Dueling for Values
In recent months, I have asked about a dozen audiences of sophisticated people, "How many of you have heard of Michael Moore?" Hands shoot up across the room. Then I ask, "How many of you have heard of Rick Warren?" A few hands rise, slowly, tentatively.
Rick Warren, I go on, is an evangelical preacher in Southern California whose recent book, The Purpose-Driven Life , just happens to have sold more than 22 million copies over the past two years. Not long ago in Atlanta, a woman held hostage in her apartment read passages from The Purpose-Driven Life to her captor--a man who had allegedly just shot four people--and he gave himself up. Reminded, a few more heads nod.
This reaction reflects the growing cultural and religious divide in America. As columnist David Brooks put it after he discovered that a bookstore in Berkeley, Calif., didn't even carry the Warren book, "There are two conversations in this country." As the gulf grows, it is distressing some while frightening others and starting to tear us apart politically.
Under God. America has always been one of the most religious of western nations. And even as pews have emptied in western Europe, the United States has grown more religious, or at least more serious about religion. In late 2003, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 51 percent of Americans "completely agree" that prayer is important in their daily lives, up from 41 percent in 1987. And 69 percent said they never doubt God's existence, a 9-point increase over the same time. While attendance has slipped in many mainstream Protestant churches, the upsurge in evangelical and fundamentalist worshipers--especially in megachurches--is so strong that, according to Warren, more Americans will attend a religious service over a weekend (whether in church, synagogue, or mosque) than all the Americans who attend sporting events over an entire year--combined!
Meanwhile, conservatives of religious faith have also been flowing into politics in greater numbers, stimulated in part by Supreme Court rulings on abortion, prayer in school, and other issues. In 1987, according to Pew, white evangelicals composed 19 percent of the electorate and leaned Republican versus Democratic, 34 to 29 percent, in political identification. Today, they make up 23 percent of the electorate and are Republican by a better than 2-to-1 margin, 48 to 23 percent. Their alliance with rightward-moving Roman Catholics (last November, Catholics preferred United Methodist George W. Bush over Catholic John Kerry, 52 to 47 percent) has given fresh momentum to the GOP and is transforming the political dialogue.
On the surface, there is nothing to fear from an infusion of people of faith into our politics; indeed, they should be welcomed. After all, people of strong faith helped to create some of our noblest causes, including the abolitionist movement in the 19th century and the civil rights movement of the 20th. Just because many of today's most ardent churchgoers come from the right is no excuse for people on the left to now say that religion must be kept out of politics. A people's values are inevitably rooted in its spiritual beliefs.
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