Andrew Sullivan on Chirac:
<font color=brown>Another article from Andrew Sullivan.......I wonder how it feels to be Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist watching the GOP fight to get every last Christian vote while ignoring them in the process.<font color=black>
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The Party of God
Republicanism Reinvented
America is an exceptional country and one of the ways in which it has always been exceptional is in the role of religion. Every astute observer has noticed this and it's still true - far higher rates of church attendance than in other developed countries, constant religious references in public life, an enormous network of religious charities that do amazing work, and a perpetual churning of spiritual frenzy. If you are a person of faith, as I am, it's highly impressive. But it's also, of course, fraught with danger and occasional excess. American religion justified the enslavement of African-Americans and their emancipation; it fueled the Great Awakening of the nineteenth century, the anti-evolution Scopes trial in the early part of this century, and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It has propelled activists of right and left, of reaction and revolution.
What's interesting about the current moment in American history is therefore not that it's particularly religious. It is that religion has become such a partisan affair. The current upsurge in Protestant fundamentalism and, to a much lesser degree, Catholic orthodoxy, is finding its expression almost exclusively in the Republican party. Not so long ago, observant Christians could be found all across the political arena: the Democrats were the natural home for Catholics of all stripes (as well as a hefty proportion of conservative Southerners); the Republicans drew strength from mainstream Protestant denominations. No one dreamed of one party alone representing religious devotion and the other party becoming the home for secularists and more easy-going faith-seekers.
But that is what is now happening. It's part accident - a function of the Republican party reaching out to disaffected white Southerners at the same time as a religious revival. But it's also part design. The Republicans are now consciously organizing their re-election campaign on a church-by-church basis, targeting groups according to their religiosity and church-going habits, while the Democrats are receiving more and more voters alienated by the piety and alleged intolerance of the new religious right. You saw a dry run of this divide during the fight over the "Passion of the Christ," Mel Gibson's medieval movie treatment of the last day of Christ. The new Republican alliance - conservative Catholics and born-again Protestants - swooned over the movie. Jews, moderate believers, atheists and secularists were appalled.
The polls tell you the story. Should a president be guided by religious faith in making political decisions? A Time poll last week found that 70 percent of Republicans said yes, while 63 percent of Democrats said no. 60 percent of Republicans attend church once a week; only 35 percent of Democrats do. Do Bush's religious views make him too close-minded? A full 65 percent of Democrats said yes, compared to only 5 percent of Republicans. Among white evangelicals (around 17 percent of the total vote, according to a recent analysis by Democratic pollster, Stan Greenberg), Bush is ahead of Kerry by a staggering 50 points. Among people who identify as "secular" (around 15 percent of the total vote), Kerry has a lead of around 40 percent. Devout Catholics are far more likely to vote Republican than nominal or less committed Catholics - which is why they have become a critical group for Bush to target.
And so you have an uncomfortably sectarian cast to this election. There is strong Republican pressure on the Catholic bishops meeting last week to criticize John Kerry for his permissive stand on abortion. The Catholic bishops in Massachusetts have sent letters to all parishioners urging them not to vote for state legislators who support marriage rights for gay couples. Various Catholic bishops have said they will not give communion to politicians who support the right to an abortion - forcing the governor of New Jersey, for one, to withdraw from the Communion rail. Some bishops have even said that communion should not be given to lay Catholics who vote for such politicians - ruling out a whole swathe of the Democratic party from the Catholic church.
Last week, president Bush addressed by satellite the annual convention of the Southern Baptists, the same week they pulled out of the international Baptist organization because they feared it was becoming too liberal. They returned the favor by promising to rally support for the president's proposed Constitutional amendment to deny gay couples any legal protections for their relationships. The Texas Republican party recently passed a platform making it a felony for anyone to perform a same-sex marriage in the state and were addressed by a pastor who said, "Give us Christians in America who are more wholehearted, more committed and more militant for you and your kingdom than any fanatical Islamic terrorists are for death and destruction." Virginia recently passed a law invalidating even private contracts between two people of the same-sex - an attempt to strip gay couples of even the most basic protections for their relationships. And the National Catholic Reporter informed its readers last week that George Bush, in his recent meeting with the Pope, had complained that some American Catholic bishops were "not with me" on social issues. By that he was understood to mean that they had not sufficiently condemned Kerry for being a bad Catholic for his support of legal abortion.
The sides are hardening. Last week, Bill Clinton remarked that "What separates us is that we haven't tried to have our politics driven by religion." In a recent interview with a variety of religious right journalists, president Bush struck a very different note: "A person's faith helps you keep vision. As a matter of fact, helps clear your vision‹is a vision. It is one of the prayers I ask is that God's light shines through me as best as possible, no matter how opaque the window." (My apologies for the president's grammar.) In the recent Bob Woodward book, Bush famously denied that his own father was a source of political advice. What mattered was the advice of his "Heavenly father." Bush knows not to push this too far: "The best way for faith to operate in somebody is, as I said, to let the light shine as opposed to trying to defend or alter or get my job mixed up with a preacher's job. And the only way you can do that is just be yourself, without crossing any lines of politics and religion. Separation of church and state [is] important in America. And by that I mean the people of faith should participate in the state, and there's a difference." That difference may not be so apparent in the White House itself. The former speech-writer, David Frum, observed that one of the first things he was asked when he got his job was whether he was going to Bible study. He's Jewish.
Will religion determine this election? I hope not. As an admirer of the extraordinary energy, diversity and social commitment of American faith, I'd hate to see it become used in a partisan mud-fight. But Karl Rove has other ideas. He knows how powerful religious sentiment can be as a political tool - and recently gave the Commencement address at Jerry Falwell's university. Both he and Bush have delegated social policy entirely to the religious right: trying to divert federal funds to religious charities, opposing all legal abortion, most stem cell research, and any gay rights (Bush is so hostile he refuses even to say the words 'gay", "lesbian" or homosexual"). Kerry knows that his own Catholic past - he was once an altar boy and got an annulment from his first wife, rather than a divorce - is an asset to be used defensively. He also must know that his abortion position - enthusiastically supporting even the horrific practice of partial birth abortion - is morally hard to square with minimal respect for human life. But he is also ambivalent about being targeted by the bishops. It could help him with liberal Catholics and secularists but hurt him among older, more orthodox Catholic voters. Either way, I hope he gets the courage to deplore the frequency of abortion in America and never has to face the dilemma of being turned away at the Communion rail. The partisan fusion of politics with religion in this campaign is poisoning an already toxic cultural atmosphere. God help us if it makes its way onto the altar itself. |
