RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 1
JOHN SHATTUCK: Good evening and welcome again to the John F. Kennedy Library. I’m John Shattuck, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation. And on behalf of myself and Tom Putnam, the Acting Director of the Library, we are pleased to present tonight a special forum that will explore an issue at the center of our nation’s political life, the relationship between politics and religion.
Before introducing tonight’s forum and our distinguished panelists, I’d like to thank the institutions that make these forums possible, starting with our lead sponsor, the Bank of America. We’re also grateful to Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, the Corcoran Jennison Companies, and our media sponsors, The Boston Globe , NECN and WBUR, which broadcasts all of our forums on Sunday evenings at 8:00.
And we all know that religion and politics have had a long and complicated relationship in America. And we know, I think, as Thomas Paine wrote at the time of the American Revolution, that “This new world is the asylum for persecuted lovers of religious liberty from every part of the old world.” We also know, as the First Amendment to the Constitution says, that the government is prohibited from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
What most people don’t know is that the Constitution actually goes a step further towards separating religion and politics. It says, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” That’s what the Founding Fathers said in Article 6 of the Constitution. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 2
Now when John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic to be elected President, there were plenty of people who had argued during his campaign that he should be disqualified because his religion might require him to take orders from the Pope. Candidate are often judged today in the other way; not on the basis of whether they pledge to separate their private faith and their public office, but on whether they wear their religion in a very conspicuous way, and pledge to follow a higher authority in making political decisions.
Now to set the stage for tonight’s discussion, I’d like to take us back briefly to the 1960 campaign. No obstacle to the presidency handicapped John F. Kennedy more than the widespread belief that putting a Catholic in the White House would be like electing the Pope. At first, Kennedy tried to dismiss this charge by making fun of it. At a campaign dinner in New York in April 1960, he said that he had “sat next to Cardinal Spellman at dinner the other evening. And I asked what I should say when voters question me about the doctrine of the Pope’s infallibility. “I don’t know,” the Cardinal told me. “All I know is he keeps calling me Spillman.””
[laughter]
So as the campaign went on and the charges kept growing, and the anti-Catholic prejudice ran deep, Kennedy decided to address the issue head-on. And in an historic speech on September 12, 1960, he went before the Greater Houston Ministers Association, and talked about the relationship between religion and RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 3
politics in America in a way that few other politicians ever had. Let’s watch a brief film clip from that speech.
[video]
So as we know, John F. Kennedy persuaded a majority of voters that his religion would not dictate his politics once he became President. Today, however, many politicians go out of their way to convince voters that religion is at the heart of their politics. Tonight we have assembled a distinguished panel to discuss and debate where to draw the line between religion and politics in America, the urgency of getting it right, and the danger of getting it wrong.
Our first panelist, who is actually seated to the left and next to the last panelist, is Senator John Danforth who represented the state of Missouri in the U.S. Senate with great distinction for 18 years. A long time leader of Republican moderates, Senator Danforth is an ordained Episcopal minister with strong views on where to draw that line. He spells this out in a new book, Faith and Politics: How the “Moral Values” Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together .
Last year, in an op-ed in The New York Times , Senator Danforth wrote, and I quote, “I do not fault religious people for their political action. The problem is not with people or with churches. The problem is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.”
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Since leaving the Senate in 1995, Senator Danforth has continued his public life as an author, a diplomat, a peacemaker and a minister. He was appointed by President Clinton to head a review of events surrounding the 1993 assault on the compound of a heavily-armed religious cult in Waco, Texas. In 2002, as President Bush’s special envoy to Sudan, he brokered a peace agreement to end the brutal religious conflict in the southern part of that country.
Senator Danforth served for a time as President Bush’s Ambassador to the United Nations. And in June 2004 he officiated at the funeral services of former President Ronald Reagan at the Washington National Cathedral. Senator, it’s a privilege to have you with us here tonight.
[applause]
Our second panelist, who is seated two seats to my left, is the Reverend Richard Cizik, Vice President of Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, the largest Christian evangelical organization in the United States, with a membership of 43,000 churches and 27 million adherents.
Reverend Cizik has served the Association for 24 years. And he directs its public policy positions and advocacy before the Congress, the White House and Supreme Court. He has long been involved in international issues on behalf of the Association, particularly religious persecution. And he’s been influential in getting the Congress and the State Department to include the promotion of religious liberty as a U.S. foreign policy objective. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 5
I met Reverend Cizik when I was serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. And he was organizing a religious leader’s delegation to the People’s Republic of China in 1996. Needless to say, that was not an easy mission. And I was impressed by the diplomatic way he went about it.
In recent years, he’s expanded his international advocacy by calling for steps to combat global warming and to promote international development. And he’s also called for greater political activism by the evangelical movement in his book, The High Cost of Indifference: Can Christians Afford Not to Act? Richard, we’re delighted that you could be here today.
[applause]
Our third panelist is the Reverend Barry Lynn, seated to my far left, the Executive Director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The Reverend Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and a widely respected activist and lawyer in the defense of civil liberties.
He and his organization have long been at the center of the debate over religion and politics in America. And they were strong proponents of the absolute separation of church and state mandated by the First Amendment of the Constitution. He had led the opposition to prayer in public schools, to vouchers paid for by the government to support education in religious schools, to faith-based RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 6
initiatives promoted by the White House to support religious organizations, and to other political efforts to get the government to pay for religious activities.
I’ve known the Reverend Barry Lynn since his days as legislative counsel to the ACLU. And I could tell you, he is the kind of advocate that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote that religious freedom would never be self-enforcing. It would need people like Barry Lynn to be out there.
In a new book, Piety & Politics , Barry Lynn outlines Jefferson’s vision and why it’s threatened by those, he says, who would mix religion and politics. He appears frequently in the national media as an expert on church/state issues. It’s great to have you here, Barry.
[applause]
And to organize tonight’s discussion, we’re very fortunate to have as our moderator the distinguished editorial page editor of The Boston Globe , Renee Loth. As the person who formulates all The Globe’s editorial positions, Renee is probably one of the most influential people in our city.
Under her direction, The Globe editorial board interprets what’s happening in Boston, the country and the world. Before her appointment as editorial editor in 2000, Renee was an award-winning reporter for The Globe and, before that, an associate editor for New England Magazine , a political reporter for The Boston RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 7
Phoenix , and editor of The East Boston Community News . She didn’t think I was going to bring that up. A wonderful publication.
She has been a fellow at Radcliffe’s Public Policy Institute and Harvard’s Institute of Politics. And I cannot imagine a better person suited to lead our discussion here tonight. So please join me again in welcoming Senator John Danforth, the Reverend Richard Cizik, the Reverend Barry Lynn and Renee Loth to the stage of the Kennedy Library.
[applause]
MS. RENEE LOTH: Well thank you very much for joining us tonight. This is a terrific topic. And I think, as the clip of Senator Kennedy shows, we’ve come a long way since 1960.
And I think we can stipulate that politics today is thoroughly untrammeled with religion. Sometimes it’s referred to as moral values. Sometimes it’s called the culture war. But it’s religion. And it’s informing our debate on public policy issues now from school vouchers, as we heard, to stem cell research, to gay marriage, to what would Jesus drive, to whether evolution or sex education ought to be taught in the public schools. And on the international scale, which I think we’ll also address tonight, it could even be keeping us in an unpopular war.
It’s a topic that really engages people’s passions. But I don’t know how much it engages their minds. And so that’s why we’re here tonight, to engage our minds. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 8
So I think my first question has to be to Senator Danforth. In your experience, your political experience, your faith experience, do you think that it is possible to inject religion into the public debate or for a public man, a politician, to be informed by religious views? Is it possible to do that without being divisive or discriminatory?
SENATOR JOHN DANFORTH: Sure. I don’t think people who have deep religious faith are expected to check their faith at the door when they leave their church or mosque or synagogue. Religion is something that infuses all of our lives, hopefully our personal lives, our family lives, our business lives, and our political lives.
The problem is that, when religion becomes a political agenda, it can be very, very divisive. So I think that the question isn’t whether religion informs whatever we’re doing in the world, but does it do so in a divisive way? Or does it do so in a way that allows us to hold ourselves together as one country?
I think that, in turn, depends on the degree of certainty or the degree of humility with which we go about practicing our faith. Do we think that we have a monopoly of God’s truth? Do we believe that we can translate our perception of God’s truth into a political agenda? If so, then we tend to approach politics as God’s way versus the enemy of the people of faith. On the other hand, if religion brings with it a sense that God’s truth is bigger than any of our perceptions of it, then it creates the kind of humility which makes it possible for us to find common ground. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 9
MS. LOTH: I bet that Reverend Lynn has a somewhat different view of that question.
REVEREND BARRY LYNN: A somewhat different view. I do like, very much, what Jack Kennedy said in 1960, that he believed in an America where the separation of church and state was absolute. Because I think we are talking about a fundamental principle, but not a fundamental principle that necessarily requires anyone, as Senator Danforth just said, to check their religion before entering the legislative chamber in Massachusetts, or even the Oval Office in Washington.
But it does mean that people whose policies are going to be based at all on their religious beliefs need to recognize that the scriptures of no particular church, not even the Christian Bible, holds any special place in the governance of the United States of America, and that every decision made politically must be tested against, first and foremost, the Constitution of the United States.
And if someone’s understanding of truth comes from a source, a biblical source, another spiritual source, but it comes into conflict with the demands of the constitution in a secular democracy, I believe it is the constitution that has the final say. And moreover, when you have people in public office… I really don’t want to bash President Bush tonight. But he’s the only President we’ve got. So, I have to say a few things. He is a man who has said to at least two of his members of his cabinet that he believes he was selected by God to serve at this time in history. We had similar sentiments from the Secretary of Defense just recently. This troubles RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 10
me a great deal. Because it’s very easy, if you have that as the truth which guides you, to avoid having to test those ideas that you’re expressing, among other things, against the demands, the rights and the responsibilities that the constitution imposes on elected officials.
MS. LOTH: Reverend Cizik, you want to try that?
REVEREND RICHARD CIZIK: Religion and politics are and always will be-- I think it was André Malraux who said many years ago, “If the 21 st century is not religious, it won’t be.” How prophetic could you be?
In other words, religious values are not just front and center here in America, they are front and center around the world. And it’s true. The question is how do these two relate, religion and politics? And frankly, they do pretty well in this country. For all the liabilities and for all the excesses and the mistakes… And believe me, I’m the first to say that the evangelicals probably specialize in the excesses. Maybe a lot of people here would agree that the evangelicals specialize in the excess of religion and politics. But it is a reality that you cannot take these issues of faith and values out of politics.
I’m a Presbyterian. The black robes of the revolution were the references made to the preachers who set us on this course of independence. And that is the same influence, the same kind of passion which gave us, you see, abolition and, after that, the suffragette movement and, after that, the civil rights movement and, today, RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 11
the new human rights movement that carries its values and the causes for freedom for people now being persecuted with genocide in Darfur.
And so the question is, yes, Barry, how far do we go? George Will says in his book, Statecraft as Soulcraft , that the four most important words in answering the question, “How far do we go?” the answer, ambiguously he says, is up to a point, up to a point. Well what is that point? Well we would all disagree. But we have to find, I think, a better point, a resolution, than we have had heretofore in the last few years.
MS. LOTH: Well, you know, it’s interesting that you bring up the abolition movement because the Bible, like the Qur’an or like any… I don’t want to get into quoting scripture with this audience, that’s for sure, with this panel. But it can be interpreted in any number of ways. So there’s a liberal agenda in the Bible, as well as there is, what we call today in our modern interpretations, a conservative agenda. Why do you think, though, that our politics right now -- and correct me if you disagree -- are driven by a conservative interpretation of religious teachings, and not that liberal agenda? Is it because the Bible has been hijacked by the conservative movement?
REVEREND CIZIK: I think the Republican Party uses evangelicals in the same sense, frankly, that the Democratic Party has used those in the mainland Protestant movement at times, or Catholics.
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Look, Republicans are in power. They have been for the last eight years or more. And 40% of the GOP base is evangelical. And so, look, these evangelicals are carrying their values into the public arena. And there is pushback. Obviously, there is pushback. And some of it is legitimate and some isn’t.
And so answering what is that point where you find this proper balance is every man or woman’s definition. But this is why, in my opinion, we have this out in front today, because evangelicals have assumed a greater place in public life than ever before. And I don’t think that’s going to change.
MS. LOTH: President Kennedy made an explicit reference, in that prescient -- because I don’t know if this was an issue at the time in 1960 -- to taxpayer dollars being used to advance faith organizations.
REVEREND CIZIK: Barry noted that real--
MS. LOTH: I’m sure.
REVEREND LYNN: I noted that. [laughter]
MS. LOTH: And so here we are with a situation now, though, where taxpayer money is explicitly now going for faith-based organizations both locally and abroad. And I don’t think anybody questions the value of the work of some of these organizations. Some of them are right here in Boston, very important, very RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 13
successful, working with poor people in urban crises, and overseas as well, in Africa.
But The Boston Globe ’s recent reporting and also The New York Times reporting has found that, unfortunately, these organizations are not adhering to the requirements that they not proselytize or that they not discriminate based on people’s religions and employment or in the services they provide.
So it raises a question about whether it’s even possible to reconcile the idea of public taxpayer money going for faith-based organizations. You’re nodding, so I’m going to ask you first.
REVEREND LYNN: I mean it is certainly possible that there can be partnerships between religious institutions and government entities, but they have to be done very carefully. And what we’ve seen over the course of the President’s Faith-Based Initiative has been quite the opposite.
In 2002, I made allegations in The Washington Post that the monies being spent in the Faith-Based Initiative were, in fact, being used to promote seminars in particular congressional districts and particular states with very close races between the Republican and Democratic candidate. The White House, of course, and all of its spokespeople denied that.
But now we learned from David Kuo, the gentleman who was the number two person in the Faith-Based Office, in a new book that he came out with just two RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 14
weeks ago, that that was the sole purpose of those seminars, to lure primarily African American churches into believing that, if they came to these seminars, a) they might get some money from the government -- most of them did not -- and then also that they would be reminded that this was a Republican program, and that they might carry that with them into the polling place or into their congregations where they would suggest that others might vote in the same direction.
This was a scam. This was like walking around with money in Chicago when Democrats actually would go up to preachers and say, “Here are a few bucks. Can you bring a few more parishioners to vote for the Democratic machine?” It was corrupt then, and it’s corrupt now. And it’s very difficult when you have a relatively small amount of money to hand out, and you’re playing this religion card, not to end up giving money to the people who are going to help you. A corruption of the church itself, and a corruption of the political process. A twofer. And it’s bad news for the constitution when that happens.
MS. LOTH: Reverend Cizik.
REVEREND CIZIK: I couldn’t disagree more.
MS. LOTH: I thought so.
REVEREND CIZIK: Look, the President doesn’t pick the recipients. He doesn’t even know who they are. There has been, in my opinion, little that has ever been proven, Barry, to have been wrong. I know you can say that there are those who RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 15
have violated the prohibitions against sectarian worship and instruction. But frankly, if they were aware of the lawsuits that have shown this and been successful in doing so--
REVEREND LYNN: Well, I’m filing them.
REVEREND CIZIK: I’m sure you are as we speak. But David Kuo’s book has maybe a piece of the elephant’s tail, but he doesn’t have the whole picture, in my opinion, of the Faith-Based Initiative which was on a principled level. It was about leveling the playing field between secular and religious service providers, leveling the playing field.
And I think most Americans believe in that; not to fund religion for religion’s sake, not for worship or instruction, or to proselytize, but rather to empower those groups which we have seen in most recent days in Katrina, that the faith-based providers, including the Salvation Army, were in fact the most effective, the most efficacious. And that is what, I think, most Americans support.
MS. LOTH: Senator.
SENATOR DANFORTH: Well I’m no expert on the Faith-Based Initiative. And I haven’t read the famous book that the other two panelists are talking about. So I don’t have much to offer.
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I think that the problem I see with the Faith-Based Initiative is that, unless there is an unlimited amount of money to give to every applicant who comes through the door, there is a picking of winners and losers. There must be if there is a finite amount of money. And that troubles me.
I would like to, if I could, get back to an earlier question, maybe a broader question than the Faith-Based Initiative. And that is the whole question of how this came to be, and this phenomenon now of the religious right and its involvement in politics. I think that this is a strategy on the part of each of the two political parties, namely to appeal to the base.
The concept is that the center doesn’t matter anymore. And there was a newspaper article in The New York Times a month or so ago that said something like 6% of the voters are Independent or undecided. And I can remember in 1994, before the election, attending a Republican strategy meeting where it was said that we’re not going to think about the undecided so much. We’re going to try to energize the base of our party.
Well the base of the Republican Party is the Christian right. And the strategy of the Republican Party has been to energize the Christian right. And how is that done? It’s done by focusing on what are called wedge issues. Wedge issues are designed to be very appealing, very emotionally appealing to the base of the party. And the meaning of wedge is exactly what the word says; that is, to pound something until it drives the country apart.
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So we have this emergence of all of these hot issues. The hottest of them all right now, the question of gay marriage, and the appeal of that. Why was there a vote on the floor of the United States Senate this summer on the question of gay marriage as a constitutional amendment? I can’t imagine that people in the United States Senate truly believe that this belongs in the Constitution of the United States. So why have a vote on it? Well it’s the summer of an election year. And it’s therefore a very, very blatant appeal to the base of the party.
So this is the phenomenon I see. I don’t think that it’s just that conservative Christians are active in politics. More power to them for being active in politics. But it’s a manipulation of the political system by this very divisive appeal to the base.
MS. LOTH: But that’s my question. Isn’t it precisely the insertion of religious questions that makes it polarizing, that makes it divisive?
SENATOR DANFORTH: Well there’s nothing more divisive, potentially, than religion. If religion is, “I’m on God’s side and you’re not,” there is nothing more divisive than that. There is nothing that makes politics more impossible. If politics is compromised by its nature, how can you compromise if you believe you’re on God’s side?
So what’s happened in America today is the center of American politics has become marginal as the common ground has been cut out from under us. And it’s very deliberate. And by the way, it’s done by each of the political parties. It’s RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 18
done by the Republican Party by appealing to its religious base. It’s also done by the Democratic Party in appealing to its base. It just doesn’t happen to be religious.
And I think that most people in this country believe that American politics now is so polarized that it’s become dysfunctional. And part of that polarization has been this religious appeal by the Republican Party.
REVEREND LYNN: You know, Senator, I agree with everything you said. But I think it’s actually much worse than that because the appeal on some of these issues then leads into a wholesale criticism of the very institutions that make America America.
For example, when the judicial courts in the state of Massachusetts decide that same-sex couples can, in fact, be recognized as a marital unit, then not only does the religious right come in and say that’s ungodly, but they also begin to criticize the very nature of the courts. So the whole judicial system becomes demonized with the phrase “the unelected black-robed judges.”
And that creates a much bigger and broader enemy to attack. The same thing goes on in public schools. Jerry Falwell says-- many agree with him-- he says, “I hope to live to see the day when there will be no public schools left in America because the church will run all of them,” [which is] a fundamental attack on public schools because they teach critical thinking, something that most of us think is a good thing, but which the far right thinks is a very dangerous thing. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 19
You go on to other institutions, medicine. We’re having debates on the floor of the United States Senate on stem cell research that sound like they’re medieval, theological debates about when life begins. We are ignoring the evidence of medicine and of science when we try to teach intelligent design, in replacing evolution in schools, and in discussing what contraceptives should be available to American women.
So this separation of church and state idea becomes a rope. It’s more than a thread. It’s a rope that starts to twist together, in a very dangerous way, into many of the social controversies we have in America today.
SENATOR DANFORTH: I don’t want to-- Sorry.
REVEREND CIZIK: Go ahead. Go ahead, Senator.
SENATOR DANFORTH: But just on this business of the alleged demonization of the judiciary, I don’t agree with that at all. I mean I think it’s a basic question of American jurisprudence. What is the appropriate role of the judiciary?
And I did not read the Massachusetts case. But it seems to me to be reasonable to say that if the issue of gay marriage is taken out of the legislative branch, and turned into some sort of constitutional issue, that that is something that’s fair game for criticism. It’s just the basic question of how powerful should the judiciary be, RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 20
and how literally should it interpret either the state constitution or the federal constitution.
My criticism of this gay marriage issue is that, whatever it is, it clearly does not belong in the Constitution of the United States. This sort of social value question is not a U.S. constitutional issue. Therefore, why was it voted on? Well because it was red meat in an election year.
REVEREND CIZIK: I would suggest it was voted upon because you have around the country states that have adopted amendments to their own constitutions, which they have done overwhelmingly so, 12 to 13 states in the last electoral go around, and will have seven or eight states do the same thing again this election cycle.
And they’re overwhelmingly adopted because the American people are saying-- not that they want religion unduly injected into this debate, not at all-- that rather they have a traditional understanding of marriage as between one man and one woman. And that’s what they would like their state laws to reflect.
So I would suggest that rather than the assault, you see, that I hear from you, Barry, by the religious right, the radical right upon all of our judicial institutions, I simply see the American people responding not by, you see, a radical right, but by large percentages simply saying, “Hey, here are our values. We want the state we live in to reflect them.”
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And when judges, be it in Massachusetts or elsewhere, want to dictate to the rest of the nation what the rest of the country ought to do, they say, “No. We want these values in our state.” Okay. Let’s say, if it’s not right, Senator, to be in the Constitution, in the federal constitution, then by all means, let the states decide. And I’m sort of one of those who would say that will maybe be the solution here.
REVEREND LYNN: Well, you know, neither one of you would say the same thing about race. But it was in 1967 that miscegenation laws finally were declared unconstitutional. These were laws that prohibited African Americans and white people from marrying. There were still laws like that in Virginia and Tennessee. And the voters in those states continued to ignore them or to continue to reenact them.
But finally it took a court to say something. The court said, “We are going to get over this. And we are, in a sense, going to take a new value.” The value says if two people accept the rights and responsibilities of marriage, we’re going to use and accept that that’s the power of the state to declare it a marriage. I think, now, it’s time to get over this other problem of not recognizing two men or two women who want to take on the rights and responsibilities of marriage.
And frankly, it is a value to say what I have just said. And I don’t think that we delay justice or the acquisition of just values just because we can’t convince the majority of people in Tennessee that they should see it the right way. And I think it is the right way if the goal is justice for every American, and not having some religious group be able to dictate how he or she should live his life. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 22
SENATOR DANFORTH: Well, it’s hardly some religious group.
REVEREND CIZIK: Amen.
SENATOR DANFORTH: It really isn’t. It is a question of values. I agree with you, sir. I think that it’s essentially a legislative issue. It’s not a judicial issue. There are times when values are so broadly accepted. And a country race would certainly be one of them that that does become a judicial issue. But clearly this particular marriage issue has not reached that point yet. But I really am not here to debate the issue of gay marriage. I recognize that people have different views of that. But that’s fine with me.
What I am saying is how did this vote occur in the United States Senate? And it occurred because it was a very, very blatant effort to win votes by appealing to a particular block of people. And it was highly divisive to do it. And I think that was wrong.
MS. LOTH: The only thing I wanted to say about gay marriage is that it was no secret why those ballot questions were put on each individual state ballot in the 2004 presidential election. It was to galvanize the anti-gay marriage constituency, legitimate or not, in the states which tended to vote for Republicans. And it was put upon those ballots by the Republican operatives.
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So here is another example where a social value issue is being injected into an explicit political matter, and nothing gets more political than a vote for president. And so, I’m just wondering-- and it is a tremendously divisive issue-- so I’m just wondering what role these personal and private and social issues really have in an explicit political activity like voting.
REVEREND CIZIK: Politics is not bean bagging. We express our values through politics. We do that through the candidates we select. And by and large, I don’t buy this argument that America is in the midst of a great culture war.
Now I think Barry would think so. He said so. I think the evidence is to the contrary. If you read, for example, Patrick Hynes’s book, In Defense of the Religious Right , and the polls that are even conducted by The Pew Center for Religion & the Public Life, of which I serve on the Board, the evangelicals themselves in this country, Renee, do not want a culture war.
Now that’s maybe the most surprising thing that you would hear from evangelicals. We don’t want a culture war? Absolutely not. We, in fact, are more intentionally aimed at this time in history, I think, at common ground issues than, say, in the ‘70s or ‘80s.
And so rather than, I think, being more contentious, more vigorously opposed to one another as Americans, I think evangelicals are saying, “Let us find common ground.” And we have done so, for example, in the United States Congress over the last eight years on subjects such as Sudan, passing the International Religious RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 24
Freedom Act for international religious freedom, the Sudan Peace Act, as you know, Senator, to help bring peace in the south, the North Korea Human Rights Act to address in a new way the human rights violations in North Korea, and on and on, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, working with the ACLU on prison rape, and with feminists on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
So I would suggest that rather than this being the most difficult time in American politics and religion, it might in fact be a stellar time that is maybe setting the stage for what is a common ground that we, as Americans, all ought to find unity on. So that would be my optimistic ...(inaudible). [simultaneous conversation]
MS. LOTH: And I think some people here would like to know more about your activities around global warming and the global environmental issue because I do think that may be an area of common ground.
REVEREND CIZIK: Well I get attacked because I’m simply saying that climate change is a sanctity of human life issue, that it is an issue of the rights of millions and millions of people not to be the victims of change which is largely the result of America in which we, 4% of the world’s population, contribute over 25% of the greenhouse gases. So isn’t that a human rights issue? Isn’t that a sanctity of human life issue?
And to my critics on the right who, frankly, have said to me, “We will not allow mercury poisoning in our rivers to be a sanctity of life issue,” I’ve said, absolutely, “Why not? Why?” Because there are people-- I would concede, Senator-- there RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 25
are people, yes, who do want to use a very select list of issues, the litmus test issues of the right, if you will, same sex marriage and abortion, to aid and abet one party.
And to these people on the right, I say, since when is our agenda that of any political party? Shouldn’t we as evangelicals, shouldn’t we as Christian people, shouldn’t we as Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims or whatever, be saying to both political parties, “Here are our agenda concerns. Now, tell us what you think,” not simply to say, “Well, we’ll use one political party to further our cause.”
MS. LOTH: Well put.
REVEREND CIZIK: That’s an entirely different kind of scenario for the future. And it’s a different kind of methodology, I would say, as well, which is increasingly accepted by evangelicals in this country.
MS. LOTH: Senator.
SENATOR DANFORTH: I just want to say I really agree with that. And I think that that’s correct. And I clearly saw that when I was the President’s Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan.
This was an issue that was pushed positively on the national agenda by all kinds of people, people of all kinds of religious persuasions, and particularly by evangelical Protestants. And it was totally admirable. And I believe that if you were to ask the RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 26
American people, “Do you believe that religion should be used to divide us as a country?” most people would say, “Absolutely not. Not here. Not in America.” Other places in the world it happens. It is not going to happen here, including evangelical Christians. I don’t think they want this kind of divisiveness.
REVEREND CIZIK: No, they don’t.
SENATOR DANFORTH: I think it is really a political manipulation.
REVEREND LYNN: It is. But it’s also true that, during much of the time that we’re talking about, at the United Nations, the United States would vote with Sudan on other issues involving health, involving women’s rights in a way that made them indistinguishable from the Sudanese government.
SENATOR DANFORTH: Oh, baloney.
REVEREND LYNN: What do you mean, baloney? What do you--
SENATOR DANFORTH: Well, I don’t know. I was six months there. I never voted with the government of Sudan on anything.
REVEREND LYNN: Well, how about condom distribution in a third world? How about all of the efforts that should be international efforts to make sure that we deal not with a comment made in the State of the Union Address about what the President might do about AIDS, and money he might get, but to actually get RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 27
United States funding and international funding to the people who desperately need it without a sermonette attached about what they can and cannot do?
So I agree with you that we should find common ground. I spent two and a half years trying to find common ground at the invitation of Senator Rick Santorum, someone whom I certainly don’t agree with about much, on the Faith-Based Initiative. We came up, and right and left, the Association of Evangelicals involved as well, 37 specific programs and ideas to be implemented by Congress. Not one of them has passed. They all were common ground ideas about how to preserve the civil rights of people, as well as to get more money to the poor. It was the Congress that blocked it because they didn’t want to resolve that issue.
So I say, when common ground is reasonable, when it’s directed at creating kind of new compromises, not idiot compromises, but new compromises, new ways of thinking, we can all move forward. But we cannot forget the fundamental constitutional rights of American citizens in the process.
REVEREND CIZIK: Barry, I am a principled pluralist. Now, in defining that, I say I believe that no religion deserves a privileged place in American public life. No one religion, not even my own deserves a privileged place. I not only believe in tolerance, which is respect for people of other faiths, but I go beyond that to say not just principled pluralism. But frankly, there has to be a place, Renee, in American life in which you even show partnership for those with people of other faiths.
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Now this may get me into hot water with some people. But I actually believe that God uses people of other faiths for His purposes in the world. And if that’s the case, then why would I be objecting, even in this world of civilizational conflict, to collaborating with people on behalf of common objectives which we can agree upon.
And so I happen to think that, yes, the 21 st century will be religious or it won’t be at all. Yes, Malraux, I believe, was right. But the kind of world will not be the Sam Huntington world. John Shattuck has spoken earlier, invited us here. Mr. Shattuck, I would say I don’t believe Sam Huntington’s thesis, we are inevitably headed towards civilizational conflict. In fact, I would say just the opposite.
MS. LOTH: Well, okay. Now we’re on the international stage. So how has the post-9/11 conflict… We’re supposedly at war with Islamic terrorism. How has it complicated these questions?
REVEREND CIZIK: Are you asking me?
MS. LOTH: I’m asking any one of you.
REVEREND CIZIK: Let the Senator take that one.
MS. LOTH: Okay, I’ll start. I actually have been dismayed-- and maybe this will be surprising to some Globe readers-- I, personally, am dismayed to see that RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 29
in Western Europe, for example, very liberal, supposed, societies are having a difficult time assimilating their Muslim immigrants into their societies. And there have been violent clashes. And certainly, in London and Madrid, there have been terrorist acts linked to Islamic citizens, in some cases, who had just not been able to assimilate into those Western European cultures with their Western European values.
And so, for example, in France and in England, there are movements to try to get women to not wear their veils, Muslim women not to wear their veils. And I disparate this. You know, one of the few things I’ve been proud of, in the United States in the last several years, has been our ability to comfortably assimilate people of different faiths. But I worry that that pluralism that you talk about, this precious pluralism, is jeopardized by the insertion of too much rhetoric and activity on the part of our government leaders.
REVEREND CIZIK: I happen to think there is a place here for the releasing of values that doesn’t happen elsewhere in the world. In other words, I think that you have Turkish communities in Germany -- I’ve met with Angela Merkel about this issue -- in which they listen on their computers and on their televisions on programs that are beamed in, exclusively Muslim programs. They do not assimilate. And that is, to me, the heart and soul of the challenge that we face. Will we integrate in ways that Europe has not? And I happen to think that America has shown itself an example to the rest of the world since 9/11.
MS. LOTH: That’s right. So far. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 30
REVEREND CIZIK: So far. But it requires a dialogue, I happen to think, on our deepest differences, not just as, I think, interfaith dialogue has occurred over the last 50 years on behalf of faith and justice, faith and justice. I am almost tired of hearing about faith and justice.
I think what we need is dialogue on the subjects which are our deepest convictions. And they do, yes, involve issues of proselytizing, yes. Because fundamentally, both Islam and Christianity are proselytizing faiths. And that has to be on the table. Is it the first issue that you address? Of course not. But do you have to eventually get to that subject? Yes. And thus, how we work this through will depend, I think, on whether or not we have 50 to 100 years of conflict, or whether we have something else.
REVEREND LYNN: I mean it certainly makes, in some ways, it easier for us to identify the enemy after September 11 th . And now we’ve got a new name for the enemy in the last six months, and that’s Islamofascists. But there’s really no sense of understanding that fundamentalism-- as Dr. Martin Marty at the University of Chicago did in a whole series of books-- fundamentalism is a strain in all of the world’s religions. And it also has the potential for causing the very same problem. You literally die for a cause that you would not die for, but for the sense that your religion compels you to do it. And I think for us to ignore that fundamentalism is real and alive in the United States, that it has a tremendous impact on political decisions at all levels is foolish and dangerous.
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 31
So I agree that we have to have this dialogue. But you know, one thing, Richard, that you said that I’m a little concerned about, you’ve talked about interfaith dialogue. There are 20 million Americans who have no religious faith. They’re first-class citizens in America. They’re humanists and free thinkers and atheists.
And when you start with the assumption that this is the century in which we will have religion, you kind of cut them out of the dialogue. And you almost suggest -- I hope you’re not doing this -- almost suggest that you can’t really have a moral framework in which to talk about Darfur or anything else unless you also have a religious connection to make. And I think that’s something that does disturb 20 million Americans.
SENATOR DANFORTH: I don’t think he was saying that at all. Look, I mean, one thing we learned in 9/11 is that people hijack planes and fly them into buildings because they think that God wants them to do that. We’ve got a religious problem in the world. We’ve got people killing each other. This is not a new phenomenon. It’s been going on a very long time.
In Iraq right now, Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other. They’ve been killing each other for 1400 years. Religion can be a cause of violence. And we better figure out how to do with this. I don’t think that that means ignoring people who are not religious. But it does mean that somehow we’ve got to come to some sort of understanding of this cause of violence. I saw this in Sudan. It wasn’t the whole of the problem, but it was part of the problem. It was people fighting each other over religion. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 32
So how is this going to be resolved? Is there some kind of understanding out there about the just war theory? Is there some sort of common understanding out there about non-combatant immunity? If there is a religious problem, we’ve got to face it as a religious problem, and not sort of say, “Well, you know, let’s talk about general concerns.”
REVEREND LYNN: Senator, when the late Pope John Paul II discussed the possibility of an invasion of Iraq by the United States, he condemned it in probably the strongest and most personal terms of any Pope in modern history, saying that the people who would be the architects of that invasion would have to answer directly to God.
It was within a few days that President Bush called in some theologians on the right, is probably the best way to describe them, to come meet with him, then hold a press conference at which time they came out and said, “Well, the Pope’s wrong. We’ve reevaluated this ‘just war’ doctrine. We think the war in Iraq is just and justified.”
He was using a theological lynchpin. Instead of spending time gathering more intelligence, he decided to go theologically shopping. And because of that, there are 2,879 families today whose sons and daughters will not be with them for Thanksgiving. And to act like there’s no religious motive… And I want to ask you this. Do you think we have no perceived religious motive being used to justify our invasion of Iraq? RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 33
SENATOR DANFORTH: I am not debating the war in Iraq. That is, obviously, a very, very big issue. I don’t think it’s the issue for this one-hour program. I think that the issue is how religion can be destructive or how it can be reconciling.
And it’s clear to me that, in many parts of the world, it has been destructive to the point of terrible bloodshed. It was certainly true in the past in Northern Ireland. It’s true right now in Kashmir. It has been true in Bosnia. It is true right now in Iraq. We have, now, a situation in the Middle East between the Sunnis and the Shiites, in a part of the world where geographical boundaries, political boundaries don’t mean all that much, where this can escalate into something very, very serious.
And I absolutely don’t understand thinking that this, somehow, isn’t a religious issue that shouldn’t be addressed as such. Of course it is a religious issue. Does that mean that it’s our side versus God’s side? No. But it means how do we stop from blowing each other up because we think that God wants us to blow each other up?
MS. LOTH: Can I just say that, in a few minutes, we’ll be taking questions from the audience. So if you have some questions for the panelists, you want to line up at these two microphones. And I’ll be taking questions in a minute, but not quite yet.
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 34
REVEREND CIZIK: I believe, Renee, religion is the missing dimension in foreign policy. I would even go so far as to say that, because I don’t believe those who crafted this war entirely understood the role of religion, that we may be in this in a way we wouldn’t have been otherwise.
Now am I saying, if they had understood religion, would we have not gone to war? No. Because I believe there were perceptions -- wrong, we’ve discovered -- about weapons of mass destruction. Some would say the information was misused to deceive the American public about the existence of weapons of mass destruction.
But whether that’s the case or not, I think it’s safe to say, from my perspective, that if we don’t understand religion as the missing dimension, if our State Department staffers, the National Security Council, and even the United States Senators don’t come to a better appreciation for the role of religion in world life, then I think we will face Huntington’s conflicts of civilization for the rest of the next 100 years. Now that is an awesome thought. But I think it reflects, in my mind, how little our policymakers do understand religion. And even some of the best thinkers in Washington admit as much, that our policymakers don’t get it.
REVEREND LYNN: You’re right. You’re right. And you’re right internationally and you’re right nationally. I mean how many Americans, when they really think about it, would like the United States government to pass a constitutional amendment to return prayer to public schools so that their children could be praying on a random day to Allah one day, to God, Jehovah the next day, to Odin a third day? I mean this is not even sensible. But it is-- RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 35
REVEREND CIZIK: And evangelicals don’t support it. I know this will come as a surprise to you, Barry.
REVEREND LYNN: No, I know you don’t. I know you don’t. Senator Danforth never supported it either.
REVEREND CIZIK: But evangelicals do not support a constitutional prayer amendment.
REVEREND LYNN: But you know that it’s something that, as soon as the new Congress convenes, no matter who is in charge, there will be 100 people cosponsoring such an amendment to the Constitution because they don’t--
REVEREND CIZIK: That is simply patronizing to those people who happen to believe in religious freedom.
REVEREND LYNN: Of course it is.
REVEREND CIZIK: And, in fact, I once told the staff to George Herbert Walker Bush, I said, “Don’t come to the NAE and patronize us with support. “Why?” they asked. I said, “Because,” even in the early years of the Reagan Administration when the Reagan people had offered a school prayer amendment, we came back, this is amazing, as evangelicals to say, “There should be no government influence RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 36
upon the former content of prayers.” And the White House said, “Why, that’s a killer amendment.” And within a year, they had adopted it.
And evangelicals have, I believe, come to a greater appreciation of our role in American public life to say we don’t want a school prayer amendment. I think that’s progress, from my vantage point. Why? Because I’m a principled pluralist. And I think more and more are. So Barry, please, don’t kick that one around.
REVEREND LYNN: No, no. But I’m saying you know if 100 people are signing on to a resolution to have a prayer amendment--
REVEREND CIZIK: It means nothing. That simply--
REVEREND LYNN: Well no, it doesn’t not mean anything because it is used by the very people who are organizing, using the wedge issues Senator Danforth talked about. This is another wedge issue. But if you think about it, if you understand the role of religion in your own life, when the government comes and says, “We want to help you be religious,” you know what you do. You run as fast and as far away as possible.
REVEREND CIZIK: I would. I would, that’s right.
[applause]
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 37
MS. LOTH: Okay. I think we are going to be starting to take some questions from the audience. And may I remind you that these are to be questions for the panels, not speeches or testimonials. I’m a very strict, strict taskmistress, and so don’t test me. [laughter] Sir.
MICHAEL D’ANGELIS: I’m Michael D’Angelis. And I’m from Portland, Maine. You talked a little bit about this from a political perspective. But I just wondered, from a spiritual perspective, seeing there are two Reverends and an ex-priest, about the gay issues. And I always wonder how the religious world, the religious political world has ended with this special place of condemnation and ostracism for homosexuals.
It seems like you could choose the United Nations, and condemn them for doing such a poor job in feeding the hungry, or governments that setup a system where some people live out in the cold, and other people keep their cars in heated garages, or corporations that have done such a poor stewardship of the earth. I know. I moved--
MS. LOTH: You’re giving an excellent speech. [laughter] So the question being, again, how did that special place come for homosexuals? And as far as the gay marriage issue, don’t you think that if we made divorce illegal and adultery a crime that would take care of it because the gay boys know the straight boys would be getting married. It would just be over. [laughter]
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 38
REVEREND CIZIK: Let me say something that may or may not satisfy the questioner. And that is that, look-- and I’ll get to the same-sex issue-- but first of all, on abortion, look, do you think that those of us who look at this issue of the number of, from our vantage point, babies aborted each year doesn’t deserve more than what the Republican Party has given us? Oh, believe me. I had a Republican staff member say in a meeting I was in not so long ago, “Well, it’s election time. Do you think we should do something?” Well, do you think we don’t understand when we’re simply being taken advantage of? Of course we do.
And thus, I would suggest that those of us who have goodwill, and almost all of us do, we find ways to take some of these issues from being simply political footballs used to gain votes and, together, work with foundations, and others, and service groups, private service groups, and religious community groups to do something about the problem.
And here’s a way to start, in my opinion. Northern Europe, which is a secular place, does not have the abortion problem we have. And, in fact, the incidence of second abortions is very small. And yet, half of all abortions in America are second abortions. And so, I would suggest that’s the place to start for some common ground. And look, if there are evangelicals who vilify gays or lesbians, then they’re wrong. And they’re not practicing biblical Christianity, period. Because that isn’t the gospel.
Now what happens is that translating those convictions we have about what the law ought to be into public policy is extremely difficult, and it is divisive. That part of RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 39
this is divisive. But can it be done in a non-divisive way? Well, it’s up to us. It’s up to us. And I happen to think that there will be compromises, I suggested earlier, on that subject. It’s likely to be, since I don’t believe a constitutional amendment is ever going to pass, that this will be a matter states resolve. And that may be the best solution possible.
REVEREND LYNN: What about the resolution where the church decides, as the United Church of Christ, of which I am proud to be a member and a minister, and the Unitarian Church, and Reform Judaism, and other groups that will perform same-sex marriages? All we are asking, really, is for the opportunity to have the state respect our spiritual and religious rituals in the same way that they will respect the rituals of churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. And I don’t think that’s too much to ask, frankly.
[applause]
REVEREND CIZIK: There’s always a tension, in our community, between what is nation building and church building. And it’s a continuum. And the right, the political right, is interested in nation building. And they want the nation to adopt its values, their values. And the church builders are saying, “Now, wait a minute. We are not into Christian nationalism. We don’t worship the tribal god of America. We worship the universal God of the Bible.” And therefore, there is a kingdom that is transcending nationalistic boundaries and even these kinds of issues that we fight over domestically in the politics arena that is more important.
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 40
And so balancing nation building and church building is, I think, what will determine, from our community, just where we end up on this. And it’s a pendulum that swings back and forth. And to the extent that we emphasize, I think, church building and not nation building is the extent to which we are willing to be a witness, regardless of whether the state adopts our values, willing to be a witness for the faith, for Jesus, if you will, whether or not the state adopts our values. And that would be sort of a kingdom building as opposed to a nation building process.
D’ANGELIS: Before Mr. Danforth answers, I just want to say I didn’t want to keep bringing us back to that. What I was really trying to ask is, even from a spiritual perspective, I mean all the prophets’ message was spiritual. Homosexuality is mentioned in there. And I’m just wondering-- Senator Danforth might be able to pick up on this-- why does that issue become such a divisive one? Why aren’t we talking about how angry we are that there are hungry people in the world while we’re throwing food away or all those other issues that I talked about?
SENATOR DANFORTH: I think, you know, most Americans-- I think the polls have shown this-- I think most Americans would just work this out if they were allowed to do it. And I think that the way they would work it out is, first of all, anything that smacks of gay bashing, I think, most people would be against. It’s cruel.
I think a lot of people, myself included, would see the proposed constitutional amendment as just a drummed up political issue that really amounts to gay bashing RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 41
because it serves no other purpose. I think that to ask most people to say that same-sex relationships are marriage is something most people would not be willing to do culturally. Maybe at some point they would do it. I don’t think that they would do it right now. I don’t think it’s a constitutional issue. I don’t think it’s a judicial issue. I do agree that it’s the kind of thing that’s most likely to be worked out in state legislatures.
And I think, in the foreseeable future, the way it would be most likely worked out is in the form of approving certain legal rights for committed relations, namely the civil union type of a thing, but without calling it marriage.
MS. LOTH: Thank you. I actually recommend that you read Senator Danforth’s book on this question. He writes very movingly about this and many things related to that. And because we’re looking for common ground, I want to take a question from this side of the room.
DENNIS NORTON: Thank you. My name is Dennis Norton from Foxboro, Massachusetts. And I’d like to touch back on the issue that came up earlier regarding the SJC decision in terms of the position of gay marriage. And my question is, given the fact that the Founding Fathers hashed this issue out of the role of the judiciary, and the legislative, and the executive, and given that it was discussed at great length in the Federalist Papers and, to put a finer point on it, in Federalist 10 , does everyone up there believe that the courts have a role to play in preventing a tyranny by the majority of the minority? Or is that something that just kind of has gone by the board? Because that’s the impression that I have RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 42
nowadays, that somehow that part of checks and balances isn’t there anymore. Take anything and everything. Let the people vote up or down. That’s democracy. Do you really think that? I don’t think so. And I’m asking you folks.
MS. LOTH: Good point.
REVEREND CIZIK: I don’t. I don’t. I’m not a moral majoritarian. I don’t believe the majority is necessarily right. And I believe minority rights have to be protected. That’s America’s contribution to the world.
[applause]
SENATOR DANFORTH: I’m kind of conservative in jurisprudence. I think that the courts are, by design, removed from the American people, particularly the federal courts because they’re appointed for life. And therefore, I think that basic questions, value type questions are best decided by the legislative branch rather than by the judicial branch, unless there is some clear reason to the contrary, namely something that you can point to in the Constitution, or an issue that has been so hashed out over a long period of time that there is a general national consensus that could be stated by a court. But I think, on something like this, for courts to just decide value issues, I don’t think that that’s the role of courts.
REVEREND LYNN: I think these courts are deciding constitutional issues, Senator. I think they’re deciding them because they recognize that they are often the last protector of the rights of the people, even the minority of the people. And RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 43
that we would not have come to the position of race relations that we have, sad as it frequently is, in 2006. We would not have gotten to 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education if we had just hoped that state legislatures would integrate public schools in the south or anywhere else. We need that.
[applause]
And I would say that the lesson of Marbury vs. Madison, the case that everybody learned about in high school, is that there has to be in every game, including in the World Series, a referee who says, “It was dirt” or “It was something else on somebody’s hand pitching the game.” And the same thing has to happen here. There has to be some entity where finality is achieved and justice is done. And I think that’s the federal courts, not because I agree with every decision they make, but because that is their role.
And it horrifies me to think that Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas, for example, have both written recently that they’re not clear that the Bill of Rights does apply to the states, that the Fourteenth Amendment really wasn’t written for that purpose. That’s a shockingly retrograde view of the role of federal courts in our country.
[applause]
MS. LOTH: Welcome to Massachusetts. [laughter]
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 44
REVEREND CIZIK: You know, Justice Scalia wrote a decision that evangelicals strongly disagree with. And what he held in Oregon v. Smith was that the state, the government, need no longer show a compelling state interest to override a First Amendment liberty. And thus, the Congress unanimously, Republican and Democrat, passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which then the court then came back and struck down again.
In other words, I think evangelicals need to be very careful about their majoritarian views simply because, hey, we are a majority. And the latest religion surveys show that 33% of Americans attend an evangelical-- they might not define it that way, 15% do-- 37% say an evangelical church weekly. But that gives us no right to exercise sort of that majority status.
Like I said, principled pluralism, which is to say, even though we may have those numbers, that gives us no right by numbers to do it. It’s only on the basis of having won the argument in the public arena that we should ever be able to be entitled to our values as we understand them.
MS. LOTH: Thank you. Ma’am.
PEG CENTURIA: I’m Peg Centuria(?) from Brookline, Massachusetts. I’m thinking about American history and how much this country was a product of the reformation and counter-reformation and all the religious wars that happened then. And I’m wondering what you can draw on from that heritage that we could use RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 45
now to get past this latest round of what feels like religious wars without abolishing a dialogue on values.
REVEREND CIZIK: You know, I take a little-- I understand your point, Ma’am-- but I take a little different tack on this, as you may have heard earlier. Friedrich Nietzsche made a prediction at the start of the 20 th century in which he said, “The god of religion will die, and another god will take its place, the god of politics. And the numbers of people will die in far greater magnitude by the god of politics than ever died in the name of religion.”
And the 20 th century was a testimony, in my opinion, to making a god of politics. And we fought wars and world wars. And I happen to think that what is needed is an enlivening of young people, and all people, to the right role of faith, that being an animating influence in the 21 st century, not the god of politics. So that’s a little different take on your question. But that’s because I’m fundamentally an optimist.
And let me say, do you want to know the difference between a fundamentalist and an evangelical? There was this old joke. I hesitate to tell it. But a fundamentalist was someone who is no fun, a whole lot of dam, and not much mental. And I hesitate to joke. But I am a fundamentalist in the sense I believe in the fundamentals.
But evangelicals, you see, believe in a soft Calvinism which is optimistic. The fundamentalists believe in kind of a pessimism. The other big difference is this: I happen to believe, as an evangelical, that there is a common ground with people of RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 46
other faiths. And the fundamentalist says there is no common ground with people of other faith. And that’s the difference.
And so I can see the danger, Senator, yes, in that fundamentalism that says, “I know all the answers. I’ve got it all right.” And moreover, that mindset says there is no bridge building capacity here. Or as Robert Putnam here at Harvard says, you know, “There’s no bridging outward to the fundamentalist because there’s no common ground.” And I think, if you approach all of these issues, where do I find some common ground with that person, getting to yes, if you will? You would be surprised what we would agree upon.
REVEREND LYNN: You know, we kind of did that, though. The reason the counter-reformation and the reformation in Europe was as difficult a period is they didn’t have something like a constitution, like we do, to help resolve the issue in an extraordinarily creative way. It’s those 16 words in the Constitution that John talked about at the beginning. “Congress shall make no law respecting,” that means touching upon, “an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” They said the entities of the church will be best served if the government doesn’t tell them what to do.
On the other hand, the politicians will be best served because they won’t have to resolve theological issues. They will allow voluntary religious evangelism to occur. And those that will listen will listen. And those that will listen and reject it will be able to do so. That’s a remarkable compromise, unknown in any other part of the world, the greatest intellectual contribution America has made to world RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 47
thinking. And the notion of fiddling with it as this point in our history is frightening indeed.
[applause]
MS. LOTH: We have a -- thank you -- question on this side.
BOB PATINI: My name is Bob Patini(?). I’m from Braintree, Mass. I appreciate you all coming here. And this is a wonderful discussion. First, we have a check and balance system. And the three branches of government have to be checked and balanced. And that goes along for the court.
We all have discussed it with Congress as we hear everyday. And the situation is a sleeping dog has woken up, as far as I’m concerned. And people are playing a role in it. Now you want to start labeling me a fundamentalist or a terrorist or whatever, then I have a problem because I’m not going to get close to you. You call me your brother, and there’s a chance of us sitting down and breaking bread.
So the fact that I’m expressing myself and I’m not allowed to express myself, then there’s a problem. When we want to start stating that there’s a wedge going through, we’re now depicting the thing. And maybe I’m making the judgment. And maybe I ought to stop making judgments and start breaking bread with one another.
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The question I’d like to ask to you, what’s the role of the media in our political arena? Because as far as I’m concerned, the media is driving a wedge through all of us, and throwing labels back and forth, and using the ability to spin things left and right so that we’re divisive, and we want to throw all of Congress out. And they should be thrown out because they’ve been there too long. And it’s a government by the people, for the people, and of the people. The people are not in the office any longer. They’re all people of wealth and so forth. So I’d like you to address where the media plays a role. And the media’s a big role in the politics. Thank you.
MS. LOTH: Thank you. Sooner or later, it always comes back to the media. You notice this? It’s the media’s fault for almost everything. You know--
PATINI: Excuse me. I didn’t say it was their fault. I just say, what’s their role in it?
MS. LOTH: Okay. Thank you.
SENATOR DANFORTH: I’ll put the fault on the media. [laughter]
PATINI: Thank you.
MS. LOTH: Oh, I think the media’s role is to be a facilitator for debate, and to allow sessions just like this sort of in print, or maybe on television, although RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 49
television doesn’t tend to be quite as substantive as the print. That’s my prejudice. It’s just to be a facilitator for debate.
The editorial page where I work is something else. That’s to drive an agenda or to drive principled values that we hold as an institution. But the whole rest of the newspaper is to facilitate a sort of dialogue around important issues when we’re doing our jobs.
SENATOR DANFORTH: Well my basic view is that American politics is too polarized now, and America is too polarized, and that the common ground has been eroded, and that this has made it very difficult for us to have any kind of civil discussion, much less any kind of positive result on really important issues that we have in this country.
How do we deal with terrorism? What do we do about Iraq, other than calling each other either cut and run or liars? What do we do about the future of Social Security and Medicare, which are going to be huge problems for our country? What do we do about our dependence on foreign sources of energy? Right now, our energy policy is to hope for warm winters and cool summers. How do we deal with these issues?
And we become more and more polarized. And part of the polarization is what we’ve been talking about tonight, that both parties appeal to their base. And that, for the base of the Republican Party, it’s the Christian right.
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Now what’s the role of the media in this? It is a very big part of the problem, particularly television and particularly the 24-hour news stations. What do you see when you turn them on? You see people, generally two people, and they’re shouting at each other. You can’t hear them. They’re interrupting each other. They’re talking over each other. They’re yelling at each other. And do they represent two points of view? Yes. Sure they do.
But, speaking for myself, and I bet for a lot of people, when I listen to them, I say, “Those are two points of view, but they’re nowhere close to my point of view.” Because the people they get on are the colorful characters, the bombastic characters, the loudmouths, and the people who take the most extreme, sharp- edged positions. So I think that this is all part of the polarization of American politics. I was recently on the O’Reilly show. We spent eight minutes talking about nativity scenes in front of public buildings. I’m against them.
REVEREND LYNN: So am I. [laughter]
SENATOR DANFORTH: But O’Reilly, when you talk about culture war, he’s got a bestselling book, doing better than either of our books, called Cultural Warrior . Now what I said to him is, “Look, if you want crèches in front of buildings, you don’t have to have them in front of City Hall. You could have a big campaign. And you could have millions of them popping up in everybody’s yard all over the country. You could have one on your desk here, Bill, if you wanted to do that.” [laughter] Why does he want that? Because this, again, is raw meat. It is just plain raw meat. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 51
REVEREND CIZIK: And it’s right wing.
SENATOR DANFORTH: So do I think the media is part of it? Sure. Because the way to hype your ratings is to be extreme or to have people on the extremes yelling at each other.
REVEREND LYNN: You know, there is something worse than that, though. And I was on Bill O’Reilly three weeks ago. [laughter] And, actually, we talked about what it is to be a secular progressive. I said, “That was the best kind of government,” secular because it recognized that it has no religious function, but progressive in the sense that it is working for progress. And that is to say, to make sure that opportunities are available to more and more people. That seemed to confuse him a little bit. And he never got to the nativity scenes on that show.
But there’s something even worse happening. Instead of “Crossfire,” sad as Jon Stewart rightly said that show had become, at least they were talking about issues. Now we’re talking about crime. We are talking about missing white women in Aruba. And we’ve been talking about it for a year and a half. Not to say it’s not a personal tragedy, but it does not have any connection to a resolution, left, right or center, on issues like crime, immigration, the tragedy of healthcare, the separation of church and state, women’s rights. They’re all ignored because now we’re focusing on something less relevant than screaming heads. And that is just body of the day on the cable shows. So it’s even worse.
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PETER GIARD: Peter Giard(?). I’m from Merrimac, Massachusetts. And I have a question for Reverend Cizik and Senator Danforth regarding the point that you just made, and also talked about earlier about secular constitution. And it was clear that our Founding Fathers intended us to have a secular document to govern ourselves by. How is it and when was it that secular became a bad term, and that secular progressives became nasty people? It seems to me that without secular progressives, we’d all have an English accent, condone slavery, and keep women from voting. When is it that seculars and secular progressives became bad people?
MS. LOTH: Thank you.
REVEREND CIZIK: I can answer that question. When rightists decided to make secular humanists the boogeyman. Now are there people who are secularists? The latest surveys indicate absolutely; 9% I think is the figure precisely. And they are afforded and should be afforded every right and privilege that anyone who’s religious is afforded in this country.
And I think that the debate, however, that is really occurring is less between the secularists and the religionists, as much as between the religionists. And I may be wrong about that. But I think that what we have discovered in recent years is that some people want to monopolize the debate. And they won’t even allow those of us who take an alternative viewpoint, even within the Christian conservative community, to voice that, if they would have their way.
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In other words, I have been called anti-American, a hater of America simply because I happen to believe that climate change is real. Now I’m in Boston. I can say this. [laughter] I actually happen to be a friend of E.O. Wilson, brought together by a friend at Harvard Medical School.
And I believe that one of the most interesting developments of the 21 st century will be the conversation that occurs between religion and science. And I would recommend you read E.O. Wilson’s book called Creation . Because that conversation, when it ensues, will change the face of this country and the rest of the world for the better. Because he, E.O. Wilson, says in his book that we have something that we have to work together toward. And that is the saving of this earth.
MS. LOTH: Thank you. Ma’am.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I wanted to turn the conversation back to Sudan. It troubles me deeply. And it’s an issue in which I feel very passionate. And I’m a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church. And we have done a lot of work to try to get some action in Sudan. And hear that the religious right has also been very concerned about the genocide going on there. So why aren’t we more successful? I mean why is that genocide still going on today, and perhaps even more brutally today? Where is the failure? Or what should we be doing to stop that?
MS. LOTH: Senator. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 54
AUDIENCE MBMEBER: As you both said, it’s an issue that liberals and conservatives agree on.
SENATOR DANFORTH: It’s just a very, very tough, very tough issue. I was involved in the North/South civil war. That was hard. That lasted over 20 years. Finally, we got a peace agreement there. And then this other war has now broken out in Darfur.
And there was a front page article in today’s New York Times saying now the rebels don’t want peace. The rebels. So that they’re apparently renouncing the peace agreement that was signed in Nigeria between one of the rebel factions and the government. But there are several rebel factions. Plus, there’s the Janjaweed, the militia, plus the government of Sudan. So there are a lot of parties in this.
I think that the most important, immediate thing that can be done is to get UN peacekeepers in there. And the Security Council has passed a resolution calling for a much more robust force. But it depends on the government of Sudan agreeing to allow the peacekeepers because the Security Council isn’t going to vote to invade Sudan. It’s not going to vote for that. And we’re sure not going to do it, invading an Arab country, large Arab country. I don’t think so.
So I think that the best hope and the immediate hope is for the government of Sudan to hear from surrounding countries, namely the Arab countries and the African countries, plus China, because of the oil interest. I think that the RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 55
government of Sudan has to hear a very loud, very persistent message from one, the Arab League, two, the African Union, three, the government of China, that the time has come for peacekeepers to go into Darfur.
REVEREND CIZIK: Good answer.
MS. LOTH: Thank you.
DAVID CULLEN: My name is David Cullen from Cambridge. But, in earlier years, I had a wonderful Congressman, Father Drinan. I was listening to President Kennedy’s comments. And what happened to Father Drinan, as he was forced to step down by the church because of his secular representation, was just in direct contradistinction to what President Kennedy said.
Then I had a wonderful Congressman, Barney Frank, who was subject to a very blatant attack during one of his election campaigns by Cardinal Medeiros of asking anybody who was in his district to vote against him because of his support of choice. I would like to ask the panelists if they can enlighten us-- in today’s election coming up, are there equally blatant religious insertions into the elections of today that are operating right now?
REVEREND LYNN: There’s an enormous amount of interest on the part of groups like the Focus on the Family organization on passing out voter guides, the Christian Coalition, to the extent that it still exists, passing out voter guides.
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In the past, at least, and generally, these guides are not given to the public until about a week before the election. So we haven’t seen all of them. But they demonize Democrats, frankly. They make them all look like they belong in the House of Horrors Wax Museum on the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey. And then every Republican looks like he or she is about to be elevated to sainthood. They are obvious efforts to do two things, influence the election and two, influence it unlawfully because tax-exempt churches, given that tax exemption automatically, are not supposed to endorse or oppose candidates for public office. That means Democrats, Republicans or Independents.
Somehow Martin Luther King managed to change the whole culture of America without ever once endorsing a candidate from a pulpit anywhere in America because he didn’t think that the church was the proper place, the venue in which you should get your political advertising or your political expectations. As President, then running for president, Kennedy said he didn’t think that Protestant churches should tell their parishioners for whom to vote.
But it still goes on. And it still goes on through the device of these phony voter guides. And I think the best place most of these voter guides should end up is in the wastebasket if they’re distributed in a church that you happen to be attending.
SENATOR DANFORTH: Well let me just say this as an old politician. I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen in the next two Sundays. [laughter] Republican candidates for Congress and for other offices are going to go around to conservative Christian churches. And they’re going to be there. They’re going to RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 57
appear. They’re going to be introduced. And if it’s not going to be an endorsement, it’s going to be just short of an endorsement to keep within the guides of the Internal Revenue Code.
At the same time, Democratic politicians, candidates for Congress, are going to go around to churches, certainly to the black churches. And they’re going to appear. They’re going to speak from the pulpit. They’re going to be introduced by the pastor. And it will be everything that sounds like an endorsement, maybe short of violation of the Internal Revenue Code. It is absolutely going to be done not just by Republicans, but by Democrats. And endorsements are going to be made of Republican candidates and of Democratic candidates.
REVEREND LYNN: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
SENATOR DANFORTH: It is not a good thing. Even though I gladly participated in them--
REVEREND LYNN: Oh, you did, did you? [laughter]
SENATOR DANFORTH: But now that I’m out, I can say it wasn’t a good thing.
REVEREND LYNN: But you know, a pastor friend of mine, the most he does is recognize candidates who are in the congregation that day. He’ll always ask them to stand up. He’ll say, “This is a candidate for State Senator, Mr. Jones. And Mr. RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 58
Jones, I hope to see you sometime after the election also.” That’s the best response.
REVEREND CIZIK: Well, the politicians who show up in churches and leave before the sermons are numerous. [laughter] I’ve had my own problems with some of the voter guides in the sense that, if they’re a selective narrow list of issues, then I think they’re problematic.
I think that one of the biggest changes, for example, is the selection of Reverend Joel Hunter to be the new Chairman of the Christian Coalition who happens to be the public voice-- let me remind you of this, Barry-- he happens to be the evangelical face on ads running around the country on behalf of doing something about climate change. Now does that sound like somebody’s rightwing agenda, the Chairman of the Christian Coalition speaking out?
REVEREND LYNN: No. Well, we’ll see.
REVEREND CIZIK: We’ll see. [laughter]
REVEREND LYNN: We’ll see how much he talked about that. What I mean is, the Alabama Christian Coalition just broke away from the organization precisely because of that. He wasn’t taking a hard line enough stand. That’s all I’m saying.
REVEREND CIZIK: But you’re suggesting that people simply read a guide and march lockstep off to vote for certain candidates. It doesn’t happen that way. I RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA 10.23.06 PAGE 59
know you think that’s what happens. But evangelicals are …(inaudible) percent to Democrat and 14% undecided. In other words, they’re being a lot more discriminating, these evangelicals. And they’re looking at all the issues. Very interesting.
MS. LOTH: Well I’ve gotten the high sign, I’m sorry to say. So we aren’t going to be having time to get all of the questions asked publicly. But you know, at least two of the panelists, and perhaps Reverend Cizik as well, will be signing their books and answering questions, and meeting you right outside this chamber right after this presentation. So thank you all for coming. It’s really great.
[applause]