c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The 2004 presidential campaign will go down in history as one in which Democrats and Republicans battled tooth and nail while God ran unopposed.

Never before has religion played such a central role in American presidential politics, as both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry sought to wrap themselves in the mantle of faith and convince voters that they, not their opponent, could be trusted to lead the country in trying times.

While many lament this mix of the spiritual and the secular, the interplay between the candidates and the reactions of the electorate revealed important truths about the state of faith in America today, and about the future of politics. Among the lessons that will have crucial ramifications:

1) Secularization is dead; God is not.

A famous Time magazine cover in 1966 asked, “Is God Dead?” For years, the answer seemed to be in the affirmative. Supreme Court rulings barred government-sponsored prayer in schools, and a series of books, notably Harvey Cox’s 1965 best seller, “The Secular City,” promoted the thesis that society was outgrowing the need for religion. The rise of the religious right in the late 1970s and 1980s was a reaction against secularization theory, but the phenomenon was confined to the Republican Party.

This year’s race showed that Democrats were determined to contest Republicans on their own turf. Democrats realized the import of these hard facts: In 2000 Bush outpolled Al Gore among frequent worshippers (who were more than 40 percent of the electorate) by more than a 3-to-2 ratio, while self-identified seculars (only 10 percent of the electorate) went just as strongly for Gore.

While Kerry bumbled the faith issue at almost every turn and failed to improve on Gore’s numbers, it wasn’t for lack of trying. As the campaign wore on Kerry increasingly visited pulpits, trotted out parables and Bible verses, and offered personal testimony of his Roman Catholic faith. He defended traditional marriage (while supporting some form of civil unions) and even signaled a willingness to back “faith-based” programs, though under stricter terms than Bush envisions.

The impact of this shift on the wall of separation between church and state will be the subject of debate. But the indisputable reality is that the cultural wall has already been breached. In the messy election post-mortem, Democrats admitted they have to do better on the morals-and-values agenda that voters said _ to the surprise of too many Democrats and pundits _ was their priority. That may push party leaders to turn to the likes of Barack Obama, Illinois’ newly minted senator, who proclaimed in his widely hailed convention keynote speech: “We worship an awesome God in the Blue States.”

That bumper-sticker declaration, however, means different things to different believers. The question is not whether religion will drive politics and policies, but what form it will take.

2) The battle between “faith alone” and “good works” continues.

The rift in America is not so much between secularists and pietists as it is between differing views of how religion should work to alleviate society’s ills: Is religion principally a matter of personal morality leading to social uplift through individual conversion (Bush), or is it about social progress through faith-inspired policy changes (Kerry)?

This is an echo of the old Reformation debate between “sola fide” as the way to salvation and sanctification through good works, and it has been a persistent strain in America’s political as well as religious life. Today that drama is playing out in new ways as Christian conservatives want to use government to enforce rules on personal behavior and belief _ barring homosexuals from marrying, reining in abortion, keeping religious mottos on coins and in the Pledge of Allegiance _ while taking a free-market approach to social justice by, in Bush’s words, “unleashing the armies of compassion.”

Liberal Christians, on the other hand, are trying to revive the lapsed “social gospel” tradition of government progressivism by claiming it is “God’s work” _ Kerry’s phrase _ to eliminate poverty, fight for equality and protect the environment. They take a more libertarian view on personal morality, however, believing that an individual’s sexual behavior is a matter of conscience with little impact on the commonweal.

Bush’s vision clearly won last Tuesday, but this year a “religious left” began to coalesce, foreshadowing a long-term struggle to tip the balance.

3) The divisions are within denominations, not among them.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, and now, so does religion.

The old trench wars of religion that once scarred the religious landscape have given way to the primacy of the culture war. Today it is more important for religious conservatives that their allies be fellow social conservatives, and it is of little import whether they are Protestant or Catholic or Jewish. Pluralism reigns, for both the left and the right, while theology takes a back seat.

Thus the campaign saw Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians joining forces on some issues while mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics were forging alliances on others. Likewise, Bush, a nominal Methodist, was castigated for his policies by leaders of his denomination, while Kerry faced his harshest attacks from conservatives in his own Catholic Church _ most of them lay people rather than clerics. The polarization that afflicts the country’s political discourse is just as virulent within religious communities, and schism, rather than unity, rules.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

4) There is no Catholic vote.

It’s time to bury the myth of the “Catholic voter.” If Catholics used to be a solidly Democratic bloc, they have shown themselves of late to be more independent-minded than anything, willing to go with either party. In 2000, Al Gore barely edged Bush among all Catholics, and during this campaign the so-called Catholic vote swung wildly, from a 47 percent to 38 percent Bush advantage among white Catholics in September’s survey by the Pew Research Center to a 50-43 Kerry lead a month later to an eventual 52-47 margin for Bush on Election Day. And this was in a campaign that had a Catholic candidate at the top of the ticket for the first time in 44 years.

Catholics are more assimilated than ever, which means they are more like other Americans than ever, which means they are more divided than ever. Assimilation also means the laity is more independent of church authorities. This goes for right as well as left. Indeed, many conservative Catholics were so upset with the election guide the hierarchy printed _ they felt it underplayed pro-life issues, mainly abortion _ that they tried to distribute their own voter guides. Moreover, despite the attention given to a few conservative prelates whose statements read like Bush campaign endorsements, some three-quarters of U.S. Catholics voiced disapproval of any heavy-handed tactics, especially the threats to withhold communion from Kerry.

This dynamic is not likely to change anytime soon. Catholics have long complained of being politically homeless, and polls show they are less likely than any other religious group to say that their religion informs their political decisions. Yes, Catholics are a swing vote. But the issues that sway them tend to be the same ones that sway everyone else.

5) Evangelicals are the new Catholics.

Evangelicals are what Catholics used to be _ large (about one-quarter of the electorate), with preferences that are clearly prioritized: rigorous personal morality and strong national security. While there are fault lines within evangelicalism, the group is dominated by white, suburban, church-going social conservatives who share the same agenda.

In fact, with polls showing their support for Bush at close to 80 percent, white evangelicals are far more unified than any other religious group, with the exception of Jews and African-American Christians, who trend just as strongly to Democrats.

What’s more, while evangelicals feel they are part of the mainstream, research shows that nearly eight in 10 of them feel ill-treated in America _ believing they have to fight to make their voices heard in a hostile culture. The advantage in combining a sense of victimhood with demographic dominance is that this cohort can change the political dynamic by lifting a metaphorical finger, and today more than ever they are motivated to do so.

In politics, as well as culture, evangelicals are the Earth around which the sun revolves, and Democrats and Republicans will be contending with that reality for years to come.

(David Gibson is the author of “The Coming Catholic Church.” He wrote this article for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

MO/RB/JM END GIBSON