September 5, 2008 | 7:58 pm

Huckabee on Palin, teen pregnancy and faith in politics

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Now that he’s not running for president, I like Mike Huckabee a lot more. The former Arkansas governor sat down with Christianity Today’s Sarah Pulliam at the RNC yesterday. Here’s a snippet:

How does Sarah Palin’s candidacy change the race?
I think it’s really energized the base of the party and given people a reason to be excited about the ticket. There was a lot of anxiety about McCain picking Lieberman. He really gave people a reason to be not just accepting about the ticket. Everyone I’ve talked to is excited about the ticket. It’s a completely different atmosphere than it was a week ago.

Do you think Palin’s pregnant daughter will change whether people will vote for her?
The way the media went after the daughter is the most shameful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. If anything, it just caused [evangelicals] to run to her. Everyone understands that the basis of being a Christian is that everyone has fallen short of God’s ideal. Everyone understands that. We do understand is that when there’s a problem or failures, the family sticks together. We saw a mother who gave her unconditional love to her daughter. That embodies what Christianity means. We all mess up, the issue is how we respond to it. What she showed us is exactly what we wanted to see in terms of a witness.

(skip)

Do you think the issues that evangelicals care about have changed?
I think one of the things that is positive is that while they are still steadfast on life and marriage, but there’s a broadening of the issues. People are care about hunger, poverty, and diseases. It’s one of the things I’m very, very thrilled to see. I’ve advocated for a long time education reform, health care reform, and conservation. Those are issues that touch everybody.

How has your faith affected your policies?
In two ways. I don’t have to wake up every morning and think what do I want to believe today. You sense that public policy ought to be a direct result of your deep convictions, not just trends that you can pick up on through polling. I believe in my heart of hearts that sanctity of every human life is important. I don’t support traditional marriage because polls show I should. It’s the foundation of our society. In that way, I think it’s a part of shaping your views and the priorities you have.

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September 5, 2008 | 2:07 pm

More on mentioning God in political speeches

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Last night I mentioned how I heard John McCain name-drop the Lord’s name several times during his speech. Today, The New York Times ran a graphic that looked at the words the candidates used in their speeches.

“As it turns out, GOP speakers invoked the name of God (“God”) nearly twice as often Democratic ones, 43 to 22,” Mark Silk writes at Spiritual Politics. “But when it came to the tickets themselves, the invocations were tied: Biden and McCain, 8 each; Obama and Palin, 2. In other words, those candidates most identified with religion mentioned God least.”

Hmmm. I wonder why? I think we can guess pretty accurately.

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September 4, 2008 | 12:58 pm

John McCain and ‘a deeply committed Christian’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Dobson

Focus on the Family leader James Dobson said last night that he’s come around on John McCain. Why is that so surprising?

Well, beside that fact that McCain is incredibly uncomfortable in a room full of evangelical Christians, Dobson said in February that he wouldn’t vote for McCain “as a matter of conscience.” In July he changed his tune to tepid optimism. And then last night, before McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin, whose Christian convictions have endeared her to a lot of my friends—Rhett Smith tweeted last night, “Sarah Palin, you had me at hello.”—Dobson’s organization sent this around:

Dr. Dobson: ‘If I Went into the Polling Booth Today, I Would Pull the Lever for John McCain’  ....“A genuine reformer. A deeply committed Christian.”

That’s how Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family Action, described Gov. Sarah Palin, who joined Sen. John McCain’s presidential ticket Friday.

On a special Focus Action radio broadcast, Dr. Dobson said Palin has helped change his mind on McCain.

“If I went into the polling booth today, I would pull the lever for John McCain,” he said.

Editor’s note: I’m totally burnt out by blogging ad nauseum about Sarah Palin. I don’t care if Barack Obama drops Joe Biden in favor of getting Palin on his ticket, I’m not mentioning her in another post until at least Sunday.

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September 4, 2008 | 10:25 am

When Lieberman loved Obama

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Joe Lieberman has been riding John McCain’s coattails since the tide shifted in the Republican primaries; Tuesday the Jewish senator, who came improbably close of the vice presidency in 2000, praised McCain at the Republican National Convention. But two years ago Lieberman was exhorting McCain’s Democratic rival, Barack Obama, pledging his support and playing up his involvement in the young senator’s development.

“As far as I’m concerned [Barack Obama] is a ‘Baruch,’ which means a blessing. He is a blessing to the United States Senate, to America, and to our shared hopes for better, safer tomorrows for all our families,” Lieberman said, captured in the above video. “The gifts that God has given to Barack Obama are as enormous as his future is unlimited. As his mentor, as his colleague, as his friend, I look forward to helping him reach to the stars and realize not just the dreams he has for himself, but the dreams we all have for him and our blessed country.”

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September 3, 2008 | 3:31 pm

Evangelicals and the Palin pregnancy

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

From the all-Sarah-Palin-all-time file, Perez Hilton says, “It’s called karma.”

I don’t believe in karma and I don’t think the Palin parents are to blame for a mistake made by their daughter. We all make mistakes—even though some of my Christian friends who have been where Bristol is would say their baby was no mistake. And while this case of teen pregnancy hits quite close to home—actually, right at home—for Sarah Palin, I don’t suspect it will change her stance on funding for teen moms.

The amazing thing to me, so far, has been the way that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, and commitment to keep the baby, has energized evangelical Christians. Instead of being a liability, as I suspected, they see her case as a courageous example of owning up and taking responsibility for your mistakes.

I wonder if the McCain campaign had polled this possible reaction before selecting Palin ...

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September 3, 2008 | 2:09 pm

Palin visits AIPAC, promises to strengthen U.S.-Israel ties

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Just days after John McCain plucked Sarah Palin as his running mate, the Alaskan governor paid a visit to AIPAC to voice her support for Israel, something she definitely needed to do because of her support for Pat Buchanan’s 2000 presidential campaign.

Unlike McCain and Barack Obama, who dueled at AIPAC’s policy conference in June, Palin offered no sweeping statements regarding Jerusalem or Israel’s threat from Iran. She settled for the much more diplomatic commitment to “work to expand and deepen the strategic partnership between U.S. and Israel.”

Every legitimate candidate pays such respect to AIPAC and the U.S.-Israel relationship. But does she mean it? Considering McCain’s record, I’d imagine so.

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September 2, 2008 | 12:29 pm

Sarah Palin: Is she good for the Jews?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Right about now, Sarah Palin is looking like a great vice presidential pick—that is, if Barack Obama got to choose his opponent’s running mate.

So, she’s likely not good for John McCain, but is Palin, the relatively unknown governor of Alaska good for the Jews (the few real life frozen chosen, not the Sitka Jews of Michael Chabon’s world)? Rob Eshman, The Jewish Journal’s editor in chief, weighed this question in a news analysis Friday.

Despite the expected plaudits and scourges Palin received from the usual suspects, Rob argued that Palin could actually cost McCain some of the Israel Firsters that his track record and affiliation with Sen. Joseph Lieberman had given him such a firm grip on.

If McCain had picked Mitt Romney or Tom Ridge or—cue the bar mitzvah band—Joe Lieberman, he would have unquestionably swept up the Israel Firsters. These men have track records and gravitas when it comes to Israel and foreign policy. (This debate among Jews and Israel reflects the larger foreign policy concerns about Obama that Republicans are making the centerpiece of their opposition. Many conflicts in Jewish life mirror conflicts in the larger culture—that’s Anthropology 101).

But he chose Sarah Palin: former mayor of a small Alaska town, governor of Alaska, devout Christian.

As I’ve written about more than a few times, many devout Christians are Israel fanatics. But questions remain about Palin’s passion for the Promised Land, in part because she has less foreign policy experience than Obama. And also because she endorsed Pat Buchanan in his 2000 run for president. Rob continues:

Palin has no foreign policy experience. No Israel experience. Her AIPAC rating? When you enter her name on the AIPAC home page, you get this:

  Your search - palin - did not match any documents.
  No pages were found containing “palin”.

The RJC’s Greenfield says her AIPAC relationships are great, but confined to Alaska. And Republicans are now marshalling a great comeback to the charge that Palin once supported Pat Buchanan.

Buchanan is anathema to the Jews. He is someone who has blamed Israel and American Jews for directing American foreign policy against American interests. He has spoken kindly of Adolph Hitler—who is not popular with Jews—and, well, this is going to be interesting.

Sarah Palin might cause the Israel Firsters, who seemed to be pretty much done with Obama, to take a second look.

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August 27, 2008 | 1:09 pm

Obama NOT gaining evangelical voters

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I know that headline runs contrary to what I’ve written before—in July an informal Christianity Today poll found that about 51 percent of respondents supported Barack Obama, compared to 41 percent for John McCain. But another unscientific more-scientific survey, this one from Crosswalk.com, a site popular with evangelical Christians, discovered Obama’s evangelical outreach is in the depths of despair.

The poll, via the Bible Belt Blogger, found that only 5 percent—close to zero when considering the margin of error for a scientific survey—plan to vote for Obama. McCain stands to receive 81 percent of these 777 voters.

And with such a perfect number of participants, how could this poll be wrong?

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August 21, 2008 | 2:15 pm

Democrats don’t get ... atheism

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Since I voted in my first presidential election—in the year 2000—Christians have been kvetching about how Democrats just don’t get religion. In 2004 we were told so-called “values voters” were key to George W. Bush’s re-election. And this campaign season we’ve seen Democrats go way out of their way to prove they care about religious folk and that they get religion.

Their latest gimmick is the “first-ever faith caucus” that they invited to the Democratic National Convention next week. (Though one of their big gets, Cameron Strang, the evangelical publisher of Christian pop-culture magazine Relevant, pulled out of the caucus yesterday because he didn’t want it to appear he was endorsing Barack Obama over John McCain.)

But now, proving that for action in American politics there is a comical reaction, atheists are upset, and hell hath no fury like an atheist’s scorn.

But what about those Democrats who are not “people of faith?” Are they not invited? Or invited just to watch others pray? Should their own outlook not even be acknowledged?

If the Democrats are trying to strike unifying chords among their entire kaleidoscopic range of liberals, moderates, and progressives, it should be obvious that secularists cannot dare be left out of the “big tent” event, and that it should be about beliefs and values, not solely about religion.

Secularists remember all too painfully one of the most dramatic presidential addresses in American history. At the National Cathedral three days after September 11, 2001, the president’s speech so filled with religious language that it was virtually a sermon.

As he delivered it, Bush stood flanked by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian representatives, with no one invited to stand alongside them whose presence might acknowledge the existence of the tens of millions of secular Americans.

At this most important collective moment in the recent history of the United States, it was as if their president was telling them that they did not exist. The United States had become a nation of believers.

Yet one of the most remarkable implications of the data presented in the new Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey is that atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and believers in an impersonal God or universal spirit—people who do not believe in God at all or who do not believe in a traditional God—will be a huge share, perhaps as much as 40 percent of Democratic voters in November.

Another Pew discovery: Two out of every three Americans say that their moral values do not come primarily from religion. In other words, whatever their faith, these are people who live largely or wholly secular lives.

First, this country has always been one of believers, just not one limited to believers. Additionally, atheists recently have made more of an attempt at being big-tent than Unitarian-Universalists. That number Ronald Aronson, who wrote the above op-ed and the book “Living Without God,” is really a stretch in that it includes many religious devotees who are uncertain of their God’s existence.

The Friendly Atheist further discusses this snub and points to an incredible op-ed from the Colorado Springs Gazette that compares Hitler’s vision for a Judenrein world to a billboard from the Freedom From Religion Foundation that stated “Imagine No Religion.”

Are you f—-ing kidding me?!

Since when are words on a billboard the equivalent of killing 6,000,000 Jews?

They go on to write about what would happen in a religion-less world — apparently, there would be more Pol Pots, more Stalins, far fewer charities, no Golden Rule, and we’d be rid of most hospitals and great universities.

As I read that, I wanted to respond to each point separately… and then I read the end of the piece:

Democrats will nominate a Christian gentleman who respects others. It’s likely they didn’t invite atheists to their faith service because they didn’t want embarrassing guests. Atheists might bring pseudointellectual proselytizers, who are intolerant, self-aggrandizing and rude. Atheists should fund universities and hospitals. They should feed and clothe starving kids. They should act more like Christians and Jews. If they do some of that — if they contribute to a diverse humanity — they might get better party invites.

I know you’ve heard this before… but you replace “atheist” with “Muslim” in that paragraph and lots of people would be out of a job.

Yeah, but, as everybody knows, only atheists—and Jews—eat Christian babies. (Speaking of blood libels—there’s a phrase I never expected to utter—Peter Manseau has a related excerpt from his new book, “Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter,” at nextbook.org. Will blog later.)

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August 20, 2008 | 2:51 pm

Columnist: Rick Warren wins, America loses

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister—no matter how beloved—is supremely wrong,” Kathleen Parker writes in her column in today’s Washington Post. “It is also un-American.”

Since Barack Obama and John McCain appeared on stage at Saddleback Church on Saturday, the discussion has centered around who gave the most meaningful answers to the Rev. Rick Warren’s questions about good and evil, and whether McCain had an unfair advantage by speaking second.

It’s natural by now for someone to take the contrarian’s position and indicate a fundamental flaw in the whole process. But Parker has a very valid point. As I’ve said over and over again, the religious litmus for presidential office that developed during the past eight years is a very bad thing for American politics.

Randall Balmer, editor-at-large for Christianity Today writes about this evolution in “God in the White House,” which he discusses on NPR’s “Fresh Air” today. (Audio and a book excerpt here.) And Parker gets it right when explaining why this should make us uncomfortable, and in indicating that we shouldn’t trust what we hear. She continues:

The past few decades of public confession and Oprah-style therapy have prepared us perfectly for a televangelist probing politicians about their moral failings. Warren’s Q&A wasn’t an inquisition exactly, but viewers would be justified in squirming.

What is the right answer, after all? What happens to the one who gets evil wrong? What’s a proper relationship with Jesus? What’s next? Interrogations by rabbis, priests and imams? What candidate would dare decline on the basis of mere principle?

Both Obama and McCain gave “good” answers, but that’s not the point. They shouldn’t have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that “Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him,” or that McCain feels that he is “saved and forgiven”?

What does that mean, anyway? What does it prove? Nothing except that these men are willing to say whatever they must—and what most Americans personally feel is no one’s business—to win the highest office.

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August 17, 2008 | 10:03 pm

Democrats continue coveting religious-minded voters

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Sorry I’ve been fairly MIA since Friday. It’s been a nightmarish few days finishing up this week’s cover story. Never have I experienced the laws of inertia like I did the last two days.

That being said, I didn’t have the chance to liveblog the presidential forum at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church last night. Rod Dreher, Mark Silk and William Lobdell, however, did. But besides updating you on my status as still breathing, the purpose of this post was to share a link hinted at in the headline.

For the first time in its history the Democratic National Convention will include meetings for a faith caucus. The list of invocators and benedictors provided in a press release from Barack Obama’s campaign include Joel Hunter, an evangelical pastor who has challenged the Christian Right; Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism; Sister Catherine Pinkerton of the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby; Archbishop Demetrios, primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of America; and Cameron Strang, who is publisher of the Christian pop culture magazine Relevant.

“Democrats have been, are and will continue to be people of faith—and this Convention will demonstrate that in an unprecedented way,” said Leah D. Daughtry, CEO of the DNCC. “As Convention CEO and a pastor myself, I am incredibly proud that so many esteemed leaders from the faith community will be with us to celebrate this historic occasion and honor the diverse faith traditions inside the Democratic Party.”

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August 11, 2008 | 6:01 pm

John McCain’s Jesus problem

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Have you heard? John McCain is going to church again.

Yep, his campaign wants you—conservative Christian voter—to know that he’s really a religious man. They know he’s uncomfortable talking about God, that he’s more fluent in the language of the non-God-fearing crowd, that he’s given aging Christian right leaders the heebie jeebies. And the best way to solve these campaign ills, they assume, is to publicly plop his tochis in a church pew.

And you wonder why I am tired of the exploitation of religion for political purposes?

Bring the Pain McCain, though, likely is just as frustrated by the marriage. Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone’s politics writer, observed McCain one Sunday at North Phoenix Baptist Church for an article about the Republican nominee’s presidential dilemma.

As I’ve mentioned before, Taibbi is not the most astute of conservative Christian observers, mainly, I suspect, because he allows his perception to be overly clouded by his deep disdain for their politics. But his article offers some good insights into why McCain is struggling so seriously in his attempts to court the evangelical voters that, much more than four years ago, appear willing to swing for the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama.

Just a warning: You’ve got to wade through some stomach-wrenching turns of phrase. I’ve posted a (fairly) clean snippet after the jump:

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