GOD, POLITICS AND LINCOLN'S PEW
Schroth, Raymond A.
GOD, POLITICS AND LINCOLN'S PEW From its inceptionin a conversation between stu-dents at the Wesley Theological Seminary in October 1975-the conference on Religion and the Presidency (RAP 76) was...
...But these assumptions seem to have been wrong, and RAP '76 was caught in a Catch-22 situation from the start...
...The candidates weren't going to show unless they either liked to talk about religion in public, felt some moral obligation to the people running the conference, or made a tactical judgment that two hours in the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church were worth more votes than a day in the snows of New Hampshire...
...He answered that he treasured his youth in a Mormon family but that 30 years ago he had split with his church over its racial policies and had not been back...
...Mean-while the "religious leaders" weren't going to show if they were liable to end up talking to themselves...
...Some of the "heavies"-Birch Bayh, Jimmy Carter, Fred Harris and George Wallace-all made other com-mitments...
...Certainly not Gerald Ford whom I watched from the House press gallery as he delivered his State of the Union Address on Monday night, tacking on his "God bit" in the last 20 seconds-as if the mention of the Deity could give substance to so inadequate a document...
...He had tried those Washington prayer breakfasts but just didn't seem to fit in...
...Jack Egan, Ira Silvennan etc...
...Henry Jackson, scheduled for the last night, begged off a few hours before he was to appear without giving any reasons...
...GOD, POLITICS AND LINCOLN'S PEW From its inceptionin a conversation between stu-dents at the Wesley Theological Seminary in October 1975-the conference on Religion and the Presidency (RAP 76) was in danger of turning out like a party where everybody was invited but nobody came...
...That left Gene McCarthy, whose opening homiletic (in the good sense) position paper on the Christian in politics and whose designation of poverty, overconsump-tion and the relationship between defense and trust as the moral issues of the campaign, served as a keynote for the meeting but did little to convince his listeners he was a "serious" candidate...
...Plus Sargent Shriver, Milton Shapp, Lloyd Bentsen, Morris Udall-and Arthur Bles-sitt...
...Blessitt is a religious man who, if elected, would cut the president's salary to twice the income of the average family and would make unannounced visits to citizens' homes and stay overnight...
...McCarthy had said the candidate he was closest to ideologically was Udall...
...The first candidate to refuse was President Gerald Ford...
...I had come to the conference undecided on whom I could support for President, hoping that I could get some sense of the character of these relatively unknown men as they dealt with questions as intricate as disarm-ament and as intimate as their concept of God...
...RAYMOND A. SCHROTH...
...But RAP '76, perhaps unintentionally, sprang from certain assumptions about power, politics and religion in contemporary America: that organized religion really is a political-moral force...
...At first it looked like a good idea: get 32 distinguished ecumenical co-sponsors-Martin Marty, Msgr...
...that civil religion-that historical, invisible weave between the-ology and public life in the secular state-was still ah've enough to generate good debate...
...Unlike Shriver he said he would unilaterally limit our arms build-up as a moral example...
...that the "500 religious leaders" who would respond to the mailing of 4000 invitations had power that the 11 candidates, approached four months ago when their schedules were still open for January 19-21, could not refuse to confront...
...invite 500 "religious leaders" (500 is the seating capacity of Washington's New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where Abraham Lincoln's own pew is still in place, second row on the right) to a forum with all the announced presidential candidates, for two hours each, and get their views on a set of questions-moral leadership, civil rights, welfare, econ-omy, world hunger, education and foreign policy...
...There seemed to be no one there-just a voice and a bland speech not far enough from Ford's, a string of "I'm for X but we must leave room for Ys...
...I cannot help think-ing that his presence on the program was a signal that the conference was in trouble...
...With civil religion in decline, there's nothing much more American than that...
...I can only surmise that a scout must have reported that if he came he would have been talking to a crowd of at most 75, including press, a few seminarians and his own secret service men...
...Terry Sanford pulled out the first day, plead-ing doctor's orders...
...Seldom have I seen a public man whose words so seemed to correspond to the feelings and convictions that sent them forth...
...Asked about his religious faith, he told the story about his Catholic friend who had been asked to describe his relationship to his church and replied, "critic...
...Perhaps the equally elegant Shriver, who has been unfairly clas-sified as a lightweight, who does talk too much and can't stick to a point when he gets wound up (he turned a question on birth control research into a lecture on medical ethics, Karen Quinlan and cloning...
...It re-minded me in a way of the semiannual intramural con-ferences we used to stage for our own community at the old Woodstock Seminary in the Maryland hills...
...Not the elegant, silver-throated, hard-eyed Bentsen who came across as a Lyndon Johnson with poise and no heart...
...More than the others, Udall spoke right to each point and captured the enthusiasm of the group...
...He now finds God in hikes to mountain tops...
Vol. 103 • February 1976 • No. 4
