White Catholic split

Pat Oliphant's cartoon, printed last Wednesday on Washingtonpost.com, received criticism for being offensive, particularly from some 350 Pentecostals. Debra Howell, who appeased such responses in her column, continued the discussion with a more general piece on the politics of cartoons. In response,silk pajamas, a Getreligion post by Mollie pointed out that not only is the cartoon offensive to Pentecostals, but that "Howell neglected to mention in her lengthy column was that Oliphant was so ignorant of Palin’s religious views that he didn’t even know that she is no longer Pentecostal." Actually, it's not entirely clear what Palin's religious views are at this point in time. In 2002, she did leave the Assemblies of God church that belonged to for almost all of her life and joined a nearby Bible church, but she remains a "friend' of her old church and is reported to attend an Assemblies of God church when she's in Juneau.

The Faith of Palin

Max Blumenthal, scourge of the religious right, has come up with a Wasilla Assembly of God video of a Kenyan pastor, Thomas Murthee, laying hands on Sarah Palin prior to her gubernatorial run in 2005, praying that God make a way for her in politics on a number of fronts, including by protecting her from "every from of witchcraft" (which perhaps is more common in Kenya than in metro Anchorage, but who knows?). Blumenthal says he managed to videotape an appearance of Murthee at the church a few days ago, and promises a posting of it shortly. Meanwhile,silk pajamas, Kos and Olbermann picked up on the old recording yesterday, and so it looks as though we're due for another round of speculation about the Faith of Palin.

Will Palin permit herself to be engaged in a discussion about her religious beliefs before the election? Such that someone could ask her, for example, whether she shares Pastor Murthee's wish that America's schools be filled with "tongue-talking, devil-casting" children rather than little followers of Buddha or Muhammad? Or why she (sort of) left the Wasilla Assembly of God after nearly 40 years? Or just what her views of the role of religion in public life are? I'm not holding my breath.
 

Religious Right Voodoo

OK, the touchstone of the narrative of John McCain and the religious right is his angry denunciation, following the 2000 South Carolina primary, of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance." But now, thanks to Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr.'s fascinating investigative piece on John McCain and the gambling industry in today's NYT, we learn the sequel--and something more about the underworld of Republican inside politics in the Bush-Delay years.

As anyone who has followed the Abramoff scandal even slightly knows, the Great Game had to do with playing one Indian tribe off against another. Tribes that wanted gaming licenses hired lobbyists to get them in,Sexy silk dresses, while other tribes, feeling their business threatened, hired lobbyists to keep them out. From the moral values standpoint, a politician could claim to be opposing gaming interests even as he was taking money to protect gaming interests. Sweet.

Now it seems--and truth to tell, the Times has the goods--that McCain has been playing his own version of the Great Game. As chairman of the key Senate committee, he learned what the Abramoff gang was up to from those it had ganged up on, and quickly adopted the stance of Senate Savonarola, investigating the corruption (I'm shocked, shocked!) even unto its innermost parts. And then, having gotten mad, came the chance to get really, really even.

That's because it turned out that right in the middle of the hanky-panky were Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, paladins of the religious right and the guys who put the smear on him in South Carolina.

“It was like hitting pay dirt,” said one associate of Mr. McCain’s who had consulted with the senator’s office on the investigation. “And face it — McCain and Weaver [John Weaver, McCain's chief political strategist] were maniacal about Ralph Reed and Norquist. They were sticking little pins in dolls because those guys had cost him South Carolina.”
Neither Norquist nor Reed was ever indicted for anything, and Norquist has more or less been able to skate away. But Reed had decided on a career in electoral politics for himself, and in 2006 was running for the GOP nomination to be lieutenant governor of Georgia. Thanks to the revelations, he had to kiss that sucker goodbye.

It now becomes clearer why the McCain campaign went so hysterically after the Times last week. The necessary response calls were being made, and the campaign knew what was coming down the pike. The last thing it needs is for the country to take another close look under the Abramoff rock, not with the Maverick as one of the creatures crawling around.

Pew Premie

McCain's support among white evangelical Protestants, a key Republican voter group, has inched up to 71% (Obama is supported by 21% of evangelicals). Based only on voters who express a preference between the two candidates, McCain's lead among evangelicals (77%-23%) is comparable to Bush's final margin among this group (78%-21%). McCain has a small edge among white Catholic voters, 48% to 41%. He also holds a clear lead among white Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly (52% McCain vs. 36% Obama). Four years ago, Bush beat Kerry 61% to 39% among this group.
It sure looks as though this race is reverting to type--i.e. to the 2000 and 2004 pattern--when it comes to religion. Thank Sarah Palin for that.

Specifically, the religion (or God) gap is back to previous levels. Among those who say they attended worship weekly or more, the Republican margin has risen from 10 points in August to 18 points in September. Meanwhile, among those who seldom or never attend, the Democratic margin jumped from 19 to 30. Not surprisingly, the Palin choice pulled all evangelicals toward McCain, and a few white Catholics; while the unaffiliated have shifted even more toward Obama. As in the past, frequent-attending white Mainline Protestants showed themselves less inclined to support GOP candidates who cozy up to evangelicals. Between August and September, McCain's margin among this group was cut nearly in half, from 25 points (57-32) to 14 (53-39).

One caveat, however. Pew's polling took place September 9-14--at the height of the GOP convention (or Palin) bounce. Since then, the polls seem to be showing a reversion to the August status quo ante. In other words,Fantastic silk scarves, this snapshot may be more of a retrospective than a portrait of what's to come.

Ixnay on the ulgarityvay

In a communication to me, reader B. DelMonico writes, "I appreciate this forum,Silk Queen Quilt Cover, but could I ask you to please not post comments that use the term "Papal Bull S***", or at least edit the term out. It is flat-out offensive and has no place in civil discourse." Being offensive I do not consider grounds for refusing to post comments--and anyway, one never knows what will offend whom. Ditto with sacrilege. But the comment in question is vulgar, and I'll request that those who wish to have their comments posted avoid vulgarity, which most of us recognize when, to paraphrase Justice Stewart, we see it.
 

Did it or didn't it

From the latest bit of Couric interview:

She took issue with news reports that one of [the churches she attends], The Wasilla Bible Church, sponsored a conference where gays could be made straight through prayer.

Palin: Well, it matters though, Katie, when the media gets it wrong. It frustrates Americans who are just trying to get the facts and … be able to make up their mind on,Silk Queen Quilt Cover, about a person's values. So it does matter.

From Rachel D'Oro's September 6 article in Huffpost:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin's church is promoting a conference that promises to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer.

"You'll be encouraged by the power of God's love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality," according to the insert in the bulletin of the Wasilla Bible Church, where Palin has prayed for about six years.

Civil Religion unexclusive and exceptional

The Immanent Frame, purveyor of religious cogitation from the Social Science Research Council, has begun a new series of essays inspired by this passage from President Obama's inaugural address:

Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism--these things are old.  These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

Is there a problem with this rather banal reflection? Well, there's the perennial worry among some religion scholars that any appeal to shared values is by definition exclusionary. As Frame editor-at-large David Kyuman Kim frames it:

Nonetheless, by casting certain values as "old" and as "true," Obama has enjoined the American public in an affirmation of a tradition that may or may not be in fact be as "common" as he claims.  For while he invites the American citizenry to think of ourselves as part of a common conversation that makes for a tradition, he presumes a common inheritance.  And yet: there will no doubt be those who feel left out of this inheritance and from this invitation.  They will feel so for a host of reasons: differences over political positions or moral points of view, or disputes about the master narratives that have rendered the lives of various people invisible or "insignificant."  This is one of the perils of making an appeal and a claim to "the common good" and to shared values. When a tradition aspires to be encompassing, if not universal, in its moral claims, it will inevitably leave many feeling excluded.

This, it seems to me, is a fine expression of the characteristic American concern that the ingrained celebration (viz: valorization) of pluralism (viz: difference) as marker of America's collective identity not be threatened by the enunciation of common traditions (except, of course, pluralism itself). The great bogey for such religion scholars is the idea of an American civil religion. The hegemony, the hegemony!

But the species of civil religion experienced in America is a far cry from the kinds of political religion associated with Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, , and Soviet Russia. Here's how Europe's great student of those political religions, Emilio Gentile, defines it (in his Politics as Religion,mens silk pajamas, p. xvi): 

the conceptual category that contains the forms of sacralization of a political system that guarantee a plurality of ideas, free competition in the exercise of power, and the ability of the governed to dismiss their governments through peaceful and constitutional methods. Cvil religion therefore respects individual freedom, coexists with other ideologies, and does not impose obligatory and unconditional support for its commandments.

Those scholars anxious about creeping Obamaite civil religion would do well to broaden their national and historical horizons, perhaps bearing in tmind he president's response when asked by a reporter if he subscribed to the "school of  'American exceptionalism.":

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.