c. 1996 Religion News Service

CHICAGO _ At the beginning of his prime-time speech to the Democratic National Convention, the Rev. Jesse Jackson bowed his head and asked the delegates to pray for former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and others who have died since the party last met four years ago.

It was a remarkable moment for a political party often branded by its opponents as godless, organized secularism bent on driving religion from the public square and undermining the values of the God-fearing citizens.

But from the speaker’s platform of the United Center, where the Democrats concluded their national convention Thursday, to the hallways of surrounding hotels and a pew in a nearby church, the party faithful expressed their concerns in language that sought to define their party as one of faith and inclusiveness.

Religion and spirituality are important to most delegates, said Tom Kitchen, a Wisconsin delegate sporting multiple orange, wedge-shaped pins reading”Cheese Heads for Clinton.””Religion is based on tolerance and not all religions agree,”said Kitchen, who teaches at a Catholic high school.

And while religious-based groups and activists, such as the Christian Coalition, received more attention at the Republican National Convention in San Diego than they have at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, some Democrats said faith-based ethics play an even larger role in their party leadership and policy than in the GOP.”In a lot of ways I see the Democratic party as a more spiritual party; it chooses to embrace a wider section of the populace,”said Andrew Gifford, a second-year law student at the University of Michigan. A Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal from 1992 to 1994, he attended the convention not as a delegate, but as a guest.

Sitting in the bleachers of the convention hall Tuesday (Aug. 27), Gifford said the party supports social programs that can help people who aren’t as fortunate.”The phrase `It takes a village’ is a very spiritual idea,”he said, referring to the African proverb Hillary Rodham Clinton used as the title of her recent book.

Virgin Islands delegate Lurita Boyd agreed, arguing that the African ethic recently popularized by Mrs. Clinton’s book has a lot of meaning for many people.”In the Virgin Islands,”Boyd said,”a village did raise a child. What she’s saying is not foreign to us.” While many delegates and activists such as Gifford and Boyd saw the party reflecting their religious and ethical values, others used their own religious standards to criticize the president regarding the moral issue on which he is most vulnerable in this largely liberal crowd _ welfare reform.

Robert Ellis, a guest from Milwaukee who brought his twin 3 1/2-year-old sons to the convention, said Clinton’s decision to sign controversial welfare legislation ending the nation’s 60-year commitment of federal aid to the poor did not reflect the”do unto others”ethic that brought many into the party.”I think it stinks,”he said of the welfare legislation.”I’d like to see the federal safety net re-established. Poverty’s a countrywide problem.” Liberal religious activists outside the official parameters of the convention also were in Chicago, making a case for their causes and for a more explicit spiritual dimension to the party’s program.”The Democratic Party has focused on economic entitlements and human rights,”said Michael Lerner, author of”The Politics of Meaning”and editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish political magazine.”Those struggles need to be fought.”But, he said, in an economy generating”an ethos of materialism,”Democrats must go beyond economic solutions to”connect to the (spiritual) power of transformation.” On Monday (Aug. 26), Lerner joined Harvard philosopher and theologian Cornel West and Tom Hayden, a 1960s activist and longtime member of the California State Assembly, for a forum on”the politics of meaning.” West told the gathering of convention delegates and visitors that the world is suffering from a combination of material, psychic and spiritual problems.”I believe we’re living in one of the most frightening moments in history,”he said.”So many have not been affirmed enough to feel they can make a difference. (This is) true not just for chocolate cities, but for vanilla suburbs as well.” Others, however, warned that Democrats should not embrace the same kind of religiosity they believe is expressed by conservative religious activists in the Republican party.”Extremist talk and a God-endorsed agenda are not what this country is about,”said the Rev. Albert Pennybacker, president of the Interfaith Alliance, a Washington-based group of religious leaders formed to counter the influence of the religious right on American politics.”The diversity of religion is enriching for our life.” Pennybacker said religious traditions can influence public policy to be sensitive to the needs of the overlooked, the forgotten and the poor.”People look to government to reflect policies that reflect their caring,”he said.

Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, an independent group that supports legal abortion, attended both the Republican and Democratic conventions, and she said she sees a difference in the way religion is played out in the two parties.”I don’t think religious liberals wear religion on their sleeve the same way religious conservatives do,”said Kissling, a self-described Catholic whose organization is not recognized by church officials.

Kissling said she found two Southern Baptists _ former President Jimmy Carter and Clinton _ to be”the two most religiously minded presidents in recent history.”Religion seems to play a central part in their lives. I see a religious sensibility. I see them express public values through a Christian lens,”she said.

As if to underscore her point, Clinton recently called evangelist Tony Campolo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to ask his guidance as he prepared for tonight’s nomination acceptance speech.

Campolo is a leader of the Call to Renewal movement of progressive evangelicals _ mainstream Protestants and Roman Catholics who seek to promote an alternative to Christian political conservatism. At Clinton’s request, he flew to Chicago Thursday to deliver the invocation at the convention’s concluding session.

Campolo, who has long maintained that Christians must stay above partisan politics so they can promote civility and biblical values, said he made an exception after receiving the president’s last-minute request.”When the president asks,”he told a reporter,”you don’t turn (him) down.” END ANDERSON