{"id":1485,"date":"2004-07-29T15:37:46","date_gmt":"2004-07-29T19:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/07\/29\/more-on-yesterdays-people-of-faith-"},"modified":"2004-07-29T15:37:46","modified_gmt":"2004-07-29T19:37:46","slug":"more-on-yesterdays-people-of-faith-lunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/07\/29\/more-on-yesterdays-people-of-faith-lunch\/","title":{"rendered":"More on yesterday’s People of Faith lunch"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

One of Democratic bigwigs who was at the lunch yesterday, but did not
\nspeak or have a high-profile role, was Mike McCurry, the former Clinton
\npress secretary.  McCurry’s a United Methodist, a Sunday School
\nSuperintendent in his church, and was a delegate to this year’s UM
\nGeneral Conference, which is the denomination’s national
\ngathering.  <\/p>\n

He was one of the most high profile people at the caucus lunch (along,
\nperhaps, with Jean Carnahan, former senator from Missouri), and so I
\nspoke with him for about 15 minutes.  Here’s something of a
\ntranscription of the interview, with my comments to follow.<\/p>\n

Like many of the speakers, McCurry echoed a dismay that the Democratic
\nparty has not embraced the religious communities of America. 
\nPartly, he says, this is because there is something of a discomfort
\namong the party’s secularists, and this discomfort arises for a number
\nof reasons.  For many of the party secular activists, it’s because
\nof the way that the religious right has co-opted the part that religion
\ncan play in the civic life of our country.  For others, it’s
\nbecause they have an experience of life in the American religious
\nright, and they have been burned or hurt pretty hard.<\/p>\n

McCurry noted that when he was in the White House, he and George
\nStephanopoulos were not really “out” (my term, not his) to each other
\nabout their faith and the role it played in their public life. 
\n(Stephanopoulos, while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, studied theology,
\nand his father is a Greek Orthodox priest.)  McCurry said that he
\nspoke about that faith with Stephanopoulos after his book came out, and
\nthey found that they had had some of the same struggles living out
\ntheir faith life as public servants.<\/p>\n

McCurry noted that part of this occurs because the intersection of
\nreligion and politics in America has become fairly nasty in recent
\ntimes.  “There are unfortunately some place in the [Democratic]
\nparty where religion equals red state equals Republican.”<\/p>\n

McCurry thinks that religions can offer a powerful force to help our
\ncivic life. “Our institutions of the political system are badly
\nbroken.  But the Church [and by this he seems to mean the
\n‘universal’ church of all Christians and all religious believers, in
\nsome way. -Ed.] is the place of sanctuary, where we can acknowledge our
\ndifferences but also acknowledge our common belief in God.”<\/p>\n

“If you want to solve conflicts, the Church has a great historical legacy of bringing people together.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Democratic bigwigs who was at the lunch yesterday, but did not speak or have a high-profile role, was Mike McCurry, the former Clinton press secretary.  McCurry’s a United Methodist, a Sunday School Superintendent in his church, and was a delegate to this year’s UM General Conference, which is the denomination’s national gathering.  He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[661],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deeencee"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-nX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}