Level the praying field

That was the original title of an article Time magazine’s Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy did recently on faith and politics. Online, it’s called “How the Democrats Got Religion.” It’s long and probing enough to explain the shift in the Democratic party toward embracing religious values, or at least claiming to.

Let’s parse it down. Here’s the lead…

A President has to be a preacher of sorts, instructing, consoling, summoning citizens to sacrifice for some common good. But candidates are competitors, which means they seldom manage to talk about faith in a way that doesn’t disturb people, doesn’t divide them, doesn’t nail campaign posters on the gates of heaven.

That sounds cynical, right off the bat. Though Nancy Gibbs is one of the finest writers at Time, and usually more fair and thoughtful than….others. There’s good insight into Hillary Clinton, part of it being this quote:

“Maybe we’re getting back to where people can be who they are,” she says. “If faith is an element of who you legitimately, authentically are, great. But don’t make it up, don’t use it, don’t beat people over the head with it.”

That’s a really good statement….until the end. There are some overused phrases in politics about religion, like ‘I believe religion is important but you shouldn’t wear it on your sleeve’, and ‘Don’t beat people over the head with it.’ Those are worn out cliches that say more about the politican using them than about people of faith.

Then there’s this quote from another prominent Democratic leader:

“Science is a gift of God to all of us,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a debate on increased embryo-research funding, “and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure.”

Now, what’s wrong with that sentence? It is not biblical to take human life.

The Democrats are so fired up, you could call them the new Moral Majority.

That would necessitate defining “moral.” Read on…

This time, however, the emphasis is as much on the majority as on the morality as they try to frame a message in terms of broadly shared values that don’t alarm members of minority religions or secular voters. It has become an article of faith among party leaders that it was sheer strategic stupidity to cede the values debate to Republicans for so long; that most people want to reduce abortion but not criminalize it, protect the earth instead of the auto industry, raise up the least among us; and that a lot of voters care as much about the candidates’ principles as about their policies. “What we’re seeing,” says strategist Mike McCurry, “is a Great Awakening in the Democratic Party.”

They are awakening to the value of a large bloc of voters, that’s for sure. But it’s troubling these days to hear so much from politicians and media about equating all issues of rights and justice, as if feeding the poor and protecting the earth were equivalent to upholding the sanctity of human life. From that human right comes all the others. And, as if pro-life people are not as committed as abortion supporters to other social justice causes. Now they want pro-life people to “cede the values debate” to secular progressives.

And, who is “the least among us” if not the vulnerable human persons in the womb?

Look carefully at the last line of this snip:

Mainline, evangelical and Roman Catholic organizations have united to push for immigration reform. The possibility that there is common ground to be colonized by those willing to look for it offers a tantalizing prospect of alliances to come, but only if Democrats can overcome concerns within their party. “One-third gets it,” says a Democratic values pioneer, talking about the rank and file. “A second third understands that this can help us win. And another third is positively terrified.”

But that’s still two-thirds of the Democratic party that doesn’t actually “get it.” The good news is that he thinks a third does.

“I think that this emerging change in mind-set, at least within significant segments of the Democratic Party, could pay tremendous dividends if the Republicans are foolish enough to nominate Rudy Giuliani,” says Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s political guru. While a Mitt Romney nomination might suppress evangelical turnout, he says, as long as there is a basic difference over abortion, socially conservative voters will pick the pro-life candidate. “But if you take the abortion issue off the table,” Land predicts, “then a lot of these other issues get oxygen they aren’t getting now, such as the environment and social justice and racial reconciliation, all of which Evangelicals care about.”

“As long as there is a basic difference over abortion”? This is becoming a primary talking point, beaten like a drum, to fully mainstream the idea that all good humanitarian causes are of equal value. You can’t take the centerpiece off the table. Protection of women and their unborn children is the platform of one party, but abortion is the platform of the other. Everything else stands – or falls - on that.

The Democratic Party is rekindling its relationship with Catholics as well. For years, candidates dodged Catholics out of fear that abortion would dominate the discussion. Now Democratic leaders are pursuing alliances with the Roman Catholic Church on issues ranging from immigration to the minimum wage to Iraq. Catholic voters, Democrats realize, are the loosest swing vote in the spiritual cosmos, especially as the church has become more outspoken in its opposition to the war in Iraq.

That Democratic leaders are pursuing alliances with the Roman Catholic Church is good. That they see political gain from it is shameless. And that this article calls Catholic voters “the loosest swing vote in the spiritual cosmos” is disturbing, or ought to be, as long as abortion is still “on the table.”

One more thing, then you read the rest…

The article credits Sen. Barack Obama for starting the trend toward speaking out “in the language of faith.”

It was Obama who first signaled a shift when he spoke last year at the Sojourners/Call to Renewal gathering and challenged Democrats to make it a little harder for Republicans to paint them as godless hedonists. “If we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice,” he declared.

Exactly, Sen. Obama. Think about that statement. And then you may begin to understand the pro-life universe.

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