The religion gap
choir, Amy Sullivan: Democrats join the
looked is the blatant misogyny in many Old Testament "texts of terror." In interpreting the New Testament, Ratzinger endorses a similar sexualized focus, one that gives too much weight to the...
...Listeners who do not share the religious beliefs of the speaker can nonetheless engage the larger political questions...
...And all Christians, whatever their differences, can happily join Ratzinger when he quotes Revelation: "In Jesus Christ all things have been made new...
...And for a while, those in the national Democratic Party structure seemed to absorb two lessons from this trend—that they will never win support from religious Americans, and that in order to retain their core base of secularists and religious minorities, the party should avoid the topic of religion altogether...
...Hope for that ongoing prospect springs from this letter's positive points, but even more from Ratzinger's description of God's "long and patient pedagogy" with humankind...
...John Kerry picked up this theme later in the spring, quoting his favorite verse from the Book of James—"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds...
...In fact, more than 60 percent of Democratic voters attend church several times a month and 85 percent say that religion is an important part of their lives...
...Bill Clinton used the same under-the-radar trick, leading the audience in chanting "Send me," the response he said Kerry has given every time the country has asked him to serve...
...the inclusive gospel message...
...This reaction may be due, in part, to the use of evocative phrases instead of aggressive Bible thumping...
...The causal arrow in the religion gap is less than perfectly clear—it may be that the conflation of religiosity with conservatism over the past twenty years has contributed to the decline in church attendance among many liberals and not that Democrats have steadily lost interest in religion...
...Former Clinton White House press secretary Mike Mc-Curry has become the party's unofficial spokesman on the issue...
...Amy Sullivan is an editor of the Washington Monthly...
...Given those options, most would wisely opt to keep religion out of politics...
...Democratic convention delegates are often characterized as more secular than any other slice of the electorate, and yet they not only tolerated the use of religious rhetoric by speakers, but warmly embraced it...
...Paul's words that "in Christ there is neither male nor female" show, according to Ratzinger, that "the distinction between man and woman is reaffirmed more than ever...
...Reporters who contact the Kerry/Edwards campaign looking for comments on a story quickly find that their calls and e-mails go unreturned if they are writing about religion...
...These might be two very rational conclusions to draw both from polling data and from a sense that the country is divided by a culture war...
...But they are wrong...
...But enough...
...Just as Bush's use of the phrase "wonder working power" in his 2003 State of the Union address re-minded Evangelical listeners of the hymn from which those words came—"Pow'r in the Blood"—when Obama referred to an "awesome God," he triggered a tune in the heads of Americans who grew up singing the praise song, "Our God Is an Awesome God...
...This third rhetorical way premiered in Boston and has been road tested in battleground states in the weeks since...
...In interpreting the New Testament, Ratzinger endorses a similar sexualized focus, one that gives too much weight to the gendered image of Christ as bridegroom...
...And for the first time, the Democratic presidential campaign is reaching out to people of all faiths, not just as-signing one staff member to talk to black churches...
...The liberal Center for American Progress, led by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, held a day-long conference in June on "Faith and Progressive Politics" that attracted hundreds of political types and policy wonks in Washington...
...The speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Mario Cuomo, Barbara Jordan, and the most recent Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, are replete with religious imagery and language...
...It is important to note that his acceptance speech in Boston, Kerry made the first explicit step any modern Democratic presidential candidate ever has to open the door of the party to religious Americans...
...For every Democratic candidate who feels free to talk about faith there is another who is convinced that such language poses a political risk...
...The proclamation was more than just a shot across the bow of the Bush/Cheney campaign...
...But it also comes from the prophet Isaiah (6:8...
...The Democratic Leadership Council has de-voted several sessions of national conferences to the topic of faith, sponsoring workshops to teach local politicians how to talk about religion in a way that is inclusive, not defensive...
...What separates these speeches from those of many political conservatives is that the religious rhetoric is used to supplement arguments that are based on appeals to shared democratic values, not the other way around...
...A rebuke both to those on the right who would claim religion only for themselves and to those on the left who see evidence of faith as enough to disqualify individuals from participation in the political sphere, Kerry's statement represents a sea change in thought within the Democratic Party...
...He is an unlikely standard-bearer, but John Kerry just might make religion safe for Democrats again...
...Over the past year, Hillary Clinton has held closed-door meetings with her Senate colleagues about the importance of reclaiming concepts like "values" and "morality" from conservatives...
...Now the preaching begins in earnest...
...America is not us and them...
...Feminine imagery of the bride abounds and becomes fulfilled in Mary...
...What Kerry and his advisers appear to have learned over the summer is that it is possible to criticize how others use religion without criticizing religion in general, that a candidate need not remain silent about his own faith in order to speak out against how others turn theirs into political tools...
...his may well be remembered as the year of the Democratic Revival, when Democrats stopped allowing religion and God to be co-opted by the Republican Party and started to fight back...
...By staying away from religion for decades, Democrats have let Republicans get away with discussing their own personal religiosity without making any explicit connection to how that aspect of their life reflected on their qualifications for office...
...Ratzinger makes the astounding claim that the resurrected body, while nonprocreative, will be gendered for all eternity...
...Sidney Callahan is the author, most recently, of In Good Con-science: Reason and Emotion in Moral Decision Making (Harper-SanFrancisco...
...In addition, Democrats have often posed the question of how to talk about religion as a false choice—either remain silent on the topic or end up sounding like George W. Bush and his proudly pious cohort...
...Democrats who believe that "religious people" are mostly conservative have bought into the Republican Party's hype...
...Now, by stepping into the fray, Kerry and his colleagues can redefine the debate and demand that campaigns not be a contest to determine who is the better Christian, or even who is a Christian at all...
...Borrowing an Abraham Lincoln anecdote that John Edwards has used to good effect, and telling audiences, "I don't wear my own faith on my sleeve," " Kerry asserts that he has faith, but indirectly contrasts himself with Bush in how he speaks about his personal religious experience...
...in the midst of a riff contrasting Bush's rhetoric to his accomplishments...
...Over all an exaggerated romantic view of sexual difference ends up subsuming (or swamping...
...It was also a salvo in the internal struggle being waged in the Democratic Party over whether and how to address the role of religion in politics...
...No one who has something to con-tribute will be left on the sidelines," he said...
...We worship an awe-some God in the blue states...
...But Lieberman isn't the one leading the revival of the Democrats...
...A humble church can know itself moving toward God our Future...
...During the primaries, Wesley Clark often spoke of attending Baptist revivals as a child in Arkansas, noting that, "We all knew someone who could preach a revival but who didn't live it," and moving directly into a critique of Bush ("We have one of those in the White House right now...
...the party that doesn't...
...Illinois state senator Barack Obama declared to an arena full of five thousand cheeringdelegates who roared their approval back at him...
...If the past few months are any guide, that debate may soon be over...
...And it was more than just a sign that Democrats can wield religious rhetoric as skillfully and subtly as Bush and his speechwriters...
...Several key Democratic figures in 2004 have shown they understand this...
...Instead, the choice is about which values voters align themselves with...
...And let me say it plainly: in that cause, and in this campaign, we welcome people of faith...
...Many Americans, it turns out, are Democrats precisely because of their religious beliefs, not despite them...
...The "religion gap" has become the hot topic du jour in political polling, launching many a panel discussion over why Americans who attend church more often tend to vote Republican and those who don't appear to side more with Democrats...
...the party of none, or the party that respects faith vs...
...Heading into the fall debates, both George W. Bush and John Kerry have already laid out their political theologies...
...But this construction ignores a rich tradition of liberal political discourse informed—not dictated—by faith...
...As a rhetorical conceit, "Send me" works well (so well, in fact, that Clinton has used it in speeches since 1997...
...A sexually and dualistically complementary scheme of salvation is ingeniously constructed and insisted upon...
...Congressional aides are quick to point to Senator Joseph Lieberman's doomed presidential run as proof that assertively religious Democrats cannot succeed...
...But Obama and Clinton are both steeped in the rhythms and cadences of evangelical religion, adept at tossing off scriptural passages or even improvising rhetorical flourish-es...
...t14E lR S ICk.r,;!PRtE C0MMr1TEI) -1-6 P `~-ESf FVlhli~ SAi;Ct O r~l CJ C Commonweal I I September 10, 2004...
...The technique worked because it expressed a Commonweal 1 0 September 10, 2004 general frustration with Bush—that he says one thing and does another—by tapping into a suspicion of those who talk the talk without walking the walk, a theme found through-out the Bible...
...For the first time in a generation, the presidential campaign has been explicitly cast not as the party of values vs...
...Still, there are plenty of Democrats—particularly in the upper reaches of the party machinery—who would prefer to see the party stay away from the topic of religion altoSCHWADRON gether...
...Other images of Christ—as Word, light, friend, shepherd, physician, mother hen, vine, living bread, or "the way, the truth, and the life"—are omitted...
...Amy Sullivan THE RELIGION GAP Can Democrats bridge it...
...Kerry, a cradle Catholic from the Northeast, lacks the same cultural familiarity with everyday religious words and yet he is well on his way to developing a language of faith all his own...
...The gauntlet was officially thrown down on day two of the Democratic Convention in Boston...
...Obviously, the church's internal dialogue on sex and gender has a long way to go...
Vol. 131 • September 2004 • No. 15
