c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The Rev. Jay Geisler invited Call to Renewal to his church because he’s weary of Christians squabbling over ideology, and desperate to address the poverty and hopelessness in the neighborhoods around St. Stephen Episcopal Church in McKeesport, Pa.

Call to Renewal is one of several faith-related groups touring the country this election year to draw Americans together from both sides of the ideological divide for polite conversation, social cooperation or both.

Geisler, who pastors in a once-prosperous steel town that has rusted alongside its shuttered mills, appreciates Democratic attention to health care and other safety net issues. But he also finds merit in Republican efforts to encourage marriage and discourage abortion. He hasn’t decided which presidential candidate to vote for. And he rejects both election year stereotypes of “godless liberals out to destroy the family” and “quasi-fascists dropping bombs for Jesus.”

“Theologically, I’m in that broad, silent majority that at some point is being forced to speak up,” he said. “This polarization is tearing churches apart, tearing our country apart. Each side wants winner-take-all. We don’t seem to want to see win-win anymore.”

Three faith-based groups have been traveling the country to act as peacemakers of sorts in the ongoing culture wars. Each group has its niche, but they all share a common, overarching goal of increasing civility:

_ Call to Renewal’s “Rolling to Overcome Poverty” bus tour holds rallies and prayer meetings to encourage Christians with clashing worldviews to work together to help the poor.

_ “Red God, Blue God” forums bring a religious liberal and a religious conservative together for civil debate about the role of faith in politics and public policy.

_ And the Gamaliel Foundation trains local religious activists to identify and address pressing community issues that might otherwise be neglected by both sides of the aisle.

The Rev. Jim Wallis, an evangelical, founded Call to Renewal in 1995. It includes Catholics, mainline Protestants, conservative evangelicals, leaders of historically black churches and peace churches. One of its greatest achievements may have been getting representatives of the conservative National Association of Evangelicals and the liberal National Council of Churches to sit at the same table.

“I often joke that it’s like working with the Crips and the Bloods. I like to have a Mennonite sit between them to make sure nothing happens,” Wallis said.

But they have worked together and lobbied Washington together on behalf of various social welfare policies.

“The cry of the poor rings from cover to cover in the Bible. It’s clear that God hears the cry of the poor and wants us to as well,” Wallis said.

The group has backed some Republican initiatives, such as President Bush’s proposal to expand funding to faith-based social services. At other times it has taken the Democrats’ side, backing expansion of the child tax credit to the poorest working families. It promotes a petition headlined “God is not a Republican or a Democrat.”

“The Democrats have a long way to go before they will be seen as champions of the poor,” Wallis said. “And we are challenging the Republicans to make good on the promise of compassionate conservatism. That was strong language, but it hasn’t produced many results this first four years. There are things Republicans can and should do on the issue of poverty.”

Wallis traces religious polarization over the candidates to what he sees as inflexible Democratic Party support for abortion rights. When he was invited to address the Democratic platform-writing committee about economic and foreign policy issues, he also challenged them privately to appeal to Democrats who oppose abortion.

“I think some smart Democrat someday will figure out how to bring pro-choice and pro-life people together by actually targeting a reduction in the abortion rate,” Wallis said. “I think there’s a middle ground, but the extremes on both sides want to use it as a litmus test.”

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Finding that middle ground is one task of the “Red God, Blue God” forums, which have been touring through several presidential swing states in advance of the election.

The forum takes its name from colored maps in the 2000 presidential election, and from polling data showing that white churchgoing Christians are one of Bush’s most reliable constituencies. The Red God, Blue God Forum,was founded by Democrats to overcome the poll-driven perception that religious people vote Republican.

But the panels, which include a religious liberal, a religious conservative and someone adept at interpreting polling data on faith and politics, aim to puncture stereotypes on all sides.

The Rev. Shaun Casey, assistant professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, co-founded the forum with former Clinton press secretary and Kerry adviser Mike McCurry, an active United Methodist. They wanted to show journalists that people of strong faith would vote for John Kerry. But Casey, who belongs to the theologically conservative Churches of Christ, also wanted to counter media stereotypes of evangelicals as uneducated and unconcerned about social welfare issues.

Representation on “Red God, Blue God” panels tilts left, but always include a respected conservative, such as Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, or Michael Cromartie, vice president and director of the Evangelicals and Civil Life project of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

“The reality is that evangelicalism is irreducibly plural and complex in America. To say that (Jerry) Falwell and (Pat) Robertson speak for all evangelicals is just laughable,” Casey said.

Casey argues that the so-called “God gap” between those who vote for Republican presidents and those who vote for Democrats is a myth, because the overwhelming majority of voters for Al Gore in 2000 professed a religious faith. Most black Christians, for instance, are doctrinally indistinguishable from white evangelicals but vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

“I think the real God gap between the two parties is institutional in the sense that in the last 30 years the Democratic Party has walked away from explicit (religious) constituencies, and the Republicans have been building relationships,” he said.

Building relationships between people of both parties in order to address social issues is a goal of the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation. Its “Rolling Thunder” tour is going cross-country to train local people to identify community problems and work to address them.

“Our mission is to bridge the gaps where people differ,” said Evans Moore Jr., executive director of the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network, a Gamaliel partner. “We all realize that social injustice is not something our faith embraces.”

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