If conventional wisdom is to be believed, John Kerry has a religion problem -- namely, that Americans think he's insufficiently devout. Every pundit in America has advice for Kerry on how to appeal to religious audiences on the trail and how to make use of his own Catholic faith -- but should he listen? Ayelish McGarvey argues that religion could lead Kerry to the promised land, but Matthew Yglesias fears that the road to defeat is paved with biblical quotations.
This is the final round in a three-part debate. You can read the first two segments here and here.
Matthew Yglesias
What does Kerry have to lose, you ask? At least part of the answer, I think, is well-established by your own recounting of how Kerry got -- and then lost -- religion on the campaign trail. You say the campaign "lost its nerve and righteous indignation in the face of rogue Catholic bishops," but casting aspersions on the bishops in question -- deserved as such aspersions may be -- doesn't do justice to the very real strategic problem Kerry faced. How viable was it, really, for Kerry to travel around the country preaching his own gospel while tailed by bishops correcting his theology at every turn?
It's true that Bush has exploited his own somewhat eccentric take on Methodism with great aplomb, so in some sense cosmic justice calls for Kerry to get away with his similarly unorthodox Catholicism. But life on the campaign trail isn't fair. The reality is that Kerry has a communion problem and Bush doesn't. What ultimately saved Kerry during the controversy was that most of the American hierarchy didn't want to see the church dragged into partisan politics. If John Kerry insists on dragging it in, those bishops who want to make the Catholic Church an arm of the GOP will only have their hand strengthened. At the end of the day, insofar as Catholic leaders do want to engage in electioneering, they're bound to come down on the side of the Republicans, the party of opposition to abortion, opposition to gay rights, and -- perhaps most importantly -- the party whose idea of domestic policy is to take money away from federal programs and give it to Church groups.
It's a fight Kerry can't win and, therefore, a fight he wisely chose to avoid. That's what he has to lose.
And there's a larger difficulty with a religious strategy for Kerry. A Republican presidential candidate's religious base is fairly homogenous: white Protestants here and devout white Catholics there. A Democratic candidate, on the other hand, counts on a block of African-Americans that includes many evangelicals; a block of white non-churchgoers; a block of Latinos with a wide range of relationships toward the Catholic Church; a small but financially important group of Jews; and, hopefully in 2004, non-black Muslims disillusioned by the Bush foreign policy. Many of these people are attracted to the Democrats in part because Democratic candidates don't talk much about religion -- some because they're not religious, others because they are religious but not in the Christian mainstream. A promise that John Kerry will govern based on his communications with God threatens to destabilize this somewhat awkward mix, while bringing little in the way of benefit.
Now on the question of outreach to Muslim groups, we're in complete agreement. This isn't the biggest voting block in the universe but it's still one worth going after. The question is whether making a play for the Muslim vote has anything to do with getting "comfortable" with religion.
Look at Bush's effort to improve the GOP's standing with Jewish voters. This, like any proposed Democratic outreach to Muslims, was based primarily on foreign-policy positions, not on trying to convince Jews that the president keeps kosher. The main reason this strategy not paid off is precisely that Bush is too comfortable with his religion. Jews, after all, are Jewish, not Christian; while we might like a leader guided by our faith, the last thing we need is a president who indicates that his policies will be grounded in his religion.
American politics has traditionally been quite secular, not because it was a country full of secular people but because it was a country full of religious minorities who don't want to see the government captured by any one faith. Under the circumstances, more talk of faith would probably be counterproductive in trying to woo Muslim voters, among others. What Kerry should be saying is that the Bush administration has been too Christian, not that it hasn't been Christian enough.
Ayelish McGarvey
Again: A distinction must be made between personal religious faith and religious empathy, so to speak. John Kerry does not need to act more pious to speak to religious voters in a compelling way. Rick Perlstein in the Los Angeles Times took Kerry's religion critics to task in a scathing op-ed. He charges that Democrats have been hustled into believing that theirs isn't “real” religion and consequently have allowed Republicans to define religiosity in harsh, legalistic terms. But how does Perlstein suppose that Kerry should handle all of the God talk from the right?
A more morally sound strategy -- and also, quite possibly, a more politically sound strategy -- would be for Kerry to point up the way the president fails to honor the faithful and trifles with them by turning them into cogs in a political machine. Remind Americans that Bush has lectured Catholic cardinals like they were precinct captains -- complaining to one in Vatican City, "Not all the American bishops are with me." Point out how he has arranged privileged White House briefings on Mideast policy with apocalyptic Christians who are more interested in fulfilling the divisive conditions they say will hasten the Rapture than actual peace in this world. Put on display the way the Bush campaign has walked the razor's edge of campaign law by instructing conservative churches to send their membership rosters to Bush/Cheney headquarters.
Exactly right. Kerry should highlight Bush's cavalier exploitation of religious faith for political gain. But that's not enough. To drive home his message, Kerry must align his platform with the religious beliefs held most dear by his audience. Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners, a liberal evangelical magazine, once told me his thoughts on the far right's perversion of Christian principles. “You fight bad religion with better religion,” he said. “You don't respond by changing the subject.”
This leads me to my closing point on Kerry and the Catholic Church: John Kerry must not change the subject. Yglesias believes that Kerry has much to lose by taking on the rogue bishops who have used his stance on abortion as leverage to discredit his faith. But Kerry doesn't have to confront individual bishops to speak compellingly to persuadable Catholics. The majority of bishops, after all, are perfectly willing to offer Kerry communion. And in the wake of sex scandals in the Church, the number of Catholics who strongly support the Bishops has dropped to an all-time low of 18 percent, according to a recent Zogby poll.
But really -- would it hurt Kerry to point out the stark hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchy? No bishop to date has stepped forward and tried to deny Tom Ridge (a prominent pro-choice Catholic) communion during Sunday mass. And when did the Catholic Church become a single-issue organization? There is far more to Catholicism than a dogmatic opposition to abortion. (The Just War Doctrine comes to mind.) Kerry might well point out that the right has used abortion as a political football, never really working to lower the abortion rate as they crow about its sinfulness.
For four years, George W. Bush has worn his Christianity on his sleeve when his administration has been anything but. John Kerry will have to fight bad religion with better religion -- even though it might offend his liberal sensibilities and perhaps make his secular advisors squirm in their seats. To win, he must not change the subject.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer. Ayelish McGarvey is a Prospect writing fellow. This is the final round in a three-part debate. You can read the first two segments here and here.
