TUART, Iowa - The soybeans are in, the corn is next. The yields are good. The farm broadcasters are worrying whether there's enough capacity in the silos and grain elevators. It is a classic Iowa crop harvest.
Not so the political harvest. In towns like this, sitting at the neat right angles where the roads meet, there is a strange quiet - and the feeling, palpable in the air, that something is missing. It's not political interest, or even political passion; there's an ample supply of that. What's missing is the mobilization, as dusk thickens after suppertime, of religious conservatives.
For a quarter-century, religious conservatives have been one of the critical elements of Iowa's political caucuses, now scheduled for Jan. 31. The religious conservatives are still here, of course. But they're not at the center of things - not at the center of campaigns, not at the center of conversation, not at the center of speculation.
Shifting currents
There are great waves to the rhythm of politics, and perhaps religious conservatives are in one of the troughs when one wave ends and another isn't ready to begin. That pattern has been occurring for nearly two centuries, with successive waves of social reform bringing evangelicals and their causes - temperance, abolition, prohibition, abortion, school prayer - to the very front of American politics. Michael Lienesch, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, has his own compelling image for this phenomenon. He says religious conservatives are like a comet, spectacular each time it makes a regular appearance in the sky.
It is impossible to know, with the imperfect vision provided by the brilliant Iowa sunshine of autumn, whether the end-of-the-millennium passage of the comet is over. But there are signs that suggest it may have run its course, or just disappeared from view, at least for now.
''The Christian Right is in a moment of quite active retrenchment,'' says Grant Wacker, a Duke University Divinity School expert on the history of religion. ''Many of them want to rest, and assess, and see what's wrong. The leaders of the Christian Right are in a tempered mood right now - not despair, but a moment of reverie.''
For the faithful, a test
The strength of Governor George W. Bush of Texas, a moderate who speaks of his deep Christian faith but shies away from issues favored by religious conservatives, symbolizes the predicament faced by religious conservatives four months before Iowa's Republicans retreat to their church basements, municipal halls, elementary schools, and community centers for the precinct caucuses that traditionally begin the election season. Bush is pulling the support of about twice as many Iowa Republicans as his nearest rival, publisher Steve Forbes, according to a Mason-Dixon Poll conducted this fall.
Forbes made no effort to attract religious conservatives four years ago, but once the 1996 election was over, he and his strategists swerved in the road and began an offensive - radio advertisements in off-election years, prominent statements against so-called partial-birth abortion each time the issue emerged in Washington - to court a group that distrusted him deeply. That has paid off, and public opinion surveys show that Forbes may be emerging as the conservative alternative to Bush. And activist Gary L. Bauer, who has his own presidential campaign, also is offering himself as a safe harbor for religious conservatives worried about the moderate breezes coursing through the party.
But, says Nathan O. Hatch, a historian who is the provost of the University of Notre Dame, ''there's a backlash against the kind of shrill, partisan message people heard'' from religious conservatives in the past.
Religious conservatives themselves, moreover, are in a period of soul-searching, questioning whether the concerns of the political world ought to be as prominent as the concerns of the pulpit. These voters were very prominent in the Iowa gubernatorial campaign in 1998, but their candidate, former US representative Jim Ross Lightfoot, was defeated, giving Iowa its first Democratic governor in 30 years. ''The Christian right is a lot quieter this time,'' says Barbara Trish, a Grinnell College political scientist who studies how candidates and political movements organize for Iowa's caucuses. ''They're less evident - and more divided.''
Republicans - and Bush, if he is the eventual nominee - ignore religious conservatives at their peril despite their low profile.
National Election Studies surveys from the 1996 election show that traditional white Protestant evangelicals are more in favor of lower taxes and fewer government services than any other religious group in the electorate. That's the Republican message in 2000. Though religious conservatives are the dog that hasn't barked in the campaign thus far, they are not likely to be a dog that doesn't bite.
