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It's Chapter I of Living in the U.S.A: Americans like their religion on Saturday or Sunday, and their elections on Tuesday. And if there was ever any doubt that religion and politics don't mix, it should have evaporated in recent weeks.
Republican Presidential rivals George W. Bush and John McCain have engaged in an increasingly bitter battle over which one of them is the most tolerant of religious intolerance. The fight has degenerated into an indecent display by two decent men. And the lesson in all this is that the combustible mixture of religion and politics just breeds voter cynicism about both politicians and preachers.
Unless the Texas governor and Arizona senator distance themselves from religious activists who cloak themselves in political righteousness, they risk grave damage not only to their candidacies but also to the Republican Party.
DUAL MESSAGE.
Bush ignited the firestorm on Feb. 2, when he chose Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., for his first campaign appearance after his disastrous New Hampshire primary performance. For those who have not already heard, Bob Jones U. bans interracial dating and refuses federal funds so that it will not have to comply with government antidiscrimination mandates. The top preacher at the Christian institution, which for decades banned black students, sometimes spews anti-Catholic dogma and directs epithets at the Holy See in Rome.
Bush received an enthusiastic response at Bob Jones U. and said nary a word about the school's policies. (In contrast, GOP Presidential longshot Alan Keyes, who is both black and Catholic, rebuked BJU during an appearance there.)
The Bob Jones stop sent a clear message to the religious conservatives who dominate the South Carolina GOP: George W. Bush is one of us. Unfortunately for Bush, it also sent a message to the Catholic voters who dominate the Michigan Republican primary (and other primaries in the Northeast and Midwest): Beware the gentleman from Texas.
Religious Right leaders have been working to trash the pro-life McCain as a threat to American religion and free speech
You would think Bush might have learned something. Instead, his embrace of Protestant fundamentalists continues. First in South Carolina, and now in Virginia, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and other leaders of the Religious Right have been working the phone banks and the e-mail lists to trash the pro-life McCain as a threat to American religion and free speech. Christian radio stations have aired vicious ads attacking McCain, while talk-show hosts have described him variously as a demon, a liberal, and a "Manchurian candidate" brainwashed by his Vietnamese captors.
McCain's response? He paid for "Catholic Voter Alert" phone banks in Michigan, charging that Bush appeared at an anti-Catholic university, while the callers reassured voters about McCain's own pro-life views. The script may have been technically accurate, but the Bush campaign went ballistic. "They called me an anti-Catholic bigot," Bush sputtered with indignation. Bush communications director Karen Hughes was even angrier. "That's shameful politics," she told a conference call on Feb. 25, "and it's the lowest blow of this political season so far."
Well, it has some competition. In Michigan, one pro-Bush group questioned McCain's commitment to the anti-abortion movement. And Robertson launched a recorded telephone message blasting McCain campaign co-chair Warren Rudman as a "vicious bigot." Rudman, a former New Hampshire senator who happens to be Jewish, had written in his memoirs that while many Christian conservatives were decent and well-meaning people, some were intolerant and fixated on the abortion issue. McCain refused to disavow his friend's comments, and Robertson pounced.
DESCENT INTO POLITICS.
The ugly sparring has some religious leaders very worried. "The challenge for our church is to be principled without being ideological, to be political without being partisan, to be civil without being soft, to be involved without being used," said Roman Catholic Cardinal Adam Maida of the Detroit diocese. "It's regrettable when people go over the line."
Cardinal Maida is correct. Many Americans are profoundly uncomfortable when religious leaders of the right and left cloak their political aims in religious rhetoric. Few Americans believe that God favors a particular candidate for President. When men and women of God descend into the political arena, they risk their own credibility. And both Republican candidates risk alienating the silent majority of religious Americans by wearing righteousness on their sleeves.
One lesson of the 2000 campaign: Men and women of the cloth ought to be more concerned with saving souls than saving candidates. And Presidential candidates should leave religion at the churches, synagogues, and mosques of America.
Dunham is White House correspondent for Business Week. His column for BW Online appears on Mondays EDITED BY DOUGLAS HARBRECHT
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