God on the ballot
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| Thu, 09-16-2004 - 2:19pm |
President Bush has targeted conservative white evangelical voters with a specifically religious appeal. Sen. John Kerry has sought to attract socially conservative religious voters by addressing social justice and moral values, with little reference to his own Catholicism.
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Sept. 15: MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson tells MSNBC-TV’s Sam Shane that how strongly people believe tells more about how they vote than specifically what they believe.
MSNBC
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
Updated: 11:04 a.m. ET Sept. 15, 2004
Although He’s regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.
— Democratic former Sen. George Mitchell
Tell it to the Republicans, senator. They’re banking on Him.
President Bush, a United Methodist, built his meteoric national rise on his appeal to conservative white evangelical Christians.
Although Bush previously had made it clear that he was “born again,†he was reluctant to discuss the details of his faith before he ran for president. That changed in 2000, as the Bush campaign highlighted the candidate’s religious principles as the core of his proclaimed “compassionate conservative†agenda.
It paid off in 2000. Exit polls showed that Bush won 55 percent of the Protestant vote, which made up more than half of the electorate; among white Protestants, Bush beat Al Gore by almost 2 to 1. The support was crucial — Gore won among every other measurable religious group, from black Protestants to Catholics to Jews to non-believers.
For the president, paying close attention to his religious base doesn’t just make sense — it is imperative. Opinion polling shows that Americans’ votes most closely track their religious attendance. Voters who say they go to church every week vote Republican, by overwhelming margins. Those who go to church less frequently vote Democratic, by nearly similar proportions. Beginning with exit polls conducted during the 2000 election, the synchronicity has held across nearly all denominations and even faiths, appearing among Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians. For Bush, then, a critical goal in 2004 is to generate turnout among the nation’s most religiously observant voters. The Bush campaign sees that task as being easiest among the president’s own.
Bush’s main political adviser, Karl Rove, has said he was frustrated that as many as 4 million conservative white evangelical voters did not go to the polls four years ago. Those voters, the campaign believes, could make the difference in any of a number of closely divided states. In an election as tight as this one is expected to be, when one state could make the difference, the Republican Party has mounted a sophisticated pitch to what it sees as its base.
Difference of opinion is helpful in religion.— Thomas Jefferson
The president appeals to such voters across a shared belief that the Bible is the literal Word of God. It is a faith that recognizes a very real Devil. In fundamental terms, in other words, the president’s faith divides the world into two camps: good and evil. There is no gray. There is only right and wrong.
In “Plan of Attack,†his examination of the Bush administration’s buildup to the war in Iraq, Bob Woodward portrays Bush as unwavering in his belief that his cause was righteous, not merely right. “I haven’t suffered any doubt,†Bush said in an interview with Woodward.
The president’s religious conviction is the defining measure of his life, and of his administration. Lest there be any doubt, Bush said in that book: “I was praying for strength to do the Lord’s will. ... I pray that I will be as good a messenger of His will as possible.â€
In June 2003, Mahmoud Abbas, then the Palestinian prime minister, said that in a conversation with Bush, the president told him: “God told me to strike at al-Qaida, and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.â€
Democrats and other Americans surprised by how strongly Bush’s near-fundamentalist beliefs guide his governance can’t say they weren’t warned. Throughout the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush expansively talked about his faith and how it had rescued him from a squandered life of alcohol and failed business ventures. But even before then, he had hinted at a more direct connection between his beliefs and his political aspirations.
Southern Baptist television evangelist James Robison related that in a telephone call in 1999, Bush told him, “I feel like God wants me to run for president.†The same year, said Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bush told religious leaders at a meeting that “I’ve heard the call. I believe God wants me to be president.â€
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.
— Mohandas K. Gandhi
Not since 1960, when Sen. John F. Kennedy chose to confront head-on the perception that his Catholicism might disqualify him in the minds of many voters, have the religious beliefs of the major-party candidates played so prominent a role in the presidential election. Jimmy Carter’s faith was widely commented upon in 1976, but he stressed that he saw no “special relationship†between God and politics, and the issue rarely came up in a serious context.
This year, Bush’s frequent invocations of religious principles and faith have raised complaints that he is blurring the line separating church and state. Meanwhile, Bush’s Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts — like Kennedy — is struggling with the demands of his Catholicism.
For both men, religion is a tightrope they must walk carefully.
The Bush campaign makes no secret of its hope to mobilize conservative white evangelical voters. Doing so too aggressively, however, risks alienating not only many moderate voters, including many Catholics, but also leaders of some conservative denominations for which independence from secular government is a point of principle.
For Kerry, the Democratic Party’s longstanding support for abortion rights, which he has endorsed, is condemned by Catholic doctrine. His candidacy has become a test case for a Catholic Church task force developing guidelines for how U.S. bishops should approach Catholic lawmakers who promote policies opposed by the church.
Religious experience is highly intimate, and, for me, ready words are not at hand.
— Adlai Stevenson
Catholic voters favored Gore by 50 percent to 46 percent over Bush in 2000, exit polls showed. As a Catholic himself, Kerry would hope to do even better.
But the Catholic Church isn’t exactly cooperating. Kerry disagrees with church doctrine on abortion, and the controversy has occasionally slowed his campaign.
A handful of U.S. bishops said they would deny communion to pro-abortion-rights politicians, including Kerry, and two — Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis and Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs — said Catholics who voted for them would be guilty of a grave sin. In Los Angeles, meanwhile, a member of an ecclesiastical court filed heresy charges against Kerry.
Republicans have sought to exploit Kerry’s positions — he says he personally opposes abortion but believes it is a woman’s choice that must be protected — as evidence that he is not a “good Catholic.†Public opinion polling, however, suggests that the charge could rebound.
The polling firm Belden Russonello & Stewart reported in June that 61 percent of Catholics believed abortion should be legal. Even more, 72 percent, said Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights should not be denied communion, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in May, indicating that even some abortion opponents did not see the issue as make or break.
Likewise on embryonic stem cell research. Bush issued an executive order three years ago banning federal funding for scientific research using new lines of stem cells harvested from human embryos. Many scientists believe such research could lead to significant advances in treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases, but Bush said that “even the most noble ends do not justify any means.â€
The president is in line with the Vatican’s stance on embryonic stem cell research, which a spokesman said “the Holy Father has always unequivocally condemned.†Polls show that American Catholics overwhelmingly support such research — only 15% opposed it in a survey conducted in July by Harris Interactive.
The data explain, in part, why Kerry speaks so seldom about his faith. He does not need to.
Bush’s decision to target Catholics on religious grounds means he must talk to them in explicitly religious terms. Kerry, with Catholic voters on his side on many issues, is under no such obligation. To try to match Bush’s rhetoric would be largely superfluous, and it would risk disaffecting less churchly voters.
Kerry prefers to speak in terms of “values,†a word that for him encompasses not just religious principles but also “social justice†issues that have little to do with religion. In that way, he can speak to religious voters without invoking individual faiths.
“I don’t wear my own faith on my sleeve, but faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday,†Kerry said in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
The appeal is targeted at so-called “freestyle evangelicals,†a term coined by Steven Waldman, founder of Beliefnet.com, and John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron who is considered the foremost scholar on the politics of the American evangelical movement.
Green estimates that as many as 40 percent of American evangelicals fit the definition: theologically conservative but politically independent and more troubled by what they see as the degradation of the world around them — popular culture, the environment, neglect of the disadvantaged — than they are by specific questions of doctrine. The term could apply equally as well to moderate Catholics, giving Kerry a surprisingly large pool of religiously conservative voters who could be open to his message.
Again, polling data suggest that Kerry is already making noticeable inroads.
In a major new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted last month, “moral values†emerged as a key issue in the presidential election, with 64 percent of likely voters saying it would be “very important to my vote.†Even though conventional wisdom holds that those voters should overwhelmingly back Bush, Kerry was statistically tied — leading by 45 percent to 41 percent, in fact, but within the margin of error — when likely voters were asked which candidate “could do the best job in improving the nation’s moral climate.â€

Oh well then, who am I to argue with God.
I find the religious component in American politics very interesting. Seldom does the issue of religion come up with a Canadian politician. Most don't know what religion our leaders are. I'm sure interested parties can find out. It isn't really a secret. It's just not a campaign issue. In fact, we tend to find using one's religion and God as a campagin strategy rather cheap and in incredibly poor taste. It's not that Canadians are not religious, in fact Canadians are quite religious. This article by Catherine Whelan Costen about the attitude I am talking about sums up what I am trying to say quite nicely:
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It is our responsibility as citizens of this country to consider the political party, the candidate and the leader by their abilities to lead and govern this country. We should not expect or want them to guide us in moral or spiritual matters which belong in the dominion of our respective religions. Just because something is legal does not make it morally right, neither does something that is illegal necessarily mean it is immoral. We must make personal choices for our own deeds and accept the consequences for doing so. We may be comforted to know that our Prime Minister has a faith, and that he knows he is not supreme ruler, that he must answer for his actions to a higher power; but that should not be the reason to elect him or her. We must learn to separate ’Church and State’ in our own minds as well as in law in order to elect the best government for all people of all faiths. Although he or she may know that they answer to a higher power, that does not absolve him or her from answering to those that elect them to that public office, nor should it ever be our blind faith that keeps him in office or elects him to it in the first place.>>
This is what the religious right fails to grasp in their attempts to elect leaders that will pass laws in accordance with morality as it is spelled out by their OWN religion. It is up to every religious person to live THEIR OWN LIVES in accordance with their personal beliefs. If God is indeed the judge, then it is not up to them to impose their morality on everyone else. I'm not sure, but I believe that deep down they really do want a theocracy.
The concept of free will is huge in Christianity. If their faith is strong they should know that God will judge how people have lived their lives and if their decisions have been moral according to the teachings of their religion....not the president of the United States.
Edited 9/16/2004 4:35 pm ET ET by suemox
Too bad MM didn't include this in F9/11. The fact that Bush actually believes that God is speaking to him and instructing him to go to war is beyond bizarre. It simply proves how egocentric the man is, if not crazy. if we as a people follow him instead of our God, perhaps we are the ones who are crazy.
If I had paid no attention to this campaign and were to hear that Bush had made the above statement it would be all I would need to run, not walk, to my polling place and cast a vote for Kerry.
I suppose we'll have to take Bush's word for it (as many obviously have) that he is a TRUE prophet and not just delusional. Also, we have no proof that he LIED so it must be true. It's amazing how stuff just doesn't stick to this guy. Maybe it IS God's work after all
...or maybe he is an unwitting Dr Faustus and his gang (Cheney, Runmsfeld Wolfowitz, Rove) are Mephistopheles.
LOL
;o)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tragical_History_of_Doctor_Faustus
Edited 9/16/2004 5:36 pm ET ET by suemox
Does anyone remember this speech?
'I Believe in an America Where the Separation of Church and State is Absolute'
September 12, 1960, address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
John F. Kennedy While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida--the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power--the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms--an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space.
These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues--for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.
But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured--perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again--not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me--but what kind of America I believe in.
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be 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--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim--but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so--and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test--even by indirection--for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it.
I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none--who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him--and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.
This is the kind of America I believe in--and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died."
And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died--when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches--when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom--and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey--but no one knows whether they were Catholic or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo.
I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition--to judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress--on my declared stands against an Ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of the public schools (which I have attended myself)--instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic church leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American Bishops in 1948 which strongly endorsed church-state separation, and which more nearly reflects the views of almost every American Catholic.
I do not consider these other quotations binding upon my public acts--why should you? But let me say, with respect to other countries, that I am wholly opposed to the state being used by any religious group, Catholic or Protestant, to compel, prohibit, or persecute the free exercise of any other religion. And I hope that you and I condemn with equal fervor those nations which deny their Presidency to Protestants and those which deny it to Catholics. And rather than cite the misdeeds of those who differ, I would cite the record of the Catholic Church in such nations as Ireland and France--and the independence of such statesmen as Adenauer and De Gaulle.
But let me stress again that these are my views--for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters--and the church does not speak for me.
Whatever issue may come before me as President--on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject--I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.
But if the time should ever come--and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible--when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.
But I do not intend to apologize for these views to my critics of either Catholic or Protestant faith--nor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.
If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.
But if, on the other hand, I should win the election, then I shall devote every effort of mind and spirit to fulfilling the oath of the Presidency--practically identical, I might add, to the oath I have taken for 14 years in the Congress. For without reservation, I can "solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution...so help me God.
Reprinted with permission from the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library.
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Elaine