Where are the young ones?

On Sunday, there was an OpEd in the Los Angeles Times that discussed the problems with Republican Bill Simon's California gubernatorial campaign. In particular, the influence of the Rev. Lou Sheldon, a conservative evangelist, was noted. We've followed the reverend in the news for quite some time, and it dawned on us that he's getting on in years. In fact, isn't that the case for all the Big Men in the religious/political realm? We decided to do a little research, and here is what we've found:

who	organization	born	age today	reference
Rev. Sung Myung Moon	Unification Church	1920	80	link
Rev. Pat Robertson	Christian Coalition	March 22, 1930	72	link
Rev. D. James Kennedy	Center for Reclaiming America	Nov. 3, 1930	71	link
Rev. Jerry Falwell	Moral Majority (closed 1989)	August 11, 1933	69	link
Rev. Lou Sheldon	Traditional Values Coalition	1934	68	link
Dr. James Dobson	Focus on the Family	mysteriously impossible to find out	est 60+	link
Gary Bauer *	Family Research Council	May 4, 1946	56	link
Robert W. Peters *	Morality in Media	1949	53	link
Ralph Reed, Jr. *	Christian Coalition ('89-'97)	1961	41	link

* operative only, not a reverend or preacher

Is this a sign that the movements are fading as a political force? Most of these guys were active fifteen to twenty years ago when they were in their early-40's to mid-50's. So where are the equivalents today? The closest thing seems to be politicians (like the president) who are more explicitly religious - but that's a pale copy of the real thing.
posted by Quiddity at 9/09/2002 06:58:00 AM