OK, hurricanes are unpredictable things, but as you can see, the National Hurricane Center is predicting that Gustav will be hitting New Orleans, oh, just about the time the gavel comes down to open the Republican National Convention up there at the other end of the Mississippi. If I believed in that sort of thing, I'd say it was one of those divine punishments that is being visited upon the GOP by an angry God set on reminding voters what that Party's still sitting Administration accomplished three years ago to the day.

But believing as I do in a more merciful Deity, I'd prefer to believe that a Jonah, say maybe Streetprophets' pastordan, is being dispatched posthaste to St. Paul, to call upon the assembling delegates and hangers-on to repent forthwith. And perhaps they will don sackcloth, from the most magnificent senatorial Pooh-Bah down to the least intern amongst them; and they shall refrain from the shrimps and the filets mignon and every other bespoke foodstuff; and the Anointed McCain will sit in ashes; and the Assemblage will turn from its evil ways. Whereupon God will stop Gustav in his tracks, and cause him to peter out, thereby of course angering the Jonah. But the Lord shall teach the prophet a lesson, saying, "And should not I spare the GOP, that Grand Old Party, wherein are more than threescore million persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left; and also many lobbyists?"

Posted by Mark Silk at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As Joe Biden prepares for his self-introduction as Barack Obama's ticket-mate, it's a good time to think a little about what he brings to the table in re: the abortion issue, and how this may matter with respect to his Catholic co-religionists. The first thing to say is that, by Democratic Party standards, Biden is center-right on abortion. (Here's an outline.) His NARAL rating is only 36 percent, the result of his opposition to public funding for abortions and his support of the ban on the "partial-birth" abortion procedure. He accepts as part of his faith his church's teaching that life begins at conception, but strongly supports Roe v. Wade on the grounds that he doesn't want to impose his religious views on those who do not share them. That is to say, he declines to go along with the Catholic Church's position that, inasmuch as its position on abortion is derived from Natural Law rather than Revelation, it may be imposed by law on non-Catholics.

Naturally, this position is beyond the pale for Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, who sua sponte informed the AP by email that Biden ought not present himself for Holy Communion. But among rank-and-file Catholics, it's a very common position. According to the American National Election Studies, 1980-2000, 42 percent of white Catholics are either completely pro-choice or believe that abortion should be permitted for reasons of rape, incest, or danger to the woman's life, or if the need for it has been clearly established. The plurality position (38 percent) is to permit abortion only in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the woman's life. Only 19 percent follow their church's teaching that abortion should never be permitted. Latino Catholics are more pro-life than whites, but not by much.

So what does this mean? In a recent study of the political behavior of white Catholics--that crucial swing voting bloc--University of Cincinnati political scientist Stephen Mockabee performs the magic of multivariate factor analysis (in the 2007 volume, From Pews to Polling Places, edited by J. Matthew Wilson) and discovers that, in fact, abortion had no statistically significant effect on Catholic presidential vote choice in 2004. That's right, none. How could this be? Well, one way to help understand it is that while older white Catholics are much more pro-life than younger ones, they are also far more loyal Democratic voters. "Post Vatican II" Catholics--those born after 1960--trend Republican but only seven percent share their Church's position on abortion. When it came to issues, what pushed white Catholics toward George Bush was their support for capital punishment and their opposition to gay marriage, not John Kerry's pro-choice position.

After PA Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.'s brief agree-to-disagree mention of his and Barack Obama's differences over abortion last night, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue thundered, "CASEY BLOWS IT BIG TIME." But the sound and fury emanating from him and Chaput really, when it comes to the Catholic vote for president, signify nothing.

Posted by Mark Silk at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pew's got its new religion-and-politics survey up, and its lede is the not-so-new news that Americans are less enthusiastic about mixing religion and politics than they were a couple of years ago. Gallup had a bead on this story two years ago. As John Green and I put it in a story in Religion in the News last year:

Throughout President Bush’s first term, annual Gallup surveys found that more Americans believed organized religion should have greater influence in the nation than believed it should have less. For the past three years, however, it’s been the other way around.

Nonetheless, Pew finds that evangelicals are showing no sign of swinging to Obama. When it comes to presidential preferences, the main difference is that they are far less enthusiastic about John McCain this year than they were about George Bush four years ago. I remain persuaded that it is important to keep an eye on possible regional variations in the evangelical vote this year. My hypothesis is that on the West Coast and (most importantly) in the Midwest, a significant fraction of evangelicals are attracted to Obama. The most recent evidence of this comes from the latest Humphrey poll, which shows evangelicals in Minnesota favoring McCain by only 57-32 percent. If Obama ends up getting upwards of 30 percent of the evangelical vote in Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, he's in good shape.

Now, back to Frenchman's Bay.

Posted by Mark Silk at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)