Faithful raise voices
Sunday, January 16, 2005
JEREMIAH STETTLER
THE SAGINAW NEWS
Church-pew politics prevailed in placing President George W. Bush, a devout United Methodist, back in the White House -- a twist of political fate that Democrats denounce and evangelicals herald.
It was an electoral victory swayed in part by moral values, in which biblical rhetoric of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, galvanized Christian voters on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion.
Preachers invoked images of Sodom and Gomorrah. Christian broadcasters called on voters to preserve the "sanctity of life."
"I saw this as a dangerous moment for America," said Jack Van Wagoner, 80, a parishioner at First Free Methodist Church in Saginaw Township. "I thought evil would carry the day. I was alarmed. I was saddened. I was ready for the worst."
But in a bitterly contested election marked by high turnout among first-time Democrat voters and Christian Republicans, Bush captured a second term with 51 percent of the popular vote.
Bush will take the oath of office at noon Thursday, kicking off what evangelicals hope is the start of four years of reform and defense of Christian values at the executive level.
While pundits may disagree on how much moral values mattered in November, they generally concede the Christian voting bloc -- commonly known as evangelicals -- handed Bush the 2004 presidential election.
"(Moral issues) motivated conservatives to come out and vote," said Ed Sarpolus, vice president of EPIC-MRA. "If they had not shown up, with the large increase in Democratic voters, Bush would have lost."
That leaves Democrats with some soul-searching to do during the next four years as party leaders reach out to the state's churchgoers. They must convince voters that a moral monopoly does not rest with Republicans.
Leading Democrats say that push began long before Bush's victory in November and will continue so long as Republicans promote themselves as the party of principle.
The election shapers
Bush's re-election strategy reached in the pews of Protestant evangelical churches across the country.
Congregations that once slumbered politically awakened, actuated by disgust and outrage at a perceived decline in American morality.
They snarled at Massachusetts' recognition of homosexual marriage, demanded reform when Janet Jackson bared her breast on national television and boiled when California's 9th Circuit Court declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional in public schools because of its mention of God.
"The whole moral fiber of society is being challenged," said Pastor Larry Osweiler of First Free Methodist Church in Saginaw Township.
"I've been a pastor through many elections and have never found an election in which Christians were so galvanized. The feeling was that enough was enough."
Such was the case with parishioner Van Wagoner, a former Democrat who switched parties in the 1960s because of moral issues.
"This was a watershed election as far as I'm concerned," he said.
Driven to the polls to support a proposed ban on same sex marriage and a presidential candidate who could place a pro-life justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Van Wagoner joined evangelicals nationwide in voting Republican.
He didn't expect Bush to win.
"Christians have festered under the rule of the minority," Van Wagoner said. "As Christians flex their muscles, things may change."
Beneath the evangelical label is a voting bloc that comprises nearly 25 percent of the electorate, experts say.
Corwin Smidt, director of the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, defined the group as consisting of white church-going Protestants who cling tightly to a conservative moral agenda.
They generally are married, often with more children than their liberal counterparts, and boast a slightly lower divorce rate. Most live in suburban or rural neighborhoods and are clumped heavily in the South and Midwest.
While income and education varies dramatically among this group, Smidt said evangelicals generally have middle- to lower-middle-incomes, and their families are headed by parents who have college educations but fewer post-graduate degrees than secular voters.
Black protestants are not considered part of this voting bloc, Smidt said.
Van Wagoner nearly fits the mold. He describes himself as a white middle-class man from a suburban neighborhood in Saginaw Township. He is married, has two grown children and declares himself solidly conservative on moral issues.
What doesn't fit is education. Van Wagoner, a retired high school counselor, holds a master's degree and several advanced certifications in classroom instruction.
Yet for the first time -- having watched evangelicals rally at the polls -- he believes he shares more in common with the nation morally than he had once thought.
Morality or economy?
While evangelicals swayed the national election, experts such as Sarpolus say the impact of moral values likely was exaggerated.
The Pew Research Center reported that 27 percent of voters selected moral values as their top priority when picking from a list of seven issues on an exit poll questionnaire.
When pollsters asked the question without a list of pre-selected topics, the war in Iraq ruled the day as the leading issue for 25 percent of respondents. Moral values trailed in second place with 14 percent.
In Michigan, the economy carried the greatest weight in an EPIC-MRA poll. Only 8 percent of voters declared moral values the leading issue. Respondents named the economy, terrorism and health care above moral issues.
"There is no indication that moral and family values had much impact," Sarpolus said. "If you probed the voter, economy and jobs were still at the top."
State exit polls also found that only 5 percent of voters were drawn to the ballot box by a proposed gay marriage ban. Pollsters reported nearly 300,000 voters who chose a presidential candidate but left the gay marriage proposal blank.
In the end, Michigan handed its 17 electoral votes to Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry and awarded Democrats five extra seats in the state House.
How would Jesus vote?
Pastor Matthew Smith knows a thing or two about the Bible. What he can't seem to find is a passage that labels God a Democrat or Republican.
That's not the message he heard from Republicans this year as they paraded Bush as the choice of the moral masses and champion of traditional family values.
But Smith, the pastor of St. Matthew Evangelical Church in Bridgeport Township, believes Republicans manipulated voters in the name of gay marriage and abortion.
"There are a wide range of issues that Christians should consider before they vote for any official," he said. "I don't believe we can, or should, in good conscience vote for an individual based on a single issue."
The pastor doesn't object to incorporating moral values into political decisions, but "morality" also touches on civil rights, poverty and health care.
Democratic Party leaders echo Smith's position. They insist that the Republicans don't have a monopoly on morality, although conservatives successfully marketed themselves as such during the campaign.
"There is more to morality than same-sex marriage and abortion," said Joseph Smith, chairman of the Saginaw County Democratic Party. "If somebody has lost their job and is about to lose unemployment, health care and home, do you really think their first concern is going to be same-sex marriage? I don't think so. Morals are about preserving the family.
"If you are going to start comparing apples to apples, you need to put all the apples in the basket."
Sarpolus said Republicans indeed have tailored the meaning of morality to include just three issues -- abortion, same-sex marriage and stem cell research. Unlike presidential candidate Al Gore, who appealed to religious voters in 2000 by declaring that Democrats "value families," Sen. Kerry was unable to stave off an evangelical shift to Bush.
Ari Kelman, department chair of history at the University of Denver, said Protestant and Catholic voters surged as "they haven't done before" to give Bush the upper hand.
"The Christian Right turned out in numbers that equalized or made a wash of the number of new voters that turned out for the Democrats," he said.
The key was branding, Sarpolus said.
"The Republicans have effectively limited the scope of family values," he said. "They don't want to get into issues of poverty, taking care of the aged, mental health care or lack of affordable medication because they will lose."
The Rev. R.B. Ouellette dismisses claims that Republicans used religion to manipulate voters. He says moral issues carry as much weight in the political arena as the economy and war in Iraq.
Ouellette says the Christian community cannot afford to have someone in the White House who might nominate a pro-choice justice to the high court or sit idle while homosexual marriages gain recognition in state courts.
"One strikes at the essence of life and the other at the essence of civilization," said Ouellette, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Bridgeport Township.
He said morality is interwoven in politics, making values a key component of selecting a leader and governing the country.
"A lot of us believe we need to leave a moral foundation of right over wrong and virtue over vice for our children," he said. "If those battles are lost, we believe it would hurt society and our children."
Redefining Dems
The Democratic Party must now redefine itself as a party of the faithful, state partisans say.
It's not that the party has faltered in Michigan -- Democrats carried the day in the November election and maintain high approval ratings at the gubernatorial level -- it's that party leaders want to break the anti-religion stereotypes imposed by Republicans.
Mark Brewer, chairman of the state Democratic Party, says his party will reach out more aggressively to religious organizations during the next four years to spell out its positions on leading moral issues.
"Our party is full of religious people," Brewer said, "but we need to make people understand that. What the Republican Party is trying to do is pigeon-hole us into that stereotype."
Leaders also hope to define their party as one of inclusion, even allowing a pro-life caucus within its ranks.
Calvin College professor Smidt doesn't foresee evangelicals playing a pivotal role in the upcoming state elections. While moral issues weighed heavy in national politics, he said they have less impact at the state level.
"There is a different nature to state and national politics," he said. "Issues in state elections tend to be more policy-based and less symbolically-based. (Evangelical) groups are there, but they are not likely to be activated or motivated in a state election."
However, Smidt is confident that Republicans will use Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm's pro-choice position on abortion and public opposition to a gay-marriage ban against her.
Will they prevail? Probably not, he said.
Gary Glenn, president of the Midland-based American Family Association of Michigan, disagrees.
He said moral values likely will come back to bite the governor in a state that overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment barring homosexual couples from marriage.
The gay-marriage ban passed by an 18 percent margin, rallying support from both sides of the political aisle. Glenn said it illustrates the governor's moral disconnect from the rest of the state.
"(The governor) is going to answer for that in the 2006 election," Glenn said. "I don't think there is any doubt about it."
Ouellette believes it would take a strong candidate to spoil Granholm's bid for re-election, even with her stance on abortion and same-sex marriage. He's no Democrat, but he considers the governor a powerful politician.
"Gov. Granholm is a very good candidate," he said. "She is pleasant, smart and seems to be able to move her agenda. Unless there is a strong candidate running in opposition to her, she is going to sit in the governor's mansion as long as she wants to." v
Jeremiah Stettler is a staff writer at the Saginaw News. You may reach him at 776-9685.
If the "arnold" law ever became policy, Granholm would then be eligible to run for VP too.(She is Canadian).
"Such was the case with parishioner Van Wagoner, a former Democrat who switched parties in the 1960s because of moral issues."
Gee, wasn't the sixties when that whole Civil Right thing happened? :?:
Just a coincidence of course.
There's a very good article about 'moral values' on Democratic Underground:
| QUOTE |
The Religious Wrong
How Conservative Christians Fail At Ethics
January 14, 2005
Sharon Isikoff
Religion should support the best in man, not the worst. It should help us to adhere to the highest principles, to be as good as imperfect human beings can be. Religious fanaticism clearly does not pass the ethics test.
Whether you are considering the sanctity of life, the golden rule, virtues like charity, or sins like pride, there are so many ways that Conservative Christians who see the world in the absolute colors of white and black, right and wrong, consistently fail to find the best in themselves.
The Sanctity of Life
The Christian Right allows no exceptions to their prohibition of abortion. But how about if a woman with a bad heart condition, say cardiomyopathy for example, is criminally assaulted and raped? She manages not to die from the trauma of the attack itself, but is now going to die from the overwhelming of her heart by the stress of the resulting pregnancy. Neither she nor the unborn fetus is likely to survive. How does denying her a "morning after" pill or a very early abortion protect life?
Fighting to preserve unborn life while not protecting women's lives, by offering real and accurate sexual information in schools and by making birth control available, is not consistent or ethical. Pregnancy, wanted or unwanted, has a mortality rate associated with it. Hundreds of women die each year of toxemia of pregnancy and from pregnancy complicating other disorders.
I am no more in favor of abortion as a means of birth control than the Christian "right" is (and having been a pathologist who saw the results of the procedure first hand, I understand the horror), but it is wrong to not consider the situation.
And while I know how joyful adoption can be, I also know how painful it can be. Do you really believe it is respectful of life to bring children into the world who will die in pain shortly after birth from horrible genetic mishaps or deformities like anencephaly? Perhaps you do, but if so, would you please make arrangements to adopt some? Or at least to pay their hospital bills so that their parents can afford to try again to have a child with a real chance at life?
And while we are talking inconsistencies, if you really believe that life is sacred, how can you support the following concepts?
Fighting to preserve unborn human life while fighting wars that kill children, men and women.
Fighting to preserve unborn life while okaying (or standing silently by, which is the same as okaying) torture and the death penalty.
Believing that only human life is sacred, and really only human life that looks just like you.
Believing that you can protect human life but at the same time not worry about protecting the environment that supports all life.
Love Thy Neighbor
I have no doubt that some of the most loving people in the world are members of the Christian Conservative movement. I have personally been loved to death by some of them. But I am ethnically Jewish, and religiously indeterminate, and they all agree that since I do not agree with them, I am damned.
For this reason they insist on trying to convince me of their rightness. And all I can think of is how wrong that is. So many of them believe that you should love thy neighbor unless he is a slightly different color or religion or sexual orientation or political party or any other difference that you (or your bible or your minister or your tv evangelist) choose to define as objectionable. And then love him, but insist that he is sinful and damned and should change and be the same as you, because you want him to be saved and not be left behind when the apocalypse comes. Or love thy neighbor unless he is too needy and requires your tax dollars to support a government program that helps him.
The Virtue of Charity
I have a friend who is a teacher who is opposed to the program which provides breakfast at school for needy children. This, in spite of the fact that studies have shown that a child who has not eaten breakfast will not learn as well as one who has. She objects because she feels the program provides for too many children who are not really needy.
I could understand if she objected on the basis of the programs supplying non-nutritious foods like toaster pastries which only contribute to America’s obesity problems. But to deny food to the needy because a few people might be taking advantage seems a bit short of charitable.
Her objection to welfare is similar, that there is too much cheating and women just have babies in order to get more welfare money. Her attitude remains the same, even though she recently visited South America and observed first hand what happens when societies become polarized between the very rich and the very poor.
If you want to live in an armed fortress to defend against your poor and discontented neighbors, then you are right to condemn welfare. Let the poor fend for themselves, let natural selection reign. (Oh, wait a minute, if you are a Christian conservative, you do not believe in natural selection... never mind about that part).
Even if charity was not considered a virtue, in my book, just for self-preservation reasons, it is wise to care for the poor to a certain level in order to avoid armed conflict. Resenting the taxes that help avoid the polarization of our society is wrong.
The Sin of Pride
I have no objection to your having faith that you have selected a righteous path. I object to your insisting that there is no other path that is righteous. You have faith, you believe that you are correct, and that is fine. But you are not all-knowing and all-seeing, nor any wiser than the millions of other human beings on the planet, most of whom have chosen other paths.
Unless you claim you are all-knowing and all-seeing, you cannot be sure you are right, you can only be sure in your faith. If this is the case, then other people with other beliefs deserve your respect of their faith, which includes not insisting that they switch to yours.
You are claiming that your answers should be taught in schools and posted on government buildings, because you are the only people who are right, and therefore smart and special. Every group believes that they are smart and special. That, my friends, is pride. Black pride, Gay pride, Christian pride, Moslem pride. All pride.
If you claim to be sure you are right, and therefore all-knowing, you are guilty, by your own definition, of the sin of pride. You have usurped the position of your own Creator by insisting you know it all. And you have denigrated the whole concept of God by claiming to know exactly what God wants and what God’s will is. What a puny God that must be, that you, a lowly human, can be so sure of what God wants, or even of what God is. If you think this way, you are prideful, and that is a sin, and it is wrong.
Forgiveness
And while on the subject of sin, I would like to question the idea that one may sin and sin and sin and still be a good person and be "saved." Yes, humans are imperfect, originally sinful if you choose to call it that. And yes, forgiving the sins of others is an important part of coming to grips with that lack of perfectness that is part of the human condition.
But to me it is wrong to comfort yourself by saying God will forgive you for anything as long as you repent later. You can hate homosexuals and women, resent government charity, be pridefully sure of your righteousness, and even rape and murder, and as long as you say you are sorry and truly regret all that before you die, you are as eligible for redemption as the saint who devoted her life to charity and never hated or harmed a soul.
What kind of a message is that? While no one is perfect, religion should not be so easy. It should insist that we try our best to be good, and that we should do our best to right wrongs that we have done to others, to ask other people’s forgiveness before we ask for God's. Only then should redemption be possible.
Well, you say, that is not what our religion says, only God's opinion matters. And are you certain that it is God's opinion that it is so easy to gain forgiveness? You know God's opinion? Well, there you go again... you and your pride.
The Religious Right
So how can we avoid being a part of the Religious Wrong? Stop assuming that life is so simple, so black and white. Accept that you cannot know it all. Accept that your faith is a valid path for you, but that it may not be the only valid path. Fight wars only when absolutely necessary, not on the basis of religious differences. Accept laws that truly promote the best in humanity, preserve the sanctity of all life, including women and other species, respect our neighbors no matter what they look like, and care for the poorest and least able among us.
Do not promote laws that limit freedom and dignity for particular groups just because they are different. Remember that none of us knows everything, none of us can know fully the will of God. Believe as you will, but let others believe as they will without interference.
Who knows, perhaps we are all wrong, perhaps the idea my daughter came up with is right: the apocalypse may have already occurred and we have already all been "Left Behind." |
:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:
Couldn't have said it better myself.
| QUOTE (earthmother @ Jan 25 2005, 09:12 AM) |
:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:
Couldn't have said it better myself. |
I agree totally, I would love to see a copy of that hanging on the wall of every hypocrite church in the country. :)
I think I will print this off and pass it around!
I could care less if someone is religous, however, when hey say one thing and practice another, it irritates me more than anything.
Also, I think hypocrisy should one of the deadly sins!