When Barack Obama burst onto the
national scene at the 2004 Democratic National
Convention, he represented—among many things—the
shining hope for the religious left. Here was a
liberal politician who was not afraid of the language
of faith, who just might reclaim territory that the
Democratic Party had, willingly or not, ceded to
Republicans. Red America did not own religion, Obama
declared: “We worship an awesome God in the blue
states.
Between 2004 and 2007, when Obama
announced his candidacy for president, he became
possibly the most prominent Democratic politician who
was comfortable speaking about religion—a liberal who
gave the impression that his religiosity was
heartfelt, genuine, and important to his politics. He
spoke with ease about his conversion; of the influence
of Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr.; and,
in a key speech before the Call to Renewal conference
in 2006, of the importance of “religion in the public square.”
In the 2008 presidential election, Obama’s message
seemed to resonate with religious people who had not,
in recent years, gravitated toward the Democratic
Party. He won more churchgoers than any Democratic
presidential candidate since Bill Clinton.
But, in just two short years, the
left has become sluggish in its courtship of religious
voters, significantly scaling back its faith-outreach
programs. While many factors—primarily the
economy—doomed the Democrats this fall, the
consequences of this abdication nevertheless seem to
be severe. In the recent midterm elections, House
Democrats lost white evangelical voters in greater
numbers than they did in 2004, when “values voters”
flocked to George W. Bush. Reversing their Democratic
allegiance from the past two elections,
Catholics—nearly a quarter of all voters—favored the
GOP 54 to 44 percent. Compared to 2008, the drop-offs
were steep: a 20-point decline with Catholics, a
14-point decline with white evangelicals, and a
10-point decline with white Protestants. How and why
did this happen?
The post-2004 revival
of Democratic faith outreach, which reached its apex
in the 2008 elections, can be traced to 2005, when
House Democrats began holding a series of closed-door
meetings. The gatherings, known as the Faith Working
Group, were the brainchild of Nancy Pelosi, who wanted
Democrats to start paying attention to religious
voters. John Kerry had just lost the election and had
seemed markedly uncomfortable talking about faith.
(Though a Catholic, Kerry lost the Catholic vote to
Bush, an evangelical Methodist.)
More than two dozen congressmen
regularly attended the sessions, or sent aides on
their behalf. (Barack Obama, then a junior senator,
even sent a representative.) Attendees saw
presentations on getting out the “God vote”—reaching
voters motivated by their religious affiliation—and
met with mega-church pastors as well as leaders from
the religious left. The aim was simple: to formulate a
sincere _expression_ of progressive faith.
This idea caught on with the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) as well. Though
not known for his religious literacy, DNC
Chair Howard Dean (whom TNR called “one of the most
secular candidates to run for president in modern
history”) made faith outreach a priority in 2005. He
instructed DNC staffer and Pentecostal minister Leah Daughtry to target
religious voters, opened a faith-advisory council for
the DNC, and kicked off the Faith in Action
initiative, which, according to its mission statement,
was intended to increase “the national visibility of
Democrats on issues of faith and public life.” The new
strategy showed promise. According to political
consultant Eric Sapp, Democrats who did extended,
targeted faith outreach in 2006—like Ohio’s Ted
Strickland and Michigan’s Jennifer Granholm—fared 10
points better with frequent churchgoers than the
party’s national average.
By 2008, faith-related political
efforts had become prominent within the Democratic
Party, with Obama’s campaign exemplifying the trend.
Obama chose a young pastor, Joshua Dubois, to head the
campaign’s religious outreach, and a hefty portion of
the campaign’s field game was led by divinity school
graduate Jeremy Bird, who adeptly merged religious
outreach with political organizing. The campaign ran
dozens of faith forums in pivotal states, and the
Democratic National Convention even kicked off with an
interfaith worship service—a first in its history.
On Election Day, Obama made modest
but definite inroads among white
evangelicals, Protestants, and Catholics. He did eight
points better than Kerry with Catholic voters; and
with voters who went to church more than once a week,
he lowered the GOP advantage from 29 to 12 percent.
Voters who attended church monthly actually favored
Obama over McCain, 53 to 46 percent (Kerry had lost
these voters by two points). Once elected, Obama
expanded a Bush-era creation, the Office of
Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFBNP), and
put Dubois at its helm, hiring a number of the party’s
faith consultants to work under him. Obama and the
Democratic Party seemed poised to command respect
among the religious population they had so diligently
pursued.
But, when Obama took office, the
Democrats’ faith outreach began to fall by the
wayside. Several of those who had led the religious
aspects of the Obama campaign landed in the OFBNP,
which is legally barred from electoral politics, and
thus faith-based political outreach. “I accepted this
position knowing it would be distinct from the
electoral role,” Dubois told me. Another key faith
operative, Mara Vanderslice,
joined Dubois in the OFBNP, abandoning her nascent
political action committee, the Matthew 25 Network,
which had been formed to promote progressive Christian
candidates. With Dubois and others quarantined in
OFBNP, many of the strongest religious-outreach
coordinators were removed from the efforts in which
they had been so effective.
At the same time, the national
party began to strip down its religious outreach
programs. The DNC’s faith program had at least seven
staffers on hand in the 2008 race; during the recent
midterms, it downsized to one, who was also charged
with African-American outreach—a throwback to the days
when Democratic faith outreach meant showing up at
black churches. To be sure, there are significant
differences between midterm and presidential
elections, but even taking this into consideration,
several insiders say that the Democrats’ faith effort
noticeably dropped within the last two years.
According to Mark Silk, a professor at Trinity College
who writes frequently on religion and politics, the
Democrats “did take [faith outreach] seriously enough
in 2008.” But, he says, “it didn’t happen in 2010.”
Current DNC Chairman (and former
missionary) Tim Kaine has made vague statements
denying that he would allow faith outreach to falter,
but evidence of the DNC’s clear commitment to
faith-based coordination is hard to come by. The
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)
will not confirm the amount spent on faith-based
efforts during the midterms, but it seems likely that
it was less than the reported $82,000 spent
on faith outreach in 2008. “I haven’t met or talked to
anyone who knows of specific activities that are
happening out of the Democratic Party right now,” says
Rebecca Sager, a sociologist who studied faith
outreach during the last two elections. In the lead-up
to the midterms, Sager embedded with the campaign of
Virginia Democrat Tom Perriello, who ran a strong
religious outreach program in 2008, and attempted to
do the same in 2010. In 2010, however, the candidate
received little encouragement from the national party
to pursue religiously motivated voters, according to
Sager. (He ultimately lost his re-election bid.)
The experience of Democratic
political consultants, Eric Sapp and Burns Strider,
whose consulting company, Eleison, specializes in
Democratic faith outreach, further testifies to the
newly diminished role of faith-based campaigning. In
2008, Eleison was contracted to work on over 40
campaigns. This year, it was not hired by a single
campaign. In August, the DNC made a last-minute play
and brought the company on board, but, as Sapp puts
it, “you couldn’t get a program fully underway in a
couple months.”
Of course, the
Democrats’ chances at keeping the House this election
cycle were slim for many reasons, and they would not necessarily
have fared better if they had amped up their
faith-based efforts. “If anyone thinks that we lost
because we didn’t give enough contracts out to
faith-based consultants, I’d like to know what they’re
smoking,” says one Democratic strategist. “This
campaign was all about economy and jobs.”
Yet while it’s certainly true that
the 2010 campaign was mainly about the economy, it’s
not true that economics and faith-based outreach are
mutually exclusive. As one Democratic organizer told
me, “I think religious voters want to hear there is a
moral reason we need to save this economy and not just
an economic one.” To defend his record and contend
with the right-wing grassroots, Obama would do well to
articulate the moral-religious values that permeate
his policies and initially energized his supporters.
And, if the Democrats want to avoid the impression
that such values messaging is merely a
presidential-election-year tactic, they should
probably begin reinvigorating their faith outreach
efforts sooner rather than later. “Ninety percent of
people believe in some sort of God,” Sager points out.
“It’s mind-boggling why you would cede those voters to
the Republican Party.”
