A Wild and Crazy Thing

“We believe in the separation of church and state, but we don’t believe in the separation of religion and politics.” That’s how the prominent evangelical pastor Rick Warren put it when he explained last summer why he interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain on religious, moral and social questions. The event, held at Warren’s “Saddleback Church” and carried live on television, marked a blending of faith and politics that had long since taken on an institutional form in the United States. How closely connected religion and politics were was something Democrats had often ignored, sometimes misunderstood or just resigned themselves to.

Neglecting religion was a pivotal point when Bush’s chief strategist, Karl Rove, was successful in mobilizing white, evangelical voters who proved decisive in re-electing Bush in 2004. Sixty one percent of voters who attended church at least once a week voted for George W. Bush, while only 39 percent of them voted for his challenger, John Kerry. Kerry came off especially poorly among so-called “values voters” for whom questions of morality were most important in their choice. The Democrat got only 18 percent of their votes while Bush pulled in 80 percent.

House party values

Barack Obama openly spoke about his Christian faith as no other Democratic presidential candidate since the evangelical southerner Jimmy Carter had, courting those voters for whom questions of morality and faith played an important role. Obama’s team sought out contact with pastors, including those who, it was assumed, weren’t inclined to support a Democrat in the first place. The strategy was that perhaps doing so would prevent them from attacking Obama from the pulpit. Obama also spoke to students at many Christian colleges.

Obama’s campaign team also encouraged “house parties of American values” hosted by Obama supporters to which they invited their church-going friends. Strong support for the strategy came from left-liberal, Christian organizations that emphasized the themes of social justice, poverty reduction and environmental protection. Obama sought to build bridges to voters who essentially supported his political platform but were concerned by his pro-choice stance on abortion. Obama hoped to neutralize ideological contradictions by supporting abstinence-based educational programs and government support for expectant mothers in order to reduce the number of abortions.

Voices from every religious camp

Was the effort to gain the support of religious voters worth it? The left-liberal Washington-based “Center for American Progress Action Fund”, where religious organizations recently analyzed results, found surveys of religious voters that showed it was. According to analysis done by the prestigious Pew Center for Religion and Public Life, Obama was able to win support across the entire religious spectrum whereas John Kerry was not able to achieve that.

Support for Obama varied according to religious denomination but was high across the entire spectrum with the greatest support (over 75 percent, an increase of 8 percent over those who voted for Kerry) coming from those who declared themselves non-denominational. The final result, according to Greg Smith of the Pew Forum, was that these religiously independent voters played a role in Obama’s victory similar to the role played by evangelicals in George W. Bush’s 2004 win.

Increased gains among Latino voters

The Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life reported that Obama’s ability to win over Catholic voters was of significant importance. Where a majority of Catholics had voted for George W. Bush in 2004, 54 percent of them voted for Obama in 2008. The assumption that there was a political change of tenor among Catholics in general, however, is faulty. Among white Catholics, Obama increased his share of the vote compared to John Kerry to 47 percent, a mere one percentage point gain. His success among Catholic voters was due mainly to the support of Latino voters.

To what extent voting patterns of Catholics and other Christians can be traced back to ethnic and racial grounds rather than religious beliefs is one of the central questions being examined by the Pew Center at present. Senior Research Fellow John Green, one of America’s leading researchers in the area of religion and politics, theorizes that the overwhelming support of black Americans for was partly due to Obama’s success in gaining the backing of those who said they attended church at least once a week. The theory that Obama’s statistical success among the deeply religious is at least partly due to race is borne out, according to Green’s theory, by the fact that 34 percent of white Protestants voted for Obama, an increase of just 2 percentage points over John Kerry four years previously.

The “God gap”

Obama still had a five percent advantage in votes from evangelicals regardless of skin color. The support of young evangelicals was decisive according to Edison Media Research. Twice as many young evangelicals voted for Obama as voted for John Kerry in 2004. Generational aspects also played a role in their changing agenda according to religious scholars, with subjects like environmental protection, human rights and social equality becoming increasingly important alongside the traditional concerns about abstinence, abortion and gay marriage.

Religious voters saw the financial, real estate and economic crises that dominated the campaign not only as economic issues but also as serious ethical problems, according to Green. Beyond increased support for the Democratic slate, however, the political-religious landscape changed very little. Obama’s largest gains with religious voters were with those who already tended toward the Democrats, while the clear majority of conservative voters supported John McCain, according to political scientists. “The God gap still exists,” Green concluded. The difference between 2008 and 2004 was the number of voters Democrats were able to mobilize this time.

Permanent religious impressions

In the future, American political and religious experts expect questions of religion to continue playing a highly controversial role in elections. “Religion is a wild and crazy thing. Its language and symbols are often incomprehensible to outsiders,” admits Paul Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and expert on religion at Princeton University. The potential for conflict found in religion as a campaign theme was especially noticeable in the heated debates about the candidates’ relations to preachers beginning with the controversy over Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, down to the strange spectacle of Sarah Palin seeking protection from witchcraft from the itinerant Kenyan preacher Thomas Muthee.

Raushenbush predicts future presidential candidates will try to avoid the “pastor problem” by subjecting congregations and clergy to political suitability tests before associating themselves with them. One wonders what effect such a tactic will have not only on the socio-political role of churches, but also on the religiosity of American politicians themselves.