Sun Belt. Mondale and Ferraro draw what strength they show from the hurting industrial states. The Republican candidates stand unequivocally opposed to “big government”; the Democrats believe just as vigorously that government has a much wider purpose than building roads and bombs. If the polls hold their current trajectory, Mondale will get most of the women and minority votes, Reagan the white male votes.

In one dimension only is the choice not so clear: the religious. Both candidates have made professions of faith. Both tickets have claimed, in so many words, to be “more Christian” than the other. Neither embodies a perfect and complete biblical agenda.

It is a crucial election, likely to influence the direction of the nation well into the next century. Accordingly, both candidates demand careful scrutiny. In the previous issue, CHRISTIANITY TODAY considered the Republican side of the coin. In this issue, we review the Democratic side.

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