Whoever wins the U.S. presidential race will take more than his politics to the White House. One of two self-professed men of faith — one overt and the other covert — will bring his own brand of religion to the task as well.
So in an election year arguably more drenched in religious language and debate than any U.S. history, many agree that at the heart of the world views of both President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry is how they are — or are not — defined by their faith.
And because millions of Americans are similarly disposed, pollsters pin up the American map and color it red and blue. Bush dominates in the Rocky Mountains, the Midwest and the Bible-belt South, while Kerry has locked up both coasts.
Religion watchers know the lines often reflect the faith of the majorities in those states as much as they do the politics — not simply the denominational affiliation but the actual practice of that belief, whether conservative or liberal. Polls consistently show that America is the most religious nation in the industrialized world, leading Steve Waldman, CEO of Beliefnet.com, to opine in a recent New York Times piece, "If a candidate is uncomfortable with religion, he is uncomfortable with Americans."
So where does discomfort with religion's place in a candidate's views begin? A nationwide poll conducted in August by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows 53 percent of respondents were comfortable with the way Bush's religious beliefs affect his policymaking. Yet the same poll also showed that 56 percent of the same respondents are comfortable with the amount of time Kerry devotes to talking about religion.
For millions, the choice is between a conservative Christian president who talks openly of God's will, and a liberal Catholic senator who prides himself on keeping his faith and his politics separate. Some see what they term "values-based voting" not as an option but as a scriptural mandate, according to the Southern Baptist leader Richard Land. Others see politics and religion in totally separate spheres, like Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who has accused Bush of running for "national pastor" rather than president.
Many of both candidates' highest-profile supporters, as well as their grass-roots voters, reflect their approach.
The Rev. Billy McCormack doesn't mince words about his faith, not only in God, but in Bush. He invokes both their names in the same sentence, thankful for a president "who is a Christian and not ashamed of it."
"He loves God, and he's a man of prayer. . . . He's hated by the left because he dwells on biblical standards of morality and they don't like black and white or right and wrong. When he puts up a standard of belief, they hate him," he told a local audience during a recent taping of National Public Radio's "Justice Talking" at Utah State University.
The Rev. McCormack, a founding board member of the Christian Coalition, embodies the view of millions of evangelical conservatives who have become a major political force in American politics.
Throughout his presidency, and particularly since 9/11, Bush has drawn the ire of many academics, celebrities and the media for evoking images of "manifest destiny" — the theory that America is God's tool for spreading democracy, and some say Christianity, to a world in desperate need of freedom and/or redemption.
The success Bush has garnered using his born-again Christianity as a rallying cry among conservatives works against him when other religious voices — some Christian, some Muslim, some Jewish, some of everything else — view his focus on the war in Iraq and deficit spending as hypocritical policies that reject many of his faith's most basic teachings.
"God created the heavens and the Earth," said Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ at USU, adding Jesus' admonitions about "blessed are the poor" and "blessed are the peacemakers." The president's policies don't fit either of those biblical admonitions, he said, answering the Rev. McCormack's assertion of Bush as a follower of Christ.
Edgar, an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and a former six-term congressman, told Utahns that poverty, the environment, the federal deficit and making peace are "the principles around which the faith community needs to focus, not homosexuality, abortion and those other issues. They're important, but they're not the critical issues of our time."
That's the same message Sen. Kerry, D-Mass., has been zeroing in on with increased intensity in the final leg of his campaign for the White House.
Political action committees on both sides come down along those same lines, with Bush supporters taking up the call to legislate traditional marriage and excoriating Kerry for taking Catholic communion even though he favors legalized abortion. Several Bush-backing groups have conducted prayer campaigns aimed at boosting his performance in the recent debates and swaying undecided voters into his column.
Kerry boosters focus on morality as the driving force behind care for the poor and the marginalized, and cite the "immorality" of Bush's decision to go to war against a nation that made no pre-emptive strike on America.
The religious emphasis that underlies those issues is so powerful that many believe America's 51 million Catholics — by far the nation's largest denomination — will ultimately determine the winner. Wednesday's Wall Street Journal noted that the Catholic vote "has gone to the popular winner in every presidential election since 1972." And while Kerry's brand of Catholicism no doubt sways millions toward him, it also alienates untold numbers of others, including a few Catholic archbishops.
While the religious styles of the candidates have by now become well-defined, the difference in how Americans actually vote may most often come down to how they define themselves in terms of their own faith.
Robert Franklin, distinguished professor of social ethics in the Chandler School of Theology at Emory University, told students at Utah Valley State College on Thursday that religious communities and adherents relate to politics in distinct ways:
Accommodationists seek to preserve the status quo through cooperation and compromise, and view the biblical Sermon on the Mount as "a basic primer of Christian ethics which should inform the entire society." They perceive God as the creator and architect of American government.
Radicals are much more concerned with social justice, and see government's role not as a preserver of the status quo but as a means of reaching out to the poor and disenfranchised, often through political confrontation and even civil disobedience. "They view God as a liberator of the oppressed."
Separatists see American society as fundamentally sinful and fallen, and seek to separate themselves from the national mainstream, through ethnicity, religion or race, to avoid the "contamination" of secular ideas. They deal with government only when absolutely necessary, and see God as a "redeemer" who views them as his "chosen remnant."
Revivalists also see society as fundamentally fallen but believe in personal redemption of individuals. They seek to reform a sinful world one soul at a time. They are indifferent to political behavior and focus most on God as Savior of the repentant. They include "most televangelists and storefront preachers."
Materialists are best embodied in widely popular preachers like Robert Schuller, T.D. Jakes and Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker, "religious leaders that require a personal jet" to promote their "gospel of health, wealth and success," which sees God as the provider of all good things to those of a "certain outlook and behavior."
Under such breakdowns, Franklin said, it may often be difficult to distinguish what "religion" really means, because it could easily include not only Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism, but Marxism, capitalism and the free market, he said.
"Few religious leaders seem concerned that capitalism has, itself, become an alternative religious system."
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com