{"id":1553,"date":"2004-09-20T22:45:08","date_gmt":"2004-09-21T02:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/09\/20\/democrats-and-the-devil\/"},"modified":"2004-09-20T22:45:08","modified_gmt":"2004-09-21T02:45:08","slug":"democrats-and-the-devil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/09\/20\/democrats-and-the-devil\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats and the Devil"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Over the weekend, the Boston Globe ran an article, written by BC professor Alan Wolfe, on the religion gap in American politics right now<\/a>.  <\/p>\n

But God’s not dead as a partisan player in American politics.  At least not in Minnesota<\/a>. 
\nOr in many other fora.  I was brought up in a church where I was
\ntold that you can’t be a Christian and be a Democrat, because all the
\nthings that the Democratic party believe are contrary to the
\nBible.  Well, that mindset may seem simplistic, but much of the
\nRepublican campaigning this year has attempted to appeal to religious
\nbelievers and the fearful on just such a basis.  Dick Cheney’s
\ncomment that voting for Kerry will increase the terror attacks (or at
\nleast their chances) on the country is simply par for this
\ncourse.  But many of the believers in the church to which I belong
\nnow almost seem to believe the opposite, that you can’t be a Republican
\nand be a Christian.<\/p>\n

I’m willing to bet that God wouldn’t be more or less happy or upset
\nwith either party, but with both in equal measure.  Just a hunch.<\/p>\n

As to Wolfe’s article, I think that one of the strengths of it is that
\nit points out the religious war being played out in the Republican
\nparty, even if he didn’t discuss that at length.  If the
\nsocio-religious conservatives continue to hold sway in the party, I
\nthink that the fragmentation of the party is a likely outcome; not in
\nthe sense that the party will split up formally but that it will become
\na rickety coalition, much like the Democrats present at the current
\ntime. (All RNC speakers aside, the platform and the nominees are highly
\nconservative, and it’s in those two sites that the signal of power and
\nthe power itself lie.)<\/p>\n

The Democrats are working to acknowledge their religious roots, to show
\n“people of faith” that they are necessary to the party’s and
\nliberalism’s future.  Now sure, the Right dominates religious
\ndiscourse in this country right now, but that has seemed to me more a
\nmatter of tactic and personality than of theological support for either
\nparty’s particular positions.  But the religious believers provide
\nthe party one of the appeals that it probably needs to win in electoral
\npolitics.<\/p>\n

Americans seem much more worried — at least in some political arenas
\n— about the place of morality in their politics.  That is,
\nAmericans want certain moral appeals made by their politicians before
\nthe voters will reward them with office.  (Whether or not that
\naction itself is a moral one is a good and, I think, highly contended
\nmatter.)  Candidates who can convincingly speak a language of
\nethics — even if it is one that the voter may not agree with — will
\nprobably speak more convincingly to voters.  But to be convincing,
\nthe candidate will have to have an actual grounding in some sort of
\nmoral and ethical system.  Religious affiliation and profession
\nprovide a signal, a cue, to the voters that the candidate may have such
\na grounding.  <\/p>\n

Somehow, for Democrats, this hasn’t worked out.  All the
\nsuccessful Democrats of the last 30 years (all two of them) were men
\nsteeped in being Southern Baptists.  But Clinton’s Christianity
\nwas not perceived to have made a difference, and the same has proven
\nthe case with John Kerry, so far.  Kerry, in fact, has suffered
\nsomewhat for being seen not to be in lockstep with every one of the
\nteachings of his church (i.e., he doesn’t share the abortion position
\nwith the bishops, but most of his others line up), while the same has
\nnot proven true with Bush.  Bush has agreed with almost none of
\nthe major social teachings of his church, the United Methodist Church,
\nbut he hasn’t suffered for it.  I imagine it’s because he
\nprofesses the sort of militant 19th-century triumphal Christianity that
\nproves continuingly popular among evangelicals today.<\/p>\n

In the end, however, the Democrats have a difficulty to overcome that
\nthe Republicans do not.  Since 90 percent of American believe in a
\ndeity of some sort, there’s only a few who don’t align with a religion,
\nand I’d wager that most of them are Democrats.  (If you’re an
\natheist who votes Republican, there’s a good bet that — like gay
\nRepublicans — you’ve had to make some sort of peace with the fact that
\nyou are an oddly fitting minority in your choice of political
\nassociates.)  The Democrats have a more diverse religious
\nunderpinning than the Republicans (as I’d also wager that you’ll find a
\nwider range among the stances of religious believers in the Democratic
\nparty), and so their median religious belief is likely more to the
\nmiddle, where the Republicans’ is further right.  As such, they
\ncan make fewer pronouncements from the point of view of faith. 
\nCombined with a more uneasy stance toward authority, this all makes it
\nharder for the Democrats to make convincing an argument that when they
\nargue from faith that they really are doing so.  But some of the
\nmost significant social changes in the history of this country have
\ncome as a result of religion — as well as some of the most significant
\nopposition to those changes.<\/p>\n

But, as I have noted earlier<\/a>,
\nthey are trying in this cycle.  And I think that whether Kerry
\nwins or not, the Democrats can continue to lay a foundation among faith
\ncommunities, reclaiming the idea that the Deity belongs to any of us or
\nall uf us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, the Boston Globe ran an article, written by BC professor Alan Wolfe, on the religion gap in American politics right now.  But God’s not dead as a partisan player in American politics.  At least not in Minnesota.  Or in many other fora.  I was brought up in a church where I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-p3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553","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=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}