Running on Their Faith
Bush and Gore are making religion a big issue, and praying voters buy the sermon
It's been generations since so many politicians have talked so much about Jesus--and their personal relationship with him. Just back from a jog, George W. Bush is game to talk more. He slings a towel over his shoulder and plops into a seat on the patio of the Texas governor's mansion. "What are we talking about?" Faith. "Good. I like talking about faith." Five minutes later, he's discoursing on the Crucifixion and whether Jews can enter heaven. ("Governors don't decide that.")
Across the country, Bush's spiritual twin in the campaign--the other major evangelical candidate--leans over the arm of his chair and speaking in an uncommonly gentle voice. As if confiding a secret, Al Gore lists the defining moments in his spiritual life: attending revivals as a child, becoming born again at Harvard, his adult baptism. And prayer, he says, has gotten him through the bumpier stretches of the campaign. "I just don't know how I would react to the challenges that have made me stronger without my faith," Gore said in an interview. (The complete interviews with Gore and Bush on faith are available at U.S. News Online, www.usnews.com.)
When candidates make public displays of religion, a common reflex is skepticism: American politicians have always found votes in church. But with the governor and vice president, there is evidence of devotion. Bush, a Methodist, reads daily from The One Year Bible; he prays with ministers on his cell phone; he asks staff, "Did you go to church on Sunday?" Mine the biography of the Baptist Gore, and you'll find similar stories: He peppers conversation with references to Numbers and Acts; when friends or family have a problem, he advises them to "pray on it." At a recent midnight meeting in the vice president's mansion, Gore told aides that he had decided to pare down his campaign. To explain his decision, he kicked into the cadence of a revival minister, telling the story of Gideon girding for battle. "And the Lord said, 'Gideon you've got too many people.' "
Post-Clinton craving. But there is a bigger point than piety here. For both front-runners, their political agendas are bound to their religious agendas. When Bush touts compassionate conservatism (especially his idea that government should fund faith-based charities), he is applying evangelical principles to politics. And when Gore talks about his signature issue, the environment, he draws heavily on theology gleaned in divinity school. This welding of faith to policy harks back to another era. According to University of Akron Prof. John Green, an analyst of religious politics, "We haven't seen anything like this since William Jennings Bryan"--the fundamentalist who ran for president in 1896, complaining the country was being crucified on an idolatrous "cross of gold." It's the culmination of a long trend in American politics. After decades of agitation by the religious right, faith has become an accepted fixture on the landscape. (This fall, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops published its first-ever voter guide.) There are also brute political reasons for trumpeting faith, and one of those is Bill Clinton. After scandals--and school shootings--the public tells pollsters that it craves politicians who address "declining moral values."
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