Recently in Democrats Category

The headline on the latest Gallup poll says that Democrats are less white and more liberal than they were three years ago. Religiously, they have trended almost exactly as the country has: same proportion of non-Catholic Christians; fewer Catholics and other faiths; more Nones. In the country as a whole, the only religious segment of the population that's growing is the Nones--by 25 percent (from 12 percent to 15 percent). Altogether, this would seem to bode well for the Democratic future.

The two Dans are still mixing it up over religion and the Dems, God & Country Dan here and and here, and Pastordan here, the latter enlisting enough in the way of comments to suggest that the discussion has generated more than a modicum of interest, at least at the corner of Street and Prophet. I don't have anything much worth adding, so I'm happy to let the two duke it out to their hearts' content.

Except this: The election's over, the Dems are in power, and the issue at hand is how the Obama White House decides to deal the religion deck. Rick Warren was the first card played, and it suggests that the incoming president sees white evangelicals as the force to be reckoned with, enlisted if possible, or if not defanged. Gilgoff believes that Obama's actually managed the last of these; while I think that's highly unlikely, the effort's noteworthy.

But the real question is: What happens next? My guess is that the White House will undertake a process of religious coalition building, on an issue-by-issue basis: AIDS, Darfur, abortion reduction, faith-based social service provision, poverty, immigration, climate change, health care. Denominational leaders will be players as well as representatives from a wide range of church and para-church groups. The point will be to engage the religious in those areas where their agendas and the administration's coincide. Will some feel that that they're being co-opted? Sure, and with reason, but the invitation to participate will be hard to resist. Who will manage the process? Hey, reporters!

Update: And it does indeed look like the White House is moving in that direction. Thanks for the reporting, Dan!

Dan Gilgoff, late of Beliefnet's God-o-Meter and now covering religion for U.S. News where he blogs as God & Country, has decided to crash our little three-way on religion and the Democratic Party. In a word, he objects to Pastordan's denigration of Mike McCurry's account of the Democratic Awakening. I'll leave it to the good pastor to riposte as only he can. G&C Dan makes the case that Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Catholics United, Faith in Public Life, the Eleison Group, and the Matthew 25 Network are something new under the Democratic sun, and deserve credit for turning out troops on election day and lobbying their party on behalf of the poor and "reducing the demand for abortion."

This returns our discussion to what we've been calling the Religious Industrial Complex (RIC). It's an amusing name, well calculated to get under the skin of its members, but not really a very accurate one. There's nothing industrial about it, nor is it much of a complex. What it really amounts to is an aspiring Democratic Religious Establishment, or DRE. As such it represents a counter to the religious right, which has alway been so allied with the GOP that it deserves to be called the Republican Religious Establishment (RRE). From its emergence on the national stage in 1980, the RRE has been about the business of making social conservatives--many of them, in the early years, nominal Democrats--into good Republicans, even as it sought to make the GOP the vehicle for a social conservative agenda. The DRE, for its part, has sought to persuade religious moderates (or moderate conservatives) to consider the Democratic Party a worthy vehicle for their values, and to get the party to take those values seriously, even if it cannot fully embrace all of them.

But while the RRE has had a pretty consistent agenda, which it has never been shy about enunciating, the DRE has a tendency to elide the tough issues. Sure, it's against poverty and genocide and unjust wars. But where does it stand on abortion rights, on gay marriage, on hiring rules for publicly funded faith-based social services? In the name of "common ground," it doesn't like to say. That's what drives mainline Protestant lefties like Pastordan nuts, and leads them to accuse the DRE of selling its prophetic soul for a mess of priestly pottage. With the Democrats now about to take charge in Washington, it will be more than a little interesting to see how the DRE comports itself, and what its place at the table of power will be.

My oh-so-good (if sometimes intemperate) twin Pastordan can't seem to stop fretting about Mike McCurry's (and my, and now Adventus') readiness to acknowledge something like the standard narrative of a Democratic party gone increasing secular if not a- or anti-religious over the past generation. Let me just add a couple of points to a discussion that may by now be trying readers' souls.

So OK, it is a mistake to buy into the journalistic shorthand that Democrats/progressives abandoned public religion in the post-Vietnam era. The sanctuary movement of the 1980s, the ongoing community organizing of the Industrial Areas Foundation (where Obama got his start), were nothing if not faith-based. And there have been prominent politicians ready, willing, and able to wear their faith on their sleeves. But it is sheer nonsense to pretend that the public religious witness on the left has been equivalent to that on the right since 1980, and that the only reason it isn't widely known is the success of the PR machinations of the religious right.

In the 1970s, religious right leaders, having denounced black churches for involving themselves in politics during the civil rights era (abandoning what was called "the spirituality of the church"), decided to go and do likewise. And they really did create a grassroots movement, via a host of national and state and local organizations. Though marquee groups like the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition have come and gone, Christian conservatives have continued to do their thing in American public life, very often but not always tied closely to the Republican Party apparatus. And, I would argue, their actions have tended to make the case against faith-based politics for many progressives. The religious-secular divide within the Democratic Party today is not illusory, and based in part on our experience of a generation of religiosified national politics.

For their part, religious progressives have not, until the past few years, faced up to the need to organize at the grassroots level. I remember giving a talk to a bunch of liberal religious warhorses during the 2004 campaign cycle. They believed that in order to counter the lamentable lack of media attention to themselves, the thing to do was to issue press releases and hold press conferences. They were not particularly happy to hear from me that what they needed was boots on the ground. The prevailing narrative has its shortcomings, but at the end of the day, what it signals is the correct recognition that progressive religious folks are out and about, doing their things in their own ways (hi RIC!) to counter a generation of active religious politics from the other side.

So yes, bro, you and your Dad have kept the faith all these years. But numbers are numbers and movements are movements, and for better or (sometimes) for worse, the Democrats have found religion in a measurable way. What they do with it now is the real question.

Mike McCurry, one of the most decent guys in American politics, offers his take on the Democratic religious awakening. Take note Dan, Fred, Sarah et al.

Update: My response to Pastordan's screed.

I'm with McEnroe on Connecticut's junior senator. During the campaign, the man was a shonda for the goyim. But I have an idea. Come January, Congress and the Obama administration should get rid of the monstrosity that is the Department of Homeland Security. Let its parts revert to what they were, the whole having turned out to be less than their sum. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security will thereby be rendered null and void, and with it its chairman.

Steve Waldman thinks Obama messed up by not making sure that his pro-life religious supporters got more out of the platform committee abortion plank. I'm not so sure. Like it or not, Obama is firmly pro-choice. His opponents are pulling out all the stops to demonstrate that he is not just your run-of-the-mill pro-choice politician, but a true believer--and, indeed, Obama's got some tough explaining to do to prove otherwise. So rather than engage in a lot of hypocritical talk about the tragedy of abortion, he might be better advised to say:

Look, I believe in choice, real choice, for all women. So abortions should be freely available for those who feel compelled to have them, but also and no less important, there must be material support for those who want to carry their pregnancies to term. And I believe that if all of us, pro-choice and pro-life, can join together to ensure that support, we will have done more to reduce the number of abortions in this country than the Republicans have done with their lip service to constitutional amendments and their legislation to require parental consent and to ban abortion procedures. For too long, the conflict over abortion has prevented us from moving forward in a bipartisan way on a host of critical issues. What I'm proposing is a new way forward, which maintains the right to abortion while reducing its incidence. And I firmly believe that this is what most Americans want to be the case.

It is worth bearing in mind, as pastordan over at Streetprophets rants here and here, that there are lots of religious folks who are, in fact, pro-choice. In a word, there's a pro-life moral high ground and a pro-choice moral high ground. There's not a pandering-to-the-other-side moral high ground. In a non-hypocritical way, the Democrats' new platform language gives pro-life folks an opportunity to work for abortion reduction in the ineluctably pro-choice context that is the Democratic Party. For those for whom that's not good enough, so be it.

The conference call (see immediately below) has come and gone, with much in the way of testimonials to the effect that the Democrats' new abortion language is "a real step forward" (Wallis), "a historic and courageous step" (Hunter), "an excellent example of the art of the possible" (Cahill), "most significant" (Kmiec), "Catholics United is very happy about this new language" (Korzen), and "Those of us who have pro-life commitment are pleased" (Campolo).

Does that mean that they actually support the plank? Well, not exactly. When I put the question, there was dancing around from some and silence from others. What they've got via the language is reassurance that the Democrats are sensitive to pro-life concerns and prepared to undertake policies that overtly aim at abortion reduction. My colleague Renny Fulco points out that abortion reduction via contraception has always been the goal of Planned Parenthood, but on this the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, that remains an unacceptable approach in certain quarters.

Hunter, a self-described Republican, seemed to be struggling with his vote. The others will clearly be voting for Obama (Campolo's on the Platform Committee), but now with an easier conscience and good talking points for dealing with their censorious co-religionists. A key point is to challenge Republicans to join them in a bipartisan ("common ground") effort to support funding for programs that make it easier for pregnant women contemplating abortions to choose to carry to term. Look for Obama to make that point when Rick Warren asks him about abortion at Saddleback on Saturday.

In their proposed new platform language, the Democrats toss a bone to the pro-life community by spelling out ways to make abortion rarer:

We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre and post natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.

Brody, who's got the old and new text side by side, is somewhat impressed--but claims that the proof of the pudding will be whether the Democrats in general and candidate Obama in particular say they're prepared to sign on to concrete anti-abortion measures such as parental notification. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Douglas Kmiec, who as Obama's most prominent conservative Catholic supporter had a hand in the new language, contends that it represents a significant (if not, by his lights, sufficient) move. Naturally, his erstwhile friends on the right don't think so, and are contemptuous of him for making the case. They recognize that the language will enable Obama and party to make the case that they are not, as the pro-life community always puts it, "pro-abortion."

The abortion battle between Democrats and Republicans has always involved a complicated dance of absolutes and increments. The party platforms have historically been the place for the absolutes, with the Republicans declared in opposition to abortion under all circumstances and the Democrats in absolute support of a woman's right to choose. But the real abortion game has always been played in the middle--up to and including Roe v. Wade, which never guaranteed choice in any and all circumstances.

Partisans love the absolutes, but the public at large doesn't. Americans' predominant view is that abortion is a bad thing that under some circumstances is preferable to the alternative. In 1996, Ralph Reed (then executive director of the Christian Coalition) proposed helping Bob Dole's presidential candidacy by making the GOP's abortion plank less rigid via language acknowledging that the American public was not ready for an absolute abortion ban. And while the pro-life corps handed him his head for his pains, that's the position George W. Bush articulated in 2000 and never abandoned, his party platform notwithstanding. Moreover, the pro-life agenda became purely incrementalist--ranging from parental notification to banning the "partial-birth" abortion procedure.

What the Democrats are now signaling is that they are prepared to undertake policies that do more to reduce the number of abortions than the Republicans' incrementalist measures. For pro-lifers willing to sacrifice principle for results, it's a pretty good argument. Especially when they consider how little the Republican increments have achieved. This a.m. at 11, a conference call with the media will be held by the group of Catholics and evangelicals most supportive of the new language. Here they are:

§ Rev. Tony Campolo, Eastern University, author of The Red Letter Christians, and member on the Democratic Platform Committee

§ Rev. Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland Church (Orlando, FL), author of A New Kind of Conservative and former President of the Christian Coalition

§ Dr. Lisa Cahill, J. Donald Monan, S.J., Professor of Theology at Boston College

§ Douglas Kmiec, Chair & Professor of Law at Pepperdine University, and the former Dean of the The Catholic University Law School

§ Chris Korzen, Executive Director of Catholics United and author of A Nation For All

§ Rev. Jim Wallis, Founder and CEO of Sojourners, the largest network of progressive Christians in the United States, and best-selling author of God’s Politics and The Great Awakening (HarperOne 2008)

Stay tuned.

Jane Lampman of the Christian Science Monitor had nice profile profile of Leah Daughtry, the Pentecostal pastor who is CEO of the Democratic National Convention, a few days ago. It does, however, trade heavily in what has now become narrative orthodoxy: that not until two years ago did the Democrats take faith-based campaigning seriously, and only this election cycle have the doubters been convinced. The only recognized exception to this formula is the longstanding habit of Democratic candidates' appearing in black churches.

The narrative is not quite as true as it sometimes seems. (I've made this point before, but it bears repeating.) To be sure, the Democrats have not tied their wagon to a religious cohort the way the Republicans did to white evangelicals in the 1980s. But telling the story of the party's awkwardness with religion usually means referring to Michael Dukakis in 1988 and John Kerry in 2004--two candidates from a part of the country where religion does not play a part in political campaigning. Read out of the story are Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Southern Baptists all, who had no difficulty doing the religion thing. Carter was notoriously born again and Clinton was a very churchly guy whose difficulties with religious voters had nothing to do with an inability to relate to people of faith. Presidential candidates do not, of course, constitute a whole party. But they are disproportionately the political figures whose religious stance matters to American voters.

One other thing. Reports that all Democratic insiders are now cool with religious outreach seem to be exaggerated. All campaigns are about the allocation of scarce resources, and there are plenty of power centers within both the DNC and the Obama campaign that want no truck with religion. So far as I know, the Joshua Generation is still wandering nameless in the wilderness.