The loser in this election is religion. (AP)
Eric Gorski of the Associated Press wrote a poignant piece this week about how religion and politics came head to head in this election and religion ultimately lost.
Here are some highlights from his article:
Analysis: Religion used divide, mock in ’08
With a few exceptions, whatever seemed odd or fringe trumped serious discussion about how candidates’ religious beliefs shape their approach to governance.
The 2008 Election – Religion, the Economy, and Values Voters (AP)
Eric Gorski of the Associated Press has written a fascinating article about the issues that Americans are concerned about this election season.
Religion today
By Eric Gorski – September 25, 2008
“For years, more liberal faith leaders have tried to elevate fighting poverty at home and abroad onto the values agenda. What’s changed is that an increasing number of voters are seeing suffering not just in the streets but in the mirror.
“Barriers remain to both major parties if they seek to appeal to religious voters on the economy. You’re either for or against gay marriage or abortion rights, but no one supports foreclosures and layoffs. Differences arise over solutions, and analysts say it can make more sense for campaigns to make general pitches on the economy than faith-based appeals.”
Read the full article at http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ghGk5Lj6-e5KJOZMpIzs-pBPVnTAD93DNL180
The Politics of Obama’s Faith and the Evangelical Left – Stephen Manfield
[amazonify]1595552502[/amazonify]
Thomas Nelson Publishers has published a new book objectively presenting Barack’s faith. This video introduces the book. Many voters question Obama’s authenticity and beliefs, both religious and political, and how the two intertwine. According to Stephen Mansfield, the author of this book, Barack is “raising the banner of what he hopes will be the faith-based politics of a new generation . . . and he will carry that banner to whatever heights of power his God and the American people allow.”
A portion of the proceeds of the sales of this book from the above link will go to support ReligiousLiberty.TV.
Chrisopher Hitchens: Don’t Patronize Palin (Salon.com)
In today’s column, outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens describes the religious situation of this year’s crop of candidates. Here is an excerpt of the full article which is available at http://www.slate.com/id/2199568/
Interviewed by Rick Warren at the grotesque Saddleback megachurch a short while ago, Sen. Barack Obama announced that Jesus had died on the cross to redeem him personally. How he knew this he did not say. But it will make it exceedingly difficult for him, or his outriders and apologists, to ridicule Palin for her own ludicrous biblical literalist beliefs. She has inarticulately said that her gubernatorial work would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with god.” Her local shout-and-holler tabernacle apparently believes that Jews can be converted to Jesus and homosexuals can be “cured.” I cannot wait to see Obama and Biden explain how this isn’t the case or how it’s much worse than, and quite different from, Obama’s own raving and ranting pastor in Chicago or Biden’s lifelong allegiance to the most anti-”choice” church on the planet. The difference, if there is one, is that Palin is probably sincere whereas the Democratic team is almost certainly hypocritical. The same is true of the boring contest over who can be the most populist, and of the positively sinister race to see who can be the most demagogically anti-Washington. With this kind of immaturity right across both tickets, it’s insulting to be asked to decide on the basis of experience, let alone “readiness.”
Read the full column at http://www.slate.com/id/2199568/
VIDEOS: Obama’s, McCain’s and Palin’s Pastor Problems
This year, the candidates’ religious leaders and their own beliefs are getting a lot of attention. Here is a round-up of some of the videos that have made news in recent months.
Jeremiah Wright has been a political liability for Barack Obama:
Wright spoke at the National Press Club about his remarks and views:
Sarah Palin’s pastor, Larry Kroon, on his belief that God will punish America. GOP Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin’s pastor says that God will Punish America, compares the United States to Assyria and a corrupt African nation.
Sarah Palin speaks at her childhood church:
Pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley’s endorsements of McCain have created a bit of concern for the candidate:
McCain ultimately rejected Hagee’s endorsement:
But if it is any consolation to the candidates, they don’t need to worry about distancing themselves from the infamous Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church – he doesn’t like either side!
Evangelical Christians and Sarah Palin – Excerpt from Peggy Noonan’s Column (WSJ)
Peggy Noonan has some interesting thoughts on McCain’s choice of running mate. It is certainly jumbling up categories – some liberals are making arguments that Palin should stay home with the kids while conservatives are making feminist arguments that if Palin was male, the media wouldn’t be asking these questions. It has interesting implications in the culture war.
Here are some excerpts from Peggy Noonan’s September 3, 2008 column in the Wall Street Journal - http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
Let me say of myself and almost everyone I know in the press, all the chattering classes and political strategists and inside dopesters of the Amtrak Acela Line: We live in a bubble and have around us bubble people. We are Bubbleheads. We know this and try to compensate for it by taking road trips through the continent — we’re on one now, in Minneapolis — where we talk to normal people. But we soon forget the pithy, knowing thing the garage mechanic said in the diner, and anyway we weren’t there long enough in the continent to KNOW, to absorb. We view through a prism of hyper-sophistication, and judge by the rules of Chevy Chase and Greenwich, of Cleveland Park and McLean, of Bronxville and Manhattan.
And again we know this, we know this is our limit, our lack.
But we also forget it.
And when you forget you’re a Bubblehead you get in trouble, you misjudge things. For one thing, you assume evangelical Christians will be appalled and left agitated by the circumstances of Mrs. Palin’s daughter. But modern American evangelicals are among the last people who’d judge her harshly. It is the left that is about to go crazy with Puritan judgments; it is the right that is about to show what mellow looks like. Religious conservatives know something’s wrong with us, that man’s a mess. They are not left dazed by the latest applications of this fact. “This just in – there’s a lot of sinning going on out there” is not a headline they’d understand to be news.
So the media’s going to wait for the Christian right to rise up and condemn Mrs. Palin, and they’re not going to do it because it’s not their way, and in any case her problems are their problems. Christians lived through the second half of the 20th century, and the first years of the 21st. They weren’t immune from the culture, they just eventually broke from it, or came to hold themselves in some ways apart from it. I think the media will explain the lack of condemnation as “Republican loyalty” and “talking points.” But that’s not what it will be.
Another Bubblehead blind spot. I’m bumping into a lot of critics who do not buy the legitimacy of small town mayorship (Palin had two terms in Wasilla, Alaska, population 9,000 or so) and executive as opposed to legislative experience. But executives, even of small towns, run something. There are 262 cities in this country with a population of 100,000 or more. But there are close to a hundred thousand small towns with ten thousand people or less. “You do the math,” the conservative pollster Kellyanne Conway told me. “We are a nation of Wasillas, not Chicagos.”
Read the rest at http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
VIDEO: John McCain on What the President’s Religion Should Be (BeliefNet)
Ah, the warm glow of the political circle continues to encompass us until November. And this year it seems like in addition to electing a Commander-in-Chief, we are also electing a Pastor-in-Chief, a religious leader, if you will – - at least if you listen to some of the pundits.
A few months ago BeliefNet interviewed John McCain and asked him what religion he thought the President should be. The Republican presidential candidate told Beliefnet he’s uncomfortable with a Muslim president but felt Mitt Romney’s Mormonism is a non-issue. Any religion is okay, according to McCain, so long as this candidate “will carry on the Judeo-Christian tradition that has made this country great.”
Very interesting . . .
VEEPSTAKES: Will Alaska Governor Sarah Palin bring in Conservative Votes for McCain?
With Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty apparently out of the running for McCain’s VP pick, speculation this morning turns to Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska. Scratch that . . . News Just In – Sarah Palin IS McCain’s running mate.
Richard Land was interviewed by CBS News and the following exchange took place:
CBSNews.com: Who’s on the list of people mentioned for VP that you think would most excite Southern Baptists and other members of the conservative faith community?
Richard Land: Probably Governor Palin of Alaska, because she’s a person of strong faith. She just had her fifth child, a Downs Syndrome child. And there’s a wonderful quote that she gave about her baby, and the fact that she would never, ever consider having an abortion just because her child had Downs Syndrome.
She’s strongly pro-life. She’s a virtual lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. She would ring so many bells. And I just think it would help with independents because she’s a woman. She’s a reform Governor. I think that, from what I hear, that would be the choice that would probably ring the most bells, along with Mike Huckabee, of course, who’s a Southern Baptist, along with Mike Huckabee, of course, who’s a Southern Baptist.
From: http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/2008/08/leading-evangelical-says-palin-rings.html
As she is relatively new to the political world, only recently elected Governor of Alaska, there is not a lot of information about her policies aside from her own personal beliefs. Here is what Wikipedia users say about her background.
Family and personal background
Palin was born as Sarah Louise Heath in Sandpoint, Idaho, the daughter of Charles and Sally (Sheeran) Heath.[3] Her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant.[4] Charles Heath was a popular science teacher and coached track.[4] The Heaths were avid outdoors enthusiasts; Sarah and her father would sometimes wake at 3 a.m. to hunt moose before school, and the family would regularly run 5k and 10k races.[4]
Palin was the point guard and captain for the Wasilla High School Warriors, in Wasilla, Alaska, when they won the Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982; she earned the nickname “Sarah Barracuda” because of her intense play.[4] She played the championship game despite a stress fracture in her ankle, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds.[4] Palin, who was also the head of the school Fellowship of Christian Athletes, would lead the team in prayer before games.[4]
In 1984, Palin was second-place in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant after winning the Miss Wasilla contest earlier that year, winning a scholarship to help pay her way through college.[4][5] In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.
Details of Palin’s personal life have contributed to her political image. She hunts, eats moose burgers, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, and owns a float plane.[6][7] Palin holds a lifetime membership with the National Rifle Association. She admits that she used marijuana when it was legal in Alaska, but says that she did not like it.[8]
Palin holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Idaho where she also minored in politics. She briefly worked as a sports reporter for local Anchorage television stations while also working as a commercial fisherman with her husband, Todd, her high school sweetheart.[4] One summer when she was working on Todd’s fishing boat, the boat collided with a tender while she was holding onto the railing; Palin broke several fingers.[4] Outside the fishing season, Todd works for BP at an oil field on the North Slope[9] and is a champion snowmobiler, winning the 2000-mile “Iron Dog” race four times.[4] The two eloped shortly after Palin graduated college; when they learned they needed witnesses for the civil ceremony, they recruited two residents from the old-age home down the street.[4] Todd is a Native Yup’ik Eskimo.[4] The Palin family lives in Wasilla, about 40 miles (64 km) north of Anchorage.[10]
On September 11, 2007, the Palins’ son Track joined the Army. Eighteen years old at the time, he is the eldest of Palin’s five children.[10] Track now serves in an infantry brigade and will be deployed to Iraq in September. She also has three daughters: Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, and Piper, 7.[11] On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome.[12] She returned to the office three days after giving birth.[13] Palin refused to let the results of prenatal genetic testing change her decision to have the baby. “I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection,” Palin said. “Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?”[13]
High approval ratings
In July 2007, Palin had an approval rating often in the 90s.[6] A poll published by Hays Research on July 28, 2008 showed Palin’s approval rating at 80%. [54]
VEEPSTAKES: Could Tim Pawlenty Bring 30 Million Evangelicals Back to the GOP?
Back in June,The Minnesota Independent explored the question of what type of Vice Presidential candidate Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty would make, and in particular whether Pawlenty could bring evangelical voters out to vote for John McCain.
Although McCain has won the GOP nomination, some evangelical leaders such as James Dobson have expressed that they will not vote for him because he is too “liberal.” Can Pawlenty bridge this gap?
Here are some excerpts from the story:
Pawlenty became an evangelical Christian in the mid-1980s when he married Mary Anderson, a member of Wooddale Church, an evangelical megachurch in Eden Prairie. The couple were married by the Rev. Leith Anderson, a senior pastor at Wooddale since 1977. Anderson happens to be the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization representing more than 30 million American evangelicals. In fact, Anderson had been the president of NAE from 1999 to 2003, and became the current president after the Rev. Ted Haggard’s troubles involving methamphetamines and gay sex forced him out in 2006.
. . .
In 2003, Pawlenty and Wooddale hosted about 1,600 evangelical leaders from around the country for a two-day convention of the National Association of Evangelicals. Pawlenty praised the work of President Bush and his faith-based initiatives, a program that funnels federal funds to religious charities. “If you’re going to change destructive behavior, you’ve got to change hearts,” said Pawlenty, according to the Star Tribune. “Governors can’t do that. We hope you can do that in a God-honoring manner that meets the challenges of our day.”
. . .
In 2005, Pawlenty created the Governor’s Council on Faith and Community Service Initiatives, a Minnesota version of Bush’s White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Also in 2005, Pawlenty began National Day of Prayer services at the State Capitol, a move that garnered significant praise from evangelicals and social conservatives. In fact, annual Minnesota’s Day of Prayer activities, at which Pawlenty is a regular speaker, are exclusively evangelical, due to a takeover of such events by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson.
. . .
Pawlenty toed the line for the Family Council and Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life in the 2008 session when he vetoed legislation to fund stem cell research and legislation to allow cities to implement domestic partner benefits. He even vetoed a bill authored by a fellow Republican, Rep. Kathy Tinglestad. Her bill would formalize the processes involved in surrogate motherhood, but because anti-choice groups said it didn’t ban abortion, Pawlenty vetoed the bill.
. . .
Pawlenty courts the religious right in Minnesota albeit on the down-low. He’s made appearances at anti-abortion rallies, and was a featured speaker at the Minnesota Family Council’s Legislative Insights Luncheon in early 2007. A member of that group asked him, “Do you think you would have won without the faith-based vote?” Pawlenty quickly responded “No,” and was greeted with laughter and applause.
Will McCain pick him as the VP Candidate? We’ll know in a few hours.
Read the full newspaper story at The Minnesota Independent
Thanks to Pastordan for posting a link to this on his blog “Street Prophets.”
INTERVIEW: Barry Lynn – Why Churches Should Stay out of Politics (SpectrumMagazine.org)
Barry Lynn
Spectrum Magazine has just posted an interview with Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Lynn is an attorney, activist, and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.
Lynn discusses the election, the recent event with John McCain and Barack Obama at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Community Church, and his view of the United States Constitution.
Read the entire article at SpectrumMagazine.org
Here are a couple of excerpts:
Question: So how does your faith impact your work?
Answer: My faith helps me to understand both the breadth and the diversity of the American religious experience. And also the depth of feelings people have about their faith – or if they don’t have faith, the depth of their opposition to it.
It makes me able to understand that people sincerely believe a vast variety of things about religion and its place – if any – in our culture. I take people’s statements of faith seriously and I’m not quick to say: Oh well, he’s just saying that for political reasons.
. . .
Question: Have your politics changed over time? You marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. when you were younger. Certainly he mixed religion and politics?
Answer: Dr. King mixed religion with politics in the broadest sense. He went back to the Constitution for what he wanted for the country. He gave a speech the day before he was assassinated. I can’t quote it verbatim, but he basically said that all he was asking was that America do what she wrote about. He was talking about the Constitution. He called us back to our common roots.