Religion and Politics

Democrats appear to be having the time of their lives at the 2008 National Convention. Obama’s surprise appearance after Biden’s speech brought even more enthusiasm to the crowd and television viewers. In the world of religion and politics, it has been fascinating to see that every speech references God and no politician can close a speech without “God Bless You” and/or “God Bless America.” The blogs are reporting that faith at the convention is getting center stage. David Finnigan with RNS says that “Democratic Party leaders are making an aggressive push for Catholic and evangelical voters” – with their faith-focused ideas. Another blog from the Newsweek site, however, says that Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama both “laid off the God Talk” in their speeches despite the “sermons and homilies from the 2008 Democrats.” The Convention has had two faith caucus panel discussions, which was part of a new initiative from the Democratic Party “to put faith in action,” and the Convention has shown that spirit by having the official program always begin with an invocation and end with a benediction. There is a good press release from the DNC-2008 describing the First-ever Faith Caucus Meetings, here. Sarah Brown wrote another piece for Al Jazeera titled, “Talking Politics and Faith,” which looked at the drama of the interfaith meeting at the convention when three anti-abortion protesters were thrown out for disturbing the event. Brown also wrote that the event was like a religious ceremony, and she discusses with Muslim women representatives their hopes that Americans of different faiths would work together.

Picture from Al Jazeera website, here.

Suzanne Sataline, with the Wall Street Journal, wrote an article today titled, “For Some Evangelicals, GOP Ties are No Longer Binding.” In some ways, after several months of analyzing the Christian vote, this kind of article is old news. On the other hand, the interviews and facts, which Sataline includes, portray quite well the changing dynamics of the evangelical vote. The first quote is from a 55 year old woman, who went on a mission trip and came back considering “other solutions.” She is now thinking of becoming an Independent. The following statistics are mentioned throughout the article:

The evangelical vote makes up about a quarter of the electorate.

President George W. Bush received 78% of this voting bloc in 2004.

A third of that number will either vote Democratic or independent this November.

40% of evangelicals are open to being persuaded to vote Democratic.

70% of white evangelicals support McCain – 12 points less than the percentage of support for President Bush four years ago.

17% of white evangelicals support Obama

It is remarkable that traveling abroad would have such significant influence on voting behavior, but all the statistics speak to this trend. Sataline also says that about 1.6 million U.S. churchgoers travel on short-term mission trips each year. This phenomenon of “small” shifts away from the Republican Party may be the result of seeing poverty first hand – although the connection between experiencing poverty and greater self-perceived political awareness or knowledge of the party platforms is hard to see. It is doubtful that evangelicals returning from two weeks in Haiti, for example, are suddenly aware of the differences between the two parties or how they intend to improve conditions in less developed countries.

On Saturday, Obama and McCain made their first joint appearance as presumptive nominees at a “Civil Forum”. The candidates were speaking before the Saddleback Church in California. NPR has reported news of the event and said that the church has a membership of “22,000 evangelical voters.” The pastor of the church and interviewer on Saturday was Rick Warren, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life.” Warren has not endorsed either candidate, saying that they are both patriots and his friends. The NPR article includes an interview with John Green from the Pew Research Center. He noted that the “approach to religious voters is central to both campaigns” although most analysts have agreed that Obama has been more forthcoming about his faith and how it shapes his life. The New York Times Politics Blog has pointed out that the forum was the “unofficial opening of the general election.” The two candidates spoke separately, with Obama going first (after flipping a coin) and each of them speaking for about an hour. The questions were quite varied but related mostly to character and personality. The main goal appeared to get the candidates to do some soul searching – allowing viewers to get more personal information from the candidates about their leadership styles and opinions. “The event reflects the importance of religion in American life and increasingly, in politics,” and as Pastor Warren said in his introduction (see transcript), “we believe in the separation of church and state, but we do not believe in the separation of faith and politics because faith is just a world view and everybody has some kind of world view.” A CNN article also looks at the politics of trying to persuade religious voters to vote one way or the other. Ed Hornick wrote that the “stakes are high for both candidates, who are actively courting so-called values voters and evangelicals, important voting blocs.”

Photo of Pastor Rick Warren from the Purpose Driven website

Last week, Mazen Asbahi, stepped down as Barack Obama’s Muslim outreach adviser. He held the position from July 26 until August 6, at which point he resigned from the volunteer position. The Wall Street Journal reported that there were questions about Mr. Absahi’s “involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups.” A CNN blog also repeated that Mr. Absahi’s decision was based on his desire “to avoid distracting from Barack Obama’s message of change,” particularly as his involvement with those groups tied him for a brief period to Jamal Said, who has been linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. On June 26, this blog looked at the criticism Obama was getting from the Muslim-American community on account of the perceived disparity between attention given to Christian and Jewish Americans on the one hand and Muslims on the other. For this reason, the position of Volunteer National Coordinator for Muslim Affairs was a promising step in ensuring that the Arab and Muslim vote would not be divided between the two candidates. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Absahi was too well-connected to fill the post without political controversy. A recent Al Jazeera piece reminds readers that “three-quarters of the US Arab-American electorate is Christian, but they nonetheless share Arab-Muslim concerns on racial profiling, the war in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Obama cannot afford to ignore the politics of the Arab-American community or the Muslim-American community. At the same time, Obama is maintaining his ongoing attempts to dispel rumors about his own religious faith – arguing that the “whole strategy of suggesting” he is a Muslim actually shows widespread anti-Muslim sentiment. The WSJ article cited above also includes a fascinating Pew Research Poll that shows only 57% of Americans identified Obama as Christian, while 12% said he was Muslim, and 25% did not know. Those figures help explain why the front cover of the New Yorker last month may have been particularly offensive and politically controversial.  

The article, Figures on Faith, discusses new efforts to gather information about the actual number of Muslims living in the United States. For many years, there has been a debate about the size of the Muslim communities in America. Past surveys put the numbers quite low, worrying Muslims that they may not have a substantial presence in the American political process. The Council on American Islamic Relations says the number of Muslims in the U.S. is between 6 and 8 million people (or 2-3% of the total population). The Pew Research Center - based on phone surveys - says the number is more like 2.3 million (0.6%). The Christian Science Monitor in an article back in 2002 discussed “America’s Elusive Minority,” and pointed out that the population estimates range from 1.2 to 10 million. A New York Times Article from 2005 discusses trends in immigration and reminds readers that although the U.S. Census Bureau and the DHS does not track religion, “both provide statistics on immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries.” Accordingly, “in 2005, more people from Muslim countries became legal permanent U.S. residents - nearly 96,000 - than in any year in the previous two decades.” The exciting part of this new initiative (partly led by the Islamic Society of North America) is that it will not be a sample phone survey. Rather, as reported by the lead researcher of the study, they are going to “try and identify the total universe of mosques and not do a sample survey but a complete survey of every mosque.” The surveyors will also gather information and data about mosque governance, voter drives at mosques, and the level of participation of women. Hopefully, this census will make statistical sense of all the packed and overflowing mosques throughout the country.

It is rather incomprehensible that the New Yorker actually intended to insult Muslim Americans – despite showing the Obamas as flag-burning militants in the White House. The fact that the cover of the July 21, 2008 issue of the magazine has offended Barack Obama and countless Americans may speak precisely to what the New Yorker’s cover artist was intending to point out: Americans are scared and many assume that the Obamas are Muslim. The title of the front page cartoon, “The Politics of Fear,” (by Barry Blitt) is meant to show Americans how scare tactics are being used to hurt Obama’s increasingly successful campaign. The Huffington Post published a response from Blitt to the outrage. He wrote, “It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is.” But Obama himself has specifically said that the cover illustration was an insult to Muslim Americans. He said on Larry King that “for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate.” A wiser comment from Obama was that “in attempting to satirize something, they probably fueled some misconceptions about me instead.” Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune says the caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama is startling in its image, “but not nearly as clear in its meaning.” Page reminds us that when it takes you too long to figure out a joke, it’s not funny and worth forgetting. Moreover, in contrast to Obama’s comment, Page more accurately says that “Folks who say they think the cartoon depicts the real Obamas offer evidence that false perceptions already are out there, New Yorker or not.” The editor of the New Yorker has written that the cartoon picture of the Obamas in the White House was “a lot like the spirit of what Stephen Colbert does,” which unfortunately shows no understanding of why Colbert gets laughs. Even those people who accept the meaning and intention of the New Yorker’s front cover probably aren’t laughing.

According to President Bush’s speech at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast on June 26, his administration “has provided unprecedented support for the compassionate work performed by faith-based and community groups.” He continued this thought by saying that the “government can hand out money, but government cannot put hope in a person’s heart.” The President remarked that his legacy has been to lower “the barriers that kept government and faith-based groups needlessly divided.” The U.S. President also addressed the National Conference of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and said that when he came to office his goal was to change the fact that faith-based organizations were “often barred from receiving support from the federal government.” His method of change was “compassionate conservatism.” The President also recalled that compassionate conservatism was his main agenda item as a candidate back in 1999.  In reality, it was his main focus until the foreign policy of the U.S. dramatically shifted after September 11, 2001. Afterall, his first executive order established the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives itself.  In essence, this order was meant to ensure that faith-based organizations “do not have to give up their religious character to receive taxpayer money.” To be clearer about how his initiative could coincide with true U.S.-style separation of church and state, President Bush said, “Government should never fund the teaching of faith, but it should support the good works of the faithful.” The President further spelled out three policies advanced for this cause: 1) The tax code was amended to provide greater incentives for charitable donations; 2) The Compassion Capital Fund was established; and 3) The Pro Bono Challenge was launched this year. The President said that “the movement is bigger than politics or any political party;” 35 governors have faith-based offices – 19 of them Democrats; and last year the government provided “more than 19,000 competitive grants to community and faith-based organizations.”  The areas where faith-based groups have been active are listed in a White House Fact Sheet, with interesting facts such as: “Of the 60 million people who give their time to others, more than one-third do so through faith-based groups.” 

(Photo from the White House website)

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama still has the support of a majority of American Muslims, but a New York Times article from June 24, 2008 questions whether there is a “disconnect between Mr. Obama’s message of unity and his campaign strategy.” One reason for questioning his sincerity is Obama’s failure to visit a single mosque during the campaign season. Muslim Americans interviewed for the NYT article said that the implication is that there is something wrong with being Muslim, particularly because on Obama’s website, “he classifies the claim that he is Muslim as a smear.” The article reflects on Representative Keith Ellison’s concern that Obama’s aides are not considering carefully enough that Muslim Americans are being alienated from the campaign process. The questions about Obama’s evasiveness picked up intensity after reports that two Muslim women were recently prevented from sitting behind Obama at a rally in Detroit. The reason for the exclusion of the women may have been, according to a report on politico.com, that Obama’s aides are almost paranoid about the need to deny rumors that Obama is Muslim, leading many members of the Muslim American community to “feel betrayed.” Questions are being raised in two directions: Whether Obama is really driven to create a unified America and whether Muslim Americans are a sufficient political force that Obama cannot afford to ignore them.

From all the media coverage of the current U.S. presidential election, it seems that the “liberal” or “progressive” voice has once again entered U.S. politics. According to a recent Q&A at the Pew Forum, “the religious left” is more active. John Green, the Senior Fellow in Religion and American Politics, provides clear definitions of the religious right and religious left in the interview. He distinguishes “red-letter Christians” from “progressive centrists” and the “core religious left.” Despite the subgroups in the body of people making up the religious left, John Green says that they are united by social welfare issues, environmental protection, and foreign policy. Other issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage are “potential points of division.” The religious left also has “in common a negative reaction to the religious right.” Based on a 2004 Survey of Religion and Politics, the Senior Fellow estimated in the interview that the religious left totaled a little more than one-quarter of American adults.   

AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is an organization that lobbies to promote and secure greater U.S. support for Israel and a stronger U.S.-Israel relationship. This past week, AIPAC held its Policy Conference 2008. All three of the U.S. presidential candidates spoke at the conference, as well as prominent speakers such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Barack Obama spoke at the conference on Wednesday, June 4, 2008. Obama directly stated that as President he would “never compromise when it comes to Israel’s security,” while making pledges for aid and support.  As part of the justifications for this decision to stand firm for Israel were: “voices that deny the Holocaust” and “terrorist groups and political leaders committed to Israel’s destruction.” Obama brought the politics of the Middle East into his speech by referencing “government-funded textbooks filled with hatred towards Jews.” The politically clever aspect of Obama’s speech was his ability to refute media allegations that he would have negotiations with country leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. The brilliant part of the speech was the connection he drew between the African American community and the Jewish community. Obama said, “Jewish and African Americans have stood shoulder to shoulder. They took buses down South together; they marched together; they bled together; and Jewish Americans like Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner were willing to die alongside a black man, James Cheney on behalf of freedom and on behalf of equality.”