Analysis of the first quarter of 2008 suggests that Faith and Values Politicking is Like Skating--Check That: Speed Skating--On Thin Ice With a Little Vial of Nitroglycerin Stashed in a Recess of Your Skin-Tight, Oddly Eroticized, Aerodynamic Suit. Indeed, a glance at the past three months reminds us of the truism that playing the religion card may diminish electoral profitability.

Take, for example, Mike Huckabee. His disquisition on amending the Constitution to God's standards clearly antagonized secularists. It also led some religious non-Evangelicals to change their perception of Huck from “likeable, guitar-strumming Christian dude” to “dangerous Right-wing fanatic.” But my hunch was that patriotic Evangelicals were dismayed by the intemperance of those remarks as well.

Over in the Obama camp, the combustive properties of God Talk are now also well appreciated. The Senator’s published tributes to Jeremiah Wright were eagerly cited by opponents celebrating the nation’s one billionth viewing of the Reverend's YouTube philippics.

Continue »

That the 2008 campaign is drawing attention to the declining fortunes of American secularism is a point I have been making in these columns and elsewhere. It is with similar concern that I call attention to an overlapping (and under-discussed) trend that is coming into sharper focus this election season: the ongoing collapse of the distinction between the public and private sphere.

Let me start by adducing three seemingly disparate examples (bear with me):

Continue »

Avoid religion and politics at the dinner table -- so goes the conventional wisdom. Tempers will flare and appetites curdle with the passions that both topics so often arouse. But in reality we need to get the kind of dinner-table discussions going that can help overcome some deep and poorly understood prejudices about religion in American life.

Keith Ellison, the first elected Muslim in Congress, observed this week that while America's founders got race and gender very wrong, they got religion right. America's foundation as a pluralistic society is one of their great legacies. A drive along 16th Street in Washington with its extraordinary array of churches, temples, and other religious centers, gives an inkling of what is happening across the country – complexity, color, variety, and change.

Ellison was hosting a three-hour event on Capitol Hill Thursday, about how the global tensions that some call a "clash of civilizations" play out in the United States. It was an eminently civil discussion among 12 experts, a diverse group chosen to represent a range of views – Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. Journalist Sally Quinn moderated the event, which was organized by the World Economic Forum (the Davos folks), which sees West-Islam relations as one of the world's greatest strategic challenges, and by Georgetown University, which oversees an annual global stocktaking about how those relations are faring.

Continue »

Continue »

I greet the spring like characters in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: with relief, weary gratitude and ebullience. As the month of March expires I praise the sky and salute the sun. I smile toothily at forlorn pansies that cross my path.

Yet there is one rite of spring which leaves me decidedly glum. I refer to the start of baseball season. Compounding my despair is the veritable Cult of Baseball that predominates in the newsrooms of America. Question: How do you know it’s Opening Day? Answer: When half the (often secular) pundits nationwide are writing columns about baseball being like religion. Like their religion.

*******************************

Why credible opinion makers lack any modicum of objectivity when addressing this subject is beyond me. But it has not escaped my attention that nearly every psalmist of The Diamond lets slip something to the effect of “My dad used to take me to the ballpark.” The infection sets in early.

Continue »

As I get ready for this Sunday’s Compassion Forum, I keep repeating to myself the French maxim: “Les absents ont toujours tort” (Who said that? La Rochefoucauld? When in doubt always say La Rochefoucauld).

The proverb translates as “those who are not present are always wrong” and my guess is that senators Obama and Clinton will discuss at length what they view as the wrongfulness of (the absent) John McCain’s policies, not to mention those of the party that he represents.

This raises the question as to why the Senator from Arizona declined the invitation to participate from the sponsoring group, Faith in Public Life.

Continue »

There were many winners at Sunday night’s Compassion Forum at Messiah College and no discernible losers as far as I could tell.

For starters, the sponsoring and organizing group, Faith in Public Life, handled logistics superbly. FPL is setting an agenda and it is doing so with a “Big Tent” philosophy of letting different religious Americans bring their concerns to the fore. Last night a theologically diverse group of pre-selected clergy asked questions about euthanasia, environmental concerns, poverty, AIDS, the relation between science and faith, and so on. In so doing, they broadened the issue palette pertaining to religious politicking considerably. This is where Faith in Public Life is making a major contribution to national discourse.

Continue »

Sloshing through Hezekiah’s tunnel near the City of David in Jerusalem brings home what fear and faith can do. The 530-meter-long tunnel was chiseled out of rock over 2500 years ago, deep underground, by men without flashlights or scientific instruments to guide them. They knew that if they were attacked they could survive only if they were sure of their water source. To this day water flows through the tunnel from a spring to a reservoir.

Both faith and anxiety were in evidence at a conference last month in Israel, organized by the University of Tel Aviv. It brought together a diverse group of scholars, human rights activists, philanthropists, NGOs hoping for ideas and financing, and rabbis. The topic was faith and international development and how Israelis and Jews could and should engage, through private charity and public development programs, on programs ranging from HIV/AIDS to global warming and water desalination.

The theme woven through two days of discussion was Tikkun Olam. Generally translated (from the Hebrew) as “repairing the world”, it is a call both to charity and to social activism, going far beyond the family and immediate community. The challenge for this diverse group from many parts of the world was what Tikkun Olam should mean today.

Continue »

It seems like an eternity since Senator Barack Obama’s winter of ascent. Remember the 12 consecutive triumphs? Remember Ted Kennedy and American University levitating off their moorings in Washington? Remember the 45-minute (!) victory speech on February 19th in front of nearly 20,000 delirious Texans?

But spring, as the jazz singers remind us, can really hang you up the most. March and April have brought with them some bad energy for the Obama camp. Was I the only one who saw an ominous portent in that cringe-inducing footage of some imbecile in Philadelphia hounding the Senator to pose for a picture and autograph his Cheese Steak? (Note to the Secret Service: the threat of being tasered is an exceedingly effective deterrent).

This has been the season of Rezko and Samantha Power and typical white persons and Reverend Wright and so much bitterness. As for the latter, the words are now well known. At a fund-raiser in San Francisco, Obama spoke of rural folks “cling[ing] to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations"

Continue »

As with most analysts who cover the 2008 election I receive my share of spin-related e-mails (referred to from here on in as “Spreemails”) from the campaigns of those running for high office.

A Spreemail may be described thusly: a political infomercial directed exclusively at pundits in hopes of getting these clueless dimwits to tow a presidential aspirant’s party line in their forthcoming blogs, columns, radio shows, web videos, mixed media installations, etc. In an effort to quell the inveterate suspicions of aforesaid pundits, a Spreemail will often, but not always, contain references to credible journalistic and scholarly sources.

Continue »

For guts combined with grace, Thoraya Obaid has few rivals. A proud Saudi Muslim, she leads what is probably the United Nations' most controversial agency, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) – which addresses women's reproductive health. Recently she was the speaker at the Washington National Cathedral's Sunday Forum, arguing that religious leaders must address the sorry state of women in much of the developing world.

She even dared utter the words "unsafe abortion." She wanted this issue, usually avoided in polite discussion, front and center because the suffering and loss of life it causes women the world over need to be addressed forthrightly. The Cathedral's dean (who moderated her talk), she said, told her as they moved towards the podium that those words had probably never been uttered before inside the Cathedral's hallowed walls.

Ms. Obaid reels off heart-rending statistics about what women suffer – how many still die each day in childbirth, how many girls are taken out of school, or married without a say before they are 14, and on and on. She also exudes confidence that things can change. Her experience convinces her that it can be done.

Continue »

In recent weeks I have given a lot of thought to the flap over Barack Obama’s assertion that economic frustration inclines people to “cling to guns or religion.” Beyond the domestic debate, the hullabaloo provoked by the Senator’s remarks offers a useful point of departure to probe the complex motivations that animate Islamist movements and ideologies.

Continue »

Standing on a tarmac yesterday a rather tense Barack Obama said of Jeremiah Wright: “He does not speak for me. He does not speak for the campaign.”

True enough. But how exactly should the Senator speak in the aftermath of the Reverend’s recent attempts to McGovernize and Mondaleize his candidacy? Permit me to rehearse some possible responses to the existential threat posed by Wright. But please recall that none of the forthcoming proposals is particularly good. Like America's foreign policy options in Iran, the Senator’s alternatives in this crisis can be described as “bad” and “worse”:

Continue »