The Politics of Faith
Democrats kick off a multifront campaign to connect with religious voters
Just because Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean got in hot water last month for calling the Republicans "pretty much a white, Christian Party" doesn't mean he's not hunting for white, Christian votes. At a meeting last week with liberal evangelical preacher Jim Wallis--which began with a prayer led by Dean's chief of staff, who is a Pentecostal minister--Dean drilled the antiabortion Wallis on how to make party rhetoric on abortion rights more values-friendly. "Nobody is pro-abortion," Dean said, according to a party official. "But do you want the government telling you what to do in your personal life?"
Dean is doing more than tinkering with the party line; he's spearheading a new campaign to woo religious voters. There's been so much outreach to religious groups in his five months at its helm that the Democratic National Committee hired an experienced Capitol Hill aide last week to help manage the effort. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have stepped up consultations with religious leaders. After taking a hit among "values" voters in the last election, Democrats are strategizing on how to play up what they call the moral--and in some cases biblical--underpinnings of their political convictions. Complementing the official effort is a crop of new, religiously affiliated advocacy groups. "Democrats had [thought] it a bit unseemly to wear your religion on your sleeve," says South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn. "But those of us who've been walking the walk . . . have decided it's time to talk the talk." The success of that effort could determine whether Democrats start winning elections again.
Big Bibles. After the 2004 election, polls showed that evangelical Christians constituted nearly a quarter of the electorate and that they voted for President Bush over Democrat John Kerry by almost 4 to 1. Kerry, a Roman Catholic, lost the Catholic vote, too--by 56 to 43 percent among white Catholics. Democratic polling conducted last month found that roughly half of American voters are influenced as much by their faith as by any other issue in casting their ballot--and that those voters are breaking Republican. "We're dealing with a serious block of people," says a DNC official, "not just crazies with big Bibles."
But the polling also suggests that religious voters are among the most economically vulnerable, making them potential Democratic supporters. So Democrats are dressing positions in "values" lingo. "We see Social Security as a faith-based program," says Clyburn, chair of the new Democratic Faith Working Group. "It's about taking care of widows and orphans." And some Democratic staffers are scanning the political statements of relatively liberal mainline Protestant denominations for language cues. "Look at Bush's speeches, how they pick up on key phrases straight out of the evangelical tradition," says an aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. "They're like clarion calls."
Pelosi convened the Democratic Faith Working Group earlier this year, hosting guests like Wallis and Mike McCurry, an active Methodist who was Bill Clinton's press secretary. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is about to launch a new website called "A Word to the Faithful," promoting events like a "faith summit" he has organized in Las Vegas next month.
But Democrats and their advisers stress that the values offensive will backfire if it comes across as phony. "If Dean is not a person of faith, he should not talk like one," says Wallis, noting that the former presidential candidate, a member of the liberal Congregationalist Church, mistakenly said in a campaign appearance that the book of Job was part of the New Testament. Indeed, many conservatives are dismissive of the Democratic effort. "It can't be a case where they try to append the word God to . . . all their policy discussions," says Richard Cizik, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals. "I don't think it will work until they change some policies."
Some Democrats are amending their positions. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton made headlines this winter by calling for fewer abortions and by asserting that the "primary reason teenage girls abstain [from sex] is because of their . . . moral values." In Pennsylvania, the national party is plugging antiabortion Bob Casey Jr. to challenge Sen. Rick Santorum next year. Casey's father--former Gov. Robert Casey--was blocked from speaking at the 1992 Democratic convention because of his antiabortion views.
Poverty. But the Democrats' polls suggest that most religious voters rank issues like child poverty above same-sex marriage and abortion. A recent presentation by the liberal National Council of Churches enlisted Democratic House members in promoting a computer program that helps poor people identify sources of federal assistance. "Let's not talk about this as political strategy," says McCurry. "My constant admonition is 'Talk less; do more.' "
A handful of new advocacy groups are talking and doing. A weekly planning conference call among progressive religious leaders hosted since last fall by the Center for American Progress, for instance, is now spinning off into a stand-alone group, the Faith and Public Life Resource Center.
Of course, the religious left is dwarfed by conservative groups like Focus on the Family, which has a mailing list of more than 3 million. And as the Democrats reach out to religious voters, they could risk alienating parts of their base, like Hollywood and pro-choice voters. "With all due respect to Jim Wallis . . . I don't want an evangelical progressive movement," National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy told an audience of liberal activists recently, "any more than I want the conservative one we have right now."
So making the Democratic tent big enough for religious voters won't be easy. But given last fall's election results, the party would seem to have little choice.
This story appears in the July 25, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.