Religion and Politics sources
Friends:
The following is a collection of articles discussing the roll of religion in progressive politics. It occurred to me that a great many of you would very interested in these discussions because that is such an extremely important issue in this year’s presidential election. So I pulled several together. Read as many or as few as you have time.
Especially note the references in many of the articles of our own Mara Vanderslice, a UCC lay woman who until leaving to work for the Dean campaign was the director of development for the Jubilee USA Network. She is now director of religious outreach for the Kerry campaign. See a nice article by her at the end which came out recently in Sojourners. If you are interested in more on this topic, you might check the following:
1. The very fine PBS program “Religion and Ethics News Weekly” (all but impossible to find in eastern Massachusetts).
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/archive/index3.html#1
2. Beliefnet, which frequently carries discussions of religion and politics and almost never from a narrow perspective.
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/137/story_13791.html
3. and “People of Faith For Kerry” (I’ll bet you didn’t know they existed, did you?)
http://www.johnkerry.com/communities/faith/
Peace,
Stan Duncan
Religious Left Seeks Center of Political Debate
Conferees Call For Stronger Voice
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29653-2004Jun9?language=printer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A02
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
More than 350 political liberals of many faiths gathered in Washington yesterday to begin what some pollsters say is a quixotic task: restoring the voice of the religious left in the nation's political debate.
"Progressive religious voices, which historically have fueled so much social change in this country, seem to have been washed out of the public dialogue in recent years," said John D. Podesta, a Roman Catholic who was White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton. Podesta now heads the Center for American Progress, the Democratic think tank that organized the conference to highlight the "proud past" and "promising future" of the religious left.
Speakers celebrated the role of religious liberals in the civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam War, the nuclear freeze campaign and sanctions against South Africa's former apartheid system. They called for a stronger, more clearly religious voice against the Bush administration's foreign policy and for environmental stewardship, universal health insurance, and efforts to fight poverty at home and abroad.
Yet even as the conference at times took on the enthusiasm of a pep rally, there were sobering reflections on why the religious left lost its prominence after the 1970s and how hard it may be to regain it. At the core of those concerns was a simple set of statistics, reinforced by numerous polls: People who say they are frequent churchgoers vote Republican by a ratio of about 2 to 1.
"All the surveys show that if you ask about either church attendance or attitudes -- how important is religion to you in your daily life? -- you get the same thing: the more religious, the more conservative," Gallup pollster Frank Newport said in an interview. "I certainly remember the days when being religious meant fighting for civil rights and social justice, and it's not that those people aren't still out there. But religious liberals are a small minority today."
Some liberals dispute that conclusion.
"Church attendance is not the only indicator of living out your faith," said the Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson, executive director of the Clergy Leadership Network, a group devoted to "leadership change" in Washington. "The vast majority of people of faith in this country are center to left, politically. But if you only measure religious commitment by butts in the pews, that's what you get."
Conference attendees also blamed the media, saying news reports tend to play up the simple dichotomy between the secular left and the religious right rather than citing the full range of religious views.
"It really bothers me that whenever the media and others talk about people of faith, they talk only about the religious right and don't seem to realize there are people like me, who grew up Baptist and believe in God and have strong religious values, but who want different policy outcomes," said Melody Barnes, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).
But some of the Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims at the conference also said they have felt excluded or even disdained by the secular left. The Rev. James A. Forbes Jr., senior minister at the Riverside Church in New York City, told the audience in his keynote address that "we have got to find a way not to be embarrassed" to speak about religion with secular progressives.
And there was no lack of hand-wringing among the conferees about what the religious left has done wrong.
"Part of it is our fault. We should take back the Bible, take back the theological principles and not just cede them to the religious right," said the Rev. Susan B. Thistlethwaite, a minister in the United Church of Christ and president of the Chicago Theological Seminary. "It's not good enough to talk in vague terms about values. We can do better than that. We can make the theological arguments."
Historian Taylor Branch said that in the 1970s, the abortion issue split the progressive religious alliance that had formed in the civil rights movement. Since then, the left has done no better than the right in "moving beyond polemics," he said.
"Not many people who call themselves pro-choice actually want to celebrate abortion, and not many of those who call themselves pro-life want to put women in jail for having abortions," he said. "It's more of a show than a debate, with polarizing options that aren't real. Both sides profess that they love children, but you don't really have the two sides doing very much to cooperate to reduce the number of neglected and abandoned and unwanted children, or to care for them."
The Rev. Charles Henderson, a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister who publishes the interfaith quarterly CrossCurrents, said that from the 1950s through the 1970s, the mainline Protestant denominations took for granted that their values would infuse television and the public schools. Evangelicals, who felt shut out of establishment institutions, created their own schools and broadcast outlets. "Then you wake up one day in 1984 and the Christian right is dominant, and you wonder why," he said.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Democrats strike back on faith issue
Group launches initiative to stress religious roots of policies as polls show party faces a 'church gap.'
June 09, 2004
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0609/p01s01-uspo.html
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - For much of the 20th century, the language of faith infused politics on the left on issues ranging from civil rights to a living wage for farm workers.
In 1968, for example, labor leader Cesar Chavez ended a three-week fast with prayer and breaking of bread. His speech to 8,000 supporters, read by a minister, ended with the rallying call: "God help us to be men!"
But since the rise of the Christian right in the 1970s, the mantle of faith-toned politics has been ceded largely to Republicans.
Now a group of Democrats is eager to revive the historic role that religion has played in their party. It is launching a multiyear project Wednesday to amplify the religious roots of "progressive" policies, ranging from the economy and environment to social issues.
A key reason: Religion is now the biggest predictor of vote, after party identification.
In a presidential election that could pivot on a few swing states, the fact that Democrats are losing the vote of regular churchgoers by a 2-to-1 margin could be decisive.
"The gap between people who go to church regularly and those that don't is twice the gender gap," says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. "It's huge."
To advocates, the new focus on church-pew politics represents an opportunity for peel off crucial voters without losing the party's more secular base. But big gains won't be easy, analysts say.
Protestant registered voters favor President Bush by a nine-point margin over presumptive Democratic challenger John Kerry - a gap that jumps to 18 points for those who say they attend church regularly, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. While Senator Kerry has jumped to an eight-point advantage among registered Roman Catholic voters in the same poll, it's a far cry from the 56-point lead enjoyed by John Kennedy among Catholics in 1960.
"Bush's pro-religion messages will surely help to solidify his appeal among more conservative Protestants, while trying to peel Catholic support away from Kerry," writes Jeffrey Jones, Gallup Poll managing editor.
The "church gap" worries Democratic activists, who are united as rarely before to try to take back the White House and the Congress this November.
"There is a public perception and a press perception, fueled by the religious right, that if you're a person of faith, you're a conservative," says John Podesta, CEO of the Center for American Progress, which Wednesday launches the new project on faith and progressive policy. "That is in dire need of correction, if you want progressive social change in this country."
The effort comes as the Bush campaign steps up efforts to mobilize the GOP vote in evangelical churches, where Republicans claim a big edge.
But winning back those votes is hard. At least at the top of the Democratic Party, advocates on issues such as abortion and gay rights were recruited not from the ranks of the dispossessed, but from professional classes. They cast their appeals in the language of law and individual rights, leaving faith-based appeals to opponents on right. In response, many conservative Democrats bolted the party.
It's not the first time that Democrats have tried to revive their religious roots. In 1992, President Clinton backed a constitutional amendment to return voluntary prayer to public schools - a rallying point for Reagan Republicans. New Democrats supported faith-based initiatives. "I have never believed the Constitution required our schools to be religion-free zones," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a contender on the presidential ticket in 2000 and 2004.
But such appeals have barely made a dent in the party's culture, which is increasingly secular and even hostile to faith-based appeals.
"There is a great deal of suspicion of making religious appeals of any sort inside the Democratic Party itself," says Jim Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., who writes on religion and politics.
One reason is that Democrats, more than Republicans, are very diverse religiously. It makes it difficult to find common ground, he says. Liberal religious leaders often don't have the politically active base that Republicans have found in evangelical congregations. "There are plenty of leaders, but not many followers," he adds.
Also, groups like Emily's List, which supports abortion-rights candidates, have become top party fundraisers. Anti-abortion Democrats complain that they are excluded from speaking at national party conventions and even party websites.
Conservative activists predict that the latest effort by Democrats, too, will fizzle. "Within the Democratic Party, there is an increasingly aggressive secular left that has driven people of faith, especially conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians, into the Republican Party. They recognize how damaging it is, but they can't fix it given who pays the bills and who is in charge: Emily's List and aggressively secular left Democrats," says conservative activist Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
But other analysts see an opening for change. "There has been a tendency to write off religious believers in the Democratic Party, because the party came to feel that its positions on abortion and gay rights and other cultural issues made it the enemy of religious people. Now, there is an understanding that that is not necessarily the case," says Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
"There wasn't sufficient recognition that if a person had qualms about abortion, it may be because they had serious religious beliefs and not because they were opposed to women's rights," he adds.
Podesta, former chief of staff for President Clinton, says that Democrats who are religious feel as if they have been silenced over the past few decades, and are "enthusiastic about regaining a sense of moral authority." New core values to be emphasized include inclusion, building community, taking care of each other and being good stewards of the earth.
"Some people think we're nuts and that relatively little good could come from bringing progressive religious voices back into the public square. I guess I would say history judges otherwise," he adds.
Such a new strategy could be especially helpful in heartland swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, where Catholic voters make up a significant proportion of the population. It could also help Democrats in Southern states such as North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas, as well as Florida.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, nearly two-thirds who attend religious services at least once a week vote Republican. The flip side for Republicans: For those who say they seldom go to church, two-thirds vote Democratic.
"The political right and political left have agreed that religion equals the religious right. The right has done this because they want to own the issue, and some on the left have done this because they almost want to dismiss the issue," says Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners, a magazine covering faith and politics.
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
John Edwards and Religion
Religion and Ethics New Weekly
July 9, 2004 Episode no. 745
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week745/news.html
BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The Democratic ticket was completed this week, when John Kerry picked North Carolina Senator John Edwards as his vice-presidential running mate. Kerry, of course, is a Roman Catholic. Like President Bush and Vice President Cheney, John Edwards is a United Methodist. Kim Lawton has more on Edwards and religion.
KIM LAWTON: Senator John Kerry says he has selected a running mate who understands the values of America.
Senator JOHN KERRY (D-MA, at Announcement): I know his strength; I know his conscience; I know his faith.
LAWTON: John Edwards was raised and baptized in a Southern Baptist church. But in a December interview with the Interfaith Alliance, Edwards said he fell away from religion during college and law school. Then, a family tragedy changed that.
Senator JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC, to Interfaith Alliance): And I lost a son in 1996, and my faith came roaring back. And it played an enormous role in my ability to get through that period, and it stayed with me and has been enormously important.
LAWTON: Edwards became a United Methodist and is a member of the Edenton Street Methodist Church in Raleigh, where he was also on the board of the faith-based Urban Ministries of Wake County. In Washington, he has attended the more liberal Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church.
Sen. EDWARDS: Let us pray.
LAWTON: Edwards has also co-chaired the heavily evangelical National Prayer Breakfast, where he led a prayer in 2002.
Sen. EDWARDS (at 2002 National Prayer Breakfast): We seek to be the leaders you would have us to be, and we sorely need your unsearchable wisdom. We pray each day, O Lord, that you inform our judgments with your wisdom, your humility, your benevolence.
LAWTON: Experts say Edwards brings religious balance to the Democratic ticket.
Dr. SHAUN CASEY (Professor of Christian Ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary): He's from a mainline Protestant denomination. He's Southern, and in that sense, he has perhaps a better ear for evangelical religion because he's simply a child of the South. He knows the rhythms and the cadences of Southern religion, which is something Kerry himself really doesn't possess.
LAWTON: Edwards says his faith holds great meaning for him, but observers note he doesn't give a lot of details.
Dr. CASEY: There seems to be a reticence on his part to delve too deeply into his own personal faith and the connection between his faith and his political views.
Sen. EDWARDS (to the Interfaith Alliance): I mean, over the long term, our country, our nation, will be much better off if we make it clear that we are a nation that lifts up and embraces all faiths, and we will not use faith for political purposes.
LAWTON: In his speeches, Edwards plans to emphasize values. The Kerry campaign says the vice-presidential candidate will be speaking "to the heart of America."
I'm Kim Lawton in Washington.
Democrats and Religion
Religion and Ethics New Weekly
July 23, 2004 Episode no. 747
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week747/cover.html
BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Religion continues to be one important factor in how people vote. A majority of Americans say they want a president who is religious. But there is deep ambivalence about how much the president should talk about -- and be guided by -- religious beliefs. Many Republican politicians talk openly about faith, while Democrats are perceived as being less comfortable with religious language. Is there a "God gap" in American politics? Kim Lawton has our special report on Democrats and religion.
KIM LAWTON: In the heart of Texas Bush country, kids at the Central Dallas Ministries day camp are getting a civics lesson about voting. The goal is to encourage their parents and their neighbors to register to vote. It's part of a project to help low-income people get their voices heard.
The Reverend Larry James is executive director of the faith-based ministry. The voting project is nonpartisan, but James is a lifelong Democrat -- a Democrat who is frustrated with how his party is handling religion right now.
Reverend LARRY JAMES (Central Dallas Ministries): The Republican Party has carried away the issue of faith, and the popular notion is that Democrats are not people of faith.
LAWTON: Analysts say this election season Democratic leaders have struggled over how to deal with religion.
Dr. SHAUN CASEY (Professor of Christian Ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary): On the one hand, they read the polls. They understand the demographics of the country, which would lead one to say that religion is extremely important in this current election. They see the need, but on the other hand, they lack the experience, they lack the confidence, frankly, to reach out to those communities with great ease.
LAWTON: According to recent surveys, the more often voters attend religious services, the more likely they are to vote Republican. The majority of Americans say they like expressions of faith from their politicians. Forty-one percent believe there haven't been enough such expressions. This poses some big political challenges for Democrats.
MIKE MCCURRY (Public Strategies Group): Many Democrats are not accustomed to speaking of their faith and relating their faith to political action. This is something that's just not part, hasn't been part of the culture of the party. So it's a new vocabulary for many Democrats, and I think that's what we're getting used to.
Representative ROSA DELAURO (D-CT): We shouldn't shy away from that. We should say it because it reflects who we are and what we are about, and people should know that.
LAWTON: Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro is a Roman Catholic who chaired the Democratic Platform Committee. She says Democrats need to more actively communicate what motivates their policies.
Rep. DELAURO: There is a nexus between religion and politics. We do have a separation of church and state. No one is talking about going over those bounds. In my view, Republicans use politics to push religion. I don't believe we ought to emulate that. But what we ought to do is reflect our values in the work that we do. And we ought to say it. We ought to say it.
LAWTON: President Bill Clinton's former press secretary, Mike McCurry, is an active United Methodist. He's also among the few high-profile Democrats urging the party to pay more attention to religion. He admits this is not always a welcome message.
Mr. MCCURRY: I think it's met with discomfort by some party leaders. I think some people are just not comfortable wearing their religion on the sleeve. And particularly, if you are imbued with certain Yankee taciturnity, like a certain candidate we have running for president, it's not a natural thing to talk about a faith life, even though in the case of Senator Kerry, he happens to be a particularly faithful person.
LAWTON: Religion has been tricky for Kerry and his campaign, as evidenced by the highly publicized flap over whether he should receive Communion in Catholic churches because of his stand in favor of abortion rights. The candidate himself is reluctant to make connections between faith and politics, as he acknowledged in a December interview with the Interfaith Alliance.
Senator JOHN KERRY (Speaking to Interfaith Alliance): Affairs of state are affairs of state, and they ought to be based on the discussion we have day to day about how we fund education or how big the military ought to be. And affairs of faith are affairs of faith. And they're separated.
LAWTON: But many grassroots Democrats believe the two areas should be more connected. In Dallas, Larry James has dedicated his life to helping the poor. His Central Dallas Ministries has a multipronged approach that includes a massive food bank as well as medical, legal, and housing assistance. James says all the projects are directly motivated by religious beliefs.
Rev. JAMES: Isaiah is replete with passage after passage of how God's people collectively are responsible for caring for the least among them. The law of Moses, the Torah, is filled with passage after passage on how an economy is to be structured so that no one is left behind. The values, the deep, deeply rooted values of justice, fairness, equity, how an economy is supposed to work -- all those things need to be reclaimed theologically by the Democrats.
LAWTON: Democrats, James says, can emphasize these broad spiritual values without coming across as self-righteous or exclusive.
Rev. JAMES: And if I were John Kerry or John Edwards, I think I'd get with some astute theologians and I'd hammer out some of these, because I think that resonates with Christians and with Jewish folk and with Muslims as well, to say nothing of Buddhists and Hindus and others, because these values are in all the holy texts.
LAWTON: The key, according to Mike McCurry, is being authentic and not appearing to pander to or exploit religion.
Mr. MCCURRY: I'd like Democrats to not, you know, brazenly do what Republicans sometimes do, which is to lead with a faux religion. I would really like to see Democrats speak genuinely and authentically about how religion and how faith informs the positions we take on so many issues.
Rep. DELAURO: I also say that one has to take a look at deeds and not just words or photographs. Both John Kerry and John Edwards have demonstrated by their deeds that they are men of faith, that they are men of values.
LAWTON: Another aspect of the dilemma is the growing group of Americans who identify themselves as "secular." In 2000, they accounted for 20 percent of Al Gore's total vote. Many of them agree with Joanna Citron Day, a local Democratic activist who doesn't want to see any more religion injected into the campaign.
JOANNA CITRON DAY (Democratic Activist): Religion really doesn't have a place in American politics, and I think that it's not about, you know, what your religious background is. Really, it's public service to all Americans, regardless of their religion. So why should your religion as a candidate or as president play into it?
Dr. CASEY: There's a fear, frankly, that they may alienate part of their own base, the so-called "seculars" or "nonreligious" -- that if a Democratic candidate appears too explicitly religious, that may alienate part of their base.
LAWTON: But in an electorate that is so evenly divided, Casey says, both parties also need to persuade undecided religious swing voters, especially the undecided in key states.
Dr. CASEY: You see Roman Catholic voters represented in large percentages, but also very significant evangelical constituencies as well. If you're going to persuade those folks, you need to come at them with every possible persuasive lever, and religion happens to be one of those most persuasive levers among those undecided voters.
LAWTON: In recent days, the Kerry campaign appears to be trying. They've hired a point person for outreach to religious communities and established a special area on the official Web site for people of faith, complete with buttons and bumper stickers.
Many Democrats were hoping John Edwards would bring the ticket more comfort in dealing with religion. Edwards is a United Methodist who has been active in the National Prayer Breakfast. So far, on the stump he's been talking a lot about values, but not explicitly tying those values to religion.
Both Edwards and Kerry have made obligatory election-year visits to black churches, another core constituency for Democrats. During a speech to the African Methodist Episcopal denomination earlier this month, Kerry indicated that faith does indeed have a role in his political agenda.
Sen. KERRY (During Speech): We should never separate our highest beliefs and our values from our treatment of one another and our conduct of the people's business.
LAWTON: Experts say he'll have to offer still more details in order to convince religious voters.
Dr. CASEY: He needs to take the time in telling his own story about how his own faith has shaped his politics. That's going to resonate with a lot of religiously motivated voters in this country. If he chooses not to do that, then he allows the other candidate, frankly, to fill in the blanks for him, and I suspect that will not be a very pretty picture.
LAWTON: And in a race as tight as this one appears, the stakes are high. Every voter convinced could make all the difference. I'm Kim Lawton reporting.
© 2004 Educational Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Religion on the stump could add a new dimension to election
6/10/2004
Walter Shapiro
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/shapiro/2004-06-10-hype_x.htm
WASHINGTON — The banners for Wednesday's forum proudly proclaimed, "Faith and Progressive Policy: Proud Past, Promising Future." Organized by the Center for American Progress — a liberal group founded last year as a counterweight to conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation — the conference was squarely at the intersection of religion and Democratic politics.
That explained the buzz from the nearly 500 liberals in the audience when a 29-year-old woman named Mara Vanderslice stood up during the question period and identified herself as the director of religious outreach for the John Kerry campaign.
Vanderslice's question for the religious thinkers on stage was refreshingly direct: "What do you have to say to us?"
Even though it was hard to imagine that there were any backers of George W. Bush in the hotel meeting room, the partisan tenor of the query made the moderator, Sister Maureen Fiedler, nervous. She explained that under the tax laws, the Center for American Progress could not engage in direct political advocacy. So Fiedler cleverly rephrased the question to ask whether the panelists had any advice for "progressive candidates" from either party.
Given these restrictive ground rules, only the Rev. Jim Wallis, who edits the liberal Christian magazine Sojourners, rose to the challenge. "Democrats often make the mistake of restricting faith to the private sphere," he said. Wallis went on to parody the standard approach to religion by Democratic candidates: "I have faith, but don't worry, it won't affect me."
Wallis' answer harked back to an earlier dialogue among the panelists. Historian Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Martin Luther King, had drawn a distinction between King and John Kennedy. King, he said, used religious imagery and the rhetoric of American democracy to champion racial and economic justice. Kennedy, profoundly sensitive to charges that his Catholicism would shape his presidency, portrayed himself as a secular political leader.
Branch's comments prompted me to revisit Kennedy's 1960 campaign address in which he confronted the so-called "Catholic issue" before the conservative Houston Ministerial Association.
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute," he declared. "Where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote. Where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference."
Judged in contemporary terms, Kennedy's words seem almost as quaint as his campaign oratory about "the missile gap." Bush is the most publicly religious president in modern times — and the Christian right, mobilized church by church, is an indispensable cog in the Republican governing coalition. Equally telling is that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the only Democratic presidents in the last 35 years, both carried a Southern evangelical tradition into the White House.
But even as Democratic-leaning groups like the Center for American Progress try to mesh faith with liberal policies, there is still a case to be made for Kennedy's view that the Oval Office should not be a bully pulpit for religion. At a time when the ruling American belief system is built around tolerance for minorities, it seems odd that there is scant sensitivity for those voters who feel uncomfortable hearing religious rhetoric in political speeches.
Kerry will, of course, be the first Catholic to be nominated for president since Kennedy. Kerry faces pressure from Catholic bishops enraged at his support for abortion rights. But judging from his statements about religion so far, Kerry is closer to the secular Kennedy tradition than to religiously infused Democrats like Clinton.
During a January debate in Iowa sponsored by National Public Radio, Kerry was asked to give an example of a political decision that he made because of religious conviction. The Massachusetts senator began by reminiscing about serving as an altar boy and briefly contemplating "going into the priesthood." Then in a candid statement by a presidential candidate, Kerry discussed how his experiences in Vietnam "made me question (my faith) for a period of time" before returning to the church.
Having completed his religious autobiography, Kerry talked about how he has "always separated" his personal faith from "public life." He went on to say, "My entire person is affected by my belief structure, by the values given to me both through my parents and through religion. But I don't make decisions in public life based on religious belief, nor do I think we should. I think there is a separation of church and state."
Even though Kerry poured a lot into that answer, a campaign debate is not an ideal forum for a nuanced discussion of religion and politics. Less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Kerry was conscious that Howard Dean had blundered by loudly proclaiming his newfound intention to talk about religion in the South. As a Catholic politician, Kerry understood how a question on religion could trap him in the thicket of trying to explain why he did not abide by the church's views on abortion.
But what Kerry's answer conveyed was a sense of authenticity, an attribute that has often eluded him on the campaign trail. It suggests that one of the most intriguing moments in the fall campaign may occur if Kerry and Bush are confronted with a question about religion when they face off in their first debate.
Walter Shapiro's column appears Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at wshapiro@usatoday.com
The 'God gap': A political myth
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-07-13-zelizer_x.htm
June 13, 2004
By Gerald L. Zelizer
Amy Potter, an evangelical Christian from Detroit, voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. She says she values Bush for giving greater legitimacy to discussing faith in public. But she is increasingly disenchanted with his stance on other issues and would consider voting for the Democratic candidate this time if he would more clearly show how his social agenda were grounded in his faith in God.
Democrats should pay better attention to religious voters such as Potter. John Kerry's campaign recently hired a director of religious outreach. That is a first step, but because of its reluctance to approach the faith electorate beyond African-American communities, the Democratic Party has much work to do.
Potter is among those voters whom scholars such as John Green of the University of Akron have identified as "freestyle evangelists" — "mostly white, living in suburbs in the South, Midwest and Northwest, attending megachurches and sending their kids to public schools." They are theologically conservative but politically independent, interested in social welfare and the environment and ripe for the plucking by a Democrat who will reveal how his faith informs his political decisions.
In past presidential elections, this vote has swung from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. Moreover, says Amy Sullivan in The Washington Monthly, these "swing faithful" also could coalesce with other religious moderates disillusioned with Bush. Sullivan, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Princeton University, identifies, for instance:
• Arab-Americans whose approval of Bush has fallen sharply because of his stricter immigration policies.
• Hispanic Catholics who overwhelmingly support Democrats.
• "Liberal Catholics" whose urban roots, support of unions, pro-choice attitudes and advocacy of contraception tilt them to Democratic policy positions.
• Non-Orthodox religious Jews, who are dissatisfied with his social policies.
• "Notional Christians" — those who describe themselves as Christian but are neither evangelical nor "born again." Barna Research reports that only 34% of this faith group approve of the president's performance.
USA TODAY recently reported that in the 2000 presidential election, 87% of those who attend church once a week backed Bush. Earlier polls by Gallup and Pew reinforce an erroneous assumption that a "God gap" favors the GOP.
At a conference on religion's role in this year's election, the God-gap assumption was refuted by Green and Mark Silk, director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. Yes, it is true that those who worship weekly tend to vote Republican by a large margin. But Green and Silk note that when other gauges of religiosity are measured — such as attending church services a few times a month, belief, prayer and Bible reading — the gap narrows significantly and even reverses. "So it's a weekly worship difference," Green explains, "but not much of a God gap based on other factors."
With some justification, even Democrats have bought into the myth that they are the party of secularists and Republicans are the party of believers. Green says that because the Democratic umbrella must be broad enough to incorporate both those suspicious of organized religion and diverse religious groups, it is simpler to speak in non-religious language. In the past month, Kerry has done better, using terms such as "traditional American values," thus expressing a kind of "civil religion." But even those references are too vague for religious voters.
The Democrats' timidity regarding faith is out of sync with much of the electorate and is based on an outdated model. In fact, a Fox News poll found that 69% of Americans think religion plays too small a role in people's lives.
If Democrats continue to cater to the secular component of the party, they will misread where a good share of the electorate stands.
This election is dominated by moral and religious issues important to the swing faithful. Obtaining universal health care, for example (favored by 72% of Americans), fulfills the biblical mandate of caring for the powerless among us. Sending Americans to their death in a war fought on a false premise, even if unintentional, could be construed to violate the commandment, "Thou shalt not murder."
Because many of the swing faithful live in key electoral pockets in the Midwest, the border South and city suburbs, their vote could play a decisive role in a close election. Democrats can capture that vote, and perhaps bridge a political divide, by breaking the tethers to outdated paradigms and speaking with a bolder faith accent.
Gerald L. Zelizer, rabbi of Neve Shalom, a Conservative congregation in New Jersey, is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
Kerry advisers tell hopeful to 'keep cool' on religion
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20040618-121914-6103r
June 18, 2004
By Julia Duin
Sen. John Kerry's advisers are telling the presidential candidate to steer clear of talking about religion after running afoul of several Catholic bishops and after the campaign's new director of religious outreach was criticized this week for espousing left-wing causes.
The Rev. Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest who served in Congress during the 1970s, says he has advised the campaign to clamp down on religious rhetoric and "keep cool on the Communion thing" after four Catholic bishops either barred Mr. Kerry by name from taking Communion in their dioceses or said pro-choice Catholics should be denied the sacrament.
"The mood now is to shut up about it," said Father Drinan, who teaches at Georgetown University Law Center. He said the Communion debate "is a nonissue" in the Kerry campaign and simply a tool of the Republican Party.
Mr. Kerry's detractors "are dying for him to say something. But he won't take them on," the priest said, adding that he was part of a "kitchen Cabinet" to advise the Kerry campaign on religious matters.
Meanwhile, the Kerry campaign also has sidelined its new religion adviser, closing journalists' access to Mara Vanderslice and ignoring her advice on how to appeal effectively to religious voters.
"Every time something with religious language got sent up the flagpole, it got sent back down, stripped of religious language," a Kerry campaign source said of Miss Vanderslice's ideas on overcoming Mr. Kerry's secular image.
The campaign source also said former Clinton aides Paul Begala, John Podesta and Mike McCurry have tutored campaign operatives on more aggressively using religion to appeal to voters.
"Why the campaign is not listening to any of them, I don't know," the source said. "Conservatives are about 20 years ahead of us on this stuff."
The campaign began to marginalize Miss Vanderslice when the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights mounted a public campaign against her, saying she spoke at a rally co-sponsored by the homosexual group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (Act-Up) and should be "working for Fidel Castro."
Even though she was giving interviews to USA Today earlier this month, Miss Vanderslice would not be talking to the press, said campaign spokeswoman Allison Dobson.
"It is extremely unfortunate and regretful that John Kerry's political opponents would attack a person of faith in this way," Ms. Dobson said.
Miss Vanderslice, 29, grew up Unitarian in Boulder, Colo., then attended Earlham College, a Quaker institution in Richmond, Ind.
She joined a college socialist group, majored in peace and global studies, and graduated in 1997. After interning for a year at Sojourners, a liberal evangelical magazine in the District, she joined the Jubilee USA Network, a D.C.-based group that campaigns for Third World debt relief.
What Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, found especially problematic was Miss Vanderslice's presence at a violent December 2000 rally in Seattle against the International Monetary Fund and a similar protest in September 2002 in the District against the IMF and the World Bank.
In articles on the protests, the Boston Globe identified her as an organizer and the Denver Post quoted her plans to take part in civil disobedience in order to shut down the IMF meeting in the District.
"What you get here is a profile of a woman on the far left and whose commitment to Christian organizations is connected to the most left-wing groups in the United States," Mr. Donohue said.
"This choice either suggests an incredible naivete or a very nonchalant attitude" by the Kerry campaign, he said.
The campaign is in "panic mode" because of the attacks, said Amy Sullivan, a specialist on religion and the Democratic Party who gave a galvanizing speech last fall at a Democratic Leadership Council forum in Atlanta called "God, Guns and Guts."
Plans were, said Miss Sullivan, for the campaign to assemble a "people of faith" page for the Kerry Web site, at which point Miss Vanderslice was to be announced as the contact person.
But with Miss Vanderslice not being allowed near the press, "They have no one in their communications shop who is conversant in religion," she said.
It was Miss Sullivan's June 2003 cover story in the Washington Monthly, "Do Democrats Have a Prayer?" that inspired Miss Vanderslice to quit her Jubilee job and go to work for the Howard Dean campaign as its religious outreach coordinator in Iowa.
"I was quickly dubbed the 'church lady,' " Miss Vanderslice wrote in the May issue of Sojourners, "as I tried to convince senior staff that, although many people of faith supported Dean's positions, his secular image would hurt him in the election."
Miss Vanderslice was then recommended to the campaign by Maureen Shea, the Clinton administration's liaison to religious groups from 1997 to 2001.
At first, Miss Vanderslice was given wide latitude to define Mr. Kerry's positions on spiritual issues and to hire assistants who would reach out to Muslims and black churches, the Kerry campaign source said.
Then her "strategy memo" advising Mr. Kerry on how to shift the press's emphasis on sexual morality to social justice issues got ignored.
Thus, when Mr. Kerry was asked about the Communion furor Tuesday, he said, "We have a separation of church and state in the United States" and that Catholicism "is not defined by one issue."
"Maybe the Kerry campaign is learning the wrong lesson from the 1960 presidential campaign," said Steven Waldman, the founder of the religious Web site Beliefnet.com. "They figured that if [John F.] Kennedy emphasized separation of church and state, that's the way we will do it, too.
"At the time, the question is whether Kennedy is too influenced by the church. The question now is whether Kerry is influenced too little."
Copyright © 2004 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Presidential Candidates on Religion
An ongoing record of the Democratic presidential hopefuls' comments on religion and spirituality
Beliefnet
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/137/story_13791.html
John Edwards
Senator John Edwards is a Methodist. He has been more reserved than other candidates in talking about religion and his personal faith, though he has acknowledged that his faith played a part in helping him recover from the death of his 16-year-old son Wade, in a 1996 car accident.
On Values
"...we cannot concede values to this president, because I think we win a values debate with this president. I don't think his values are the values that I grew up with in that small town in North Carolina. And they show in everything this administration does."
--Appearance on FOX News Sunday, Dec. 28, 2003
On His Faith Journey
"...My faith has been enormous to me in my personal life and of course my personal life is a big impact on my political life. I have had an interesting faith journey over the course of my life. I was born and raised in the Southern Baptist church, I was baptized in the Southern Baptist Church and then later in life joined the Methodist church and like a lot of people, when I was in my college years, and I went to law school and became a lawyer and was raising my young family I moved away somewhat from my faith. And then I lost a son in 1996 and my faith came roaring back and it played an enormous role in my ability to get through that period. It stayed with me and has been enormously important.
On Faith's Role in Politics
"...In terms of my political life I believe there's a lot of the things that are part of my faith belief is also part of my political belief. My responsibilities to others, to help others. My work for instance, with Urban Ministries. I have been on the board of Urban Ministries for years before I went to the Senate. To provide help to the homeless in the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina is an example of that. So I think it's just part of my entire life."
--Interview with the Interfaith Alliance, December 3, 2003
On Prayer
"I believe that God answers prayers."
--Washington Post profile, Aug. 7, 2001
"You know the Lord is in this place. You can feel his presence."
--Campaign stop at a Sidney Park, S.C. church, Dec. 28, 2003
On Faith and the Constitution
"...for any publicly elected official, you're responsibility is to abide by and enforce the Constitution, and meet your constitutional duties. My personal faith guides and affects my personal decisions in my personal life. But as President of the United States I have a constitutional responsibility to all of the American people, which means, to all people of all faiths. So I think you have to be very, very careful to not let your own personal faith beliefs, particularly where they may differ with other faith beliefs, to influence national policy."
--Interview with the Interfaith Alliance, December 3, 2003
On Faith-Based Initiatives
"Faith is enormously important to me personally and to tens of millions of Americans. In addition, religious institutions do wonderful work and make important contributions to our society.
"In a manner consistent with the First Amendment, faith-based charities should be able to participate in delivering services. But they should also meet the same anti-discrimination standards as other charities receiving government support."
--Statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 7, 2004
John Kerry
Senator John Kerry is Catholic, though he recently discovered that his paternal grandparents were Jewish. Kerry's grandfather was born Fritz Kohn in Austria in 1873. He changed his name in 1902, converted to Catholicism, and moved to Boston, where he married a woman who had also converted from Judaism to Catholicism.
On Prayer
"We had guys on the boat from Arkansas, from South Carolina, from all over the place. But none of that mattered. We were a bunch of guys fighting under the same flag, praying to the same God."
--Speech at a VFW hall in Tacoma, November 2002, quoted in Vogue, March 2003
On Democrats & Religion
"We've got to prove we're as God-fearing and churchgoing as everybody else."
--Quoted in Vogue, March 2003
On Fighting Extremism
"We will not prevent a clash of civilizations with Islam, radical Islam unless we begin to reach out to countries and bring the real world of religion together to understand the similarities even as we look at the differences. To recognize that we all pray to the God of Abraham and Isaac and that we need to find a way to isolate the extremists....If you don't pray that's fine, and that's the country we are also incidentally."
--Speech at a Concord, Mass. campaign event, Aug. 8, 2003
On Church and State
"May I say that one of my objections to this administration is that it has crossed that delicate line that our forefathers drew in the Constitution that separates church and state. And it is vital for us to hold on to that line. But those who pray, pray to that same God. Or they pray in a way that is peaceful and at one with the universe. But they do not accept the notion that martyrdom and killing innocent people is somehow connected to legitimate religious activity."
--Speech at a Concord, New Hampshire campaign event, Aug. 8, 2003
On Not Losing Faith
"Judy, if I do nothing else in my life I will never stop trying to bring to people the conviction of how wasteful and asinine is a human expenditure of this kind. I don't mean this in an all-consuming world saving fashion. I just mean that my own effort must be entire and thorough and that it must do what it can to help make this a better world to live in. I have not lost faith--on the contrary--I have gained a conviction and desire greater than ever before--and now, a sense of inevitability--a weighty fatalism that takes worry out of the small actions of late and makes the personal much more important."
--1968 letter to ex-wife Judy Thorme, after learning of the death of his friend Dick Pershing in Vietnam, quoted in The Atlantic, November 2003
Religious Democrats?
You wouldn't know it by the candidates, but Christians form the base of the party.
Sojourners Magazine, May 2004 (Vol. 33, No. 5, pp. 8). Commentary.
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0405&article=040541b
by Mara Vanderslice
I remember the first time I heard Gov. Howard Dean speak, more than a year ago. Dean sharply criticized the move toward war in Iraq and wondered out loud why the other Democrats were not willing to challenge the Bush administration. At the time, the faith community had been active in opposition to the war, but while protests erupted around the world, our leaders in Washington remained painfully silent. Dean broke through that silence with what to me was a prophetic voice in a time that desperately needed politicians to be truth-tellers.
I was so inspired to see a candidate who was willing to stand up for the things I believed in that I decided to leave my job to work on the Dean campaign. As a Christian, I passionately wanted to galvanize the faith community around the candidate that had captured my heart and imagination. I headed to Iowa, where I managed to convince the Dean campaign to hire me to do outreach to religious communities. I was quickly dubbed the "church lady" as I tried to convince senior staff that, although many people of faith supported Dean’s positions, his secular image would hurt him in the election.
My appeals for intelligent language about faith were met with skepticism. I was told that Dean supporters were not religious and liked him because he didn’t talk about religion. A senior staff member who came into Iowa in the final weeks even asked me, "How in the world did you get hired?!" He just couldn’t comprehend expending resources to reach out to the religious community. "It’s not that I’m against it," he said, "it’s just I would have never thought of it. Who would have known religious people could get behind us?"
When Dean abruptly started talking about religion, his comments came across as insensitive and out of touch: He said he would only talk about religion when campaigning in the South; he called Job his favorite "New Testament" book.
I was amazed by the ignorance about religious people that I found among campaign workers, who seemed unable to comprehend Christians being Democrats. What an odd misconception, considering that an overwhelming percentage of Democrats are religious; according to George Barna, one of the most respected pollsters on religious matters, 79 percent of Democrats attend a Catholic or Protestant church. It was not the right wing Dean was alienating, but the very base of his party.
PRESUMPTIVE DEMOCRATIC nominee John Kerry need not make the same mistakes. Kerry and his wife Teresa have publicly emphasized the importance of their Catholic faith. Kerry spoke recently to a church audience quoting from James on how faith without works is dead. If Kerry continues to use religious language appropriately (and not only when speaking in the South) and embraces the millions of religious Americans that are the base of his supporters, he might just change some assumptions about the "secular" Democratic Party, and in the process, pick up a crucial constituency that could tip the balance of the election.
Ultimately, I can’t separate my Christianity from my values or my values from my politics. For me, being engaged in politics is an expression of my deepest held religious beliefs—it is about actualizing a collective commitment to protect the integrity of God’s creation, it’s about meeting the needs of the "least of these," and about our nation being a generous and trustworthy leader in the world. There are certainly positions taken by leading Democrats with which many Christians won’t agree—and many Christians are appalled by what they see as the exploitation of religion for political gain on the part of the Republican Party. The bottom line in applying our beliefs in the political arena is making an across-the-board assessment of who best represents the values we hold most dear.
The best way to overcome the misconceptions about the role of religious people in politics is to get involved. Christians should join a campaign, educate their faith community on the issues they care about, and get mobilized to register and vote. And if we do, politicians of all stripes will start to listen.
Mara Vanderslice, a Christian activist and political organizer, was the religious outreach coordinator for the Dean for America presidential campaign in Iowa.
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