TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Daniel Schultz
September 15, 2009

Those on the religious right and left not only diverge wildly on everything from abortion to torture, but in their composition and distribution as well.
A graph showing the opinions of progressives on raising their profile.

It should be said at the outset that the new poll released today by the Bliss Institute and Public Religion Research concerning religious activists (on both the left and the right) contains very little that will surprise anyone who has studied religion and politics in recent years.

That should not be taken to mean that there is nothing of worth in the poll results. Far from it. It confirms, for example, much that observers have had to intuit or scratch out from other data. The religious right—pardon me, conservative religious activists—is mostly evangelical (54%), with lesser contingents of Catholics and mainline Protestants. If you’re not standard-grade Christian, however, you’re probably not a part of the demographic: only 1% were Mormon, Orthodox, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, and less than 1% were non-Christians.

Progressive believers were a much more diverse group, which is also not a surprise: 44% mainliners, 17% Catholics, 12% Unitarians/mixed faith, and so on down the line. Only 10% claimed to be evangelicals, a point we’ll come back to in a moment.

More not-shockers: conservative activists are focused like laser beams on abortion and homosexuality, while progressives are interested in poverty, health care, the environment, the economy in general, and ending the war in Iraq. Conservatives love them some individualistic ethics and free-market economics, progressives want to see structural reform. Cons are for torture and progs are against it (if that makes any sense). And the two sides have very different views about church-state relations, though interestingly enough, they both agree that faith should play a role in the public square in roughly equal numbers. [For an in-depth analysis of progressive attitudes on church-state issues see Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State—Ed.]

One last result that should not come as a surprise if you stop to think about it: conservatives report attending church far more frequently than their liberal counterparts. 52% of conservatives are in the pews more than once a week, compared to 25% of progressives. Once-a-week numbers are a little more balanced: 37-36. Does this mean that conservatives are more religious than progressives, or that there’s something about church that makes one a conservative? Nope: evangelical and Catholic churches typically offer more than one service a week. Mainline congregations, which tend to be smaller, are open for business only on Sundays.

Labels: Bliss Institute, Conservative, Daniel Schultz, politics, religion, religious left, religious right

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The End of Christian America

The End of Christian America

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 4, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Apr 13, 2009

It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking.

"That really hit me hard," he told me last week. "The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous." Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. "A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us," Mohler wrote. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture." When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. "Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society," he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

NB: This is only a small excerpt of a four-page article which can be accessed by clicking on "external source" at the bottom of this snippet.

Labels: ARIS, Christianity, culture, Jon Meacham, Newsweek magazine, politics, post-Christian, religion

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Friday, April 10, 2009

After 4,000 Comments, Taking the Pulse on Modern Christianity

Kurt Soller

...Newsweek proclaimed "The Decline and Fall of Christian America" on its cover. The Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" blog featured a post that belittled the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection. The Discovery Channel aired a documentary that painted Jesus as little more than an opportunistic politician who caught a bad break in a trial."

Whether valid or not, it's portrayals like these that have you readers -- especially Christians -- up in arms. The majority were using our forum to share their beliefs on where Christianity is headed. And as Christians, there were some great first-hand accounts of life in an increasingly "post-Christian" society. "As an Evangelical Christian from Africa, I should say this article was long overdue... I have always been bothered by Political Evangelical Christianity in America and the spreading of the same Political Christian dose in Sub Saharan Africa," wrote commenter Katm. "Any thinking and discerning evangelical Christian should take the critique in this article as a positive." Many agreed, echoing an overarching idea that Christianity in America has long been too political, and that this post-Christian America may be well-warranted. "Raised as I was, I am very familiar with the teaching of Christianity, and I am painfully aware of the holes my parents conservatism left in my education," echoed one reader."But, my favorite bible verse is the one about man being created in the image of God. Isn't that another way of saying that God and man are the same? To me it's just that simple."

With the numbers of believers down in this year's American Religious Identification Survey -- the inspiration for our cover -- I was surprised by the commenting Christians who were open about why the left organized religion. "People are not abandoning Christianity so much as abandoning organized religion," offered commenter xargaw. "Many of us have found a deeper faith in our own searching and in our communities outside of the church where irrelevant doctrine and hypocrisy are hard to ignore. There is often more of God at work in volunteerism in your town and being a true friend to someone in need than in the church building. Many are striving to live as Jesus directed rather than simply warming a pew once a week." But why forget organized Christianity? Others were quick to explain: "Most Americans still believe in God. But the last several decades the most visible voices of Christianity have been those who preach judgment, hatred, anger and violence."

Getting even more specific, there seemed to be an overwhelming amount of blame placed on the previous administration and the effect it had on politicizing religion. "I watched with dismay as the religious right hijacked the political process and decisions that were previously individual became part of a movement to impose a group's religious views on all of us," wrote Bookfan. "Abortion, intelligent design, stem cell research, and gay marriage became the property of voters' sectors--rather than a personal moral decision." Even Christians agreed, many of whom were unwilling to refute Meacham's assertion that we've entered a new era when discussing how the church interacts with the state: "Although I was raised in the US and in the Christian faith, I have come to see it primarily as something very ugly and divisive," wrote the reader 'Meditating.' "Instead of concentrating on loving one another, the Old Testament Christians (yes, it's an oxymoron) seem to have taken over the religious dialogue of my faith and turned it into a weapon intended to wound anyone who disagrees with them. What moral person would want to identify themselves with a faith like that? I don't and I am now one of those people who would not want to be identified as a Christian. It seems no one injures the name of Christ like the Christian have done."

That's certainly a harsh response, and it's worth pointing out that many Christians who read the piece were justifiably worried that Meacham and the magazine were dismissing Christianity. That's not the case; since the cover's publication, Meacham has published a follow-up -- asserting that faith, regardless of how it interacts with politics and American society, will never disappear. "The Newsweek of my childhood would have included historical data on church affiliation/attendance in America over the last two centuries," wrote Bobsf_94117. And others agreed that they wish our article had provided more context into how we've been approaching this post-Christian status." With that, came myriad arguments explaining what the Founding Fathers intended, as Christians or non-Christians, when they wrote The Constitution. But obviously, constitutional interpretation -- even as it interacts with religion -- is a different, and very huge, topic. Another time? On that note, I won't address the hundreds of comments that went back and forth arguing whether Hitler was a Christian. Not relevant...

Of all the thousands of comments though, the story about declining Christian identification focused squarely -- and nicely -- on one topic: the purpose of Christianity in society. I'm obviously not the right person to answer that, but I was intrigued by the hundreds of readers who wished religion away in sum, despite it's long history in American society. "This can only be good for the United States," argued one commenter. "We have lost our competitiveness in Science and the quality of our Education has been declining thanks in part to religious minded people who have been corrupting both Science and Education with nonsensical concepts such as Intelligent Design." In a less-specific away, hundreds agreed: "I am pleased!," wrote commenter Thevail. "How wonderful that humans have chosen once again to think for themselves, rather than depending on "the big book of answers." Religion is supposed to inspire us to be better people, make us aspire to higher goals, make us think before we act. But the truth is that if Christianity is wounded..it's a self-inflicted wound." Immediately, a committed Christian took it a step futher: "Another sensational title by Newsweek; however, as Christianity goes, so does America....maybe, that's why this country is going into the toilet."

As I'm sure you realize, it's impossible to cull more than 4,000 thoughts on Christianity into a few concise paragraphs. But from all these viewpoints, we can glean a few things: Faith isn't headed away, but our country an impasse between what Christians want from their government, and how the rest of non-Christian America views Christianity. Whether you believe Christianity is impure, or that our Democracy itself is faulted, it's clear that both politics and religion are in a time of flux. When do you think it will settle? And how will both religion and democracy -- even in a post-Christian society -- intersect? Your comments below.

Please click on "external source" for a look at a collection of reader comments...

Labels: 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, believers, Christianity, faith, God, Kurt Soller, Newsweek magazine, organized religion, politics

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Friday, March 27, 2009

Americans Losing Their Faith in Faith ... And Everything Else

by Nate Silver

Note: There is a great graph chart in this article which shows clearly the elevls of confidence discussed in this article. Please click "external source" for complete article.

The longstanding project called the General Social Survey, which has polled Americans about their feelings on a variety of political and social issues for more than 35 years, just recently came out with their preliminary 2008 data (which, I should warn you, is a little bit cumbersome to access).

The only major institution to have gained a statistically significant about of trust since 2000 is the military, which is now the most trusted major institution in the country . The gain came as a result, presumably, of 9/11, with the number of Americans expressing a great deal of confidence in the military shooting up from 41 percent in 2000 to 57 percent in 2002. The figure peaked at 59 percent in 2004 and has fallen slightly since, but the rating was slightly higher in 2008 than it had been in 2006 before the Iraq conflict had begun to wind down.

Trust in major corporations plummeted following the Enron scandal and is off slightly further since. In fact, the 16 percent of Americans who said they have a great deal of confidence in such institutions is the lowest figure on record. Banks and financial institutions were holding up a bit better ... until last year, when the trust score dropped to 19 percent from 30 percent two years earlier. This is not an all-time low -- confidence in the banks had been slightly lower during the S&L crisis of the early 90s -- although we'll see where we end up once the financial crisis ends.

Confidence in organized religion also fell significantly under Bush's watch, although most of the decline came between 2000 and 2002, when the rating dropped from 29 percent to 19 percent. I'm not sure whether that was the result of the Catholic priest scandals, some odd kind of ricochet from 9/11, or something else, but the scores have yet to really recover.

Medicine is less trusted than it once was -- the 39 percent score it achieved in 2008 was an all-time low -- and to a lesser extent so is science. Nobody, whatever their political persuasions, has much trust in the press, although the decline came long ago in the 1980s, perhaps as conservatives learned the utility of bashing the institution. And some instutitons are perennially unpopular -- particularly the Congress, which has never polled higher in this survey than 17 percent (in 1984).

We are not a very trusting bunch, it would seem.

Labels: confidence, General Social Survey, medicine, Nate Silver, organized religion, politics, the military

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Friday, January 30, 2009

New Analysis Finds African-Americans are Markedly More Religious Than Overall U.S. Population

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On the eve of Black History Month, the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life released a new analysis (http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=389) that paints a detailed religious portrait of African-Americans. The analysis finds that African-Americans are markedly more religious than the U.S. population as a whole on a variety of measures, including reporting a religious affiliation, attendance at religious services, frequency of prayer and the importance of religion in people's lives.

Compared with other racial and ethnic groups, African-Americans are among the most likely to report a formal religious affiliation, with fully 87% of African-Americans describing themselves as belonging to one religious group or another. The analysis also finds that nearly eight-in-ten African-Americans (79%) say religion is very important in their lives, compared with 56% among all U.S. adults.

These are among many findings of the new Pew Forum analysis detailing the unique nature of religion in the African-American community. Other highlights include:

* A large majority of African-Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular faith (72%) say religion plays at least a somewhat important role in their lives; nearly half (45%) of unaffiliated African-Americans say religion is very important in their lives, roughly three times the percentage who says this among the religiously unaffiliated population overall (16%).

* African-Americans express a high degree of comfort with religion's role in politics, with roughly six-in-ten saying that houses of worship should express their views on social and political topics and roughly half saying that there has been too little expression of faith and prayer by political leaders. At the same time, most African-Americans support certain restrictions on the mingling of politics and religious institutions, with nearly six-in-ten (58%) saying that churches and other houses of worship should refrain from endorsing political candidates.

* The link between religion and some social and political attitudes in the African-American community is similar to that seen among the population overall. For instance, just as in the general public, African-Americans who are more religiously observant are more likely to oppose abortion and homosexuality and more likely to report higher levels of conservative ideology.

* On a variety of other questions, including political party identification and opinions about the proper role of government in providing services to the citizenry and assistance to the poor, there are few differences in the views of African-Americans across religious groups. Perhaps most strikingly, the partisan leanings of African-Americans from every religious background tilt heavily in the Democratic direction.

The analysis is based on the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted by the Pew Forum in 2007 and released in 2008, as well as other Pew Research Center surveys.

The report is for immediate release and is available online at http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=389.

The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life delivers timely, impartial information on issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs. The Pew Forum is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy organization and does not take positions on policy debates. Based in Washington, D.C., the Pew Forum is a project of the Pew Research Center, which is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Labels: African-Americans, faith, government, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religious belief

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Testing the Limits of What I Know and Feel

by John Updike

John Updike won two Pulitzer Prizes for his series of novels chronicling the life and death of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. He is also a noted poet and essayist, as well as a critic of literature and fine art.

John Updike died this past week...

All Things Considered, April 18, 2005 · A person believes various things at various times, even on the same day. At the age of 73, I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness. The special value of these indirect methods of communication — as opposed to the value of factual reporting and analysis — is one of precision. Oddly enough, the story or poem brings us closer to the actual texture and intricacy of experience.

In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity. I find in my own writing that only fiction — and rarely, a poem — fully tests me to the kind of limits of what I know and what I feel. In composing even such a frank and simple account as this profession of belief, I must fight against the sensation that I am simplifying and exploiting my own voice.

I also believe, instinctively, if not very cogently, in the American political experiment, which I take to be, at bottom, a matter of trusting the citizens to know their own minds and best interests. "To govern with the consent of the governed": this spells the ideal. And though the implementation will inevitably be approximate and debatable, and though totalitarianism or technocratic government can obtain some swift successes, in the end, only a democracy can enlist a people's energies on a sustained and renewable basis. To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures — if not happiness — its hopeful pursuit.

Cosmically, I seem to be of two minds. The power of materialist science to explain everything — from the behavior of the galaxies to that of molecules, atoms and their sub-microscopic components — seems to be inarguable and the principal glory of the modern mind. On the other hand, the reality of subjective sensations, desires and — may we even say — illusions, composes the basic substance of our existence, and religion alone, in its many forms, attempts to address, organize and placate these. I believe, then, that religious faith will continue to be an essential part of being human, as it has been for me.

Labels: creative writing, freedom, John Updike, materialism, politics, religion

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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

What's the Status of Religion and Politics Post-Obama?

Published Jan 1, 2009, by Carol Forsloff

It seems that many Americans have had their fill of churches being involved in politics George Bush in 2001 ushered in a period where the religious right was particularly active in governmental affairs.

In 2001 the airwaves were filled with ministers praising the election of Bush as president. His leadership was treated as something that had been divinely ordained. The Post at the time talked about the number of religious leaders who met with Bush during the first year of his Presidency who testified in their faith in Bush and his ability to lead the country as God-ordained. Web sites encouraged people to pray for the President, to recognize his position as both government leader and spiritual model, virtually a Messiah for the government at the time.

According to the Pew Forum things have changed from 2000 and the election of George Bush and the election of Obama in 2008. A survey finds a small majority of the public now declares religion and politics shouldn’t mix, and ministers and religious leaders should not express their opinions on daily activities or political matters. This change follows ten years when most Americans supported religious involvement in government with Christian leaders able to express their views on political matters.

Pew Research Center research reveals that most conservatives have reexamined their position regarding the involvement of religion in politics, and now only 50% of them express support of it. Four years ago 70% believed that churches should involve themselves in governmental affairs. So there has been a sizable shift in public opinion during the last years of the Bush Presidency. Four years ago, just 30% of conservatives believed that churches and other houses of worship should stay out of politics. Today, 50% of conservatives express this view. This is likely why it was said that there was only “soft support” among religious conservatives for John McCain.

Despite the fact that Congress is accused of not representing fully the religious views of the rest of the country, the fact is that Pew reports that the composition of the new Congress is similar to that of the population of the United States, although somewhat less diverse in its representation of minority religious groups. The largest main group in the Congress is Protestant, but if the denominations are considered separately the majority group is Catholic. One unique distinction between Congress and the general population is the fact that fewer political leaders claim no religious affiliation (about 1%) than the rest of the United States (16%)

It seems, however, with the public shift towards less involvement of religion in politics, politicians may not longer have to protest their specific religious views in order to be elected. Or the pendulum may swing again, depending upon future issues because that has been the pattern of American history. The country has struggled with the issue of religion and politics since the beginning of the government, with the battle never being fully won on either side. This newest finding just measures citizen opinion at this point in time.

Labels: Barack Obama, Carol Forsloff, church-state, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religion

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Friday, December 12, 2008

Obama's faith policy and our nation's future

Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Cassie Olson

In the United States, 83.9 percent of adults affiliate themselves with a religion and 78.4 percent say they are Christians, according to the Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted in 2007. Believers and nonbelievers alike wonder how Obama's faith will affect policies of the United States.

According to his campaign, Obama hopes to mend the nation's religious divide by forging common ground between the polarities, while also diverging from some of President Bush's policy.

Despite rumors spread across the country, Obama says he deeply believes in the precepts of Jesus Christ.

"I am a Christian. I have been sworn in with a Bible. I pledge allegiance and lead the Pledge of Allegiance sometimes in the U.S. Senate, when I'm presiding," Obama said in response to e-mail allegations mentioned during the 2008 Democratic debate in Las Vegas.

Obama explained his perspective on faith and politics in an acclaimed "Call for Renewal" speech in June 2006. He acknowledged religion couldn't be ignored in a country of religious people. However, Obama said church and state should remain separate.

Because the religious and the secularists are both important in solving the nation's problems, Obama said nonbelievers must realize faith is part of the solution.

"The problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect 10-point plan," Obama said. "They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness -- in the imperfections of man. Solving these problems will require changes in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds."

He encouraged nonbelievers to stop forcing the religious to leave their beliefs out of public debate. He brought to mind the countless reformers -- Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. -- who used their religion to foster change.

At the same time, believers need to maintain an open discussion.

"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion- specific, values," Obama said. "It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason."

Obama also wants believers to ensure their policy does not exclude any one American. He reminded believers they can recognize public policy without it dictating church practices, and he reminded Americans not every mention of God is a breach in the separation of church and state.

Obama's faith will provide a moral base for his decisions, but will not dictate his policy. While campaigning in Ohio during July 2008, Obama said he hopes to reform and expand Bush's faith-based programs. However, Obama supports keeping abortions legal and promotes embryonic stem cell research.

Although some might disagree with his policy, Obama hopes Americans can join forces to prevent the nearly 1 million abortions that have occurred in the United States each year from 1975 to 2003, as reported by the Center for Disease and Control. Obama also believes United States citizens can cross party lines to eliminate the poverty 37.3 million Americans were living in during 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Americans can be thankful Obama is neither forcing beliefs on anyone nor opposing or excluding either side from the debate or the solution. The years following 2008 are a new dawn, but Obama will only succeed in mending the country and bringing the right change if Americans are willing to lay down their pride, work past their apathetic resentment and take action -- together -- for the common good.

Labels: Barack Obama, Cassie Olson, Christianity, faith, politics, religion, United States

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Monday, November 03, 2008

Muslims In America

Powell's remarks solace for many
By LINDSAY WISE
Oct. 25, 2008

On the TV screen, former Secretary of State Colin Powell was telling host Tom Brokaw he was disturbed that some Republicans have been spreading rumors that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

"Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim," Powell said. "He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no. That's not America."

...Powell's remarks seemed like a tonic for a presidential campaign that has often made them feel marginalized and vilified.

A humiliating feeling

From e-mail campaigns spreading false rumors that Obama is a secret Muslim to Republicans invoking Obama's middle name, Hussein, at rallies to cast doubt on his faith and background, Muslims resent the implication that their faith makes them unpatriotic or even dangerous.

Obama has clarified repeatedly that he is not a Muslim, but he has not denounced the prejudice behind the rumors, as Powell did last week.

Neither campaign has visited a single mosque on the campaign trail.

Recent studies by the Pew Research Center found that 35 percent of Americans have a negative view of Muslims and about half think that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence.

The reality is that Muslim Americans are diverse, middle class, and mostly mainstream in their outlook, values and attitudes, according to a national survey published by Pew last year. In fact, Muslims tend to be much more conservative than the rest of the American public on hot-button social issues, such as prayer in schools, gay marriage and abortion, the survey reported.

And that's why Powell's remarks came as such a pleasant surprise.

As Obama shot ahead of McCain in the polls over the past few weeks, the media started buzzing about a possible "Bradley effect" — coined for 1982 California gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley, who is black, and led in the polls until election day but lost. Analysts theorized that voters weren't honest with pollsters about their support for a black candidate.

In the 2000 presidential election, Muslims supported Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore, 42 percent to 31 percent, according to a Zogby International poll.

Three years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, however, Muslim support shifted decisively toward the Democratic Party. Only 7 percent of Muslims said they planned to vote for Bush for president in 2004, compared to 68 percent who backed Democrat John Kerry, Zogby reported.

This year, in Texas, the Muslim American Republican Caucus decided not to endorse the Republican nominee for president for the first time since the organization was formed in 2000. The caucus will still support Republicans in all local and congressional contests.

Board Member Farha Ahmed said the decision not to endorse McCain was based on several conferences with his national campaign in which the caucus asked officials to address Muslim voters' concerns about the war on terror, civil rights and anti-Muslim rhetoric attributed to McCain, his campaign and other GOP supporters.

In time, the idea of a Muslim becoming president of the United States might no longer seem so outrageous, said Ruth Nasrullah, the 47-year-old manager of an Islamic bookstore in Willis.

Labels: Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Lindsay Wise, Muslims, politics

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Thursday, October 02, 2008

Poll: Americans wary of churches pushing politics

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Americans strongly believe churches should tread lightly when it comes to political activity.

According to a survey released by LifeWay Research, Americans believe churches should not campaign for or endorse political candidates and pastors should only endorse candidates as private citizens outside of a church service.

When asked for their level of agreement with the statement “I believe it is appropriate for churches to publicly endorse candidates for public office,” 59 percent said they strongly disagree. Sixteen percent somewhat disagree.

When it comes to how churches use their resources, Americans believe overwhelmingly that churches should not use those resources to campaign for candidates for public office.

When asked to respond to the statement “I believe it is appropriate for churches to use their resources to campaign for candidates for public office,” 85 percent disagree, including 73 percent who disagree strongly.

Regarding whether churches should lose tax-exempt status for publicly endorsing candidates, a slim majority agree and differences appear along many of the same lines.

Thirty-eight percent strongly agree and 14 percent somewhat agree “that churches who publicly endorse candidates for public office should lose their tax exemption.” Twenty-five percent strongly disagree, 17 percent somewhat disagree and 6 percent are not sure.

“Americans overwhelmingly want pastors to stick to faith and not political endorsements,” Stetzer says. “However, they are less certain that they want the government to strip them of their tax exemption. Americans don’t want churches in politics, but they are not as certain they want the government in the churches.”

When the question centers on pastors rather than churches, Americans are slightly more open to endorsement of candidates, but not during a church service.

Although more than half believe it is appropriate for pastors to endorse candidates for public office outside of the church, only 13 percent believe it is acceptable for pastors to endorse candidates during a church service.

The telephone survey was conducted in June 2008 among 1,208 adults randomly selected throughout the country in proportion to population. Weighting is used to adjust for non-response controlling for region, age, race, religion and gender. The sample provides 95 percent confidence that the margin of error does not exceed +2.9 percent.

To view the entire report in addition to charts, visit www.lifewayresearch.com.

Labels: Americans, church, LifeWay Research, politics

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How religion got deep into politics

How religion got deep into politics

By John Shulson | The Virginia Gazette
October 1, 2008

WILLIAMSBURG -- Bruton Parish Episcopal Church recently launched its fall series, “The Influence of Religion on Presidential Politics,” with an overflow crowd in Lewis Hall to hear Dan Roberts speak on “America’s Vacant Public Square.”

Roberts, a true Renaissance man, is a professor of history at the University of Richmond. He’s also a Presbyterian minister, a Bronze Star Medal recipient and a jazz pianist. Roberts created the syndicated Public Radio series, “A Moment in Time,” which plays to 2 million listeners eager to resist “this growing epidemic of ignorance about the [historical] past.”

The radio program was inspired by a survey in which 78% of college seniors from 55 top universities could identify Bevis and Butthead, while only 33% could connect the dots between George Washington and Yorktown. Roberts set about to make history relevant in short radio bursts.

His thoughts concerning religion and politics date back to the founding days of our country and its disenchantment with the Church of England.

Assuredly, “Church and state were tightly locked,” he told his Bruton Parish audience, “but distrust also existed.” He recalled that the Founding Fathers rejected sectarian religion in government. “The state would not be the people’s moral salvation, and it wouldn’t seek to manage people’s lives.”

Instead, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution addressed religion in non-specific terms. “We could have created a Christian republic, but we looked west toward something new,” he said.

However, the seeds of a growing religious movement within the state were sown when the Constitution was ratified. “Evangelicals said they wanted a Bill of Rights and freedom of religion and bartered with James Madison to achieve this.”

As America began to grow into a diverse republic, the Great Awakening saw a growth in evangelical churches. Later, the immigration of many Catholics and Jews tended to undermine Protestant dominations, he said.

Roberts said presidential candidates realize “it’s dangerous to play the religious card. Candidates try to avoid making it an issue... in order not to offendcategories of people.”

Since candidates need to be careful not to make overt appeals, Roberts said, politicians resort to code language such as “family values.” He explained that “family values” can mean one thing to a couple with a child in Virginia and quite another to two men who adopt a child in Chicago.

Of the need to tread lightly in the use of religion, Roberts illustrated three candidates who traversed political minefields: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon.

Even though Jefferson was accused of being a deist and the father of a child born to a slave, he refused to respond to allegations and chose to ignore the subject of religion. He decided instead to hit hard on John Adams’ position on war.

Lincoln didn’t conform to orthodox religious folks. He reacted against sectarian rivalry and even used reason and ridicule to counter aspects of the Bible. However, Lincoln eventually grew into a form of Unitarian religion, using it not in debates but in other ways. He used biblical language in fighting slavery. He could speak the religious language of the voters he needed. The result was that his humor and his personal demeanor propelled him to office even though the people didn’t share his religious beliefs.

It was Nixon, Roberts said, who started “pious presidential pandering” to play to the religious. He explained that Nixon, a Quaker, occasionally went to church, preferring to hold Sunday services in the White House. However, Nixon tended to stay away from the subject of religion.

Instead, he used overt religiosity as a code.

“Nixon’s strategy was to win the Southern white vote. Many in the South were racists and religious. He realized a direct racist appeal couldn’t be done. But he did appeal to them through the use of code phrases familiar to Southern whites such as ‘states’ rights’ and ‘law and order.’”

In drawing his extensively prepared comments to a close, Roberts returned to his theme of a town square.

“The vacant public square is under attack. Many voters calculate to use religion to determine who they’ll vote for. It’s now factored into the strategy. The fate of the public square hangs in the balance.”

Labels: Abraham Lincoln, America, church-state, Dan Roberts, history, John Shulson, politics, religion, Richard Nixon, Thomas Jefferson

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Monday, September 29, 2008

Religion and Politics: Combustible Combination Influences Voters' Choices

September 25, 2008 —

Americans who regularly attend worship services tend to hold more conservative religious views, so if they decide to be similarly dedicated to voting in November, their votes could tip the presidential election to John McCain.

But if Barack Obama can rouse the more lackadaisical Christians among us, they may swing the election in his favor, based on historical trends.

Those were some of the links between religion and politics highlighted by Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, who spoke Monday evening at a University of Virginia Center for Politics event.

Lugo presented findings from the Pew Forum's recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which was based on interviews with more than 35,000 American adults.

The survey found strong correlations between Americans' degree of religiosity, as measured by church attendance, and voting patterns in the 2004 election. Survey respondents were asked to describe how often they attended church: more than weekly, weekly, monthly, a few times a year, or seldom to never. Those who attend church more than weekly chose Bush over Kerry by 64 percent to 35 percent, while 58 percent of weekly churchgoers voted for Bush.

In a nearly symmetrical reversal of those preferences, those who seldom attend church favored Kerry by 62 percent to 35 percent. The preference for Bush declined steadily in correlation with attending church less often.

This so-called "God gap" is more accurately described as a church attendance gap, Lugo said, and the Obama campaign is absolutely determined to close this gap.

Political preferences can also be broken down by religious affiliation, Lugo said. White evangelical Protestants, who make up nearly a quarter of the American electorate, voted for Bush at a 78 percent clip in 2004. In contrast, even higher percentages of Jews and black Protestants favored the Democratic candidates in 2000 and 2004.

But despite all the efforts of Obama to appeal to Christians, surveys show that he has made no progress appealing to self-described white "evangelical" voters. About 71 percent of them back the McCain-Palin ticket, according to a Pew survey conducted Sept. 9-14 — up from 61 percent in June, and about the same proportion as supported Bush in 2000, said Lugo.

Catholics make up nearly 20 percent of the electorate, and they have become a key swing vote in American politics, Lugo said. Gore won the overall Catholic vote by 3 percentage points in 2000, but Kerry lost that bloc by 5 points in 2004.

While about two-thirds of Hispanic Catholics favored both Gore and Kerry, white Catholic voters were much more evenly divided, with Bush garnering 52 percent of their vote in 2000 and 56 percent in 2004. How these white Catholics vote will be critical to the upcoming election, Lugo predicted.

Religion has always been important in American public life, with attitudes only shifting gradually, and over decades. From 2000 through 2008, a steady 70 to 72 percent of Americans agree with the proposition: "It's important to me that a president have strong religious beliefs." In the 1950s, Americans were much more open to electing an atheist or someone without strong religious convictions, Lugo said.

The increase in pro-religion sentiments in the past 50 years was spurred in part by facing the "godless" enemy of communism in the Cold War, said Charles Mathewes, a professor of religious studies. If Americans continue to face a significant threat from fundamentalist Muslim terrorists for the next 30 to 40 years, he wondered, will the importance of religion in public life wane?

As for this year's election, the "fundamentals" of an unpopular Republican president, a tanking economy and a derided war appear to favor the Democrats, Lugo said. But current polls show a very tight presidential race.

"In this election, everything is against the Republicans," Lugo said. "To be honest, I'm just surprised it's so close. ... I guess there's a lot of underlying discomfort in closing the deal with Obama."

— By Brevy Cannon

Labels: Barack Obama, Brevy Cannon, church, election, John McCain, Luis Lugo, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics

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Friday, September 19, 2008

How different faiths view major issues

By CATHY LYNN GROSSMAN • USA TODAY •
September 18, 2008

God is punishing us.

Guardian angels protect us.

The Earth is in grave danger.

So finds Baylor University’s newest survey on Americans’ religious beliefs and practices.

The survey, to be released today, is based on interviews with 1,700 adults conducted in fall 2007. Among the highlights:

Environment

Evangelicals less worried about global climate change

Most respondents to the Baylor Religion Survey agree that “if we do not change things dramatically,” global climate change will be ”a disaster” (67%); coal, oil and natural gas will be exhausted (70%) and most plant and animal life will be destroyed (57%).

But evangelical Protestants are significantly less likely (55%) than other religious groups to be alarmed about global climate change or to forecast destruction of life unless changes are made (49%).

While 56% of U.S. adults say the government is not spending enough to improve and protect the environment, fewer evangelicals do — 41%, says Baylor sociologist F. Carson Mencken.

Indeed, evangelicals are at least twice as likely as any other major religious group to say the government is already spending too much. Most likely to say spending is too little: Jews, 81%, and people with no religious affiliation, 79%.

Environmentalism has been controversial among evangelicals. When the National Association of Evangelicals launched a “Call to Action” on climate change in 2006, some religious conservatives, led by James Dobson of Focus on the Family, strongly opposed it.

Gender and politics

Are women suited for politics? Americans are deeply divided

The survey reveals deep divisions over women’s roles in society, splits that may play out in the November elections.

For example, 33% of Americans say ”Most men are better suited emotionally for politics than most women.” But 44% of evangelical Protestants agree, more than other Christians and markedly higher than Jews (29%), other religions (23%), and those with no religion (14%).

The Baylor data was gathered in 2007, when Sen. Hillary Clinton was seeking the Democratic nomination, but long before Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was named to the Republican vice-presidential ticket, putting motherhood and gender in the spotlight. Palin is a mother of five, including an infant with Down syndrome.

Both Republican candidates are evangelical Protestants (John McCain is Baptist and Palin non-denominational). Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is a mainline Protestant (United Church of Christ), whose running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, is Roman Catholic.

The survey also finds:

• 41% say a preschooler suffers if the mother works (54% of evangelicals say so, nearly double for other groups).

• 31% say “it’s God’s will that women care for children” (48% for evangelicals).
Will these views shape votes?

Tragedy and evil

Dealing with evil: Candidates disagree

God either causes or allows “major tragedies to occur as a warning to sinners,” say 20% of U.S. adults.

While 43% say most evil is caused by the devil, 47% disagree — a statistical tie.

But most (68%) would not say human nature is basically evil.

So where does evil dwell — in the devil or in mankind? The Baylor survey allows for overlapping views; it finds 36% strongly agree with both statements.

"Those who believe God causes or allows bad things to happen did not speak in terms of tragedies being God’s fault,” says Baylor sociologist Christopher Bader.

Bader says people told him that “tragedies are our fault. We have sinned as a nation and God has stood aside and allowed terrible things to happen.”

Among the questions that the Rev. Rick Warren asked both presidential candidates at his Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency was, ”Does evil exist?” Both candidates said yes.

Sen. Barack Obama said it is “God’s task” to ”erase evil from the world” but “we can be soldiers in that process.”

Sen. John McCain said, ”Evil must be defeated,” and linked it entirely to “the transcendent challenge of the 21st century — radical Islamic extremism.”

Labels: Barack Obama, Baylor Religion Survey, Cathy Lynn Grossman, environmentalism, evil, John McCain, politics, women

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Survey shows increase in support for separation church and state

Alison Wing
Updated: Thursday, September 18, 2008

Mixing religion and politics has long been an issue in the United States, and with the next presidential election upon us, some people are once again questioning the importance or unimportance of the separation or non-separation of church and state.

A recent survey conducted by The Pew Research Center reported the percentage gap between the general public thinking church and state should be separate has increased almost twenty percent over the past decade.

Four years ago fourty-four percent of the public thought the two should be kept separate. Today fifty-two percent say that the church should stay out of social and political matters.

Sixty-three percent say they want their leader to have the same beliefs and faith, but the church should not endorse nominees.

The Pew Forum survey, however, said although fifty-one percent of Americans don’t mind listening to politicians talk about how religious they are, fourty-six percent today say that they are becoming more uncomfortable with it.

In contrast, the survey finds 72 percent of Americans agree with the president having strong religious beliefs.

Thirty percent of college graduates agree it is important for the president to have strong religious beliefs while 27 percent disagree, and only 21 percent of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 agree and 38 percent disagree.

There are a little over 300 million people in the United States with 14,911 living in Oxford. About 11,526 of the Oxford population are 18 years and older and of voting age.

The survey also reveals that most of the increased opposition has come mostly from those who identify themselves as Republicans rather than Democrats. The percentage of Republicans who say churches should keep out of politics has jumped from 37 percent in 2004 to 51 percent in 2008.

The latest national survey also finds social issues still continue to be greatly overshadowed by both domestic issues and the war on Iraq.

Labels: Alison Wing, church-state, politics, religion, The Pew Research Center

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Thursday, September 04, 2008

America's paradox: We want religion in, but out, of politics

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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Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Should Churches Mix God And Politics?

Posted on Thursday, 28 of August , 2008

INSIDE THE FIRST AMENDMENT
By Charles C. Haynes

First Amendment Center

Like red, white and blue bunting, pastors and prayers have been prominently displayed in Denver at the Democratic National Convention – as they will be in St. Paul for the GOP.

Much of the appeal to God from political podiums is no doubt sincere. After all, most Americans are religious people who expect political gatherings to have invocations, benedictions and a fair amount of God-talk in between.

But beyond the benign rituals of civil religion, the mixture of God and politics in America can be a volatile brew, often poisoning the body politic with charges and counter-charges about which party is religion-friendly – and which candidate is a true Christian.

From Mitt Romney’s church to Barack Obama’s pastor, this year’s presidential race has been marked by some of the ugliest debates about religion in living memory. And all of the leading candidates have scrambled to reassure the so-called “values voters” that they are on God’s side.

It’s no accident that the first joint appearance of Obama and John McCain was held in a megachurch and moderated by an evangelical pastor asking questions about what it means to be a Christian.

Until now, at least, most Americans have voiced support for mixing God and politics. According to polls taken over the past 10 years by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans have favored the idea of churches’ speaking out on social and political issues.

Now the pendulum is moving the other way. In a survey released by Pew last week, a majority (52 percent) now want churches to keep out of politics.

Here’s the surprising part: The greatest shift in opinion has occurred among conservatives. Four years ago a mere 30 percent of conservatives said churches should stay out of politics. Today, fully half of conservatives feel that way.

It’s not just conservatives generally, but social conservatives in particular who are re-thinking the role of churches in the political arena. In 2004, for example, only 25 percent of people who rated gay marriage as a top voting issue said churches should stay out of politics. Today, that percentage has risen to 50 percent.

While the causes of this discontent may be hard to pin down, I suspect that much of the shift in opinion is rooted in disillusionment with the political process. The strategy of some evangelical leaders to ally churches with the Republican Party hasn’t paid off. The same might be said of African-American churches aligned with the Democratic Party.

For some Americans, of course, any involvement of churches in politics is too much. On a billboard near the Denver convention, the Freedom From Religion Foundation proclaims: “Keep Religion Out of Politics.”

But for most Christians and for many others, faith by definition requires political involvement of some kind. Contrary to the freedom-from-religion crowd, the First Amendment doesn’t bar religion from politics. It protects the right of houses of worship to speak out on the public-policy issues of the day.

Pollsters may be asking the wrong question. It isn’t “Should churches keep out of politics?” but rather, “How should churches engage in politics?”

The “how” question is best answered when churches keep an arm’s length from political parties and partisan rhetoric – and instead focus on proclaiming a prophetic vision of the kind of society they believe God requires.

As Martin Luther King put it: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, never its tool.” 8-28-08

Labels: Charles C. Haynes, church, First Amendment Center, politics, religion

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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Poll: Most want church out of politics

By DAVID PAUL KUHN | 8/21/08 2:46 PM EST

Page one of two - please click on "external source" for complete article

For the first time in a dozen years, a majority of Americans believe that churches and religious institutions should “keep out” of politics, according to the annual Pew Religion and Public Life Survey.

It’s the highest level of public concern with faith’s effect on politics since Pew began asking the question in 1996.

The rise in Americans’ desire to separate religion and politics — from 44 percent in 2004 to 52 percent today — appears due to a surprising increase in conservative distaste for mingling the institutions — from 30 percent in 2004 to half of conservatives expressing the view today.

Among white evangelicals, 36 percent want religious groups to stay out of politics, a dramatic rise from 16 percent four years ago.

The findings come in the wake of the Saddleback Civil Forum on Saturday, when, in unprecedented fashion, both presidential candidates — Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama — joined popular evangelical leader Rick Warren at his megachurch for their first back-to-back campaign appearance.

But the study, the most authoritative national survey of politics and religion, was conducted prior to event, July 31 to Aug. 10. Conducted on mobile and land line phones, the survey had a large national sample of 2,905 adults, with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

In the survey, released Thursday, about half of Americans who view gay marriage and abortion as “very important” voting issues say churches should not be involved in politics. In 2004, only one in four voters who saw gay marriage as a top issue said the same, while a third of those who saw abortion as a top issue agreed.

Overall, 48 percent of Americans believe that social conservatives wield “too much” influence in the GOP.

Yet older adults appeared most irked by the mingling of religion and politics. Only 18 percent of Americans age 65 and older said churches should endorse candidates, while roughly a third of voters under age 50 believed a church support for a candidate was appropriate.

The public is also increasingly split over whether they feel “discomfort” when politicians discuss religion in the sphere of public policy, as both Obama and McCain did at length Saturday.

Yet more Americans — half in fact — still say it does not bother them “when politicians talk about how religious they are.” Forty-six percent said they were offended.

American religiosity, however, remains no less prevalent. The public appears to continue to support expressions of faith by public figures while feeling increasingly uncomfortable when that faith falls into the sphere of politics.

The public believes that a president should have “strong religious beliefs.” Fully 72 percent say so today, a modest uptick since 2004 — including 85 percent of voters who attend church at least once a week and 66 percent of independent voters. Equally, only 29 percent of the public believes there is “too much” expression of religious faith by political leaders.

At the same time, the public’s perception of Democrats' unfriendliness to people of faith has significantly improved, though the issue persists.

Labels: abortion, Americans, Barack Obama, David Paul Kuhn, gay rights, John McCain, Pew Religion and Public Life Survey, politics, religion

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Friday, August 15, 2008

New Barna Group Survey on Religion and the Presidential Election

August 12, 2008, 10:27 am
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny

Senator Obama seems to be ahead of Senator McCain among most faith groups.

Among Catholics, he leads 39 percent to 29 percent. But he has slipped since June.

What’s interesting to me about polling, although I know nothing about it, is the formulation of categories. Here is what the article says about categorizing evangelicals. Anybody know if they have as complicated an approach to categorizing Catholics?

Understanding Evangelicals

One of the most frequently reported on groups of voters is evangelicals. Most media polls use a simplistic approach to defining evangelicals, asking survey respondents if they consider themselves to be evangelical. Barna Group surveys, on the other hand, ask a series of nine questions about a person’s religious beliefs in order to determine if they are an evangelical. The differences between the two approaches are staggering.

Using the common approach of allowing people to self-identify as evangelicals, 40% of adults classify themselves as such. Among them, 83% are likely to vote in November. Among the self-reported evangelicals who are likely to vote, John McCain holds a narrow 39% to 37% lead over Sen. Obama. Nearly one-quarter of this segment (23%) is still undecided about who they will vote for.

Using the Barna approach of studying people’s core religious beliefs produces a very different outcome. Just 8% of the adult population qualifies as evangelical based on their answers to the nine belief questions. Among that segment, a significantly higher proportion (90%) is likely to vote in November, and Sen. McCain holds a huge lead (61%-17%) over the Democratic nominee. Overall, just 14% of this group remains undecided regarding their candidate of choice.

Labels: Barack Obama, Cathleen Kaveny, election, evangelicals, John McCain, politics

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Friday, August 08, 2008

Religion, the Election, and the Media

By: Welton Gaddy
Thursday August 7, 2008

The Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life have published a report that confirms my suspicions about the use of religion on the campaign trail. The study found that we are in the midst of an election for a Pastor-in-Chief rather than a Commander-in-Chief.

An analysis of over 13,000 news stories from January 2007 through April 2008 revealed that religion is playing a disproportionate role in this election. Religion accounted for roughly ten percent of all stories that did not focus on political strategy or tactics. By comparison, foreign policy issues garnered 14 percent of these stories, and stories about race and gender only made up 11 percent.

The United States is in the midst of two wars, one of which is costing our taxpayers $6 billion every month. Terrorism represents the greatest foreign policy crisis of our generation. At the same time, American society is being transformed as Senators Clinton and Obama challenged traditional stereotypes of who is best fit to be president. And despite these profound changes and challenges, religion is receiving almost as attention in the media as foreign policy and race/gender issues. And the scary thing is that George W. Bush, who revolutionized using religion for partisan gain, isn't even on the ballot.

There is much blame to go around that explains this troubling trend. The presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle were more willing than ever to seek the endorsement of religious leaders, incorporate religious rhetoric into their speeches, and promote their religious affiliation as a misguided proxy for sound judgment and clear vision.

Both Senators McCain and Obama had some buyer's remorse after seeking the support of controversial clergy. But candidates cannot have it both ways. They cannot continue to use clergy for political gain and then discard them when it no longer fits their agenda.

The media deserve much of the blame as well. Last summer, CNN's Soledad O'Brien asked Senator John Edwards to name his biggest sin. Multiple debate moderators asked various candidates to name their favorite Bible story.

These types of questions have no bearing over a candidate's ability to serve as president. The media are the staunchest supporters of the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech and press, yet it appears they have not read Article VI of the Constitution, which prohibits imposing a religious test for public office.

The problem is not that religion is being incorporated into the presidential campaign. Rather the problem is that religion is being used as a divisive tool instead of a unifying power. The candidates need be less concerned with appearing "holier than thou" and focus instead on explaining the role their values play in their political worldview. The media needs to stop asking irrelevant (and irreverent) questions about the candidates' religion and start asking the candidates to outline their views on the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

If we can nurture a more positive relationship between religion and politics, a survey result like this one would be encouraging rather than lamentable.

Labels: America, Barack Obama, John McCain, Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religion, Welton Gaddy

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Thursday, July 17, 2008

Poll probes Americans' belief in UFOs, life on other planets

07/15/2008

Most Americans say it is very likely or somewhat likely that humans are not alone in the universe and that intelligent life exists on other planets.

Only a third of adults, however, believe it's either very likely or somewhat likely that intelligent aliens from space have visited our planet, according to a survey of 1,003 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University.

The poll revealed that one in every 12 Americans has seen a mysterious object in the sky that might have been a visitor from another world, while nearly one in every five personally knows someone who has seen an unidentified flying object.

America's fascination with UFO sightings has been robust, dating at least back to 1947 with the discovery of unusual objects near Roswell, N.M., that many claimed were the remnants of an extraterrestrial craft that crashed.

Among the ranks who have seen something strange in the sky are former President Jimmy Carter, the late Beatle John Lennon and the late comedian Jackie Gleason.

One of the largest mass sightings on record -- the so-called "Phoenix Lights" that hovered for several hours over two or three Southwestern states on March 13, 1997 -- was even seen by then-Arizona Gov. Fife Symington. The governor at first made jokes about the incident, but later apologized for making light of something that thousands of people saw.

At least one of the participants in the poll saw the strange, slowly floating lights over Phoenix.

"Maybe it was a military thing; I don't know," said Fran Chodacki, 62, of Page, Ariz. "Everything is mysterious in this world. It's a possibility."

She is among the 56 percent of adults in the poll who believe it is very likely or somewhat likely that intelligent life exists on other worlds. The survey found that 35 percent said extraterrestrials are unlikely and 9 percent are uncertain.

Men, young adults and college-educated Americans are more likely than most to believe that humans are not alone in the universe.

Men are almost twice as likely to have seen something peculiar in the sky than are women. Older Americans are much more likely than younger people to have seen something, as are residents of rural areas or suburbs rather than those living in major cities. People living in Western states are three times more likely to have seen a UFO than are residents of the Northeast, Midwest or South.

UFO experts agree that these trends all make sense. Men are more likely than women to be outdoors on a dark night. Older Americans have had more opportunities simply by virtue of a longer life to see something unusual in the sky.

It is also logical, they say, for people in Western states to have seen more UFOs than people in other regions. Most of the nation's largest and most expensive observatories are located in the West, which provides optimal views of the sky.

But the experts were quite surprised by other trends found among the UFO witnesses.

People who have attended church recently and who identify themselves as born-again Evangelical Protestants are much less likely to have seen UFOs or to believe in the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence than people with little or no involvement with organized religion.

People with strong political and ideological convictions -- self-identified "strong Republicans" and "very conservative" people as well as "strong Democrats" and "very liberal" persons -- are much less likely to report having seen a UFO than are politically moderate persons.

But why are people with strong political beliefs less likely to see UFOs?

"They are more attuned to the establishment," said Rodeghier. "People who are in the establishment are more likely to have distain for the whole UFO issue. That's something those of us in the field of UFO study have seen over and over again. But people who are independent are more open to the issue."

The survey was conducted by telephone at Ohio University's Scripps Survey Research Center from May 11-28. The poll was funded through a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.

The overall survey has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.

(Thomas Hargrove is a reporter for Scripps Howard News Service. Guido H. Stempel III is a professor emeritus at Ohio University's Scripps School of Journalism. Scripps Howard reporter Daniel Collins contributed to this story.)

Labels: Guido H. Stempel III, Phoenix, politics, religion, Scripps Howard News Service., Thomas Hargrove, UFO

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Thursday, June 26, 2008

World Peace Forum opens in Indonesia focusing on eliminating violence

2008-06-25 00:26:46

JAKARTA, June 24 (Xinhua) -- About 200 leaders in religion, politics and business all over the world including Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono attended the 2nd World Peace Forum opening ceremony here on Tuesday night, to discuss how to achieve global peace.

"Indonesia has demonstrated its democracy with diversified culture and religion in recent years. Though we know how impossible it is to realize true peace in the world, we have to socialize the culture of mutual respect, tolerance, peace, harmony and anti-violence to the younger generation, because they are the leaders of tomorrow," said Susilo in his speech.

The prime ministers of Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, foreign minister of the UK and other politicians conveyed their written messages for the forum by representatives or through video.

The three-day forum, co-hosted by Muhammadiyah (Indonesia's second largest Islamic organization), the Center for Dialogue and Cooperation among Civilizations (CDCC) and the Cheng Ho Multi Culture Trust, is aiming to find solutions to address facets of religious violence at national and global levels.

The conference was founded in 2006 by Muhammadiyah to involve religious and political leaders in addressing world problems.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

Labels: CDCC, Cheng Ho Multi Culture Trust, Indonesia, Mu Xuequan, Muhammadiyah, peace, politics, religion

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Part II of U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

WASHINGTON, June 23

Part II of U.S. Religious Landscape Survey details Americans' religious
beliefs and behaviors as well as their social and political attitudes

WASHINGTON, June 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life today released its second report on the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which finds that while many Americans are highly religious, most are not dogmatic in their approach to faith. This new analysis examines the diversity of Americans' religious beliefs and practices as well as their social and political attitudes. It follows the first report of the Landscape Survey, which was published in February 2008 and detailed the size, internal changes and demographic characteristics of major religions in the United States.

"The fact that most Americans are not exclusive or dogmatic about their religion is a fascinating finding," said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. "Most people will be surprised that a majority of adherents in nearly all religious traditions, including a majority of evangelical Protestants, say that there isn't just one way to salvation or to interpret the teachings of their own faith."

Based on interviews conducted in English and Spanish with a nationally representative sample of more than 35,000 adults, part two of the Landscape Survey includes a wealth of information on the religious beliefs and practices of the American public. It also explores the social and political attitudes of religious groups, including members of many small religious traditions - such as Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and agnostics - not typically analyzed in public opinion surveys.

"This report illustrates, chapter and verse, the amazing diversity and dynamism both between and within religious traditions in America," noted John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum. "And this diversity of affiliation, belief and practice matters when it comes to social and political questions."

The second report of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds:

* Although many Americans are highly religious, they are not dogmatic in their faith. Seventy percent of Americans with a religious affiliation say that many religions - not just their own - can lead to eternal life. Most also think there is more than one correct way to interpret the teachings of their own faith.

* This does not mean, however, that Americans take religious matters lightly. Most, in fact, say they rank the importance of religion very highly in their lives, and a plurality wants to preserve the traditional beliefs and practices of their faith, while only a small minority wants to accommodate their religion to modern culture.

* There is tremendous diversity of religious beliefs and practices in the U.S. Important religious differences exist between the major religious traditions, but there are also important differences within religious traditions.

* While more than nine-in-ten Americans (92%) believe in the existence of God or a universal spirit, there are considerable differences in the nature of this belief. Six-in-ten adults believe that God is a person with whom people can have a relationship; but one-in-four - including about half of Jews and Hindus - see God as an impersonal force. Similarly, seven-in-ten Americans say that they are absolutely certain of God's existence, while roughly one-in-five (22%) are less certain in their belief.

* Three-quarters of Americans report praying at least once a week, with large majorities among most religious traditions saying they pray on at least a weekly basis. Even among the unaffiliated, roughly one-in-three pray on a weekly basis. At the same time, however, there are those among all faith groups who pray much less frequently; overall, one quarter of the public says they pray a few times a month or less often.

* Almost two-fifths of Americans report meditating at least once a week. This practice is particularly common among Buddhists, but nearly half of evangelical Protestants and Muslims say they meditate at least weekly. About one-quarter of the unaffiliated report weekly meditation. These patterns may incorporate elements of both Christian and non-Christian traditions.

* Politics and religion in the United States are intertwined, and religion is highly relevant to understanding politics in the U.S. Yet while the diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice translates into important differences on many social and political issues, differences on other issues are less pronounced.

* Religion is closely linked to political ideology. The survey shows that Mormons are among the most politically conservative groups in the population. Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, by contrast, are among the most likely to describe their ideology as liberal.

* People who regularly attend worship services and say religion is important in their lives are much more likely to identify as conservative, and this pattern extends to many religious traditions. For example, within the evangelical, mainline Protestant, historically black Protestant, Catholic, Mormon and Orthodox Christian traditions, those who attend church weekly are significantly more likely than those who attend less often to describe themselves as political conservatives. And among Jews, those who say religion is very important to them or pray every day are more likely than others to be politically conservative.

* The connection between religious engagement and political attitudes appears to be especially strong when it comes to hot button social issues such as abortion or homosexuality. For instance, about six-in-ten Americans who attend religious services at least once a week say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, while only three-in-ten who attend less often share this view. This pattern holds across several religious traditions.

* On other topics covered in the survey, such as views on the role and size of government and foreign policy attitudes, the role of religion is less clear and there appears to be greater consensus across and within religious traditions. For instance, a majority of nearly every religious group supports stricter environmental regulations and believes the government should do more to help Americans in need. Similarly, most Americans, including majorities of most faiths, say it is more important to focus on problems here at home than to be active in world affairs.

In conjunction with the release of this report, the Pew Forum is updating its online presentation of the findings at religions.pewforum.org. Updated features include interactive mapping by state, dynamic charts and a variety of other tools that allow users to explore the beliefs and practices as well as social and political views of major religions in the United States.

Subsequent releases will include a re-contact survey that delves deeper into the relationship between religious and political identity, issues related to conversion and attitudes toward religious pluralism in America.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life delivers timely, impartial information on issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs. The Forum is a nonpartisan, non-advocacy organization and does not take positions on policy debates. Based in Washington, D.C., the Forum is a project of the Pew Research Center, which is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

SOURCE Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

Labels: beliefs. practices, God, meditation, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, prayer, religion, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Poll: Revealing New Look at Religious Voters

By Deal W. Hudson
6/18/2008

The volatility of the Catholic vote created by the Iraq War was confirmed by the study's findings.

WASHINGTON, DC (Inside Catholic) - A new survey on religion and politics provides important background on the dynamics at work among religious voters in 2008.

The "National Survey on Religion and Public Life" published by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College was based on a large sample of 3,002 interviews, nearly three times the sample size of most political polls.

Analyzed by director Corin E. Smidt, the survey data yielded the following major conclusions:

Mainline Protestants are now firmly identified with the Democratic Party, 46 percent to 37 percent. Smidt calls this "an historical turning point," but the shift has been in the making for over a decade. Taking their place in the Republican Party are, of course, the Evangelical voters -- 54 percent to 25 percent, slightly down from 2004.

White Catholic loyalties lean slightly toward the Democrats, 41 percent to 38 percent, reflecting the 30-year migration of Catholics into the GOP. Democrats used to own the Catholic vote in years gone by.

The White Catholic vote is "up for grabs in the 2008 presidential election." Because of the instability created by the unpopularity of the Iraq War, and the Vatican's criticism of it, I agree with him.

The news about Latino Catholics is not good for the GOP. Only 15 percent call themselves Republican, compared to 57 percent for the Democrats. The number of independents among these voters is growing (28 percent).

Individual religious beliefs and practices are more important than denominational affiliation in predicting political views. When you distinguish between traditionalists, centrists, and modernists within each denomination, each group's politics will resemble the others across the denominations. Modernist Catholics will think politically like modernists belonging to other denominations, and so on.

Traditional believers of all denominations are more likely to be Republican, and modernists are more likely to be Democrats -- with the odd exception of modernist Evangelicals, who lean toward the GOP.

The survey numbers on abortion and gay rights bear the importance of looking beyond denominational affiliation. Catholics overall agreed, 51 percent to 43 percent, that "abortion should be legal and solely up to the woman to decide." Among traditionalist Catholics, the number changes dramatically, with 71 percent disagreeing. Modernists, not surprisingly, agree 80 percent with a woman's "right to chose."

Gay marriage is not supported as strongly as abortion among religious voters, but comparing 2004 with 2008, support appears to be growing: 9 percent among Evangelicals, 5 percent among mainline Protestants, but only 2 percent among Catholics, who have heard Benedict XVI quite outspoken in opposition to gay marriage.

The volatility of the Catholic vote created by the Iraq War was confirmed by the study's findings. Non-Hispanic Catholics did not agree that the United States rightly took action against Iraq, 52 percent to 42 percent, while traditionalist Catholics supported the war 56 percent to 36 percent.

Centrist and modernist Catholics overwhelmingly oppose the war: 54 percent to 34 percent, and 68 percent to 29 percent, respectively. Latino Catholics disapprove by a margin of 69 percent to 25 percent.

The Calvin College poll asked its respondents whether they would vote for McCain or the Democratic nominee (Obama was not yet the clear victor) for president in 2008. White Catholics favored McCain 43 percent to 39 percent, but Latino Catholics supported the Democratic nominee 63 percent to 19 percent. Evangelicals picked McCain 59 percent to 24 percent, and mainline Protestants slightly favored McCain over the Democrat; 19 percent were still undecided at the time of the survey.

The methodology of the survey suggests that an innovative way for political candidates to organize their religious outreach may be in the offing. Instead of a Catholic or Evangelical outreach, future campaigns may focus on the newer categories of "traditionalists" and "modernists," regardless of denomination.

Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster, 2008).

Labels: abortion, Catholic, Deal W. Hudson, Democrat, gay rights, Iraq, National Survey on Religion and Public Life, politics, protestants, Republican

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Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Institute Poll Shows Americans Oppose Pulpit Partisanship

June 9th 2008

Faith will continue to play a significant role in the political landscape through this year’s election.

Today the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics released its National Survey on Religion and Public Life. The poll gauged the attitudes of 3,002 Americans, belonging to 18 different religious groupings, about their political attitudes, affiliations and preferences.

The conclusions of the national survey were largely unsurprising. Faith will continue to play a significant role in the political landscape through this year’s election, and congregants have a tendency to vote in a similar fashion to other traditionalists, centrists or modernists, regardless of denomination.

According to the study, mainline Protestants in 2008 have moved away from the GOP and are now more likely to self-identify as Democrats (46 percent) as opposed to Republicans (37 percent). Evangelical Protestants, however, have been moving in the opposite direction. They favored the Republican Party over the Democratic Party 48 percent to 32 percent in 1992, but now lean Republican 54 percent to 25 percent.

While the statistics, similar to those from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 2007, seem to be generally indicative of 2008 voting patterns like those of 2004, one question raised an issue of particular importance to advocates of church-state separation.

The Henry Institute asked survey participants whether clergy should endorse political candidates from the pulpit. A majority of Americans, across the board, found the practice to be inappropriate.

Fifty-seven percent said clergy should not “be permitted to endorse political candidates during worship services.” Only 28 percent said they should (with 15 percent offering no opinion).

Among Evangelicals, 55 percent opposed pulpit partisanship, while only 29 supported it. Among Catholics, the figures were even farther apart, with 66 percent taking a stand against church electioneering and only 23 percent supporting it.

With the Alliance Defense Fund and other Religious Right groups pressing clergy to violate federal tax law and endorse candidates from the pulpit, it’s good to know the American public won’t say amen to that reckless scheme.

By Ilana Stern

Labels: Ilana Stern, Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, politics, religion

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Friday, May 16, 2008

Christians in Politics: Too Much or Too Little?

By Richard Land
Christian Post Guest Columnist

Over the past few weeks, a national polling firm for LifeWay Research and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission conducted a survey asking Americans to respond to this statement: “I am concerned that at times Christians are too involved in politics.”

The results were quite informative. The majority of Americans (52%) either “strongly disagree” (32%) or “somewhat disagree” (20%) with the statement. Even larger majorities of faith-affiliated Americans disagreed with the statement. When researchers asked Americans who attended religious services of any faith at least once a week, disagreement with the statement was even higher, with 65% indicating they were comfortable with Christians being involved in politics, and only 21% expressing varying discomfort with Christians’ political activity.

Those who self-identify themselves as “born-again,” “evangelical,” or “fundamentalist” expressed the highest level of disagreement (72%) with the assertion that “at times Christians are too involved in politics” with only 27% telling pollsters they agreed (“strongly” or “somewhat”) with the statement.

These results do not surprise me at all. They underscore and reinforce the feedback I receive on a consistent basis from grassroots Christians of all perspectives, particularly conservative Christians – Catholic and Protestant.

These polling results suggest that those pundits, analysts, and religious leaders that tell us that people of faith are disillusioned with politics and public policy need to get out more and talk with the people who actually go to churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples. If they did, they would find that the people who most often attended religious services disagree with their assessment by an almost two to one margin, 65 percent to 31 percent. On a more personal note, among Southern Baptist pastors who were asked the question of whether “at times, Christians are too involved in politics”, two thirds of them either “strongly disagreed” (41%) or “somewhat disagreed” (26%).

When people of faith enter the political process they should always understand that their ultimate allegiance is to the Almighty, not any ideology or party. People of faith have an obligation to be involved as “salt” and “light” in the world, and that includes “politics.” They should be voting their values, beliefs, and convictions, based on their understanding of the imperatives of their faith.

This column originally published at Casting Stones, a blog hosted by Beliefnet.com.

Labels: Americans, Christian, LifeWay Research, politics

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Saturday, May 10, 2008

Group of evangelical Christians writes manifesto urging separation of religious beliefs and politics

By politicizing faith, Christians become 'useful idiots' for one party or another, the group warns

By Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 10, 2008

A group of prominent U.S. evangelical Christians is urging other evangelicals to step back from partisan politics and avoid becoming "useful idiots" for any political party.

In an often strongly worded statement released this week, more than 70 pastors, scholars and business leaders said faith and politics have become too closely intertwined and that evangelicals err when they use their religious beliefs for political purposes.

Three years in the making, the manifesto was signed by many high-profile, mostly centrist evangelicals, including Leith Anderson, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals; Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine; and Frank Wright, president of National Religious Broadcasters.

Many of the most prominent conservative evangelicals did not sign. A spokesman for James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, said Dobson had concerns about the document and decided not to add his name.

One of the statement's drafters said one purpose was to reclaim the word "evangelical" from its political association.

"This is not primarily a political movement," said the Rev. John Huffman Jr., senior pastor of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach and board chairman of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today. "Evangelicalism is a theological understanding that we are called to be followers of Jesus Christ, and that's not captive to a culture, society or nation."

Analyst Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said he expected the statement to have limited political impact.

"It's mainly a warning to people not to confuse their personal faith with political convictions," he said.

Labels: Christianity, evangelicals, faith, politics, Rebecca Trounson

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Keeping faith with the American voter

Saturday April 19, 2008
FOO YEE PING

The Catholic vote has become the focus of both Democrat presidential hopefuls with Pope Benedict XVI visiting the United States.

THERE is a mantra going around that the best way to know how Americans vote is to find out where they are on Sunday.

Over the past five decades, the Gallup Poll frequently surveyed Americans on the role of religion in their lives. Very often, at least 55% indicated that their faith was “very important” to them.

Women, Southerners, senior citizens, non-whites and lower income people were more inclined to say that religion was huge for them.

This week’s first official trip by Pope Benedict XVI to the United States has led to discussions about the Catholic vote; and how the Democratic presidential candidates are chasing it.

In the critical Pennsylvania round this Tuesday, an estimated 36% of the voters are Catholics.

According to news reports, Obama have tried to connect to this group of people by speaking about his time attending a Catholic school during the four years he spent in Indonesia as a child.

Clinton, a Methodist, has been reported as saying that she had felt the presence of God in her life ever since she was a little girl. “And it has been a gift of grace that has been, for me, incredibly sustaining.”

Back in 1960, there had been concerns about John F. Kennedy being a Roman Catholic. But he was a young candidate who offered a different kind of fresh politics to voters, who were also assured that faith would not interfere with any state decisions.

So, what role does religion play in secular America?

“Some people say the United States is the most religious nation in a secular set-up. With the state having no role in promoting religion, the state, too, has an obligation of not interfering in the private lives of its citizens,” Wang said.

“Thus, religion outside of the state flourishes. It plays an important role in America in determining political decisions. No where in the western world would the focus of an election include matters such as abortion.”

But how religious are Americans? USA Today reporting on a survey last year, noted that 60% of Americans could not even recall five of the Ten Commandments.

“Being religious does not mean being ritualistic or having a strong sense of religiosity,” Wang said. “It’s not about taking a quiz to determine a person’s faith.”

He explained that the changes in western society in the past 30 years included individuals trying to be more spiritual than ritualistic.

“At the same time, the tendency to equate religion with morality is prevalent in America,” he added.

In that sense, Americans would never vote for an atheist.

“As religion equals morality, atheism is seen as the end of morality, turning society into chaos,” Wang said.

“Americans, although firm believers in individual freedom and a free market, can accept protectionism or even a soft socialist as their president, but they will never accept an atheist.”

Jimmy Carter, for example, was left leaning but voters liked his strong Christian beliefs, he said.

Republican Mitt Romney failed in his bid for his party presidential nomination because Americans were mostly uneasy about his Mormon faith.

“He also did not succeed because he tried to pretend to be someone he isn’t, He tried to be more conservative than he actually is,” Wang pointed out.

Both Clinton and Obama have employed Catholic officials to speak on their behalf in their clamour to win over the faithful. A vast majority of the earlier arrivals among working class Hispanics are professed Catholics, too.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found in a recent survey that one in four Americans aged 18 to 29 declared they were not affiliated with any religion.

Be that as it may be, a person’s personal faith and religious views is a weighty factor in determining the choice of political candidacy in the United States.

Labels: Barack Obama, faith, Foo Yee Ping, Hillary Clinton, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religion

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Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Church and State, Reconsidered

When most people talk about the “separation of church and state,” the idea is to protect the state from the church. People work hard to keep “Intelligent Design” out of the public schools, believing that public life is already too religious. This may be true, but Steven Goldberg argues in the book Bleached Faith, that it’s religion that needs protection from the influence of public life.

Intelligent design in the classroom, over-sized menorahs in public buildings, and the Ten Commandments—dubbed by Goldberg as the “Nike Swoosh of religion”—in the courts don’t strengthen faith. Forcing religious imagery into public life actually cheapens religion and spirituality.

Many in the religious community, however, understand that politics and religion don’t mix well. In a recent survey by the National Association of Evangelicals, the vast majority of evangelical leaders came out unequivocally opposed to using their churches to endorse candidates. One university president put the issue in stark terms saying, “the pulpit is not the place for electioneering.”

—Bennett Gordon

Labels: Bennett Gordon, church-state, National Association of Evangelicals, politics, religion, Steven Goldberg

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Monday, March 31, 2008

A God of War? Presidential Faith and U.S. Foreign Policy

By Lyn Boyd-Judson

The religious values held by George W. Bush have undoubtedly informed his foreign policy decisions. This simple fact should give every American voter pause.

For the past eight years, many like-minded Americans have rejoiced in the current president's conservative Christian worldview and its foreign policy consequences, rather than recognizing that this worldview is a profoundly disturbing element of his presidency. They take comfort in the belief that their president receives God's guidance in political matters, both domestic and foreign. Their logic is that if good and evil exist in our world, the tension between the two manifests in the political realm and plays out in our foreign policy.

In contrast, those Americans - both secularists and liberal Christians - who find the current president's claims of divine guidance profoundly disturbing argue that one of the key principles on which the U.S. was founded is freedom from religion in state institutions. They argue that the founding fathers were deists who advocated a natural religion based on human reason rather than divine revelation. They understand that one's religious beliefs or worldview can never truly be divorced from decision-making, but they also hold that these religious assumptions should constantly be re-evaluated by rational and factual criteria when applied to matters of state. So when it is reported that President Bush says he receives divine guidance on matters of U.S. foreign policy - for instance, that God told him to invade Iraq? - these Americans believe that all citizens, Christian or otherwise, should be profoundly disturbed, because an unjust war can never be a divine war.

This contrast between American Christian worldviews is starkly apparent in the recent media reports of controversial comments made by religious leaders connected to the current presidential candidates. Barack Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has made inflammatory remarks about the U.S. government, suggesting that the U.S. is racist on the home front and that its foreign policy is unjust, aggressive and foments Islamic terrorist attacks on U.S. citizens. John McCain has close ties to pastors Rod Parsley and John Hagee. Parsley has claimed that Islam is a false religion that America should destroy, and John Hagee has called for bombing Iran to hasten the Christian apocalypse.

Several political pundits describe the current politico-cultural divide in the U.S. as a rift between God-fearing Christians and "secular" (read atheist) liberal intellectuals from (pick your coast). Of course, this distinction is inaccurate and misleading. The divide in American political culture over God is not so much about whether Americans believe in God as it is about how the 90 percent of Americans who believe in God? want to define his purpose in our political world. In this sense, the divide in American political culture over a presidential God is an argument between the politically left-leaning Christian who embraces a God of peace, inclusiveness, forgiveness and social justice, and the politically right-leaning Christian who embraces a God Almighty whose main attributes are judgment, the strength to vanquish enemies, and the righteous impulse to devalue - even destroy - all things not Christian. Again, which presidential God will shape the foreign policy decisions made in the Oval Office?

As Americans, regardless of our religious beliefs or political commitments, it is our duty as voters to reflect deeply on what we value in foreign policy initiatives, why we hold these values, and how we express them in the public sphere. We need reasonable voices speaking to reconcile the factions in the religio-political divide - a divide not over whether a candidate knows God, but over how Americans want to define the role of a candidate's God in a president's foreign policy. While religious values can certainly inform our moral impulses, the distinction between an exclusive or inclusive God is where war and peace often hang in the balance.

Labels: Americans, Barack Obama, Christianity, George Bush, John McCain, Lyn Boyd-Judson, politics, religion, war

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Sunday, March 30, 2008

A matter of character

Who stacks up in 'speaking truth to power'
BY DAVID WELLS

According to a national Associated Press/Ipsos poll, 55 percent of Americans think "character" is more important than "issues" when picking a president. But what exactly is meant by "character"?

According to Neal Mayerson, a psychologist and president of the Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation, here in Cincinnati, everybody, including every candidate, has character; they just have it in different measures.

• How do you define character?

CHARACTER TRAITS

Character is common in the famous and the unknown. It is a personal measure by which we judge others. But clearly, there is no one standard.

Ten years ago the Mayerson Foundation organized a study group of social scientists called Values in Action, and began to categorize and evaluate the traits of what people call "character." Studying a wide range of religions, cultures and philosophies, the group eventually came up with six categories of consistently valued positive human characteristics, each with a subgroup of character strengths:

Wisdom (creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning, perspective).

Courage (bravery, honesty, perseverance, zest).

Humanity (kindness, love, social intelligence).

Justice (fairness, leadership, teamwork).

Temperance (forgiveness, modesty, prudence, self-regulation).

Transcendence (appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humor, spirituality).

We all judge character, and how we define it and balance its various characteristics is largely a matter of personal choice - perhaps an indication of our own "character."

LOOK FOR BALANCE

Mayerson suggests that a truer picture of a person's character emerges when we balance the various character traits. "I would use the legal term of preponderance of evidence when trying to assess someone's character," he said. When discussing character, we also should remember that our own preferences are subject to change. We look for different character strengths for different roles. "If you are looking for a spiritual leader, you may be inclined to look for a different set of traits than you would want in the CEO of the company that is managing all of your retirement stock," Mayerson said.

So what would you want in a president?

Mayerson's group has been conducting an online survey asking people just that. Full data is not yet available, but some trends seem to be emerging, he said. One is a decision maker, but not one so single-minded that he/she is unwilling to hear opposing views. People seem to want someone with humanity strengths, but are not primarily interested in "a nice guy," he said.

Putting character ahead of issues is a way for people to deal with candidates in terms they can more easily relate to, Mayerson suggested. We may not all understand the nuance of economic policy, but we all understand honesty, courage and generosity. The important thing to remember about character, however, is that it is a package, not a single issue.

Labels: character, courage, David Wells, humanity, justice, Mayerson Foundation, politics, temperance, transcendence, Values in Action, wisdom

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Liberal Christian: 'Dominance of the religious right is finished'

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Wednesday January 23, 2008

Please click on the link to external source for complete article, including a video clip from the Daily Show January 22, 2008.

According to a prominent liberal Evangelical, there is a major political and generational shift going on among Evangelical Christians in America.

Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners Magazine, told Jon Stewart on Tuesday's Daily Show, "Two things have happened since we last talked. I've got some good news and some great news. The good news is, the dominance of the religious right over our politics is finally finished."

As the audience cheered and applauded, Wallis continued, "Even the better news is now a new generation has come of age and they're applying their faith ... to the biggest issues that face us: the moral scandal of poverty, the degradation of the environment -- which we call God's creation -- the threat of climate change, Darfur, human rights, the exclusive use of war to fight evil."

Stewart questioned whether a religious left might not wind up being just as rigid as the religious right, but on the other side. Wallis replied that he wasn't expecting that to happen, because people in this country "don't want to go left or right, they want to go deeper, they want to go to a moral center."

"Politics in America is broken," Wallis said, explaining why he anticipates a new social movement, rather than a new political movement. "Social movements often rise up to change politics when it fails. And the best social movements often have spiritual foundations."

"Why does it always have to be tied in to faith?" Stewart asked, pointing out that at the same time as the 19th century abolitionists were appealing to religion, so were the supporters of slavery. "Isn't there a way to have a right and wrong?"

"Religion has no monopoly on morality," Wallis agreed, acknowledging that all the great social movements have had a significant component of people of faith, but never exclusively. "And there's a whole new denomination now," he added, "called the spiritual but not religious, that's growing all over the country."

"The two great hungers in the world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice, and the connection between the two is the one the new generation is just waiting for," Wallis concluded.

He cautioned, however, that "when people of faith get to the public square, they shouldn't say, 'My religious view is this.' They should speak in moral language that is inclusive of everybody. ... I care about not someone's religion, but what their moral compass is."

Labels: Daily Show, David Edwards, faith, Jim Wallis, morality, Muriel Kane, politics, religious right, spirituality

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Politics and Religion Do Mix

By Paul Marshall
From the Hudson Institute
Saturday, January 12, 2008

...The problem with our contemporary talk of faith and politics is not that it exists but that it is so often so very shallow. We live in an increasingly religious world in which faith and belief affect every dimension of our existence, so our politicians better talk about it.

The future is likely to bring many more debates on how religion shapes not only politics but economics. Of course this question has always been around. Its locus classicus is Max Weber's misunderstood work on the relation of Protestantism and capitalism. Sadly, Weber never finished this work. The famous title "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" refers not to a book actually written by Weber, but to a collection of his divergent occasional pieces on this topic.

But in what he did finish, Weber argued that the widely dispersed and theologically disciplined work habits encouraged by Protestantism were a factor, though only one, in the development of modern-age "capitalism." We can argue about the historical details, but the question of how religious ethics can shape economic performance remains with us, and is being revived.

Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary of Harvard University have used the results of World Values Surveys to study the relation between religion and economic attitudes. They found that many religious beliefs concerning cooperation, government, working women, legal rules, thriftiness and the market economy are conducive to higher per-capita income and growth. Religion appears to have an effect on economic growth and development by fostering thrift, a work ethic, honesty and openness to strangers. This has lead to the notion of "spiritual capital," analogous to human capital, which focuses on knowledge and behavior stemming from transcendent concepts and ultimate concerns.

Their model stresses the importance of freedom, not only in economics per se, but in religion itself. Religion most often has positive effects when it is free. This model is reinforced by the results of our recently concluded survey of international religious freedom. The countries with the worst religious freedom records, including Burma, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, have, unless they have oil, terrible economic records. Similar relations hold for those in the middle and for those with high levels of freedom: The highest 30 countries in rankings of economic freedom all scored highly on religious freedom.

Barro and McCleary's work suggests that this is more than a mere correlation: There is good reason to think that religious freedom leads to good economic outcomes. The current evidence indicates that closed religious systems hamper economic development. Hence, if we want economic growth and development, we need to permit religious groups and people to follow their beliefs. In this case, economists should join political scientists in examining religion more seriously.

Whether we like it or not, religion is likely to remain central to politics, and even economics. This means that in the future, politicians, Democrats as well as Republicans, are likely to expand their talk of religion on the campaign trail. We should not dismiss this as if religion were a mere irrational prejudice or interest-group totem. We should instead demand that politicians address these fundamental issues in a serious, coherent and empirically grounded way. If they do not do so, they (and we) will misunderstand our all-too-religious world.

Paul Marshall is senior fellow at Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. Rankings from the center's survey "Religious Freedom in the World" are available here.

Labels: 'spiritual capital', economics, Paul Marshall, politics, religion, religious freedom, World Values Surveys

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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Devil more popular than Darwin in America

By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles

More Americans believe in the existence of hell and the devil than Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to a nationwide poll.

Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of US residents polled said they believed in a literal hell and the devil, 60 per cent said they believed in the virgin birth.

Only 42 per cent of those surveyed, however, said they believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution, or “natural selection”. Some 39 per cent of respondents said they believed in creationism.

Broken down by religion, the survey found that only 16 per cent of born-again Christians (or evangelicals) compared to 43 per cent of Catholics and 30 per cent of Protestants believed in Darwin’s theory.

Meanwhile, 60 per cent of born-again Christians, but only 43 per cent of Catholics, believed in creationism.

Overall, the poll reflects the centrality of faith to American life, politics and culture, with 82 per cent saying they believed in God.

Three quarters agreed there is a heaven while 72 per cent believed Jesus is God or the Son of God and 79 per cent believed in miracles.

The question of faith is proving a key issue in campaigning for next year’s presidential election.

The poll, by market researchers Harris, involved 2,455 US adults from across the country selected to reflect the national population in terms of age, sex, race, education and household income.

It also found that significant minorities of Americas believe in ghosts (41 per cent), UFOs (35 per cent), witches (31 per cent), astrology (29 per cent) and reincarnation (21 per cent).

Born-again Christians were more likely to believe in witches (37 per cent) while Catholics were found more likely to believe in astrology and re-incarnation

Labels: America, astrology, Catherine Elsworth, Catholic, creationism, evangelicals, evolution, faith, ghosts, politics

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Friday, November 30, 2007

Survey: Religion vital for voters

Amanda Shimko
Issue date: 11/29/07

Page 1 of 2 - Please click on "external link" for full article

A September report released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life states that candidates who are viewed by the public as not highly religious seem to top the newest Gallup Polls for both the Democratic and Republican Parties.

The nationwide survey, based on telephone interviews from 3,002 adults in August, rated people's perceptions of candidates and their religiosity.

Romney, a candidate with a Mormon background, was perceived as most religious by participants. Of those polled, 46 percent found Romney to be very religious, while George W. Bush comes in at 43 percent.

The latest Gallup Poll, released Nov. 13, shows Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani as the frontrunners of the Democrat and Republican Parties. Both candidates ranked in the bottom of the religious survey, ranking 16 and 14 percent, respectively.

While these numbers state the percentage of people who found the candidate to be very religious, 63 percent found Giuliani to be somewhat religious, while Clinton received 53 percent in the same category.

Clinton received the biggest percentage of all candidates, both Democrat and Republican, of those who find her not too or not at all religious.

According to the study, voters in the past have said it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs, and voters tend to express a more favorable view toward those candidates.

But, the report goes on to state, the new study finds that candidates with White House dreams do not have to be seen as very religious in order to be accepted by the public.

James Riddlesperger, professor and chair of the political science department, said religion has always been an important part of American politics.

However, Riddlesperger said, the effect of a candidate's religious preference on the next election outcome remains to be seen.

"We've never had an election this intense this early," Riddlesperger said. "It's too early to tell."

Labels: Amanda Shimko, candidates, election, Gallup Poll, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religiosity

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Friday, September 07, 2007

God & Man on The Trail

A Pew poll out today draws a fine line: It is important for presidential aspirants to be seen as religious, but most do not get a big bump from being perceived as "very religious." The new data also show how little the public knows about the religious and social views of the top presidential contenders as the campaigns kick into high-gear.

Across the board, if people believe a candidate is "not too" or "not at all" religious, they are not likely to view that candidate favorably. But there are smaller, if any, rating differences between those who say a candidate is "very" vs. "somewhat" religious. For example, 77 percent of those who see Giuliani as very religious rate him favorably, as do 73 percent of those who find him somewhat religious, but that dips substantially to 43 percent among those who find him less religious than that.

And faith matters: In the June Post-Kaiser-Harvard poll, 13 percent of Americans said a "strong religious faith" was an "absolutely essential" candidate quality, another 30 percent called it "very important." And both those numbers spiked higher among Republicans. (Religiosity trailed other candidate qualities in the poll; more, nearly half, mentioned "honest and trustworthy" as absolutely essential than any of the seven items tested.)

But underneath this finding is a broader point - many people have not yet focused on this important aspect of the campaign. In the new Pew poll, large percentages volunteered that they did not know enough to rate the candidates' religiosity. Nearly two-thirds say so about Thompson, more than half about Romney. And more than two in 10 couldn't rate Clinton's level of faith.

There is even lower awareness of Giuliani's position on abortion. Overall, about seven in 10 are not sure about the mayor's position on abortion (historically he has staked out a pro-choice stance). Among Republicans, six in 10 didn't give an answer. And more critically, Republican and GOP-leaning voters who know Giuliani is pro-choice are about as likely to view him favorably as those who are not sure.

The poll also reinforces the notion that Romney's Mormonism may have a negative impact on some voters. Here, a quarter of people say they'd be less likely to vote for a Mormon for president, while only 5 percent say they'd be more likely to support a Mormon.

A Muslim candidate would start with a even greater disadvantage - 45 percent would be less likely to support a Muslim candidate - but the biggest negative among those tested in the Pew poll would be a candidate who does not believe in God. More than six in 10 would be less likely to vote for a non-believer. That is another reason it is crucial for candidates to be seen as religious, even if not deeply so.

--Jon Cohen

Labels: candidates, faith, God, Jon Cohen, Pew Research Center survey, politics, religion

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Thursday, September 06, 2007

They can pray; can they lead?

September 4, 2007
Sandy Sasso

This past summer a survey by the Pew Research Center highlighted those characteristics that would make a person less likely to support a presidential candidate. Some of the results were heartening. The majority of respondents said that it made no difference if the candidate were black, Hispanic or a woman. When race, ethnic background and gender no longer determine a person's electability, then we have reason to celebrate.

Such knowledge about the American electorate might help to refocus the questions addressed to candidates. We can stop worrying about whether a person is black enough or woman enough or charismatic enough and start focusing on whether an individual is wise enough, visionary enough and knowledgeable enough to be president.

The survey offered other good news. More than half the people questioned indicated that it made no difference if a candidate were divorced or even had an extramarital affair. Perhaps this is an indication that Americans have decided it is time we stopped prying into candidates' private matters and making soap operas out of the lives of politicians. There is too much at stake for our country and the world.

The truth is that a person who might not be a good choice for a spouse might just be a great president. The truth is that we might just have more people interested in running for office if they had to worry less about skeletons in their home closets and more about domestic and international issues that will affect how secure we feel in our own homes.

But the survey pointed to some reasons for concern. The majority of respondents, 63 percent, indicated that they would be less likely to support a candidate who did not believe in God. That figure is more than 20 percent higher than the 46 percent of people who would be less likely to support a candidate who had no college education. And while Americans seem less concerned than in the past about what particular faith an individual politician affirms, a significant 39 percent would be more likely to support someone who is Christian.

There is reason to worry when issues of faith trump education, when what individuals believe is more important than what they know, when praying is of greater significance than learning.

Those running for office are well aware of the American predilection for belief in God. So they clamor to outdo one another in showing just how pious they are. They know that they have to be religious enough to get elected.

I am a member of the clergy, but I do not feel any more confident in a candidate's ability to run our country when I see him or her coming out of church, synagogue or mosque fresh from worship.

There is no doubt that belief in God can be good. It can be the foundation of moral character, responsibility and compassion. It can be a bulwark against complacency, selfishness and greed. But it isn't always. We all know of those who have professed belief in God and lived immorally. Everywhere in the world, there are people who oppress and go to war in God's name.

Religion can make good people better, but it can also make bad people worse by allowing them to believe without question that their decisions are already endorsed. The results of bad religion continue to make headlines in acts of terrorism, bigotry and violence.

We shouldn't be judging candidates by their professed belief in God or how many times they are seen attending worship services. It doesn't really tell us anything about how they would lead our country. We should rather be examining what policies they endorse, what they have to say about health care, education and poverty, about terrorism, international diplomacy and peace. In the end, that will tell us more about what they really believe in and what kind of leaders they will be.

Labels: clergy, God, leadership, Pew Research Center survey, politics, religion, Sandy Sasso

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Saturday, September 01, 2007

Religion Shaping Race and Defining Candidates

August 27, 2007
New York Daily News

NEW YORK - A crowd cheered fervently in Iowa this month as Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback quoted Mother Teresa telling him, "All for Jesus. All for Jesus. All for Jesus. All for Jesus."

Barack Obama's recently launched Spanish-language radio ad in Nevada tells the targeted Hispanic audience, "Barack Obama is a Christian man."

Hillary Clinton doesn't hesitate to let voters know the importance of prayer in her life, while Rudy Giuliani awkwardly dodges questions about his standing as a Catholic.

And then there's Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Everywhere he goes, Romney faces questions about his Mormon faith.

Religion has played a role in presidential elections throughout history. But not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic elected to the White House, has it been as omnipresent on the campaign trail.

Historians and political experts say it's unlikely religion - or social issues embraced by Christian conservatives - will dominate the 2008 path to the Oval Office because the war in Iraq and homeland security seem uppermost in voters' minds.

"Nothing in the conversation, thus far, makes it sound like gay marriage and abortion are going to outshine the war," said Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center.

But there's no escaping religion on the campaign trail. While other issues loom large, voters want to know where candidates stand when it comes to faith.

Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School and professor of church history, said the campaign now under way showcases the nation's "continuing religious saga."

A century ago, "nobody would have believed" a Catholic could be elected president, Leonard said. The 2008 race is "just another illustration of the power of pluralism in American religious experience, that indeed a Catholic was elected and that indeed a Mormon is running as such a potentially viable candidate."

Earlier this year, a Pew Research Center survey revealed religion continues to play a role in shaping voters' decisions. Nearly four in 10 Americans said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is Christian, and 63 percent would not support a candidate who doesn't believe in God.

The poll showed 30 percent of Americans admitting they were less likely to vote for a Mormon. That hurdle rises to 46 percent for a Muslim.

For Clinton and Giuliani, the two New Yorkers seeking the Oval Office, the role of religion in their campaigns is a study in contrasts.

Clinton, a Methodist, talks freely about the power of prayer in her life. She's spoken publicly about how religion helped her overcome tough struggles, most notably her decision to forgive infidelity in her marriage.

"Obviously, my faith was crucial to the challenges I faced," Clinton recently told The New York Times, when asked whether her religion influenced her to stay married to Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair.

But Giuliani, who had an affair with his current wife while married to his second wife, took a virtual vow of silence when asked in Iowa this month about his religious beliefs.

"My religious affiliation ... and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests," said Giuliani, who once considered becoming a priest.

Former Sen. John Edwards, a Methodist, sparked controversy when he cited his faith as influencing his opposition to same-sex marriage. Later, at a forum on gay issues, he recanted. "I shouldn't have said that," said Edwards, drawing applause.

Many candidates, especially Democrats, feel compelled to discuss religion openly because President Bush's profession of faith played a prominent role in his successful 2000 and 2004 White House bids, giving the religious right plenty of political clout.

But when it comes time to pulling the lever, most experts said they doubt religion will be the deciding factor.

"There are some regions of the country where religious ideology and a certain kind of (faith) shape voters' decisions very much," Leonard said. But bottom line, Americans "want to know who is going to get us home from Iraq, and are any more bridges going to fall down, and what do we still do about New Orleans."

Labels: Barack Obama, faith, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, Pew Research Center survey, politics, religion, Sam Brownback, voters

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Monday, August 20, 2007

Amanpour's `God's Warriors' airs on CNN

By David Bauder, AP Television Writer
Mon Aug 20, 8:47 AM ET

NEW YORK - Christiane Amanpour's work on the documentary series "God's Warriors" took her directly to intersections of extreme religious and secular thinking.

She watched, fascinated, as demonstrators in San Francisco accused teenagers in the fundamentalist Christian group BattleCry of intolerance in a clash of two cultures that will probably never understand each other.

Understanding is what Amanpour is trying to promote in "God's Warriors," which takes up six prime-time hours on CNN this week. The series on religious fundamentalism among Christians, Muslims and Jews airs in three parts, 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday through Thursday.

"I'm not interested in drumming up false fears, or falsely allaying fears," CNN's chief international correspondent told The Associated Press by phone from France, where she added last-minute touches to the series. "I just want people to know what's going on."

Amanpour traveled extensively over eight months to work on the series. The trips to Amanpour's native Iran are most fascinating. She explored the ancient roots of the conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, and talked with one of the country's most accomplished female politicians about how Muslim women are treated.

Another segment tried to explain why so many devout Muslims are willing to give their lives to a cause.

"To the West, martyrdom has a really bad connotation because of suicide bombers who call themselves martyrs," she said. "Really, martyrdom is actually something that historically was quite noble, because it was about standing up and rejecting tyranny, rejecting injustice and rejecting oppression and, if necessary, dying for that."

Finishing the project didn't leave her with a sense of fear over the implications of stronger fundamentalist movements.

"I did come away with a sense that we — or those people who don't want to see religion in politics and culture — if we don't look into it and see what is going on, we're in danger of missing it and not be able to react to it properly," she said.

Amanpour was one of the last reporters to talk to the Rev. Jerry Falwell. She interviewed him a week before he died about the legacy of the Moral Majority, the organization that thrust evangelical Christians onto the political stage.

The segment on Christians explores BattleCry in some depth, digging at the roots of an organization that fights against some of the cruder elements of popular culture and urges teenagers to be chaste. In noting how girls at some BattleCry events are encouraged to wear long dresses, Amanpour asks the group's leader how it is different from the Taliban.

In a nonjudgmental way, she visits a family that is home-schooling its children and explores the influence of Evangelicals on the courts.

"There is so much nuance, so much information, so much to talk about, by no means were we able to talk about it all," she said, "and by no means do I claim this is the definitive project. It is one of the fullest, one of the most ambitious and one of the most complete."

Amanpour, 49, is no longer CNN's most visible reporter, as she was when skipping from one war zone to another. She received a lot of attention for her documentary "In the Footsteps of bin Laden" last year, and said she's enjoying the opportunity to put day-to-day news in greater perspective.

She's frequently criticized American television networks, including her own, for not spending enough time on international news.

Amanpour was recently named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. She's leaving her home base of London to move to New York with her husband, former U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin.

"This is really a personal move for my husband,who has lived eight years out of his own country and wants to come back," she said.

Labels: BattleCry, Christiane Amanpour, Christianity, David Bauder, fundamentalism, Jewish, Muslims, politics, religion

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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Exclusive global CNN documentary 'God's Warriors' examines religion, power and politics

Protestors who kill for their religious beliefs. "Patriot Pastors" who seek to change American culture through the ballot box. Zealots who target prime ministers and presidents with assassination for "subverting God's will." Parents who reject science education in conflict with their religious principles. Suicide martyrs who are revered as iconic heroes. These are "God's Warriors" of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. They see contemporary society as corrupt and view themselves as the front line of defense in a battle for cultural supremacy and political power. They are changing the world.

CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour journeyed to eight countries over eight months to report for God's Warriors, an exclusive global CNN documentary about the global phenomenon of religious fervor upon politics, culture and public life . During six hours broadcast over three consecutive nights, CNN will reveal how "God's Warriors" want to bring religion back from the periphery to the center of public life – and how far they are willing to go to transform modern society.

God's Warriors includes thought-provoking interviews with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter; the late Rev. Jerry Falwell in his last television interview; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Muslim women's rights advocate; Yehuda Etzion, a founder of the Israeli settlement movement; and Israeli President Shimon Peres.

A companion website to God's Warriors offers users show excerpts from the documentary, an audio podcast and an exclusive video diary that goes behind-the-scenes. This online content will be available at http://edition.cnn.com/godswarriorsopk . The podcast will also be available for download from iTunes.

Labels: Christiane Amanpour, Christianity, culture, Islam, Judaism, politics, religion

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Saturday, August 11, 2007

A non-believer - say it isn't so

A non-believer - say it isn't so
August 11, 2007

You can be gay, black or even a woman, but America will not tolerate a president who has no religion.
Anne Davies

Pete Stark found himself in a unique and slightly uncomfortable position earlier this year. The longtime Democrat congressman for the Oakland district near San Francisco had responded to a survey from the Secular Coalition for America which offered a $1000 prize to the person who could identify the "highest-level atheist, agnostic, humanist or any other kind of 'nontheist' currently holding elected public office in the United States".

To his surprise, that was him. Stark was the only one of 535 federal politicians prepared to admit he had no religion. For a few brief weeks he was the poster-boy for the humanists in a nation where, according to Pew Foundation research, eight out of 10 people say they have "no doubt God exists" and that "prayer is an important part of their daily lives".

In the immediate aftermath, Stark's staff worried about the backlash. Would his office be targeted by fire-and-brimstone Christians, prophesying his imminent damnation? One or two callers promised to pray for Stark's soul, but for the most part, the callers felt Stark was championing a position held by a significant but silent minority.

Fortunately, at 75, Stark is not planning to seek higher office. If he had been, he had just committed political suicide.

Being an atheist is the biggest handicap a person could have to being elected US president - worse than being gay or a woman, according to a Gallup poll in February.

More than 53 per cent of people surveyed said they would not vote for an atheist. They would prefer a homosexual president - 43 per cent said they would not vote for a homosexual - or a woman president (11 per cent said they would not vote for a woman).

And it seems that these days being black or Catholic or Jewish is hardly a barrier at all, with each of these factors being named as a bar by fewer than 7 per cent of voters.

That the US remains so concerned that its leaders be people of faith is surprising.

In most industrial societies, the level of religiosity declines as the society becomes wealthier and more sophisticated, according to John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which regularly surveys attitudes towards religion in the US.

Yet the US remains a highly religious place. Not the most religious place on the planet, but certainly more religious than Europe and Australia.

Labels: Anne Davies, atheism, God, Pew survey, politics, prayer, Unites States

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Is the United States really becoming a Christian nation?

By: Joe Morehart
Issue date: 7/18/07

Both the Christian cross and the American flag are often shown together in this country, and many preach patriotism as they say, "This is a Christian nation." To say this means to say that each individual inside the U.S. borders would agree with Jesus Christ, which is simply not true in a nation that depends largely on diversity of beliefs. It also means to say that Christ would agree with both the Christian church and with this nation's policies, which is highly unlikely, but impossible to know for sure.

"In God We Trust" was added to currency after the Civil War and "under God" was included in the Pledge of Allegiance after it was added by Congress in 1954. Is this the direction the Founding Fathers would have encouraged? This is impossible to know for sure.

History's truth has been spun and rewritten to serve the interpretations of different beliefs so much so, that some say our Founding Fathers were mostly deist, while others claim that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were based on the Ten Commandments.

Which is true? How much religion actually filters into governmental policies, and how realistic is the promise of a separation between church and state?

"[No elected official should be] limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation," John F. Kennedy said. Many polls, however, show that Kennedy's opinion is not entirely shared.

In a survey conducted in 2003 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 52 percent said they would be reluctant to vote for an atheist and 38 percent said they would be reluctant to vote for a Muslim.

"I would suspect the real numbers are much higher," said Jeff Peake, political science professor at the University, said. "In those surveys, people tend to go for the more politically correct answer."

A favorable appearance for the candidate during the primaries is one of the most important reasons that they are elected. How much does religion affect the appearance of the candidate?

"If you are not Catholic or Protestant, religion is going to be the story," Peake said. "Just look at [Republican presidential hopeful and member of a Mormon church] Mitt Romney."

The media is quick to find the religious labels, which then become important, for one reason or another, to the candidates' identities. Is it more important what Romney thinks about health care or that he is a Mormon? Was it more important what Kennedy thought about civil rights or that he was Roman-Catholic?

Once in office, do the newly-elected officials govern based on what is best for the country or do they govern based on their religious beliefs?

The Pew Research Center, in the same survey attributed above, said that religion plays a role in the everyday life of 67 percent of those surveyed. Is this not the same for politicians whose "everyday life" consists of making and enforcing laws that the entire nation must obey?

Republicans have to appear more religious during their campaign to appease conservative voters, then once in office, they must compromise this religious appearance with the moderates and liberals in order to get their policy through, Peake said. To the Democrats, religion is less of an issue during their campaign so there is less of this compromise needed after being elected.

Gay marriage, stem-cell research, abortion, censorship, intelligent design versus evolution in schools and many other issues of today's world bleed over from religion to politics and are disputed on a daily basis. The separation of church and state as defined in the Constitution by America's founding fathers leaves the door open for different interpretations of what exactly that means. In the end, who has the authority to say that their beliefs are right?

Labels: America, Christian, Joe Morehart, Pew Research Center survey, politics, religion, separation of church and state

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Friday, June 29, 2007

Poll Says Americans Looking For Religious President

FAIRFIELD, Conn.— A nationwide telephone survey has found that nearly 61 percent of Americans offering an opinion believe that a presidential candidate should be a religious person. Just over 39 percent disagree with the concept.

The telephone survey, released June 14, was conducted by the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute, which polled 958.

In addition, 48.4 percent of the respondents said their own religious faith always or sometimes guides their views toward politics. An equal percent, however, (48.4 percent), said their own faith seldom or never guides their views.

When choosing a presidential candidate, 27.8 percent consider a candidate's specific religious affiliation relevant to their decisions. Another 66 percent do not and 6.3 percent are unsure.

Dr. June-Ann Greeley, assistant professor of Religious Studies and director of SHU's Center for Catholic Thought, Ethics and Culture, said that even though some voters consider a candidate's religious affiliation relevant, Greeley said it could either mean that they would vote for a candidate because of the candidate's religious affiliation or they would not support a candidate on that basis.

Either way, Greeley said, the poll shows that for most Americans, religion is important in selecting a candidate.

"We think we can understand something meaningful about a person, a politician, if we have a sense of his/her religious beliefs because, clearly, religious belief is still esteemed by a majority of Americans," she said.

The poll also shows Democrats emerging as the party of choice in the November 2008 presidential election.

Despite how survey respondents planned to vote themselves, 60.3 percent expect the Democrats to regain the White House while just 14.5 percent believe Republicans would retain the White House. One quarter, 25.2 percent, are undecided.

Labels: Americans, candidates, election, faith, politics, religion, Sacred Heart University

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

A pious nation?

Though the United States is considered a deeply religious country, a glance at America today reveals a society divided by wealth and poverty, tainted by violence and often oblivious to the common good. A country of believers? Perhaps. But saying is one thing, doing quite another.

By Tom Krattenmaker

There can be no doubting the piety of American society in this, the first decade of the 21st century. It's old news by now: The powerful influence of conservative Christians on culture and politics. An outwardly Christian president in the White House. Survey data showing the vast majority of Americans pray, believe in God and consider religion important in their lives.

"Pious," however, means something different than "religious." While both convey devotion to God and ultimate truth, "pious" also suggests showiness, sanctimony, even hypocrisy — a gap between words and action. Such a gap, unfortunately, seems glaringly on display when we survey the social landscape around us. If one is to judge by our care for the common good, American society today is more pious than consistently and truly religious.

Let's start with violence, a phenomenon hard to square with New Testament teachings about living in peace and Old Testament commandments not to kill one another.

The massacre at Virginia Tech this spring might seem an extreme case. Defenders of gun rights warn against overreaction, claiming that mass shootings, however horrific, are quite rare. In truth, Virginia Tech-style massacres happen every day, albeit in less dramatic form. Statistics show that gun violence kills close to 30,000 people a year in America, or about 80 a day — more than double the number slain in Blacksburg, Va. Is this what one should expect of a country guided by Jesus, the "Prince of Peace"?

Then there is the violence projected by our government. Here, too, it is impossible to claim that America is a peaceful nation in the image of Christ. Under the Bush administration, the United States has pursued an aggressive foreign policy and a war in Iraq that theologians struggle to justify with Christian doctrines about morally defensible war. Certainly, the case can be made that dangerous forces left our government with no choice but to fight. But the question must be raised again: Is our behavior as a nation consistent with our ostensibly Christian character?

'Do unto others'

Although debates have raged for centuries over the essential meaning of Christianity and other religions, few would argue against the central importance of the Golden Rule. This is not merely the bias of a liberal writer. Asked by CNN recently to define Christianity, Richard Land, leader of the theologically conservative Southern Baptist movement, said, "It means to do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

How as a society are we living up to this religious imperative? We could do better. There is something deeply irreligious about the growing gap between our wealthiest and poorest citizens.

Surely, conservative-minded believers will respond that charity and philanthropy flourish today, that Christian compassion is best expressed through means other than government. They're partly right. Americans, religious and secular alike, have reached out impressively to Gulf Coast flood victims. We have donated billions of dollars to charities, churches and educational institutions. Americans shovel snow from neighbors' driveways, volunteer at soup kitchens and shell out for more expensive energy-saving light bulbs to curb our impact on global warming. On the national policy level, President Bush has on occasion lived up to his creed of "compassionate conservatism," especially with his efforts to combat AIDS and poverty in Africa.

But stories of individual big-heartedness cannot forgive a general direction in our politics that leaves shocking numbers of children without health insurance and decent educations.

The Bible has been playing a prominent role in the intensifying debate over immigration. Until very recently, the most outwardly religious people took what can be argued is the irreligious stance. According to 2006 polling data, white evangelicals — a group characterized by its taking the Bible very seriously — favored a more conservative (read: inhospitable) policy toward immigrants than other U.S. citizens. This, in spite of numerous passages in the Bible that emphasize hospitality to strangers and compassion for all God's people.

Compassion and faith

As is happening on this and other issues, the myth of the evangelical monolith is being exposed. More evangelicals are publicly embracing care for the earth and service to the poor, broadening an agenda that seemed stuck on hot-button social issues. And groups from across the Christian spectrum have been speaking up for immigrants. May these compassionate stands of religious America become ever more the norm.

For now, we have what we have: A society of decent individuals who usually do the right thing — but a culture nonetheless marred by violence, greed and politics that often display a hard-heartedness unbecoming a country like ours. We may disagree about the manifestations of our social morality deficit — conservatives will emphasize abortion and sexual immorality; liberals, economic injustice — but we can surely agree that we're capable of something finer.

Given that many social ills have grown worse during a time of Christian revival in the public arena, it's tempting to blame religion. Tempting, and also wrong. It's increasingly obvious that those who led us to our current state have heeded political ambition and expediency — citing faith when it's helpful, jettisoning it when it's inconvenient.

And on goes the pointless argument about whether America is a "Christian nation." Whether this country is Christian depends entirely on how we define the terms, of course. Our Constitution: secular. Our history and culture: religious.

And what do we mean by "religious"? If we're talking about rhetoric, volume and public display, it has been a very religious time indeed. If we mean behavior that creates peace, extends compassion to the less fortunate and reaches out to strangers outside our borders, we have a way to go. If we are a Christian nation, shouldn't we more consistently behave like one?

Tom Krattenmaker, who lives in Portland, Ore., specializes in religion in public life and is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

Labels: Bible, charity, Christian, compassion, faith, God, Golden Rule, government, Jesus, piety, politics, religion, Unites States, violence

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Monday, June 11, 2007

In US, faith is never far from politics

By Ed StoddardCHARLOTTE, N.C., (Reuters) -

Three former presidents honour mega-preacher Billy Graham at the dedication of his library. Days later the three top Democratic contenders for the White House openly talk about faith in a televised forum. Church and state may be separate entities in the United States. But faith and politics have become inseparable.

"This is basically a very religious nation, people have very intense feelings here about religion," said Carroll Doherty, associate director at the Pew Research Center. "It is unlikely that a nonreligious person would be elected president," he said. This distinguishes the United States from most of the developed world.

Although figures are disputed, polls say that more than 40 percent of Americans attend religious services at least once a week, more than double the rates in western Europe, where the sacred and the secular seldom collide in the political sphere. "The strict separation of church and state in the U.S. actually fosters a broader role for religion in public life," said Matthew Wilson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

"It means religious institutions have long felt very free to publicly criticize the government and public norms," he said, pointing to the historic role of churches in the anti-slavery and civil rights movements. The growth of the "Religious Right" -- a social conservative movement aligned with the Republican Party -- over the past three decades has also brought faith forcefully into the political realm.

It is part of a broader backlash to a perceived "permissiveness" in popular culture that has helped politicize U.S. religion. How that translates into politics was highlighted in a survey by the Pew Research Center earlier this year, which found that being an atheist was a bigger negative for candidates running for president than smoking, being gay or being Muslim.

A revealing 63 percent of those surveyed said they would be "less likely" to support a presidential candidate who did not believe in God.Never holding elected office before ranked second on the negative scales among the several traits that people were questioned about. Being gay, Muslim or a past drug user were next in line.

The most positive qualities were previous military service and being a Christian, with 48 percent and 39 percent of respondents respectively saying such traits would make them more likely to support a presidential candidate.

The religious left and right

The same survey found a "wide partisan" gap with 61 percent of Republicans saying they would more likely support a Christian candidate compared with 32 percent of Democrats. But the Democratic number -- a third -- is hardly small.

This helps explain why the leading Democrats for their party's 2008 presidential nomination did their best on Monday to come across as pious on a televised forum about faith. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and former senator John Edwards were all trying to woo the "Religious Left" - faith-based organizations that see moral or Biblical imperatives to help the poor and care for the environment.

"Faith -- I mean, not only my faith, but prayer's played a huge role in my life. It does every single day; it's what gives me strength to keep going," Edwards said. Clinton said her faith had pulled her through the fallout surrounding her husband's infidelity while he was president. Obama evoked Biblical passages to care for the needy.This was an invasion of territory normally held by the Republican Party.

Some on the Religious Left see this as a mistake. "I think the Christian left is the counter-balance to the Religious Right but we're making the same mistakes," said Jan G. Linn, a pastor and author of the book "Big Christianity: What's Right With The Religious Left.""The Democrats are going to use us just as the Republicans have used the Religious Right," he told Reuters by telephone from his Minnesota base.

Mistake or not, Democrats clearly see a Christian base which they hope to energize -- just as the Republicans have appealed to their evangelical base through strident opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Faith has never been far below the surface of political power in America -- a fact driven home last week when ex-presidents George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton all appeared on a podium with the aging Billy Graham.

At a dedication to a library honouring America's most famous evangelist, the former presidents all spoke warmly about Graham's impact on their spiritual lives. Graham offered spiritual guidance to many American presidents but his distinctly apolitical approach also evokes another era, when faith and politics did not publicly mix to the extent they do today.

Labels: Billy Graham, Christianity, Democrat, faith, politics, religion, religious left, religious right, Republican

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Where the Candidates Kneel

Where the candidates kneel
Posted by dpulliam

In case you were wondering, the Associated Press reports that presidential aspirants include seven Roman Catholics, three Methodists, three Baptists, one Episcopalian, one Presbyterian, one Mormon and one who is "simply" a Christian.

With religion being an increasingly frequent topic in national politics these days, I’m starting to wonder whether a candidate’s religious affiliation will join party affiliation and locality after the candidate’s name. OK, that is probably not going to be considered by the editors of The Associated Press Stylebook. Do you readers think this survey is atypical of the AP? And are reporters focusing more on candidates’ religion this year than in previous elections?

Fortunately the AP did much more with the story, and in an accompanying article it sorted through some of the issues coming up in the next election:

Lately it seems all the leading presidential candidates are discussing their religious and moral beliefs — even when they would rather not.

Indeed, seven years after George W. Bush won the presidency in part with a direct appeal to conservative religious voters — even saying during a debate that Jesus Christ was his favorite philosopher — the personal faith of candidates for the 2008 election has become a very public part of the presidential campaign.

Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have hired strategists to focus on reaching religious voters. Obama’s campaign holds a weekly conference call with key supporters in early primary and caucus states whose role is to spread the candidate’s message to religious leaders and opinionmakers and report their concerns to the campaign.

There is so much more that could have been done with this story, and maybe AP has plans to look closer at what the candidates believe. There are certainly some compelling religion stories among these candidates beyond the frequent articles on Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and Democratic candidates’ attempts to get religion.

For example, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, a Methodist, is looking for a new church near his new house. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, is a member of St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Cleveland who attends services "not often," according to the AP. And Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., a Catholic, attends services "when his schedule permits."

Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor (Catholic), Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. (Catholic), and Romney are the only candidates who said they attend services weekly, regardless of their travel schedules. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., on the other hand, tries to attend Mass daily. When he’s in Kansas, he also attends Topeka Bible Church with his family. As a friend asked, how does he square that theologically?

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s answer that he is a Catholic, but his "personal relationship with God is private and between him and God," is somewhat refreshing. But since when did Giuliani ever keep his faith to himself? Reporters shouldn’t allow candidates to get away with lame answers that are inconsistent with the candidate’s past remarks.

But that raises one of the difficult challenges of covering religious and politics. Just how much can you press on public figures on their private faith?

Labels: Associated Press, candidates, faith, politics, religion

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Thursday, May 10, 2007

Harvard's Faith Factor

by Grant Swank

April 25, 2007 12:00 PM EST

"’Religion and morality are critical to how students think about politics and form opinions on political issues,’ said Jeanne Shaheen, a former New Hampshire governor and director of Harvard's Institute of Politics, which conducted the poll."

Harvard students are not as irreligious as prior. They are more and more relating their lives to the soul and invisible. Therefore, administration realizes that faith molds political views.

Consequently, the university is buzzing with the twosome "religious centrist."

Instead of the usual hard-line atheism-agnosticism rant common at Harvard, there is a call to play that down. May that playdown also relate to Harvard Divinity School. When I was there in the early 60s, it was popular not to believe, though studying for ministry or religious vocations of some sort.

"Jesus" was mentioned but in the context of demythologizing Him, that is, cutting out the miracles, including his virgin birth and resurrection. His divinity was always in question.

Apparently now with the world is sad shape more Harvard students are coming upon a spiritual hunger that’s real, personal. I doubt if that has changed the divinity school that much, however, for in the mailings I still receive regularly there is the usual accent on yoga, feminism, politically correctness, Unitarian-based liberalism, and same ol’ same ol’ whatever.

Peter Gomes, gay pastor of Harvard Memorial Church, said once, when learning there would be an evangelical professor onboard at the divinity school, that it would be refreshing to have someone teaching who actually believed. That is, the evangelical professor would be a biblical Christian. Gomes admitted that would be welcomed for its rarity. I can imagine his clever smile showing when he addressed his audience with those prophetic words.

Someone on the divinity faculty who truly personally had faith in the biblical record. How unusual. I wonder if the money offered to the school for that "evangelical chair" actually ever brought about such a personage on staff. I can’t recall reading anything about its actuality. Must check up on it. If so, must also check to see if the evangelical member survived the "camaraderie" of other faculty and liberal student body.

According to Jennifer Harper, THE WASHINGTON TIMES: "College students are becoming more religious, and it's affecting their political views, according to a new Harvard University survey of this potentially influential voting bloc. ‘Religious centrists’ rule, according to the university.

"A full 70 percent say religion plays an important part in their lives, with a quarter saying their spirituality has increased at college. Six out of 10 say they are concerned about the moral direction of the country, according to the poll of 1,200 students from across the country, conducted March 13 to 27 and released Tuesday.

"The Harvard study advises political parties to woo the spiritually inclined, a demographic that the popular press mostly deemed the exclusive territory of the ‘religious right’ in the past two presidential elections.

"’This analysis foreshadows the 2008 general election campaign for president where religious centrists, nearly a quarter of the student vote, will be the critical swing vote ... and likely the most influential group in American politics for years,’ according to the survey.

"A breakdown of collegiate party preferences reveals further complexities. Republicans are composed of 34 percent traditional conservatives, 30 percent religious centrists, 20 percent secular centrists and 16 percent who consider themselves traditional liberals.

"Among Democrats, 59 percent are traditional liberals, 24 percent are religious centrists, 9 percent secular centrists and 7 percent are traditional conservatives."

Copyright © 2006 by J. Grant Swank, Jr.
http://www.truthinconviction.us/weblog.php
mailto:%3Ca%20href=">joseph_swank@yahoo.com

Labels: divinity school, Grant Swank, Harvard, Jesus, morality, politics, religion, spirituality, students

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Parsing the Polls: Religion in Public Life

Sifting through the transcript of last week's Republican presidential debate, we came across this exchange between former Govs. Mitt Romney (Mass.) and Mike Huckabee (Ark.) about the role of religion in the public square.

Romney: "We have a separation of church and state. It's served us well in this country. This is a nation, after all, that wants a leader that's a person of faith, but we don't choose our leader based on which church they go to."

Huckabee: "I said, in general -- and I would say this tonight to any of us -- when a person says, 'My faith doesn't affect my decision- making,' I would say that the person is saying their faith is not significant to impact their decision process. I tell people up front, 'My faith does affect my decision process.' It explains me. No apology for that."

The candidates' comments got us thinking about how much or little the American public wants to hear about religion from their elected officials. Conventional wisdom says that most voters want a person of faith in the White House but are simultaneously wary of religion encroaching upon affairs of state.

Is that conventional wisdom right? Let's Parse the Polls!

First of all, it's important to set the backdrop on which the debate over how much religion we want in our public policy takes place. According to exit polling in 2004 and 2005, roughly nine in ten voters say they have a religious beleif system of some sort ("Protestant/other Christian" is by far the largest group), while 85 percent said they went to church at least a few times a year.

Looking at those numbers it's clear that the vast majority of Americans not only see themselves as religious but also seek out the communal setting of a church, synagogue, mosque, etc. at least a few times a year.

But, when it comes to whether religion should play a larger role in public life, people are far more divided.

In a January 2007 survey, Gallup asked people whether they would like to see "organized religion have more influence in this nation, less influence, or keep its influence as it is now." Twenty seven percent said they would like to see religion play a larger role, 32 percent said they'd prefer a smaller role and 39 percent said they would like to keep the status quo.

Those numbers are remarkably consistent with an April 2005 Washington Post/ABC News poll. In that survey, 27 percent said they preferred religion have "greater" influence in public life, 35 percent said "less" while 36 percent chose "the same."

Compare those numbers to a Gallup poll conducted in January 2001 -- at the start of the Bush Administration. In that poll 22 percent said they wanted less religion in the public sphere. In 2007, 32 percent said the same thing, a jump of ten percent in six years. Some have speculated that President Bush's willingness to talk publicly about his faith -- combined with his growing disapproval ratings -- may be responsible for the rise in the percentage of people who are put off by politics influenced by religion.

A May 2004 CBS News poll asked what worried people more: "Public officials who don't pay enough attention to religion and religious leaders or public officials who are too close to religion and religious leaders?"

Overalll 35 percent said they worried more about politicians not paying enough attention to religion, while 51 percent said they fretted about politicians paying too much attention. Isolate Republicans, however, and the numbers were nearly reversed with 53 percent saying politicians don't pay enough attention and 30 percent choosing the "too close" option. Compare that with just 25 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of Independents who wanted public officials to pay more attention to religion and religious leaders. The partisan gap is obvious.

While the American public is closely divided over the role religion should play in public life, there is a less of a chasm when it comes to several religion-related policy fights like prayer in school or displaying the Ten Commandments on government property.

An August 2005 Gallup poll showed 76 percent of the sample favored a constitutional amendment to allow voluntary prayer in schools, while just 23 percent opposed it. In that same survey 60 percent said that religion had "too little of a presence" in public schools while 27 percent said the amount of religion in schools was about right and 11 percent said it was too much.

The American public also tends to favor the display of the Ten Commandments on government property with 75 percent of a CNN/USA Today/Gallup sample in June 2005 saying the Supreme Court should allow that sort of display and just 23 percent saying it should not.

What to make of this raft of numbers? That we are a country divided -- sometimes even within ourselves -- when it comes to the proper role of religion in public life. On the one hand most Americans see themselves as a religious people; on the other, they remain generally wary about religion seeping into politics.

Because no obvious consensus exists, it's likely that the politicians running for president in 2008 will seek to find a balance between making clear to voters that they believe in a higher power while also making clear they won't be taking their marching orders from the church they attend.

It's a complicated position but reflects the divided mind most Americans have when it comes to religion's role in everday life.

The Fix owes a big debt of gratitude to The Washington Post polling team of Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta. As they so often do, the two provided essential help in making sense of all these numbers.

Labels: Americans, faith, Gallup, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, politics, religion, separation of church and state, Ten Commandments, voters

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Thursday, May 03, 2007

Religion gets an 'A' at U.S. colleges

Nearly half of the freshmen said they were seeking opportunities to grow spiritually, according to the survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Compared with 10 or 15 years ago, "There is a greater interest in religion on campus, both intellectually and spiritually," said Charles Cohen, a professor of history and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who for a number of years ran an interdisciplinary major in religious studies. The program was created seven years ago and has 70 to 75 majors each year.

University officials explained the surge of interest in religion as partly a result of the rise of the religious right in politics, which they said has made questions of faith more talked about generally. In addition, they said, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by Islamic zealots underscored for many the influence of religion on world affairs.

And an influx of evangelical students at secular universities, along with an increasing number of international students, has meant that students arrive with a broader array of religious experiences.

At Berkeley, a vast number of undergraduates are Asian-American, with many coming from observant Christian homes, said the Reverend Randy Bare, the Presbyterian campus pastor.

There are 50 to 60 Christian groups on campus, and student attendance at Roman Catholic and Presbyterian churches near campus has picked up significantly, he said. On many other campuses, though, the renewed interest in faith and spirituality has not necessarily translated into increased attendance at religious services.

The Reverend Lloyd Steffen, the chaplain at Lehigh University, is among those who think the war in Iraq has contributed to the interest in religion among students. "I suspect a lot of that has to do with uncertainty over the war," Steffen said. "My theory is that the baby boomers decided they weren't going to impose their religious life on their children the way their parents imposed it on them," Steffen continued. "The idea was to let them come to it themselves.

Increased participation in community service may also reflect spiritual yearning of students.

"We don't use that kind of spiritual language anymore," said Rebecca Chopp, the Colgate president. "But if you look at the students, they do."

Some sociologists who study religion are skeptical that students' attitudes have changed significantly, citing a lack of data to compare current students with those of previous generations. But even some of those concerned about the data say something has shifted.

"All I hear from everybody is yes, there is growing interest in religion and spirituality and an openness on college campuses," said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at Notre Dame. "Everybody who is talking about it says something seems to be going on."

David Burhans, who retired after 33 years as chaplain at the University of Richmond, said many students "are really exploring, they are really interested in trying things out, in attending one another's services."

Lesleigh Cushing, an assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at Colgate, said: "I can fill basically any class on the Bible. I wasn't expecting that."

When Benjamin Wright, chairman of the department of religion studies at Lehigh, arrived 17 years ago, two students chose to major in religion. This year there are 18 religion majors and there were 30 two and three years ago.

Presbyterian ministries at Berkeley and Wisconsin have built dormitories to offer spiritual services to students and encourage discussion among different faiths. The seven-story building on the Wisconsin campus, which will house 280 students, is to open in August.

The number of student religious organizations at Colgate has grown to 11 from 5 in recent years. The university's Catholic, Protestant and Jewish chaplains oversee an array of programs and events. Many involve providing food to students, a phenomenon that the university chaplain, Mark Shiner, jokingly calls "gastro-evangelism."

Among the new clubs is one established last year to encourage students to hold wide-ranging dialogues about spirituality and faith. Meeting over lunch on Thursdays, the students talk about what happens after life or the nature of Catholic spirituality.

Gabe Conant, a junior, said he wanted to contemplate personal questions about his own faith. He described them this way: "What are these things I was raised in and do I want to keep them?"

Labels: Christian, college, Higher Education Research Institute, Iraq, politics, religion, spirituality, UCLA

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

Americans Split Over Religion in Politics

Americans Split Over Religion in Politics
April 7, 2007

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Adults in the United States are divided in their perception of the role organized religion currently plays in public life, according to a poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates released by Newsweek. 32 per cent think organized religion has too much influence on politics, 31 per cent say it has too little influence, and 29 per cent believe the balance is adequate.

In June 2005, U.S. president George W. Bush defended his decision to allow access to federal funds for faith-based organizations, saying, "Building a more compassionate society requires that we mobilize our nation’s armies of compassion to help the poor, the sick, and those who hurt. America’s faith-based institutions change hearts every day. And we depend on the work of these organizations to bring hope to harsh places."

In December 2006, American journalist Amy Sullivan discussed the importance of religion in presidential elections, saying, "In 2004 only one of the primary candidates had any staff member who was reaching out to religious constituencies and to voter. At this point it looks like perhaps not all but at least a majority of candidates in 2008 primary will have somebody on staff focused on religious outreach and religious strategy, and that’s a sea change in the space of four years." 36 per cent of respondents think the influence of organized religion on American politics has increased in recent years, 23 per cent say it has decreased, and 37 per cent believe it has stayed roughly the same.

Polling Data

Do you think organized religion has too much influence on American politics today, too little influence, or about the right amount?

Too much influence
32%

Too little influence
31%

Right amount
29%

Don’t know
8%

Do you think the influence of organized religion on American politics has increased in recent years, decreased, or stayed about the same?

Increased
36%

Decreased
23%

Stayed about the same
37%

Don’t know
4%

Source: Princeton Survey Research Associates / Newsweek
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,004 American adults, conducted on Mar. 28 and Mar. 29, 2007. Margin of error is 4 per cent.

Labels: elections, faith-based initiative, politics, Princeton Survey Research Associates, religion, Unites States

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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Global Poll Finds that Religion and Culture are Not to Blame for Tensions between Islam and the West

Source: GlobeScan

The global public believes that tensions between Islam and the West arise from conflicts over political power and interests and not from differences of religion and culture, according to a BBC World Service poll across 27 countries.

While three in ten (29%) believe religious or cultural differences are the cause of tensions, a slight majority (52%) say tensions are due to conflicting interests.

The poll also reveals that most people see the problems arising from intolerant minorities and not the cultures as a whole. While 26 percent believe fundamental differences in cultures are to blame, 58 percent say intolerant minorities are causing the conflict with most of these (39% of the full sample) saying that the intolerant minorities are on both sides.

The idea that violent conflict is inevitable between Islam and the West is mainly rejected by Muslims, non-Muslims and Westerners alike. While more than a quarter of all respondents (28%) think that violent conflict is inevitable, twice as many (56%) believe that "common ground can be found."

The survey of over 28,000 respondents across 27 countries was conducted for the BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland. GlobeScan coordinated the fieldwork between November 2006 and January 2007.

Respondents were also asked whether tensions arise from fundamental differences between the cultures as a whole or from intolerant minorities. Only 26 percent say they are due to differences in culture, while 58 percent attribute these tensions to intolerant minorities - with 39 percent saying that these intolerant minorities are on both sides, 12 percent saying they are primarily on the Muslim side, and 7 percent saying they are mostly on the Western side. The view that the problem arises from intolerant minorities is found in 24 of the 27 countries surveyed, with two countries (Brazil and the UAE) equally divided between the two points of view and with one in two Nigerians (50%) saying fundamental differences are the cause."

Asked whether "violent conflict is inevitable" between Muslim and Western cultures or whether "it is possible to find common ground," an average of 56 percent say that common ground can be found between the two cultures, which is the most common response in 25 countries. On average almost three in ten (28%) think violent conflict is inevitable; Indonesia is the only country where this view predominates, while views are divided in the Phillipines

The belief that it is possible to find common ground between Islam and the West rises with education from 46 percent among those with no formal education to 64 percent among those with post secondary education.

The minority of people who believe that tensions between Islam and the West arise from differences of religion and culture are much more likely to believe that violent conflict is inevitable compared to those who think the problem derives from issues of political power or intolerant minorities.

A belief that violent conflict is inevitable is somewhat more common among Muslims (35 percent) than Christians (27 percent) or others (27 percent). But overall, 52 percent of the 5,000 Muslims surveyed say it is possible to find common ground, including majorities in Lebanon (68%) and Egypt (54%) as well as pluralities in Turkey (49%) and the United Arab Emirates (47%). Even in religiously divided Nigeria, a large majority of Muslims (63%) believe it is possible to find common ground, while Christians are divided on the question. Only in Indonesia do a slim majority (51%) of Muslims take the view that violent conflict is inevitable.

Countries with the largest majorities believing that Islam and the West can find common ground include Italy (78%), Great Britain (77%), Canada (73%), Mexico (69%) and France (69%). A strong majority of Americans (64%) also think it is possible to find common ground, though about a third (31%) believe violent conflict is inevitable. Pluralities in the Philippines (42%) and India (35%) agree that common ground can be found, despite the former's Muslim insurgency and the latter's history of sectarian strife.

In all but three countries, citizens are more likely to think that tensions between Islam and the West arise from conflicts about political power and interests than from differences of religion and culture. A majority (56%) in Nigeria - a country that has suffered clashes between its Muslim and Christian communities - say that tensions primarily arise from religion and culture, including 51 percent of Christians and 59 percent of Muslims. Kenyans and Poles are divided on the question.

Worldwide, Muslims (55%) are somewhat more certain than Christians (51%) that the problem mostly derives from political conflict. This is a widely held view in Lebanon (78%), Egypt (57%), Indonesia (56%) and Turkey (55%) as well as in the United Arab Emirates (48% vs. 27% cultural differences).

Respondents were asked not only their religious affiliation but also the extent to which their religion plays a strong role in how they approach political and social issues. Results were then analyzed to assess whether the views of people who are more religious (regardless of their affiliation) differ from people who are less so.

The analysis shows no consistent pattern. In a few countries, those who are more religious are somewhat more likely to say that conflict is inevitable (Turkey, Hungary), but in more countries such people are slightly more likely to say that it is possible to find common ground (Argentina, Chile, Nigeria, Poland). Those who are more religious are more likely to see the problem arising from culture in France, South Korea, and Turkey, but more likely to attribute it to conflicts of power in Hungary, UAE and the Philippines. So globally, there is no consistent effect.

In total 28,389 citizens in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and the United States were interviewed between 3 November 2006 and 16 January 2007. Polling was conducted for the BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan and its research partners in each country. In 10 of the 27 countries, the sample was limited to major urban areas. The margin of error per country ranges from +/-2.5 to 4 percent. For more details, please see the Methodology section or visit www.globescan.com or www.pipa.org

Labels: culture, GlobeScan, minorities, politics, religion, violence