Amy Sullivan, the editor of Washington Monthly and fabulous inaugural alumna of Faith in Public Live, has a piece posted on Slate that's worth a read. "Not God's Party: A new poll shows Democrats are losing (more) religious voters." As always, she provides sharp analysis of the religion and politics scene, with a sense of perspective that's always appreciated.

The piece has a great ending, quoted below, but the tone of the poll analysis seems off. From the headline, Sullivan focuses on continued Democratic weakness (which is actually just a leveling that remained within the margin of error from earlier polls), and doesn't give nearly enough attention to the fact that the Republican party suffered an even bigger hit. This Republican slippage combined with steady numbers for Dems is the real story of the poll. It just may be that the unholy alliances between Religious Right leaders and GOP officials who have no real interest in delivering victories for the Religious Right is finally being unravelled by years of broken promises. It's not even mentioned that the percentage of the population that sees the Dems as unfriendly to religion is totally level at 20% since 2005. The headline writers at Slate must have missed that.

A great quote below. Note her emphasis on state and local campaigns. That's exactly what we've found through our work with groups across the country. Check our Best Practices page and Mapping Faith resource to see just how many of these groups there are in your community.

The DNC should ramp up that search. But the party's leaders also should remain calm. The Democrats' most productive activities on the religion front have taken place at the state level and in local campaigns. This work may not bear fruit nationally for a few years, but it's important to hang in there and keep funding it. Democrats also need to avoid the temptation to play preacher: One cringe-inducing "Praise Jeeeeezus!" from Howard Dean spoils the quiet faith of Democrats like Tim Kaine and Jennifer Granholm and Barack Obama. And they should shout from the mountaintops about Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid's plan to reduce abortion rates, talk to every evangelical who will listen about tackling global warming, and re-embrace the concept of the common good that once united religious and political progressives. Democrats, take those lights out from under your bushels.

Posted by David Buckley at 01:07 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

Katherine Harris, that paragon of upright-judgment, is at it again, as many of you likely know. There's been much good written about her statement that the Seperation of Church and State is a lie. Check out Vince Isner of Faithful America for a particularly well-put response. Crossposted from Faithful America

First it was Oral Roberts... then Robert Tilton...then Pat Robertson... Now it seems Florida Representative and candidate for Senate Katherine Harris(remember the hanging chad?)is now claiming to speak for God. Now listen up all you Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Unitarians, and other non-Christian U.S. citizens: If you are not electing Christians to represent you, you are simply legislating sin... according to Ms. Harris, that is.

I suppose her most bizarre, off-the-wall comment is that GOD chooses our leaders... If this is true, then why did HER party go to such lengths to impeach one of "God's leaders?" If God chooses our leaders, then why vote? Why debate? Why question anything? Why not just close our eyes and let the bombs fall where they may, let poverty fester where it will, let AIDS run it course, let innocent detainees rot in Cuban prisons, let the poor in our land starve in the streets, let the earth choke to death, and everybody just sing Kum-ba-ya until Jesus comes to take the faithful few back home for a job well done?

Normally I find such cocksure ignorance amusing - But ignorance of this magnitude and at her level of influence is not funny. If the separation of church and state is, as Harris declares, a "lie" - then why not rejoice, ignore the constitution of the United States, and simply elect only Harris-like fundatmentalist Christians? That would prove to the world we are no longer a free nation, and all of those people "over there" whom President Bush says "hate us for our freedom" can stop hating us and start loving us as brothers and sisters in Christ... We could even teach them Kum-ba-ya...

Thankfully, Harris does not speak for the vast majority of Christians who honor and celebrate persons of other faiths and beliefs, and who believe that our nation is enriched by diversity. Gratefully, the average four-year old has more horse sense than Harris displayed in her remarks.

Posted by Vince Isner at 05:35 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (1)

Dear Randall and David,

This has been a very enjoyable exchange. I think Randall is right about hitting a raw nerve with the mention of theocracy. As Shakespeare had a character say, "Me thinks they doth protest too much!"

Steinfels' response to the recent spate of books about theocracy is fairly typical for people who lack full comprehension of the mindset of many of the evangelicals influencing the Religious Right. I witnessed the takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention by Christian Nationalists and I observed well organized bands of Christian Reconstructionists takeover the local GOP precincts around the churches that I pastored. In both instances, when I raised a hue and cry about these takeovers, I met the same kind of naïve faith and "It can't happen here" attitude exhibited by Steinfels remarks.

Henry Kissinger had a good grasp of the way that people typically respond to revolutionary powers that do not accept the legitimacy of the existing order. Here's his analysis:

Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework. The defenders of the status quo therefore tend to begin by treating the revolutionary power as if its protestations were merely tactical; as if it really accepted the existing legitimacy but overstated its case for bargaining purposes; as if it were motivated by specific grievances to be assuaged by limited concessions. Those who warn against the danger in time are considered alarmists; those who counsel adaptation to circumstances are considered balanced and sane. . . . But it is the essence of revolutionary power that it possesses the courage of its convictions, that it is willing, indeed eager, to push its principles to their ultimate conclusion.

We've seen a process like this slowly working its way out in American politics for about a quarter century now. We are dealing with patient revolutionaries. Reconstructionist goals have been advanced and implemented so methodically and incrementally that most of them no longer appear revolutionary. Here is an outline of the blueprint for civil society that R. J. Rushdoony laid out in his Institutes of Biblical Law:

1) Acknowledge the ten commandments as the foundation for civil law (Could that have anything to do with Roy 's Rock?).

2) Strengthen patriarchically ordered families (Could that have anything to do with opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and with new Baptist creeds that insist that wives must "graciously submit" to their husbands?).

3) Close the public schools and make parents totally responsible for the education of their children (Could that have anything to do with the incessant push for vouchers and the explosion of home-schooling -- especially among Baptists?).

4) Require "tithes" to ecclesiastical agencies to provide welfare services (Could that have anything to do with 'Charitable Choice' and Faith-based initiatives?).

5) Reduce the role of government to defense of the nation and the defense of property rights (Could that have anything to do with the rhetoric about 'starving the beast' of government and policies that bankrupt the government with expensive wars while cutting taxes?).

6) Close the prisons – reinstitute slavery as a form of punishment and require capital punishment for all of ancient Israel's capital offenses – including apostacy, blasphemy, incorrigibility in children, murder, rape, Sabbath breaking, sodomy, and witchcraft.

The only thing that still looks revolutionary in this list is the last one. All of them were considered extreme in 1973 when Rushdoony wrote his Institutes.

How sure can we be that this last goal will remain outside the realm of possibility?

All the best,
Bruce

Posted by David Buckley at 04:26 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (2)

Dear Bruce,

I supposed there’s not much that can properly be identified as amusing about the actions and agenda of the Religious Right these days – especially their cooperation with the present administration to compromise civil liberties, prosecute an unjust war in Iraq and condone the torture of those the administration has designated “enemy combatants.� But allow me to inject a note of levity (well, almost) into this final posting.

The thing I find most amusing about the leaders of the Religious Right these days is the way fly into an apoplectic fit anytime anyone mentions the word “theocracy.� Kevin Phillips, of course, earned their undying obloquy for using it in the title of his best-selling book “American Theocracy.� To the best of my recollection, I used the word only once in “Thy Kingdom Come,� when I suggested that what the Religious Right wanted more than anything else was a theocratic order patterned after Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. I went on to say that New England Puritanism was a grand and noble experiment that ultimately collapsed beneath the weight of its own pretensions – precisely as Roger Williams, America’s first Baptist, predicted it would.

Despite my singular use of the term “theocracy,� the Religious Right went ballistic. Someone on a radio show (the same right-wing nut who pontificated at length about my unhappy evangelical childhood) yelled and screamed about my use of the word. And another soldier in the army of the Religious Right used the term “theocracy� three times in the title of his review – well, not a review really, more of a hatchet job.

One has to wonder why a single word provokes such a dramatic response. Could it be that it strikes a nerve? Hmmm. The Religious Right passionately denies that it seeks a theocracy, of course, but my view of the matter is that it’s appropriate to administer the duck test: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s almost certainly a duck.

The first step toward creating a theocracy is to eviscerate the First Amendment and to demolish the line of separation between church and state. And this, of course, brings our discussion full circle. If you seek to undermine the Baptist principles that have served this nation – and the faith – so well for more than two centuries, you begin by undermining the First Amendment.

Once you do that, you’re well on your way to a theocracy.

Randall Balmer

Posted by Randall Balmer at 10:51 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (1)

Dear Randall and Bruce,

Again, thanks much for this exchange. We've been going for the better part of a week now, and it's still fascinating stuff. We're due to wrap up soon, and was wondering if you two could give us some closing thoughts, and perhaps consider the following excerpt from Peter Steinfels' book review essay in the latest edition of the American Prospect.

He doesn't take up your book in particular, Randall, but does raise issues on which I think both of you would have opinions. Reviewing books from Kevin Phillips, Michelle Goldberg, and Jim Rudin, he argues:

But the idea, increasingly voiced by left-of-center activists and intellectuals, that religion is the driving force of the administration's policies and the leading threat to American democracy is exaggerated and misplaced. Phillips, Rudin, and Goldberg themselves regularly stick qualifying phrases into their declarations of alarm. They know that fanaticism and nuttiness, including downright dangerous nuttiness, can be found all over the place in a religious and political landscape as vast and diverse as America's. And they know better than to equate hardcore religious-right leaders and organizations, let alone the still smaller kernel of literal theocrats, with evangelical Americans in general, who constitute between 30 percent and 40 percent of the population and who have swung massively into the Republican camp in the last three decades.

The task, in other words, is not simply to shine light on faith-based antidemocratic currents but to map context, patterns, proportions, and trends, tracing not only real connections but also deep differences between what's marginal and what's central.

His point seems to me to be that we risk alienating the broad 30-40% of Americans who are evangelical if we overstate the degree of control that ultra-conservative Religious Right leaders exert over them. I agree with that point when broadly applied to the evangelical community, but based on the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention, it seems overly optimistic. Are there, to use his words, context, patterns, proportions, and trends that can give hope that a large chunk of Baptists is not actually under the sway of the Religious Right? And if so, how do leaders like yourselves go about trying to engage and inspire that community?

Thanks agian for taking the time to join us this week, and best of luck as your work continues.

Cheers,
David

Posted by David Buckley at 01:06 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (4)

Dear Randall,

I agree. "Religious Right" is preferable to "Christian Right" as a descriptor for the movement. It's actions and agenda are not Christian. It also preserves a space for non-Christians within the movement. Some non-Christians appear to fear secularization so much that they will support a movement that rejects religious pluralism and is working to establish the Christian religion. Ultimately, I think Michelle Goldberg's characterization of this ideology as a form of "Christian Nationalism" may provide the most accurate description of the movement.

I'd like to return to our discussion of the rise of the Religious Right and "Christian Nationalism."

I think one of the key leaders of the Religious Right is often overlooked. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade, had a larger role than a lot of people realize.
In 1974 and 1975 Bill Bright convened a series of secret meetings with 20-25 key Christian Right leaders. They formed Third Century Publishers to publish books and study guides that would link a "Christian Nationalist" agenda with conservative Christianity. They needed a tax-exempt foundation to receive donations to help them support their for-profit Third Century Publishers. So, Bright with the help of Richard DeVoss, president of Amway Corp., and Art DeMoss, board chairman of National Liberty Insurance Co., took over the financially troubled Christian Freedom Foundation to solicit funds for their publishing company. They hired Ed McAteer to run it. DeMoss later publicly stated that the purpose of CFF was to elect Christian conservatives to Congress in 1976:

"The vision is to rebuild the foundations of the Republic as it was when first founded--a 'Christian Republic.' We must return to the faith of our fathers." [John Saloma, Ominous Politics: The New Consevative Labrynth (pp. 53-54).

Ed McAteer, a Baptist layman at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis where Adrian Rogers was pastor, later founded the Religious Roundtable (1979). As the Religious Roundtable was getting organized, Bill Bright, along with evangelist Billy Graham, called a meeting in Dallas with ten or twelve influential conservative leaders. Among them were Adrian Rogers, Charles Stanley, and Jimmy Draper. All three were leaders of a movement to takeover the Southern Baptist Convention. That movement began in 1979 with the election of Rogers as President of the SBC. Draper and Stanley would also be elected President of the SBC during the first crucial decade of the succesful effort to takeover the SBC. Other noteworthy leaders at Bill Bright's meeting were Pat Robertson, Rex Humbard, Clayton Bell (Billy Graham's brother-in-law), and James Robison.
Here's James Robison's account of the meeting:

"Billy Graham said, 'I believe God has shown me that unless we have a change in America, we have a thousand days as a free nation . . . three years.' Bill Bright said, 'I know. . . . I do not believe we'll survive more than three years as a free nation. It's that serious.' And Pat Robertson said, 'I believe the same thing.' Charles Stanley was standing there and I can just remember so well, he put his hand down on the table with resolve and said, 'I'll give my life to stop this. I'll give everything I've got to turn this country.' And I said, 'Me too. I'll die to turn this country. Whatever it takes. We can't lose the country.' And each man around the room said, 'we're going to get involved.' Except Rex Humbard. He said, 'I'm uncomfortable politically. I really am very uncomfortable.' And Dr. Graham said, 'I cannot publicly be involved. I can only pray. I've been burned so badly with the public relationships I've had. I can't afford it, but I care so much.'"

Shortly after that meeting, Charles Stanley fulfilled the pledge he made at Bright's gathering by inviting scores of Baptist preachers to meet at his church for a "Campaign Training Conference." At that conference Paul Weyrich told them how to get their congregations involved in politics without jeopardizing their churches' tax exemption. Weyrich fondly remembers the conference and noted the presence of Paige Patterson at this kick-off meeting for Southern Baptist involvement in secular politics. Paige Patterson was the chief organizer of the takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Here's Weyrich account of that meeting:

"I had [newspaper columnist] Bob Novak with me and he was absolutely in a state of shock. It was at that moment, he told me, that he decided Carter was going to lose, because minister after minister stood up and said, 'I was part of Carter's team in 1976. I delivered my congregation for Carter. I urged them to vote for Carter because I thought he was a moral individual. I found out otherwise, and I'm angry.' This was months before the election, and Novak said, 'I decided at that point that Jimmy Carter's goose was cooked because I saw the intensity of those people.' That was really an extraordinary moment. At one point, something was said about baptism, and Paige Patterson, who is now very big in the Southern Baptist Church, and some of his buddies lifted me up, physically, and started to carry me backwards to dunk me in the baptismal well there in the church. It was a humorous moment, and all the guys in the audience were cheering. But it was all done in good fun. It was a remarkable day, really."

When the full story is told about the rise of the Religious Right and Christian Nationalism, I suspect that Bill Bright, Ed McAteer, and a host of SBC takeover leaders will be seen to have played a more prominent role than most chroniclers currently recognize and acknowledge.

Sincerely,
Bruce

Posted by Mainstream Baptist at 09:22 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (4)

Dear Bruce,

The causes you cite behind the rise of the Religious Right – the civil rights movement, Francis Schaeffer, Reconstructionism, and the like – are absolutely correct, though I think we can push it back even farther. (I might add to your list the reaction to the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s.)

William Jennings Bryan, probably the most identifiable evangelical in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, would be considered a political liberal by almost any standard today. Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president and Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state, was involved in liberal and progressive causes.

Bryan, however, suffered a brutal character assassination at the hands of H. L. Mencken during the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in July 1925. He died in Dayton several days after the trial, and evangelicals thereafter retreated into a subculture of their own making. Evangelicals (at least those in the North) were largely inactive in political matters during those years, until the emergence of Jimmy Carter as a national figure in the mid-1970s.

During this half-century of political quiescence, there was a good bit of cold war rhetoric in evangelical circles, and this had the effect of nudging evangelicals toward the right. That tendency was abetted also by the very public friendship between Billy Graham and Richard Nixon, who formed a bond in the 1950s when they were both coming of age as anti-communist crusaders.

At that point, the forces you mentioned came into play, leading to the organization of the Religious Right as a political entity in the late 1970s. This coalition, as I demonstrate in the book, coalesced, not as a direct response to the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973, but rather in an attempt to defend the tax-exempt status of institutions like Bob Jones University, despite their racially discriminatory policies.

By the way, as you know from reading Thy Kingdom Come, I don’t much care for the term Christian Right to describe this loose federation of politically conservative evangelicals. I think Religious Right is far better. I find the term Christian Right offensive, because I detect little that I would identify as Christian in the actions and the agenda of the Religious Right.

Randall Balmer

Posted by Randall Balmer at 09:27 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

Randall,

Thanks for your kind words about Mainstream Baptists. We are indeed calling Baptists back to their birthright as advocates for liberty of conscience and we are not alone.

While the news media has been fixated on the political antics of the current leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, moderate and progressive Baptists across America have been quietly working to forge new alliances. Some reconfigurations are taking place that may strengthen the voice of traditional Baptists. In June 2007 American Baptists (Baptists in the North) and Cooperative Baptists (moderate Baptists that left the SBC in 1990) are holding a historic first joint session in Washington, D.C. A few months later, Mainstream Baptists are involved in planning a meeting for all North American Baptists.

Bill Underwood, President of Mercer University, described the significance of this new movement with these words:

There are whispers of an exciting new movement emerging in Baptist life. Within the past several weeks, leaders of Baptist organizations representing more than 20 million Baptists have launched an unprecedented initiative to advance the Kingdom through the combined voice and work of Baptists throughout North America. Baptists from the North and from the South. Black and white Baptists, conservative, moderate and progressive Baptists joining together in a covenant -- the North American Baptist Covenant -- to affirm "their desire to speak and work together to create an authentic and genuine prophetic Baptist voice in these complex times."

David asked what features of modern American society created the opportunity for the ideological development of the Christian Right religio-political machine. Here are some of features that I think have been most overlooked in reporting about the rise of the Religious Right:

The Civil Rights Movement. Randall is one of the few who have written about the abortion myth that the Religious Right developed to explain their conception. He emphasizes the role that the 1972 Green v. Connally decision played in motivating religious conservatives to organize politically. Anyone with a memory that extends back to the mid-1960's knows that the names and faces of the religious leaders who opposed Martin Luther King's civil rights movement and school integration are largely the same as those who led the rise of the Religious Right in the 1980's.

Christian Reconstructionism. I think Francis Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto served as a bridge from more traditional conservative evangelical thought to the theocratic ideology of Rousas J. Rushdoony. Schaeffer and Rushdoony always shared a presuppositionalist apologetic and a belief that the U.S. was founded as a Christian Nation. Schaeffer's latest writings also appear to be encouraging some form of Christian Dominionism.

The Council for National Policy. In 1981 Tim LaHaye, Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie founded a secretive Christian lobbying group which appears to have played a significant role in frequently bringing together America's most powerful conservative politicians, journalists, lawyers, and industrialists to strategize about politics and public policy with Christian right leaders .

I would be interested in learning what the two of you think about these features of modern American life.

Bruce

Posted by Mainstream Baptist at 12:57 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (6)

Dear Bruce,

I returned last night from a weekend in North Carolina – a meeting at the National Humanities Center on Saturday, and then on Saturday night a lecture and discussion at the Regulator Bookstore in Durham and on Sunday morning a gathering at the Unitarian Universalist church in Raleigh. The latter two events, as you might guess, centered around Thy Kingdom Come.

I gave a presentation and a short synopsis of the book, including a brief account of the second chapter, “Where Have All the Baptists Gone?: Roy’s Rock, Roger Williams, and the First Amendment.� I made my passionate plea for the recovery of the Baptist tradition in America, especially noting the importance of safeguarding the separation of church and state.

The lectures were well-received, but what surprised me somewhat was the number of people who stood during the question-and-answer session to declare that they are real Baptists – meaning that they remain faithful to the Baptist tradition of maintaining the line of separation between church and state. What I found especially striking was the pride in their voices as they affirmed Baptist principles. The audience (well over a hundred in both venues) applauded lustily.

In checking my e-mail messages this morning, I found a kind note from Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee. He thanked me for the book, but he also reminded me that there are indeed a good number of real Baptists left in America, so I’d like to use this post to underscore that fact.

You and your organization of Mainstream Baptists are another example of people who seek to call Baptists back to their birthright. I applaud all of you. Keep up the good fight against the counterfeit Baptists. It’s important for the integrity of the faith, and it’s essential for the future of America.

Keep the faith,

Randall Balmer

Posted by Randall Balmer at 04:49 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (5)

For the second time in less than a month, radical right leaders (those champions of family values) have used the family of a political candidate as a target for attack. In late July it was the shameful questioning of the sexual orientation of Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland and his wife. The most recent attack has taken place in Arkansas at the hands of the American Family Association. This email, sent to the AFA’s supporters last week, speaks for itself (hat-tip to the Arkansas Times for the find):

If you are a member of the United Methodist Church, I felt you would be interested in the two sermons preached by Rev. Betsy Singleton, pastor of Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church in Little Rock. If you are not a United Methodist, please forward this to any friends you may have who are United Methodist.

Rev. Singleton is probably better known as being the wife of U.S. Representative Vic Snyder.

Sermon: Is Homosexuality a Sin? – click here

Sermon: Is Christianity the Only Way? – click here

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman American Family Association

The AFA can’t come right out and campaign against Rep. Snyder, so they drop this hint to their base as election season approaches. As usual, the willingness of these groups to manipulate religion for partisan gain seems to know no bounds.

Posted by David Buckley at 03:07 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (6)

Dear Randall and Bruce,

First of all, thanks to you both for taking the time to join in this exchange. You're both experts in this field, so it's a real treat to have you bouncing ideas off of one another.

I have a feeling that the two of you agree on a good many things about the current state of Baptist thought on the First Amendment. So allow me to throw a question or two out there that may stir the pot a bit. Bruce, I found your closing question compelling, and would like to hear both of you spend a good bit of time actually answering it. Why, in God’s name, are Baptists erecting monuments to Pilgrims and Puritans in Massachusetts?

The well-developed Christian Right religio-political machine undoubtedly has something to do with answering this question. But that seems to me to be only half of the answer. Why has that machine found such fertile ground for its ideas, especially since they seem to fly in the face of so much history? What features of modern American society created the opportunity for such ideological development?

It seems to me that these questions have a lot to do with how one responds to the Christian Right. How do we critique the Right whlie offering an alternative vision that imbues American public life with enough meaning to sustain our republican project? In other words, what different prescription should we offer for the ailments that the Christian Right has manipulated to its own advantage?

Many thanks, and looking forward to how the conversation progresses next week,
David

Posted by David Buckley at 04:16 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (10)

Dear Randall,

It is truly a delight to be in dialogue with someone who understands real Baptists so well. The chapter on “Where Have All the Baptists Gone?� in your new book Thy Kingdom Come is one of the best summations in print regarding the about face that many Baptists have made toward the First Amendment.

For lifelong Baptists like myself, it is hard to believe that the Baptist legacy as advocates for liberty of conscience and separation of church and state could be so thoroughly disowned by the descendants of those who literally paid with their own blood to give it to later generations.

Few who review the original sources for themselves would disagree with your crediting the Separatist-Puritan-Baptist-Seeker Roger Williams with conceiving the metaphor for a “wall of separation� between church and government. Unfortunately, the writings of the revisionist historians and theocrats within the Religious Right have been so widely disseminated and broadcast over the last quarter century that the facts of history are no longer perceived as valid.

I think the concerted effort by the Religious Right to place Decalogue displays on public property comprises the spearhead of a campaign to establish Christianity as this nation’s official religion. This morning’s newspaper reveals that another Ten Commandments monument is being erected on public property in Oklahoma. A decision is still pending over the monument to American theocracy that was erected on the Haskell County Courthouse lawn in Stigler, Oklahoma.

Eighty percent of the population in Haskell County Oklahoma claims to be Baptist. A Baptist minister solicited funds and erected the monument to “‘battle’ against Satan� and to affirm this nation’s “Christian heritage.� The heritage being affirmed, however, has more to do with the “democratic theocracy� of the Massachusetts Bay Colony than with the constitutional republic of the United States of America. The Stigler monument placed the Ten Commandments on one side and the Mayflower Compact on the other.

If more Baptists knew the history of Massachusetts Bay Colony, surely fewer of them would approve of monuments to that legacy. Under their system of law and jurisprudence, Baptists, Quakers and other religious dissenters were severely persecuted.

Persecutions over matters of faith in Massachusetts just began with the banishment of Roger Williams. It escalated from there. In the summer of 1651, John Clarke, John Crandall, and Obadiah Holmes -- all members of the Baptist Church at Newport, Rhode Island -- were arrested and imprisoned for holding an unauthorized worship service in the home of a blind Baptist named William Witter who lived at Lynn, Massachusetts outside Boston. They were sentenced to be fined or whipped. Fines for Clarke and Crandall were paid by friends. Holmes refused to let friends pay his fine and was publicly whipped on the streets of Boston on September 6, 1651. In 1653, Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard University, refused to have his fourth child baptized as an infant and proclaimed that only believers should be baptized. He was forced to resign from his position and banished from Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1663, John Myles moved an entire Baptist congregation from Wales to escape the religious persecutions authorized by England's 1662 Act of Uniformity. They first settled in Massachusetts, but by 1667 the authorities forced the congregation to move to the frontier in Rhode Island.

As bad as it was for Baptists, it was worse for Quakers. William Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, and William Leddra are listed among the Quaker martyrs in Massachusetts. The last Quaker martyr in Massachusetts, Mary Dyer, was hanged in the Boston Common on June 1, 1660. All died in defiance of a law banning Quakers from Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Why, in God’s name, are Baptists erecting monuments to Pilgrims and Puritans in Massachusetts?

Looking forward to your thoughts,
Bruce

Posted by Mainstream Baptist at 03:47 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (3)

Starting today and continuing through early next week, Faith in Public Live is excited to host an exchange between two of the nation's leading experts on defending the First Amendment. Randall Balmer, professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University, is the author, most recently, of Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical’s Lament (Basic Books). Bruce Prescott blogs under the name Mainstream Baptist,, as well as at the Christian Alliance for Progress and Talk2Action, and is a leading national activist on defending the separation of church and state.

Dear Bruce,

It’s a pleasure to have the chance to trade posts with you to develop some ideas about the current state of the First Amendment in our country today. I hope this first post can serve as a jumping off point for later discussion. I’m interested to see where we agree and where we might have differences of opinion.

Of all the political strategies being pursued these days by leaders of the Religious Right, none is more pernicious than the attempt to eviscerate the First Amendment. By trying to impose public prayer in public schools (students can pray privately any time they wish!), by advocating public funding and school vouchers for use in religious schools and by seeking to emblazon religious sentiments on public places, they try to undermine the separation of church and state, the best friend that religion has ever had.

There is even a movement within the Religious Right, led by David Barton and others, to deny that our nation’s founders intended church and state to be separate. I’ve come to equate these people with the Holocaust deniers and those who debunk global warming – not in the sense of moral equivalence, but in the sense of the brazenness of their denials, all evidence to the contrary. Compounding this betrayal, many of the leaders of the Religious Right, from Pat Robertson and Richard Land to Roy Moore and Rick Scarborough, claim to be Baptists, ignoring altogether that the notion of church-state separation was a Baptist idea.

Roger Williams, founder of the Baptist tradition in America, came to the New World as a Puritan minister in Salem, Massachusetts. He quickly ran afoul of the Puritan authorities because he feared that the faith would be compromised by too close an association with the church. Williams wanted to protect, in his words, the “garden of the church� from the “wilderness of the world� by means of (again, his words) a “wall of separation.� Williams was expelled from Massachusetts and went to what is now Rhode Island; he formed there a colony that enshrined the ideas of liberty of individual conscience and freedom from state-dictated religion.

Although this notion of separation of church and state was utterly unprecedented in Western culture, the founding fathers, in their wisdom, codified Williams’s ideas into the First Amendment of the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.� Although it is true that Congress continued to pass appropriations for the printing and the distribution of Bibles, for instance, the eventual termination of this practice, far from illustrating that the founders never intended church-state separation, actually shows the beauty of the balance of powers provision of the Constitution. The courts eventually stepped in, as they are Constitutionally empowered to do, and ruled that, in light of the increased pluralism of American society, it was no longer appropriate for the government to be supporting a particular religion.

As one of the expert witnesses in the Alabama Ten Commandments case, I argued that religion has flourished in this nation for more than two centuries precisely because the government has (for the most part, at least) stayed out of the religion business. We Americans are off the charts as reckoned by our belief in God and by our attendance at religious worship. We have in this country a vibrant, salubrious religious culture because we have refused to establish any one religion or denomination, and we have allowed religion to function in a “free market,� where religious entrepreneurs (to extend the metaphor) are free to compete with one another and no one enjoys the sanction of the government.

As a person of faith, I have a further objection to the entanglement of church and state. It ultimately trivializes the faith because it suggests that religion needs the support of the state for legitimacy. When you fetishize the Ten Commandments or demand a ritualized, formal prayer in school or on public occasions, you diminish the faith itself.

That is precisely what Roger Williams, a Baptist, feared.

Looking forward to your reply,

Randall Balmer

Posted by Randall Balmer at 12:12 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

Pastor Dan at Street Prophets catches the hypocrisy of Pat Robertson, who's apparently not going to win any humanitarian awards. Also, great collection of stats on the conflict. "Lebanese economists have cut growth forecasts to zero or below from 5-6 percent. Some say the economy could shrink by 2-3 percent, with the tourism sector particularly hard hit." Yeah, that'll drive out the terrorists!

David Buckley's got a good Boston Globe cartoon on Lieberman over at Faith in Public Life.

For "Moore" Lieberman hilarity catch JSpot.

Michelle, of Metacentricies, posts an interesting round up of environmental and tech news . Check out the link to the Washington Post on Cheney's wacky comments about the majority of Americans supporting al Qaeda.

If you are interested in some possible US gov. repercussions of the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict catch Sy Hersh in the current New Yorker. Money quote:

Some current and former intelligence officials who were interviewed for this article believe that Rumsfeld disagrees with Bush and Cheney about the American role in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said that "there was a feeling that Rumsfeld was jaded in his approach to the Israeli war." He added, "Air power and the use of a few Special Forces had worked in Afghanistan, and he tried to do it again in Iraq. It was the same idea, but it didn't work. He thought that Hezbollah was too dug in and the Israeli attack plan would not work, and the last thing he wanted was another war on his shift that would put the American forces in Iraq in greater jeopardy."

Always musing and Catholic, Even the Devils Believe reflects on reasons for war. "I guess the question is whether pacifism is a principled position or just a rhetorical one," he wonders.

Radical Torah posts on Lebanon Through the Lens of Tisha B'Av. And Islamicate notes a Newsweek article about how Jews deserted Lieberman.

The Shalom Center lists Ten Ways to Save the Lives of Abraham's Children.

Reverend Mommy posts about working on the CPE.

If you are interested in the politics of the Anglican communion, be sure to read Father Jake Stops the World. He reprints a recent Coats article from Episcopal Majority. He's got 58 comments on it the last I checked.

And, Semitism.net (pro-Israel, pro-Arab, pro-peace) doesn't pull punches: no matter which way I head these days in the pro-Israel world — Jewish or Christian right — it looks like I am going to Hell.

Mainstream Baptist marks the loss of church/state separation champion Robert Alley.

Xpatriated Texan writes about the Limits of Greed.

And finally, speaking of limits, Talk to Action points out the connection between politics and the tribulation. Good God, the end to that needs to be neigh.

Posted by Alex Carpenter at 02:33 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

A good laugh from yesterday's Boston Globe.

Posted by David Buckley at 11:06 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

Today, the Center for American Progress reports that:

Focus on the Family has mailed brochures to more than 90,000 Missouri homes, arguing that stem cell research under the Missouri ballot initiative would exploit women by luring them into dangerous egg donations. The brochure, "Women's voices against cloning," quotes several women's organizations to show "the risks that this measure [Missouri ballot initiative] poses to women's health." The Progress Report spoke with several of the women's organizations quoted in the brochure who said that Focus on the Family misrepresented their positions and they disagree with the organization's aims to ban stem cell research. Judy Norsigian, author of Our Bodies, Ourselves, said that while she has some concerns about the somatic cell nuclear transplant (SCNT) technique, she is actually "very supportive of most embryonic stem cell research."

This follows a disturbing trend among right wing religious groups, one of not checking their facts and even mispresenting reality.

For example, the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures states that the opponents' argument, that supporters of the Stem Cell Initiative "have a 'profit motive' for wanting to pursue stem cell cures, is false and absurd. The truth is, the major medical institutions involved in stem cell research in Missouri - such as the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Washington University School of Medicine and the University of Missouri - are non-profit institutions."

Yesterday, the Colorado Springs Independent reported that Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals attacked the Christian Coalition. Why? Because according to him (not the New York Times) the Christian Coalition twisted words. According to his associate pastor, "he was saying the Christian Coalition is not a reliable source of information for Christians." Ouch!

And finally, the Columbus Dispatch reports:

By Thursday, [GOP] state Chairman Robert T. Bennett knew the party had been caught red-handed and issued an apology to the victim, U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, the Democratic nominee for governor. But the scurrilous mission had been accomplished: Let the whispering campaign begin.

The attack had nothing to do with records or resumes or policy. It was brutally personal – and a lie. The message the GOP had asked its followers to spread across the Ohioscape is that Strickland and his wife are gay, never mind their nearly 20 years of marriage.

In yet another perversion of religion, the state party hired a conservative Christian to do the dirty work, using a computer at party headquarters to spread the rumor via e-mail to "profamily" conservatives. Gary Lankford, headmaster of a Christian home school, started in early July as the Ohio GOP’s "social conservative coordinator."

That's four recent examples. Whether a person is progressive or conservative, sloppy research and deliberate dishonesty hurts the cause of faith. As became clear in Ralph Reed's Georgia defeat, decent folks with faith-full traditions of honesty and good work are beginning to see in the endorsement of Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, and Restoration Ohio a dogged reason to doubt.

Posted by Alex Carpenter at 02:59 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

I want to thank both Amy and Thurman for taking the time for their stimulating exchange of ideas last week on this blog. It modeled the freedom to discuss controversial topics and civility of tone that should characterize public debates. Faith in Public LIVE will bring similar extended debates to you on a regular basis in this space, so stay tuned in coming weeks.

I also want to take a moment to thank our summer interns who have done such great work with us and are beginning to depart. Lauren, Dave and Alex are sure to go on from here to do fantastic work for justice and the common good in the years ahead. We’ve been lucky to have them in our camp during this exciting summer, and look forward to the arrival of our interns for this fall.

Blessings,
Rev. Jennifer Butler

Posted by Rev. Jennifer Butler at 03:42 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

Since both David and Amy are busy today, I'll take on the task of trying to wrap things up. I believe I can summarize Amy's position as this:

The Casey campaign in Pennsylvania provides an excellent example of how and why Democrats should broaden their appeal to include faith-based groups that can be hostile to some Party positions. By insisting on fair implementation of legal requirements, the Casey campaign turned what appeared to be a partisan-front organization into at least a neutral organization. This is being repeated at state and county levels throughout the country that Democratic chairs are finding that they are the first Democrat ever to talk to some religious leaders. While it won't convert people overnight, it will at least establish a dialogue and create an atmosphere of mutual respect. This is a promising development and should be embraced by Democrats everywhere.

I agree that it is a promising development, but I caution against making too much of a single example. If the only way to make inroads is to change what we stand for, then we have effectively lost the battle anyway. What I believe we need to do, as Faithful Left activists, is to better organize and to better annunciate a theology upon which liberal ideology can rest. That's difficult work to do, and it's going to be messy and a lot of toes are going to be stepped on. But I believe it is vital work if there is to be any longterm "Faithful Left".

David pointed out that at least some of this work has already been started. We don't have to start from scratch and that there is still a good bit of work that can be done simply by reaching out to existing groups and letting them know that we exist. Both Amy and I agree with him on this issue and see greater organization (but not necessarily centralization) as a benefit.

Best,
XT

Posted by Alex Carpenter at 06:15 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

Dear Amy and David,

Don't worry about the optimism, Amy. We all need plenty of it! Actually, I'm fairly optimistic as well, I guess I just look for boulders on the highway too much.

I realize that I need to clarify something. I don't think that Casey was able to demand equal time because of his pro-life credentials. That is pure political strategy and simply using the law as it was intended. I still think, however, that his reception by the group has more to do with his pro-life stance than anything else. They may respect him for standing up to his party on abortion and to conservatives on gay marriage, but that's because he manages to stand up to different people on the two issues. If he was also pro-choice, then he'd have left a much different feeling in their bellies when he walked away. He still could have demanded, and probably received, fair and equal time. The result would have been different, though. In fact, I doubt he'd have decided it was worth his time.

The most precious resource in any campaign is time. The PPN has maybe three or four issues about which they want to hear a candidate speak. If he's against them on all four, there's no chance he'll convince a voter to vote for him. From a campaign perspective, that's a waste of time. That's why Democrats have, for so long, eschewed many religious groups. It isn't going to help them and they might say something that really gets the religious people lathered up. It's better to let a sleeping dog lie.

In Casey's case, his pro-life position allows him to make the speech something besides a waste of time. There may be a few voters there that actually vote for him. Regardless, their attacks on him, as Amy points out, are going to be blunted. So while it isn't his pro-life credentials that get him the time from a legal perspective, it is his pro-life credentials that make it worth his trouble.

The problem that this highlights is that there is no similar left-wing religious organization from which a pro-choice, pro-gay marriage candidate could get an equal political boost. That's an organizational problem. Pretty much everyone on the left understands that we are decades behind the right organizationally. I believe that is also tied to the lack of an ideological basis (in political terms) and a strong theological basis (in religious terms) for collective action. Until we find an answer for the charge that we "stand for nothing and fall for everything" we aren't going to change that. People don't generally get out of bed early to vote or take time away from their family to attend meetings dedicated to "good government" - but if you make it about "liberty" or "doing what is right for your kids", then suddenly they are interested.

That is currently where the Prevention First strategy is. It's good policy. As Amy points out, it will do more for cutting abortions than overturning Roe. But, while there is an ideological core to that policy, it is not well articulated. Therefore Senator Reid's speech has some rhetorical highlights, but no really binding ideas that will draw people out of their shells. Because it lacks a well-crafted ideological core, the only soundbites are policy-heavy and can be spun so hard it makes your head hurt. "Better access to birth control pills" suddenly becomes "Your daughter will be given birth control by her PE teacher and you'll never know it."

I want to stress again that it isn't solely the job of our politicians to make create this ideological core. In fact, due in large part to their need to appeal to a larger group, they can't. It's our job as liberal activists to create a rhetorical base that our leaders can tie into in order to make those sound bites. "That isn't conservative," was a ludicrous statement twenty years ago. Today, everyone knows what it means - or at least they think they do. Either way, the core is there and it can be used to spin off sound bites in every direction. Since it's my idea to bell the cat, I'll take a short stab at it - with the understanding that it is likely to make a lot of people uncomfortable. But I think I'll do it at my site rather than further sidetracking the conversation here.

Instead, I'll end today by encouraging the party chairs who are reaching out to groups that may have been less than friendly in the past. You can't steer a parked car, and it's better to try and steer some of the politically active in our direction than it is to build an entirely new field of politically active persons. I don't think that all of these groups are as conservative as the PPN. Rather, they are more "Republican leaning" groups that head in that direction because Democrats simply haven't tried to engage them. Rectifying that oversight should put a number of races into play that wouldn't be otherwise. If nothing else, it should help us engage a wider electorate and that should help us be more respectful of differences and perhaps - dare we hope? - bring a more civil discourse to our politics.

All the Best,
Thurman

Posted by XPatriated Texan at 02:19 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

Dear Thurman and David,

I'll harp on this just one more time before moving onto the question David posed, which also addresses a challenge Thurman raised as well.

I continue to disagree that the reason Casey was able to demand equal time with a group that had only been engaging with Republicans was because of his pro-life credentials. For one thing, he was simply making them abide by IRS regulations for tax-exempt groups--you don't have to be pro-life, pro-choice, or pro-wrestling to do that. And, of course, he could have forced them to play by the rules by filing a complaint against them. This, however, allows him to avoid the charge of being anti-religion and actually promote the fact that he's interested in hearing what they have to say. That's very different from agreeing with them, which I think most people have forgotten does not have to be the prequisite to having a conversation.

But more importantly, Casey doesn't agree with the PPN on everything. They have the same approach to abortion, yes, but this group has made the Federal Marriage Amendment a big priority this year, and Casey walked in on Monday and told them in no uncertain terms that he disagrees with their position. I'm told by someone who was there that the crowd seemed to respect him for the fact that he was willing to stand up to his own party on abortion and to even stand up to them on the marriage amendment. Again, I think the key is honest and respectful dialogue. They can still go off and try to smear him as godless, but the charge won't ring true to many voters. And that is repeatable by other Democrats, even pro-choice Democrats.

That said, it does worry me that the two recent Democratic candidates who have seemed to understand religion the best have been pro-life. I don't think for a minute that the only Democrats who can successfully communicate their religious faith and thereby neutralize the charge of godless Democrats are those who are pro-life. But it concerns me that many Democrats and progressives might make that assumption (and perhaps honestly so, given the two most visible examples), and therefore give up on the project of reaching out to religious communities because they will assume that means moving in the pro-life direction.

That's where the Prevention First strategy that David mentioned comes in. Despite the fact that Reid's speech on Monday could not have been more lackluster, and that the Senate Democrats have inexplicably waited eighteen months after introducing this legislation to finally start promoting it, I believe Prevention First could be the key to completely rehauling the abortion debate the way that "Partial-Birth" did ten years ago.

Reid had one line in the speech that I hope Democrats repeat over and over as they introduce this new way of thinking about abortion (I'm paraphrasing here without the transcript): "It's strange that the people who say they're most opposed to abortion are the ones standing in the way of preventing abortion." If Democrats can pull this off, pro-life voters will have to seriously reconsider which party is more pro-life. Here's what I mean: If you believe on principle that Roe v. Wade should be overturned and abortion outlawed completely in the United States, and you won't settle for anything less, well, the Democratic Party is not the party for you (although I'd argue that the GOP doesn't intend in a million years to let any of that happen....) But if what you want is to see abortion rates reduced, let's look at how successful each party's strategy might be.

The GOP wants to overturn Roe. Okay, well, we know that at least 40 of the states would still allow abortion, and in the ten or so that would outlaw it, abortion isn't too available right now. So at most, we're looking at a 10 percent reduction in abortions. Parental notification laws haven't reduced abortion rates, nor have partial-birth bans. So those add a big fat zero to the overall number. Democrats, however, want to make contraceptives more affordable and available, reform adoption laws, restore real sex education, and increase funds for programs that help pregnant women and new mothers. The combination of higher contraception use but lower rates of sex among teenagers resulted in a thirty precent drop in teen pregnancies over the past 15 years. If the same could be accomplished with teens and adults, you're looking at an enormous drop in the rate of unwanted pregnancies, which automatically means a drop in abortion rates.

I realize it's not communicable in a soundbyte. But that, again, is one of the reasons that state party chairs and others have been reaching out to more conservative constituencies to have meetings. Over the course of an hour-long meeting, it's possible to explain this approach and actually get people to sit up and pay attention.

I've worked myself into a small optimistic fever here, so feel free to bring me back to reality. But I'm very interested in your thoughts.

all the best,
Amy

Posted by Amy Sullivan at 09:38 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (37)

Dear Amy and David,

Looks like it's my turn again. You guys are going to make it hard for me to keep it short and sweet!

To turn first towards the Casey strategy, I think there is a consensus that it isn't going to help Casey make inroads with the hard-core Republicans (I disagree that this group is conservative, but that's another topic). I teach my students that there is generally a 30% core of voters who will back either a candidate or a party no matter what. The contest is for the other 40% of voters - the swing voters. What Casey did was neutralize an issue by demanding equal time with a special interest group. It works for him because the make up of the swing group fits nicely into his own constituency - the pro-life crowd. It wouldn't work for me, one of those non-pro-life, non-pro-choice Christian Democrats. To the extent that is true, it is repeatable only by someone with Casey's pro-life credentials.

But you are right to emphasize that this is not the only field upon which politics is played. By embracing his religion, Casey has insulated himself against the "Godless liberal" demogoguery that has been so prevalent in recent years. That is definitely repeatable - and it should be repeated by any candidate who wants a serious shot at winning in the Deep South or through the Great Plains states (the dark red states). An abortion-moderate (I'm afraid that's the best term I have right now) could still insulate their campaign from that pre-packaged slander by speaking openly to people of faith about their faith. John Kerry made a step towards that (bungling it by linking his "faith without works is dead" speech to closely to campaign rhetoric) and I think Kaine improved upon it. Casey is one more step along that path.

But here's the rub: For an abortion-moderate Christian Democrat to speak openly about faith in action, they are going to have to draw upon a theology that allows for abortion. If Kerry had done that, rather than use the pulpit to slap at the President, he might not have had to stumble through an answer of how he can oppose abortion personally but endorse it politically. Developing this theology has to be the job of those of us on the Faithful Left rather than individual candidates.

If one believes abortion is murder, then how can one justify allowing it to be legal without legalizing other forms of murder? If you don't believe it is murder, then what is it in theological terms? What is our moral and legal responsibility to the unborn, the pregnant woman, and the father (who is too often forgotten about in this discussion)? Many of us operate from a sort of gut-level theology without exploring these questions and wrestling them to submission. Because we do, the public discussion is the poorer and there is no collective understanding for a candidate to call upon in a campaign.

I agree that Kaine also reaped the benefit of an authentic persona. I disagree, however, with the comparison to President Bush. President Bush uses his authenticity to push for a positive message - in the sense that he is positively doing something. Kaine used it as a negative message - he wasn't going to change the law. In a sense, Kaine's authenticity wasn't challenged because no one expects the Virginia legislature to pass a bill outlawing capital punishment. If put in a position of choosing between following his theology and signing a bill to outlaw capital punishment and obeying the "law of the land" by vetoing it, we still have no indication which way Kaine would move. I think that's a significant difference. If the issue had been more prevalent and subject to change, I think his authenticity would have hurt him as he would have had to struggle publicly with that question. So I understand the point both of you make on this, but I think a different campaign with a different candidate in a different state would have had very different results - in other words, it doesn't represent a precedent so much as it does a deviation.

In the interest of time, I'll try to summarize my point. Kaine in Virginia and Casey in Pennsylvania both represent deviations from what we are accustomed to seeing. Both of them have used this deviation to their benefit - and there is some lesson to be learned from their doing so. The point Amy makes of being the first Democrat to speak to an evangelical group is an excellent example. The lesson there, I'd say, is not to surrender any part of the electorate. Take your message to every group you can in a language they understand. If they don't like you, they will at least respect that you took the effort to do so. That respect may or may not pay off in electoral terms, but the race is long and the more ears that are bent partially to your message, the more votes are potentially swinging for grabs.

It might be worth thinking about how we make these successful deviations into precedents.

All the best,
Thurman

Posted by XPatriated Texan at 09:30 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (11)

Hi Amy and Thurman,

First off, thanks so much to both of you for taking time to develop this conversation. We're coming through Day 2 of the exchange, and I think it's been stimulating stuff so far. Before Thurman weighs in, I want to add a few thoughts, in part elaborating on Alex's comment left on Amy's last post.

Senator Reid's address yesterday at the Center for American Progress took on the issue of abortion with admirable candor. He spent a good deal of his time discussing the Prevention First Agenda , an interesting legislative package with the support of both pro-lifers and pro-choicers. I don't know if I have the buzzword you're looking for, Amy, but it might go something like "Prevention, not Prohibition.' I'd be interested in each of your thoughts on how a concrete agenda like this might further strengthen the ability of pro-choice candidates to engage religious pro-life communities.

I have one more quick point before I leave the conversation to you two. Both of you raised the issue of Gov. Kaine's stance on the death penalty. I come down closer to Amy's reading of how that issue played out, but I understand your concern, Thurman. Will national voters respect the moral integrity of a politician who says, 'I personally believe this is wrong, but as an elected official will work with those who have different beliefs and enforce the laws of the land?'

I think voters can accept that position, and are most likely to from a public official who has a gift for sincerity and consistency. Candidate Kaine was Mr. Consistent on his values once he began fighting back against the cheap-shot death penalty ads that were leveled at him in the campaign. He talked openly and sincerely about his Catholic international social service and interestingly employed the evangelical language of 'mission' to describe that time. He personally told his story and in the process built a level of credibility and moral legitimacy that his opponent's attack ads couldn't destroy. He has a gift for the sincere, and he works it to his advantage. I'd argue that any candidate attempting to strike the middle ground on abortion that Amy mentions had better be similarly blessed.

Looking forward to your thoughts,
David

Posted by David Buckley at 03:13 PM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (0)

Hi, Thurman and David--

Thanks so much for your thoughtful post yesterday, Thurman. It's such a pleasure to discuss these topics civilly on the web! We agree on a number of areas, but I did want to clarify a few things that I wrote yesterday, raise some questions about several of your points as well, and get your thoughts on a question that has been puzzling me for a while.

To begin, I didn't mean to argue that Casey could neutralize Santorum's advantage from religious conservatives by actually gaining the support of organizations like the Pennsylvania Pastors Network. Re-reading my post, I see that I put that somewhat imprecisely. It's possible that Casey will indeed benefit in November from an increased share of the religious conservative vote, due in no small part to the fact that his pro-life stand renders that objection of theirs moot.

More important in my view--and this is where I see it working as a strategy for pro-life Democrats as well--is the fact that by forcing PPN and others to play by the rules, Casey has taken away their ability to operate as an arm of the GOP. Will they still rally the troops to vote for Santorum? Of course. But by forcing PPN to invite both camps to their events, the Casey campaign has effectively shut down their operations for a number of months.

It's true that Casey's pro-life position has allowed him to make inroads with some evangelicals who wouldn't otherwise engage with him during a campaign. A few months ago, I wrote about an event the National Association of Evangelicals sponsored at Messiah College in Pennsylvania to highlight the issue of global warming. Casey showed up and shared the stage with leading evangelicals; Santorum, whose stance on environmental issues is decidely weaker, stayed at home and was ripped apart by the largely conservative crowd.

But I would argue that what Casey has done to engage--and thereby partially defang--the PPN is definitely repeatable by pro-choice Democratic candidates. I've talked to a number of state party chairs in reddish states who have described to me the "get to know you" meetings they have been holding with conservative religious leaders in their states, sometimes the very first time that those folks have ever had a Democrat reach out and ask to talk. These Democratic party chairs are under no illusion that they will convince the religious leaders to start voting Democratic. But they do have hope that by having respectful conversations, they can soften the perception that Democrats are hostile to or uncomfortable with religion. As one of them told me, "If they come away from those meetings and stop telling other Republican voters that we have horns and are amoral, then maybe we'll have a better chance of picking up those voters." Yes, abortion comes up in those meetings. But that's not where the discussion ends.

As for Tim Kaine, I would argue that far from hiding the fact that he was opposed to the death penalty, he was very upfront about it. And that contributed to the perception that his Catholicism was authentic, which I think helped him with voters. He addressed the issue head-on in at least one major debate, and in campaign ads, as well. That could have been a risky decision, given that the vast majority of Virginia voters support the death penalty. But in the same way that people say they admire Bush for knowing what he believes, even when they disagree with him, Kaine actually benefitted from taking an unpopular decision. He wasn't saying, well, I'll say I'm pro-life, because that's popular, but I'd better support the death penalty or I'll get creamed. He applied his life position consistently. And I think he got points for that.

I'll save the challenge posed to Democrats by pro-life candidates for tomorrow, because I have too much to say for the little time I have to finish this post. But I will end by soliciting your thoughts on a question I don't know the answer to. It's long bothered me that for the past thirty years, abortion politics has required Americans to choose sides. You are either pro-choice or pro-life. If a politician supports a parental notification law, he or she is labeled pro-life by abortion rights supporters. But if the political leader also opposes a "partial-birth abortion" ban, the anti-abortion side will tag him or her as unacceptably pro-choice. There is no word for a middle-ground position in American politics.

I want a term for that middle position. Maybe that's just stupid and on the level of semantics and doesn't matter. But I suspect that most people on both sides would drop out and fall somewhere in the middle. There's a difference between a pro-life politician who wants to criminalize abortion and a pro-life politician who can't bring herself to vote against a bill to limit abortion. We should have a way of distinguishing between the two, and voters should know, as well. As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on all of this and more.

All the Best,
Amy

Posted by Amy Sullivan at 11:05 AM | Link | del.icio.us | Digg | Comments (2)