Politics roundup: Atheists, Abortion vs. Economy, Obama’s faith outreach
I am in Washington for the annual conference of the Religion Newswriters Association, which gathers together journos on the God beat at secular media outlets. Many good sessions and interesting surveys and speakers. I won’t clutter the blog with my reports for Beliefnet, but here are summaries and links to three that may be of interest to readers of this blog:
INSIDE OBAMA’S GOD OPS: The candidate’s top religious outreach officials respond to polls questioning Obama’s inroads with believers and explain their faith-based strategy for the rest of the campaign.
ABORTION? GAY MARRIAGE? IT’S THE (STUPID) ECONOMY! Do the hot-button culture war issues like abortion and gay marriage matter? If you read only blogs or the news coverage (such as this NYTimes story, “Abortion Issue Again Dividing Catholics”) you might get the impression that these are the central issues, and indeed the key to victory for McCain or Obama in November. Think again. Religion research guru John Green of the University of Akron (and the Pew Forum) today released the results of his fifth national mid-summer survey of voters, taken every four years during June, July and August, and this year’s results show two things…
AMONG THE UNBELIEVERS: NEW POLL SHOWS SECULARIST STRENGTH: Results from the huge American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) of 2000 stunned many and led to heated debates when it showed some 14 percent of Americans embracing some form of secularism. Preliminary numbers released today from the upcoming 2008 ARIS survey show that figure has held steady or even inched up a bit, to 15 percent. Barry Kosmin, the project researcher from the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society at Trinity College, broke the numbers down: The 15 percent figure (about 32 millions adult Americans) includes a wide variety of unbelievers, non-believers, and unchurched. Just 4 percent of this cohort identify as atheist, 6 percent as agnostic, and 1 percent as secular/humanist. 89 percent identify as simply no religion, the “rejectionist” position. A further breakdown is fascinating fodder for debate. One of the most interesting findings is that the typical member of the “Nones,” as they are known (those who identify with no religion) is an Irish (34 percent) former Catholic (25 percent) or raised with no religion (29 percent. (Jews are also overrepresented, at 5 percent, as are Asians, at 8 percent of all Nones.)
David, any insights on how people square the way some believers lament the horrors of our “secular” culture, with its permissive mores and lack of piety, when only 15 percent of the population actually identifies itself as “secular”?
Your report also reminds me that in the olden days, the religion beat was often the one that your editor threatened you with if you didn’t shape up.
Is religion reporting getting more respect these days, especially given that religion seems to be a big part of the political and cultural landscape (though maybe not as much as we think, according to the thread below)?
Do sites like “Get Religion” or blogs like this one help keep reporters honest? Or do reporters shun them as lacking balance?
Or should I just go over to BeliefNet and read it there?
Jean, good questions to which I would give overlong answers if I had time. But heading out to a session on the future of Catholic schools (more than one quipped that it should be a short session) with Mark Gray from CARA and Archbishop Wuerl. Should be interesting. Then heading home, so fuller responses later.
In any case, on secularism–religion thrives best, if not always virtuously, with an enemy. That’s the short answer. But I do think worried believers also see secularism (an ideological “ism”) as a crusade waged by a small minority of activists (lawyers, actually) trying to rid the public square of anything religious. And there is plenty of evidence for such overstepping. On the other hand, secularists are a convenient target when your kids don’t behave as they should. Blame secularist culture. Finally, we are a resolutely secular nation, from the Constitution onwards. But it is (ideally) what Benedict XVI hails as a “positive secularity” rather than an ideoloigcal secularism. Yet even that leaves more than enough room for arguments. Secularism is in the eye of the beholder.
As for religion writing, well, it’s gotten some respect in the last decade, but not enough from the powers that be, and the beat is taking hits all over–it’s like dead men/women walking here with all the folks who have lost jobs and the rest facing the propsect of closed newspapers or buyouts, at best. The irony is that this comes after a decade (at least) when the beat has come into its own in terms of professionalism etc. The beauty is that most journos still want the glam beats like politics. Yuck. Those who work the God beat generally get hooked. it’s great because editors don’t know anything, and generally let you do your work–unlss of course they screw it up. (Good editor joke here, but off-color, so off-line.) But bottom line at a time when we need the religion beat–and, to my mind, newspapers–it’s all going south. It is a remarakble and lamentable collpase of a profession and culture that I may opine/whine about another time.
As for GetReligion, journalists themselves don’t think much of it, though they can be spot-on and we generally check in as they can have some insights or story tips. We are our own worst critics and we have editors and readers to smack us around. Besides, like any blog, GetReligion is not written to improve the work of the people writing the news–it is geared to ginning up a certain audience who is inclined to mistrust the media anyway. (We are low-hanging fruit, to be sure.) So makes the GetReligionistas feel good, and their readers, but not sure what relevance/impact it really has for media coverage, especially when cuts and economics are driving newspapers off the cliff. Moral outrage and constructive concern might be better directed elsewhere at this point.
So there, I wrote too much anyway. i need an editor…A plus tard.
“Blame seculist culture.” No doubt, the values of secular culture have changed dramatically since we were children. I know that it has been a powerful force to deal with while raising my own children. The media is a powerful tool, and depending on how it is used, it can be an instrument for doing good as well as evil.
David, hope you’ll post more later!
Nancy, the media is not one “instrument,” but many exercising their First Amendment rights to gather information and express reasonable opinions about it. You decide, as a consumer, where you get the most fair and balanced information and what you want your kids to be exposed to.
Likewise the notion that there is a “secular culture” with one set of “values” is a fiction, as David’s original posts notes. I was raised by people who believe that if there is a God, he is too remote to care about the quotidian struggles and suffering of the human race or any particular individual in it. And such people differ greatly about what society ought to tolerate in the way of acceptable behavior.
The Wasington Post has initiated a religious blog, “On Faith”. Some of the contributors are world authorities such N. T. Wright, the theologian and Archbishop Tutu. It seems to be a big success. Why? I suspet it’s because people are very self-absorbed these days and don’t simply accept what is offered them in either the usual columns in the newospapers or in lecture sfrom the pulpit. We are rather skeptical (“secular”?), but not entirely so. Hence the need for discussion, and the internet provides it in a way that the print medum and the pulpit can’t.
Interesting results in the poll survey especially the Irish Catholic fall out. Despite the huge impact and success of some 19th Irish prelates – a more significant and darker story of the Irish Catholic culture and its impact is in a new book by Joe Rigert – An Irish Tragedy.
It provides a very deep insight into much of what this survey may indicate.
“Inside Obama’s God Ops” is one of several published reports over the last few days that talk about the Obama campaign’s “Faith, Family, Values Tour,” which begins the week of September 22. A team of Obama surrogates (including Pepperdine University law school Prof. Douglas Kmiec, evangelical author Donald Miller, and former Congressman Tim Roemer of Indiana) will travel from state to state, seeking the votes of religiously committed Americans for the Obama-Biden ticket.
According to Mr. Gibson’s report, the surrogates will be “doing grass-roots organizing for Obama in community centers (neutral sites — no houses of worship) and homes. The Tour will continue for weeks in most of the key battleground states.” Another article, on ChristianityToday.com, said that the states to be visited by the tour during the next month include Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The Obama surrogates assigned to this tour no doubt will try to persuade people of faith that Obama would “reduce abortions.” It is important to understand that Obama’s recently adopted “abortion reduction” spiel is just a public relations product cooked up at liberal think tanks like Third Way, where veteran pro-abortion activists specialize in developing strategies to help hard-core pro-abortion politicians camouflage their positions.
The real Obama is firmly committed to an agenda of hard-line pro-abortion policies that, if implemented, would greatly increase the numbers of abortions performed.
For example, by conservative estimate, there are more than one million Americans alive today because of the Hyde Amendment, which cut off federal funding for abortion starting in 1976. Even the Alan Guttmacher Institute (linked to Planned Parenthood) and NARAL admit that the Hyde Amendment (and the similar policies adopted by many states) have resulted in many babies being born who otherwise would have been aborted (the pro-abortion groups have put out papers complaining about this). So, the Hyde Amendment is a proven “abortion reduction” policy, big time. Obama, of course, advocates repeal of the Hyde Amendment — and he also wants to enact a mandatory national health insurance program that would also mandate coverage of abortion on demand.
Moreover, pro-life state laws — for example, women’s right to know laws, waiting periods, and parental notification laws — are saving countless lives, but Obama is a cosponsor of the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act,” which would invalidate every one of these laws. On July 17, 2007, Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing that I’d do.”
Obama even advocates repeal of the national ban on partial-birth abortions (which the FOCA would also accomplish). And, as documented thoroughly by NRLC, while a member of the Illinois state Senate, Obama led the opposition to legislation to provide protection and care for babies who are born alive during abortions.
I have faith that the majority of “people of faith” are not so easily snookered.
Douglas Johnson
NRLC Legislative Director
Legfederal//at//aol.com
http://www.nrlc.org
And, as documented thoroughly by NRLC, while a member of the Illinois state Senate, Obama led the opposition to legislation to provide protection and care for babies who are born alive during abortions.
It seems to me only fair to add that the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA), which is what Mr. Johnson seems to be referring to here, did not itself specify any protection or mandate any standard of care for born-alive infants, but merely declared them legal persons.
Presumably the theory was that if born-alive infants were declared legal persons, other laws would kick in and set the standard of care. So far, however, I have never seen a mention of what those laws were or what the standard of care would have been. Nor have I seen any evidence that the version of BAIPA passed after Obama left changed anything.
Any intended effect would have been in reference to previable infants only, infants that might have lived briefly outside the womb but could not possibly have survived, no matter what medical treatment they were given, since viable infants were already protected under the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975.
The evidence put before the Illinois Legislature alleging mistreatment of infants at Christ Hospital had been investigated by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and the Illinois Department of Public Health and — although not deemed false — could not be substantiated.
A spokesman for the Illinois Department of Health said the charges were taken very seriously, because they would have been violations of existing law. The fact that no legal action was taken as a result of the allegations was not because existing laws were inadequate, but because the allegations were investigated and not substantiated.
Regarding charges that Obama was indifferent to the treatment of infants, note that in speaking against BAIPA he said, “I think it’s important to recognize though that this is an area where potentially we might have compromised and – and arrived at a bill that dealt with the narrow concerns about how a – a previable fetus or child was treated by a hospital. We decided not to do that. We’re going much farther than that in this bill. As a consequence, I think that we will probably end up in court once again, as we often do, on this issue. As a consequence, I’ll be voting Present.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/%5Ehttp://www.ilga.gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST033001.pdf
The version of BAIPA that actually did pass the Illinois Legislature after Obama left contained the following parts, not included as parts of the bill Obama opposed:
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/fulltext.asp?Name=094-0559
It is difficult to see how the law, as passed in 2005, could have any affect on abortion or the way aborted infants were treated.
I want to make it clear that I know Obama’s position is strongly “pro-choice,” and therefore unacceptable to those who believe abortion should be legally restricted. I point out the above only because I feel Obama has been unfairly depicted as being indifferent to inhumane treatment of born-alive infants, which I don’t believe is a valid conclusion based on the evidence.
Also, NRLC cannot speak for all people of faith. Some believe abortion is acceptable under certain circumstances, and some believe abortion is always wrong but do not think it should be criminalized.
Douglas,
Did you read Peter Steinfels’s ‘Beliefs’ column on NRLC’s decision to feature Karl Rove at your annual convention this summer? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/us/21beliefs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
What is your response? Why did you invite him?
And what is your position on the GOP’s decision to remove abortion-reduction language from the Republican Party platform?
My comment isn’t directly related to this thread, but that’s normal here, right?
I just read a great (if old) article on abortion politics by George McKenna in the Atlantic. For those of you who didn’t read it already, I think you would get a lot out of it. A truly moderate position: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/95sep/abortion/abortion.htm
It’s relevant to a discussion Prof Kaveny and Mr. Boudway were having down below someplace on the abortion/slavery analogy, though in a surprising way.
Thanks to Bill D.
Before we change, or try to change the subject, the NRLC must be desperate to put forth that piece of truthiness here.
Thanks, Bob & JC. Agree, JC, this Atlantic piece is excellent and really picks up on myriad threads within that blog discussiion between Dr. Kaveny and Mr. Boudway.
It suggests a very unique approach to the issue of abortion – wish both major parties would learn from this article. Not sure this would have any impact on the RC bishops but it demonstrates thinking that goes well beyond a passionate defence of life to how we manage and politically address this issue when there is no consensus. It touches on things such as – overturn Roe v Wade and now you have a states rights issue; where do you go from there?
I think it definitely supports the thinking structure that Dr. Kaveny was trying to propose. In some ways it does a different job of articulating a political reality than the recent Commonweal editorial that juxtaposed abortion and nuclear weapons/peace. It appears that the goals were different but it made me stop and reconsider my own thinking.