TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Sharon Schmickle | Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008

"Keep religion out of politics," said a mega sign cruising St. Paul's streets on the back of a truck on Monday, the opening day of the Republican National Convention.

But a few blocks away, dozens of anti-war demonstrators marched with placards declaring: "Blessed Are the Peacemakers, For They Will Be Called Sons of God."

And Steve Ahlgren's sign said, simply: "1st John 4:7-21."

It was a biblical reference to loving God and loving one another, too. And Ahlgren, a lawyer from Lauderdale, insisted that religion expressed like that has a place in politics as a powerful force for good.

Religion in politics? Religion out of politics?

Both positions, paradoxically, express the view of America, one of the most devout nations in the Western world.

"Religion plays a crucial role, and it has throughout the history of the Republic," said Dan Hofrenning, a political science professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield.

It was a factor in the moral justification of FDR's New Deal, he said, and it was debated intensely when John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, ran for president. Religion provided moral authority for the civil-rights movement in the 20th century, and it played a role in women's drive for suffrage.

Indeed, religion trumps the issues for many Americans. And voters who perceive a candidate as sharing their own faith and a related set of values will forgive the candidate on a range of issues.

Religious and political differences

Putting together a religious and secular coalition is very difficult for a party and a candidate, Hofrenning said. Voters who pray often and rarely miss church are looking for expressions of faith, and candidates must respond. But many secular voters revolt at any hint of encroachment of the separation of church and state.

Hence, we have seen both McCain and Obama stumble in trying to have it both ways.

More vigilant about separation

A major quirk in America's political culture is that while we mix religion and politics, we are more vigilant than many other countries about separating church from state.

The religion-out-of-politics sign cruising St. Paul this week is sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which identifies itself on its website as "the nation's largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics)." Saying it is "critical to defend the separation between government and religion," the foundation also sent the sign to Denver last month for the Democratic National Convention.

Americans agree in theory with the ideal of drawing a line between church and state. But it isn't clear where they want it. In an August 2007 poll by the Pew Forum and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, a large majority (69 percent) of Americans agreed that it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs. However, a sizable majority (63 percent) opposed churches endorsing candidates during election campaigns. Just 28 percent said churches should come out in favor of candidates.

The voters' desire for faith in their leaders is reflected in media coverage of campaigns, according to another Pew project.

A relatively prominent topic

Researchers for Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism analyzed coverage of religion in the campaign through 16 months of the primary season, from January 2007 to April 2008. They found that when coverage of the "horse-race" aspects of the campaign was excluded, religion emerged as a relatively prominent topic. Religion garnered nearly as much coverage (10 percent of the stories) as race and gender combined (11 percent), even though the front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination were a black man and a woman.

"So despite the attention paid to Obama's former pastor, questions about McCain's relationship with his party's conservative religious base, interest in Mitt Romney's membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the surprisingly strong campaign of former Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee, only 2 percent of all the campaign stories directly focused on religion," said the Pew report.

Candidates readily affirm faith

In other words, reporters may be a bit squeamish about focusing directly on a candidate's religion. The same is not true for the candidates themselves. We heard affirmations of faith at the Democrat's convention in Denver. We can expect more of the same this week at the GOP convention and in the campaigns afterward.

Marching through St. Paul on Sunday, Rick Robinson from Cedar Rapids said his line on where religion is appropriate in politics is drawn "at using God to push your own agenda forward." The use of force to put down other people and other religions "misses the whole point of belief in God," he said.

Labels: church-state, Dan Hofrenning, faith, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, politics, Sharon Schmickle

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Thursday, September 27, 2007

Knowledge of Islam, Mormonism lacking

Most Americans know little about the faiths but say their own beliefs have little in common with them, a poll shows.

By Theo Milonopoulos, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 26, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Most Americans say they know little to nothing about the practices of Islam and Mormonism but say their own religious beliefs have little in common with either of these faiths, according to a national survey released Tuesday.

Forty-five percent of those polled said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers. Nearly 1 in 3 respondents say Mormonism is not a Christian religion, the report said.

The survey of 3,002 Americans was conducted last month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Although 58% of respondents said they knew little or nothing about Islamic practices, 70% of non-Muslims said Islam was very different from their own religious beliefs.

Pew Forum senior fellow John Green said that respondents' knowledge of Islam might be even lower than the survey results suggested. Respondents "tend to overestimate their own knowledge, so these figures may well underestimate their lack of knowledge," he said.

The survey found that public attitudes toward Muslims have grown more negative in recent years, with 35% of respondents expressing an unfavorable view. In 2002, the figure was 29%. Respondents who knew a Muslim or who were college graduates were more likely to express positive views about Islam.

But the belief that Islam encourages violence has increased even among groups that have relatively favorable views of Muslims. According to the survey, college graduates are just as likely as those with no college experience to associate violence with Islam.

The survey said Americans were similarly uninformed about Mormonism. Although 53% of those surveyed expressed a favorable view of Mormons, nearly the same amount, 51%, said they knew very little about the faith.

As in the case of Islam, respondents with higher educational backgrounds and those who knew a Mormon tended to view Mormonism more favorably. But even more important in respondents' assessment of Mormons was whether they believe Mormonism to be a Christian religion, according to the survey.

Of the 31% of respondents who said Mormons are not Christians, 49% view Mormonism unfavorably, and 42% said they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon for president.

Green said the results suggested that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Mormon and GOP presidential hopeful, could face difficulty persuading white evangelical Protestants to vote for him because nearly 40% of those surveyed viewed Mormons unfavorably.

The survey also reported that 73% of respondents familiar with Pope Benedict XVI have a favorable opinion of him; 75% reflected favorably on evangelist Billy Graham.

Labels: Americans, Islam, Mormonism, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press