>More important than any of those is secularism, in my >opinion. The Democratic Party has a remarkable >ability to have leaders who are fairly secular >(Mondale, Dukakis) or actively disdain religion (Dean, >if he wins the nomination). Americans are, on the >whole, quite religious. Lower middle class whites are >_really_ religious. Bill Clinton, who spoke the >language of faith well, was able to neutralize much of >the traditional Republican advantage on this issue, do >fairly well among lower middle class whites and, not >by coincidence, win the election. Other Democrats >have been unable or unwilling to do this, and paid the >appropriate penalty for that.
I've thought about this for a while, and I think it is a bit off the mark. There is an element of truth to it, the language of the Democrats is at odds with the feelings of a number of religious people. I know a great number of them in the Woodlands. Its curious that you list Mondale as secular. He is the son of a Methodist minister that spoke of his faith in a debate with Ronald Reagan. I remember hearing it and, at the time, finding it amazing that the non church attending Hollywood Reagan who was married to a women who became pregnant during an adulterous relationship with him would be considered more acceptable on religious grounds than the church going son of a Methodist minister who had been married to the same woman for about 30 years. As a liberal, I'm not condemning Reagan for his past; he and Nancy seemed to have a good marriage. But, I know that the folks who supported him routinely condemned Hollywood actors for doing the same thing; and tended to like church going preacher kids who stayed married. So, what gives? The answer, I think, was in their replies to a question about public expressions of Christianity. I vaguely remember Reagan giving an answer supporting prayer in schools. I strongly remember Mondale giving a heartfelt answer that America was the most religious country in the West because the government was out of religion: it was a private affair. So, that's not really an secular answer; its an answer that a secular government allows for the flourishing of religious beliefs because of the freedom of religion it involves. Unfortunately, this sounded like being wishy-washy at best to a number of people. The last two Democratic presidents were Baptists. They talked like born-again Christians. Christian fundamentalists, even those who are not Baptists, have a comfort level with this type of talk. More liberal Christians are far less likely to talk like this, because it sounds to them like being judgmental of other faiths. People, like me, who think that a devout Hindu could do a better job of actually accepting Jesus (according to Matt. 25) than someone who has proclaimed that he has accepted Jesus into his heart, are often treated as though we just said the moon is made of ice cream by our fundamentalist brothers and sisters. Let me give you a few examples of this from here. We lost most of our literalist church members because we hosted a muli-faith Thanksgiving observance in which Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Christians, and people of other faiths could all thank God for our blessings together. The second was the last memorial for 9-11, which split our community. Several Fundamentalist churches had secured the Woodlands Pavilion (which seats 13,000) for a Christian day of remembrance very early. They said that Hindus and Muslims and Jews were more than welcome to come and be involved with the Christian program. They were not welcome, of course, to offer any non-Christian prayers or thanksgivings. The liberals had a separate observation, where the people of other faiths and who were not religious could offer meditations and prayers for those lost on 9-11. It was, of course, a much smaller gathering, only 1,000 compared to the 6,000 who went to the other ones. As one of my more open minded fundamentalist friends said "I didn't feel that I needed to hear people talking about false gods when I was troubled, I needed to hear about the Lord Jesus." He was one of the few fundamentalists who did not leave the church when we let non-Christians pray at our church. The third example is the choice of music at our public schools. It is about 25% classical sacred music, 50% modern Christian music, and about 25% non-Christian music. I certainly can understand why choirs would sing old masses, there is no way to undo history. But, there are plenty of modern choral pieces that are not Christian, and we do have people of other faiths in our schools. What do these examples show to me? 1) They depict a group of people who are sure that they know the truth. Their faith is right, and those of other religions are worshiping false gods. (Jews get a bye on the last one, but they really should know to accept Christ.) 2) This view represents the prevailing mood of the community. They are not the extremists. (The extremists do things like intimidate books stores into removing their small gay/lesbian section because those violate community standards and getting a local shopping center with an ancient Rome theme to put fig leafs on their statues.) They are very much turned off by the liberal unwillingness to proclaim Christian faith. To some extent, it is a valid criticism; there are liberals who are unwilling to declare any culture or other political system right or wrong on an issue because it appears self righteous to them. You've pointed out that many leftists are self righteous themselves, which is indeed ironic. My personal opinion is that there is a middle ground; that we can have a pluralistic American society that agrees on a number of fundamental principals: such as universal human rights. I think that it OK for Christians to talk from their faith roots in explaining their desire for social justice. As Peter Gomes pointed out, this gave a lot of support to the Civil Rights movement. But, I think that it is important to accept other people, who don't have the same roots. So, my answer is that Democratic language is not anti-religious; its anti-fundamentalist. In the South, this does present a real disadvantage. Lower middle class fundamentalists who agree with the Democrats on economic policy tend to side with the Republicans on social issues; because their position is closer to the fundamentalist view. The only way for Democrats to win in the South is to win a good portion of these folks over. This can be done by emphasizing the economic issues and diffusing the social issues. Republicans try to do the reverse. So, even though the religious right is not organized to deliver votes like it was, religious conservatives represent one of the two most important groups that make up the Republican party. Dan M. All of that _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
