Forum looks at future of religion and liberalism

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 26, 2004 by Jeff Severns Guntzel

With the post-election political air buzzing with "values" talk, a capacity crowd filled a Fordham University meeting hall in Manhatten Nov. 11 to hear "the losing side," through a panel of journalists, academics and authors, think aloud about liberalism's future in a divided country.

The forum's topic, "Religion and the Future of Liberal Politics," like the election itself, inspired the kind of commentary that ends with a question mark.

But it also surfaced accusations. The panel's moderator, syndicated columnist E.J. Dionne, opened with a quote from the resident liberal on CNN's "Crossfire," Paul Begala:

"The very phrase religious progressive is seen as an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp or compassionate conservative, because much of the left is far too secular, even antireligious."

It was a discussion planned well before the election. Officially, it was an inaugural event for Fordham's new Center on Religion and Culture.

"The panel's aim will not be partisan strategizing," promised the center's codirector, Peter Steinfels, "but understanding obvious fault lines in American religious and political culture." Steinfels is also a New York Times columnist.

Analyzing the "fault lines" exposed in post-election polling data has become a sort of desperate duty for the losing side.

Bob Kerry, the former senator from Nebraska, began by flipping the common wisdom on its head.

"The specific subject matter of the left and religion is not as relevant to the current discussion in politics as the relationship between values and political conclusions.

"It's odd when I read polls that say 20 percent of Americans made their decision ... based on values. I don't think the pollsters understood values in asking the question."

Kerry rejected the notion that one party or politician can claim "values" over another. "The clash in politics is oftentimes between one value and another," he said.

He cited the issue of family leave, which he supports based on "what I consider to be right and wrong, what I consider to be good."

Opponents of family leave, he noted, don't say, "It doesn't make economic sense," he said. "They'll say it's wrong.

"Anytime somebody starts arguing that something is right or wrong, they may not be going to religion, but they are going to an ethical source somehow."

Mary Jo Bane, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, suggested that blame for the Democratic Party's defeat should not be assigned too quickly.

"I am not only a Democrat and a Kerry voter but I am one of those people who would check the box that I go to church at least once a week and I would check the box that values and morals are quite important to me."

Her initial reaction to the election results, she said, was that "those Catholics in Ohio who went to church on Sunday and heard somebody rave against gay marriage lost the election for John Kerry."

But that was too simple, she said. It was looking for a group to blame when "what we really ought to be doing is trying to understand the range of opinion and the extent to which there really is a serious divide in this country."

"We need to ask what accounts for both the shift in the Catholic vote and also what accounts for the fact that the best predictor of whether one votes Republican or not is whether one is indeed a once a week or more churchgoer."

Echoing a popular sentiment that day, Bane said, "I'm inclined to dismiss the claim that people who were concerned about values voted for Bush. I was persuaded by the argument that said the way question was asked and the way the polls were done it was easier to imagine that people who voted for Bush, when they had to explain why they voted, were more likely to choose values. They couldn't after all say that they voted for Bush because the war in Iraq is going so well."

Still, she said, liberals "need to understand that we live in a religiously pluralist country and not in a secular country ... where the overwhelming majority identify themselves as religious in one way or another. We are not a Christian nation, but we are certainly a nation in which the majority are Christians and who consider that to be an important part of their lives and also an important source, not only of their personal values, but of the political ideals that they bring into the voting booth."

Getting those red and blue Christians talking, Bane said, in the immediate aftermath of the election and beyond, is key.

"We need to create that kind of dialogue if we are to be true to a liberal-progressive political agenda, but more importantly if we are to be true to our religious convictions."

Bane was careful to acknowledge the secular left, but she was speaking to the religious left.

"It is quite likely that we can make mistakes in discerning God's will and that we are more likely to get it right if we do it together and if we ask, across our differences and our divisions, what we see as important for our society, what we see as important for humanity."

In blue Midtown Manhattan, Bane's message played well.