The ecumenical movement is having a powerful effect on the U.S. Republican Party. Since the days when Chuck Colson and Richard John Neuhaus started the group Evangelicals and Catholics together, Roman Catholics have been learning how to appeal to Evangelical voter blocs.
Roman Catholics have traditionally voted for the Democratic Party. But now, many Catholic politicians are rising in the Republican Party. It is because they have learned to talk to Republican Evangelicals about their faith in ways evangelicals can understand. They have learned to amalgamate their Catholicism and Evangelicalism so that differences that were once insurmountable are no longer deemed important.
One example is the recent stunning primary victory of Dave Brat, a Catholic with degrees from a Reformed Protestant college and Princeton Theological Seminary, who won a surprise victory against U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Brat is described as both Catholic and Calvinist. Once incompatible, those labels today are being merged into a new breed of politicians that support Catholic social teaching and free-market economic theory.
It is no longer a liability to be Catholic in American politics. Consider the politicians that have become Catholic in recent years. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush converted to Roman Catholicism many years ago from Episcopal roots. Bobby Jindal formerly a Hindu, and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback converted to Catholicism too. Also former Southern Baptist and House Speaker Newt Gingrich converted.
A lot has changed in the 50 years since John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism raised concerns that he would be more loyal to the pope than to the U.S. Constitution. Now, “leading Catholics and evangelicals decided they could do more together than working against each other.” And the cross-pollination of the ecumenical movement has worked well for Rome. Many Evangelicals admired John Paul II, and some look to Pope Francis for leadership. The new found Catholic appeal within the Republican Party suggests that powerful Roman Catholic forces on both sides of the aisle will guide the future of U.S. politics in line with Bible prophecy.
With the 2014 mid-term elections around the corner, “several of the Republican Party’s emerging leaders are Catholic including some who maintain evangelical backgrounds and tendencies.” Princeton University’s Robert P. George, the de facto leader of the Catholic intellectual political movement said, “What has emerged is a spiritual fellowship that I think was not anticipated at the beginning [of the ecumenical movement] by anybody.”
“The challenge for Catholic politicians might be finding the balancing act between a Catholic and an evangelical appeal, said Amy E. Black, a political science professor at Wheaton College in Illinois.
“While the Catholic faith used to be a liability, it might even be an asset now,” Black said
In an era where the U.S. Constitution is being replaced by presidential executive orders, judicial and legislative re-interpretations of the founding document, the forging of a new religious identity among Republicans is strategically significant. It reveals the powerful political effect of the ecumenical movement. If Roman Catholics can eventually dominate both the Democratic and Republican parties, neither of which truly respects the constitution, Rome will have achieved a powerful hand in U.S. politics.
“And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.” Revelation 13:12