NEWS STORY: Panel Looks at the Intersection of Religion and Politics

c. 2004 Religion News Service NEW YORK _ Only a few blocks from the Republican Convention in Manhattan, journalists gathered for the second installment of “Red God, Blue God,” a symposium aimed at educating journalists on how to cover the relationship between religion and politics. A panel of three experts on religion and politics, moderated […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

NEW YORK _ Only a few blocks from the Republican Convention in Manhattan, journalists gathered for the second installment of “Red God, Blue God,” a symposium aimed at educating journalists on how to cover the relationship between religion and politics.

A panel of three experts on religion and politics, moderated by former Clinton press secretary Michael McCurry, said that journalists need to do a better job of informing the public on the complex factors that cause religious groups to switch allegiance from party to party over time.


The panel consisted of Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; John Podesta, former White House chief of staff; and Shaun Casey, assistant professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.

As the election begins its stretch run, an inordinate amount of ink and airtime has been devoted to how particular denominations will vote, how faith influences the decisions of the two presidential candidates and whether political parties and churches have developed a too cozy relationship.

The panel reacted to the recently released results of a survey by the Pew Research Center that said that more Americans see the Republican Party (52 percent) than the Democratic Party (40 percent) as “friendly toward religion.”

“As the research outside it (the Pew poll) has shown, over the past decade, a person who intensely dislikes conservative religious believers has found a partisan home in the Democratic party,” Cromartie said.

Cromartie said religious conservatives have found Republicans to be more receptive to their beliefs and that because of its rejection of religious conservatives, the Democratic Party is not a “big tent” party.

Podesta disagreed, saying that part of the reason that the Democratic Party appears to be less aligned with religious groups is that religious progressives, who were instrumental in the fight for civil rights and Vietnam War era protests have disappeared from the public forum.

Casey said it was imprudent to predict the voting behavior or future political allegiance of evangelicals. He said there’s evidence that evangelicals, who have the same concerns as the rest of country (with the exception of their positions on gay marriage and abortion), could eventually come back to the Democratic party.


Casey said that there exists what he calls an “institutional God gap.” Casey said religious conservatives have done a much better job of creating colleges, think tanks and media outlets than their more left-leaning counterparts.

“They have not been able to set a form of discourse or public agenda to the extent that the right has,” Casey said.

The panel agreed that the main reason that President Bush seems much more at ease than does Sen. John Kerry with talking about his faith is rooted in the differences between their denominations.

Cromartie said that as a born-again Christian, Bush comes from a “therapeutic tradition” that encourages open expressions of faith. By contrast, Kerry, a Catholic, is less inclined to put his faith front and center.

The Pew survey also found that only 15 percent of Americans think Bush relies too much on his religious beliefs in making policy decisions.

DEA/JL END KING

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