'God-o-Meter' Democrats

It wasn't easy being the token evangelical in the Howard Dean office during the 2004 White House race.

Other staffers called Mara Vanderslice the "church lady" and reminded her that the loudest cheers at Dean rallies followed attacks on the Religious Right. But what really stung were her candidate's answers to religious questions.

Round one: Dean confessed that he left the Episcopal Church when his parish blocked the construction of a bike path. Round two: He names the Book of Job as his favorite New Testament book. Round three: Asked about his plans to woo religious believers, Dean said he was waiting until the campaign hit the Deep South.

Ouch. That was business as usual until the "values voters" carried President George W. Bush back into office, said author Dan Gilgoff, who dissected the trials of Vanderslice in "The Jesus Machine," his book on James Dobson and the Christian right. That election shook the Democrats and helped them realize that they needed some candidates who were not afraid of faith.

Meet dyed-in-the-wool United Methodist Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who openly testifies about making his profession of faith at a United Church of Christ altar. God talk is back, for the Democrats, while key Republicans face unique faith challenges.

"Part of it is the candidates in the field this time," said Gilgoff, politics editor at the Beliefnet.com website. "In particular, with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton you have two people who have been very vocal about their faith and don't mind talking about it. For Democrats, you could say this was just the luck of the draw."

Meanwhile, in the Republican pews, Rudy Giuliani has a troubled Catholic past, Mitt Romney is struggling to answer Mormon questions and various GOP kingmakers – sacred and secular – have questions about Fred Thompson, John McCain and the Rev. Mike Huckabee. The Republicans are trying to preach to a powerful, but troubled, choir.

Everyone knows the stakes are high. Voters who reported attending services more than once a week supported Bush over John Kerry by a margin of 64 to 35 percent and, for those attending once a week, the gap was 58 to 41 percent. Americans who never attended services backed Kerry, 62 to 36 percent.

It's hard for outsiders to follow all of this, which is why Gilgoff and editors at Beliefnet.com and Time have created a digital guide for politicos who want to follow this contest to win the hearts of religious voters. The result is the "God-o-Meter" (blog.beliefnet.com/godometer), which, according to its creators, is pronounced "Gah-DOM-meter." If readers click on the head of a Democratic or Republican candidate, the site delivers his or her ranking on a 10-point scale between "secularist" and "theocrat."

"Our definition of 'secularist' is someone who sees no role for religion in public life and policy," said Gilgoff. "The 'theocratic' position is pretty much the opposite of that."

But there's a theological twist here. The "God-o-Meter" applies this "theocrat" label to liberals who want to see their religious convictions shape public policy (think global warning and health care) to the same degree that it does to conservatives (think abortion and the redefinition of marriage). Thus, at mid-week, theocrat Clinton had a seven rating, the same as Giuliani, and Obama's rating had soared to nine. Romney, meanwhile, was edging close to "secularist" territory, with a five rating.

The key is that the "God-o-Meter" tracks 20 criteria drawn from campaign tactics, such as whether a candidate "frames issues in religious or spiritual terms," "delivers a speech ... in an overtly religious setting" or openly "discusses his/her personal faith and how it would influence his/her presidency." A candidate would lose points, for example, by making "a remark offensive to an important religious constituency" or by declining to "discuss his/her personal faith life when asked, e.g. by a debate moderator."

Right now, words and symbolic actions are enough.

"There is going to be a test later, in terms of whether the Democrats are willing to compromise on any of the hot social issues in terms of actual laws and policy positions," said Gilgoff. "But all of that is a long way down the road. Right now, the Democrats simply have to find a way to start talking to the evangelicals and listening to what they have to say. ... What do they have to lose?"

Mike Huckabee still believes

Like any other Bible Belt state, Arkansas contains more than its share of church camps.

Gov. Mike Huckabee thought about that after Hurricane Katrina. The ordained Southern Baptist minister also knew that the summer camping season was over and that thousands of people fleeing New Orleans had to go somewhere.

"I saw on TV people on the bridges of Interstate 10 stranded for days without water, and I thought, this isn't Rwanda. This isn't Indonesia. ... This was the United States of America," said the former governor, who is now part of the throng of Republican presidential candidates. "These were the neighbors just to the south of us in Louisiana. It was beyond my comprehension that we could get TV cameras to those people but we couldn't get a boat or a bottle of water to them."

Thus, he asked religious leaders to open camps all over Arkansas to the evacuees, while urging the public to rally around this blunt public policy: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

This was one case in which critics didn't challenge his link between private faith and public action, said Huckabee, meeting with journalists at a recent talkback session at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. This didn't turn into another nasty clash between God and the government because the need was great and this faith-based effort united citizens instead of dividing them.

Activists on the right will have to do more of that. Of course, Huckabee told the journalists that he has no intention of surrendering on moral issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Nevertheless, religious conservatives need to be less confrontational when it comes to convincing skeptical Americans that faith can be a positive force in the public square.

After all, he said, it's hard to believe that anyone actually thinks that political leaders are supposed to separate their personal beliefs from their public convictions.

"I sometimes marvel when people running for office are asked about faith and their answer is, 'Oh, I don't get into that. I keep that completely separate. My faith is completely immaterial to how I think and how I govern,' " he said. "To me, that is really tantamount to saying that one's faith is so marginal, so insignificant and so inconsequential that it really doesn't impact the way one lives. I would consider it an extraordinarily shallow faith that does not really impact the way we think about other human beings and the way we respond to them."

No one debated that concept after Katrina. Thus, Huckabee listed several other unifying moral issues that he thinks deserve attention on the political right.

While Americans disagree on what to do about health-care reform, the nation could rally around efforts to provide health care for children, he said. Liberals and conservatives also could focus on funding health-care programs that fight the big three activities – smoking, overeating and "under-exercising" – that fuel soaring medical costs.

While Huckabee acknowledged that environmental issues cause heated debates, he believes that it's time for conservatives to become more involved in efforts to promote the "better stewardship of the environment and in development of an energy source that is not foreign based but domestically produced."

And then there is the issue of corporate corruption, with business leaders drawing giant bonuses while wrecking their companies. Surely, conservatives can agree that this is immoral, said Huckabee.

"I don't see how we can call it anything other than a moral issue," he said. "That's not free enterprise. That's theft."

The point is that religious conservatives are will have to broaden their agendas and be willing to work on new issues, said Huckabee. They can do this without compromising on the essentials.

"I really do think that if Christian conservatives, who have ... held the Republican Party's feet to the fire on issues as they relate to traditional conservative social areas, no longer play that role, it not only is going to be the end of relevancy for them, but I also think that it means that the Republican Party will lose a lot of people. They will say, 'Well, you know what, if they're not going to be the party that really cares about these issues, I'll go home to the Democratic Party.' A lot of those folks came from the Democratic Party to begin with."

Democrats trying to see red

Political strategist James Carville said it, candidate Bill Clinton believed it and loyal Democrats have chanted this mantra ever since.

And all the people said: "It's the economy, stupid."

But what if an elite team of Democrats ventured outside the Beltway to talk to rural and red-zone voters in Arkansas, Wisconsin, Colorado and Kentucky and learned that the economic bottom line was no longer the political bottom line?

Focus-group researchers from the Democracy Corp in Washington, D.C., found that voters in Middle America are worried about Iraq and they are mad about rising health costs. That's good for Democrats. Many of them fiercely oppose abortion on demand and gay marriage. That's good news for Republicans. But the researchers also mapped a political fault line that cuts into the soul of Middle America.

"Regardless of voters' attitudes on the role of religion in public life or their position on touchstone issues such as abortion and gay marriage or even their personal religious faith, they all see Republicans as a party with a clear and consistent position on cultural issues and an abiding respect for the importance of faith and traditional social norms," said the researchers, in sobering document released earlier this month.

"Democrats' lack of a consistent stance on cultural issues leaves a vacuum that is clearly being filled by voices on the right. Most referred to Democrats as 'liberal' on issues of morality, but some even go so far as to label them 'immoral,' 'morally bankrupt,' or even 'anti-religious.' "

This kind of verbiage is old hat among GOP conservatives. But it's stunning to see this language in a report produced by a trinity of Democratic campaign strategists like Stanley Greenberg, Robert Shrum and, lo and behold, Carville.

The new bottom line: "It's the values, stupid."

Democrats are getting used to hearing about a "pew gap" between the political parties. This has caused tension between moderates and liberals as Democrats focus on defending abortion rights and working with gay-marriage strategists. Party leaders must have been thinking about the "pew gap" when they rejected Naral Pro-Choice America's blistering media campaign that said U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. – a traditional Roman Catholic – had winked at "violence against other Americans."

Politicos on both sides can quote the numbers and then bicker over what they mean. Everyone knows that 22 percent of the 2004 voters said they yearned for "moral values," with evangelical Protestants surging to George W. Bush. The president won 52 percent of the Catholic vote and nearly 60 percent of the total Protestant vote. Bush won a two-thirds majority among Orthodox Jews. Among Hispanics and African-Americans, the most active churchgoers began drifting to the GOP.

Looking back, Voter News Service found that 14 percent of the voters in 2000 said they attended worship services more than once a week and 14 percent said they never went at all. Among the devout, Bush won by 27 percent and, among those who avoid pews, Democrat Al Gore won by 29 percent.

According to the Democracy Corp report, Democrats are making progress with highly educated, upper-income Americans. But they have lost a key element of the old Democratic coalition – voters in rural areas and blue-collar neighborhoods, especially in Middle America. The researchers were mystified that these voters continue to act "contrary to their own economic self-interest."

Up is down. In is out. Many upper-crust Americans are also voting contrary to their own economic self-interest and backing Democrats, even though this may mean more taxes and business regulations. Why? They support the Democratic Party's stance on social issues such as abortion, gay rights and the role of religion in public life.

These moral issues are steering heartland voters, serving "as a proxy" for other concerns, according to the Democracy Corp report.

"With most voters expressing little understanding of the differences between Democrats and Republicans or the relative merits of their positions on economic policy, health care, retirement security, and other issues, they felt it safe to assume that if a candidate was 'right' on cultural issues – i.e. opposed to abortion, but most importantly opposed to gay marriage and vocal about defending the role of faith and traditional Judeo-Christian values in public life – that candidate would naturally also come closest to their views."

Can Christians vote 'no'?

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre is opposed to abortion and the rise of what Pope John Paul II has called the "culture of death."

But this does not mean that he backed President Bush.

The University of Notre Dame scholar is concerned about health care and fair wages. But this doesn't mean that he marched into a voting booth and picked Sen. John Kerry. During a year in which religion and politics constantly made headlines, MacIntyre published an essay that frayed nerves on the religious left and right.

"When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither," he said, writing for the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. "When that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw ... so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives."

While some argue that good citizens must vote, MacIntyre said that the only vote worth casting in 2004 was "a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush's conservatism and Kerry's liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target."

These are fighting words for many politicos.

Late in the 2004 race, some religious activists spoke out against "single-issue voting," a phrase often used to condemn those who cast votes based on a politician's stance on abortion. Other activists said MacIntyre and other writers who advocated political abstinence were naive and irresponsible for focusing on so many issues.

In one of his "BreakPoint" radio commentaries, evangelical apologist Charles Colson said Christians must vote in order to take part in God's work in this culture. In this case, Colson was specifically rejecting the views of historian Mark Noll of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill.

Colson said that some Christians seem to yearn for a return to the past, when fundamentalists retreated from politics rather than face the temptation to sin through compromise. Is this retreat what Noll and others seek?

"That position is dead wrong and damaging to democracy," said Colson. "It's the utopian notion which assumes divine perfection in fallen humans. His assumption that we can support only candidates who have perfect scores according to our reading of the Bible makes me wonder how he votes at all. And if that9s the standard, all of us should stop voting."

Obviously, Noll disagrees, arguing that it is not wrong to seek consistency on faith-based issues. Here is his short list – race, taxes, trade, health care, religious freedom, the international rule of law and "life issues," such as defense of the unborn.

"Each of these issues has a strong moral dimension. My position on each is related to how I understand the traditional Christian faith that grounds my existence," writes Noll, author of "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind." Yet neither the Democrats nor the Republics have made "a serious effort to consider this particular combination of concerns or even anything remotely resembling it."

MacIntyre agrees and cannot imagine embracing either major party, right now.

"Try to promote the pro-life case ... within the Democratic Party and you will at best go unheard and at worst be shouted down," he said. "Try to advance the case for economic justice ... within the Republican Party and you will be laughed out of court."

The philosopher has, in recent weeks, declined to defend his essay or to state how a Bush win or a Kerry win might affect his political views.

One thing is certain: religious believers will face similar choices again, or worse. It's hard to imagine how the religious left can compromise on abortion or same-sex unions. It's hard to imagine how the religious right will cope with the rise of cultural progressives such as Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I don't feel that I need to elaborate on what I have written at this time," said MacIntyre. "Besides, I plan to write about this subject again at greater length. These issues are not going away because I do not believe that major parties have the right answers. I also don't believe they are asking the right questions."

Whither the Catholic Catholic voters?

Former Boston mayor Raymond Flynn doesn't see a lot of Republicans at the 9 o'clock Sunday Mass at St. Vincent's Catholic Church.

This is a South Boston parish, the kind of place where Irish parishioners cherish photos of old-timers – like Flynn's dockworker dad – marching on feast days with Cardinal Richard Cushing and a young John F. Kennedy. These are hardcore, working-class, union-card Catholics.

"These people have never voted Republican in their lives," said Flynn, who also served as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican in the Clinton years. "But now they feel like homeless Democrats in their own party. They're pro-life and pro-family and pro-marriage and pro-justice and pro-poor and they have no idea who to vote for anymore. They're homeless."

Nevertheless, Flynn said it's too easy to tie this scene to the "pew gap" that has made headlines in this election year. It's true that surveys say the safest way to predict how voters will vote is to chart their worship habits. Voters who worship more than once a week go Republican – 2-1 or more. A Time poll said the "not religious" crowd backs Sen. John Kerry over President Bush, 69 percent to 22 percent.

Some strategists see this as "good Catholics" who back Bush versus "bad Catholics" who back Kerry. They want to divide America's 64 million Catholic voters into two political flocks.

"There's no way you can do that," said Flynn. "I know there are politically conservative Catholics out there and they're Republicans because that's what they believe. I also know there are liberal Catholics and they're still comfortable voting Democrat. But what about all of us who are just Catholic Catholics? ...

"In the media, the fact that we're pro-life makes us conservative Republicans. Right?"

Nevertheless, journalists are not the only insiders who think that way. Leaders of the Democrats for Life organization are reeling over platform language adopted quietly at the recent Democratic National Convention.

The 2000 platform said Democrats stand "behind the right of every woman to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade." However, it also said the "Democratic Party is a party of inclusion. We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue, and we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party."

The 2004 platform replaces this conscience clause with a statement that Democrats "stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine" abortion rights.

Democrats for Life director Kristen Day asked: "So what are they saying, that because we want to protect the rights of the unborn our own party says we're automatically Republicans?