ABC News: Conservatives See Win in Rise of New Pope By RICHARD N. OSTLING, The Associated Press

“Faithful Christians ought to be thrilled,” declared Charles Colson, the prison evangelist who’s among the best-known members of America’s largest Protestant group, the Southern Baptist Convention.

Colson is especially pleased because, as he sees it, America’s cultural elite is alarmed by the cardinals’ choice. He praised Ratzinger’s recent sermon against moral relativism, which amounted to a papal campaign platform. He also agreed with the pope that Western civilization is doomed if secular trends persist.

It’s significant that Colson is scheduled to appear Sunday night in Louisville, Ky., for a “Justice Sunday” rally where conservative Protestants will denounce what they call “out-of-control courts” and Democratic filibusters to block U.S. Senate votes on nominees to be federal appeals judges. …

[Sidebar on the honorable Charles Colson

Known as President Nixon’s hatchet man, Colson could be counted on to break the china – do whatever was necessary – to achieve the desired political ends of his boss. The saying at the time was that he would be willing to run over his own grandmother if the President ordered it to be done. (Colson never did so.) Such a reputation showed him as an administration loyalist.

Colson was involved in the Watergate Scandal, and in 1974 voluntarily agreed to a plea of nolo contendere (no contest) to obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair. Some months before this plea, Colson became an evangelical Christian.]

While the pope is no Protestant, conservative evangelicals see him as a powerful ally in such matters and Benedict’s track record suggests they’re correct. …

While Catholic liberals believe it would be both wise and just for the church to loosen up on doctrinal demands, Benedict might draw the opposite conclusion from U.S. Protestant trends.

Since the mid-1960s, liberal denominations like Thomas’ United Church of Christ have suffered a steady slide in membership, while conservative groups like the Southern Baptists have continued to expand. And in the past generation, Southern Baptist agencies have actually moved from moderate conservatism to stricter conservatism.

Penn State historian Philip Jenkins noted in his book “The Next Christendom” that the same trend is true globally.

While flexible, modernized churches stagnate, evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity are growing in the developing world as is Islam. These groups have been dogged in preserving doctrinal and moral tradition.

If Benedict plays to conservative Christians in the United States, he’ll be working with the growth sector of the religious world today.