Always Ahead Of The Curve

Yesterday, Time published Leveling The Praying Field, an article which examines the new found religiosity of the Democrat candidates for their party's presidential nomination.

A year ago, we published two posts, Why The Democrats Are Finding Religion, in which we examined the sudden about face made by Democrats when it comes to their religious identity (not surprisingly, some candidates have proved to be remarkably 'Arabesque'- saying one thing to one audience and then saying just the opposite to a different, more familiar audience).

What follow are the posts we published a year ago. As is often the case, we were ahead of the curve.

Why The Democrats Are Finding Religion

Recently, a number of Democrats including Howard Dean, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have begun to openly court the religious vote.

Howard Dean appeared on Pat Robertson's TV program and gravely announced that "marriage is between a man and a woman." This contrast sharply with some of his previous remarks:

"At a time when the Republican Party is in trouble with their conservative base, Bill Frist is taking a page straight out of the Karl Rove playbook to distract from the Republican Party's failed leadership and misplaced priorities by scapegoating LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) families for political gain, using marriage as a wedge issue. It's not only morally wrong, it is shameful and reprehensible."

After his appearance on the Pat Robertson program, Dean reportedly called gay rights leaders to apologize for 'misrepresenting' the Democrat Party agenda.

While Howard Dean proved that, well, he had all the credibility of Howard Dean, Barack Obama is far more honest. He speaks in a remarkably candid way:

For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; it is an active, palpable agent in the world. It is a source of hope.

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship, the grounding of faith in struggle, that the church offered me a second insight: that faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts. You need to come to church precisely because you are of this world, not apart from it; you need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away – because you are human and need an ally in your difficult journey.

His words are honest and poignant.

The path I traveled has been shared by millions upon millions of Americans – evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims alike; some since birth, others at a turning point in their lives. It is not something they set apart from the rest of their beliefs and values. In fact, it is often what drives them.

This is why, if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at – to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own – we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.

Because when we ignore the debate about what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Jew; when we discuss religion only in the negative sense of where or how it should not be practiced, rather than in the positive sense of what it tells us about our obligations towards one another; when we shy away from religious venues and religious broadcasts because we assume that we will be unwelcome – others will fill the vacuum, those with the most insular views of faith, or those who cynically use religion to justify partisan ends.

Obama speaks from his heart and with clarity. Rather than deride faith, he extols even differences in faith, when those differences are sincere and meant to be constructive. His words are a far cry from the derision and hate that all too often emanate from the liberal community.

Hillary Clinton noted that there are 'too many abortions' and that abortion was a 'sad, even tragic event.' Those remarks infuriated abortion proponents, who went on to label her a 'traitor.'

We have addressed the issue of the left, right and religion before. We said,

Let us be clear. We have no trouble with many liberal ideas. In fact, as we have said, liberals have, and continue to contribute mightily to the American political and social landscape. Our contention isn't with liberals.

It was not that long ago that people who went to church weren’t ridiculed.

Real liberals didn’t call them stupid and suggested they not be allowed to vote. Are those recent leftist, loud voices, fringe voices? Sure they are. Even louder however, is the silence from liberal leadership, as they did not castigate those bigoted voices. They wanted- and still want it- both ways.

The real disappointment today is that middle Americans aren’t as stupid and pliable as liberal leadership would like. They still haven’t figured out that they have to offer something other than hatred as an option to conservative voices. Take a step back and think about it. It is now conservatives that offer up social programs and it is now liberals that deride them. The legacy of the war on poverty has been passed on to conservatives. The most visible and widespread legacy the liberals can call on is racist- Clarence Thomas is an ‘Uncle Tom’ and Condaleeza Rice is an ‘Uppity Nigger.’ It is perfectly acceptable for liberals- even, and especially, in the halls of Congress, to use those epithets. There are liberals who understand that. While we don’t always agree with Michael Lerner, of Tikkun, his arguments in Common Dreams are hard to ignore. He puts it this way:

For years the Democrats have been telling themselves "it's the economy, stupid." Yet consistently for dozens of years millions of middle income Americans have voted against their own economic interests to support Republicans who have tapped a deeper set of needs…

Tens of millions of Americans feel betrayed by a society that seems to place materialism and selfishness above moral values. They know that "looking out for number one" has become the common sense of our society, but they want a life that is about something more --- a framework of meaning and purpose to their lives that would transcend the grasping and narcissism that surrounds them. Sure, they will admit that they have material needs, and that they worry about adequate health care, stability in employment, and enough money to give their kids a college education. But even more deeply they want their lives to have meaning --- and they respond to candidates who seem to care about values and some sense of transcendent purpose...

Yet to move in this direction, many Democrats would have to give up their attachment to a core belief: that those who voted for Bush are fundamentally stupid or evil. Its time they got over that elitist self righteousness and developed strategies that could affirm their common humanity with those who voted for the Right. Teaching themselves to see the good in the rest of the American public would be a critical first step in liberals and progressives learning how to teach the rest of American society how to see that same goodness in the rest of the people on this planet. It is this spiritual lesson --- that our own well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet and on the well-being of the earth- a lesson rooted deeply in the spiritual wisdom of virtually every religion on the planet, that could be the center of a revived Democratic party. Yet to take that seriously, the Democrats are going to have to get over the false and demeaning perception that the Americans who voted for Bush could never be moved to care about the well being of anyone but themselves. That transformation in the Democrats would make them into serious contenders.

…liberals, trapped in a long-standing disdain for religion and tone-deaf to the spiritual needs that underlie the move to the Right, have been unable to engage these voters in a serious dialogue… the liberal world has developed such a knee-jerk hostility to religion that it has both marginalized those many people on the Left who actually do have spiritual yearnings and simultaneously refused to acknowledge that many who move to the Right have legitimate complaints about the ethos of selfishness in American life… …The hostility of the Left to spirituality is so deep, in fact, that when they hear us in Tikkun talking this way they often can't even hear what we are saying ---- so they systematically mis-hear it and say that we are calling for the Left to take up the politics of the Right…Read Michael Lerner’s entire article here.

You may agree or disagree with Rabbi Lerner, but in fact, he raises many very valid points. In fact, no one can argue or deny the truth of much of what Rabbi Lerner says. Given the right focus and direction, as we once said, liberal values can and will appeal to many. It would be a mistake to dismiss Rabbi Lerner because of his political affiliations.

We certainly do not always agree with Rabbi Lerner, but more than one of his ideas contain more than a kernel of truth. Do you think Daniel Patrick Moynihan (one of our all time favorite politicians) could get elected now? Do you think that great American liberal patriot would have ever had the opportunity to become the American icon he was, if he we in Congress today? Simply having differing views does not disqualify the relevance or patriotism of worthy adversaries. We consider Patrick Daniel Moynihan a real American patriot. Although in many areas, the late senator Moynihan challenged the views of many not as liberal as he, there was never a question of his love of country or his dream to make America a better place for all her citizens. Mr. Moynihan often crossed party lines and confounded his supporters and detractors on a regular basis. His entire raison d'etre was to help build a better America. His politics were not centered around ‘getting’ anyone or just looking for any and every reason to vilify an opponent. Mr. Moynihan actually stood for something. Hillary Clinton states the obvious- there are far too many abortions- and she called a traitor.

‘Screw Abstinence’ parties, hosted by abortion rights groups are flaunted as au courrant in the face of parents and others who might think otherwise. There is the idea that 'getting the other side' is the object of the game- whatever it takes. Women's movements, for example, founded on the ideal of choice, seems not to tolerate choice at all. Anyone not adopting the liberal leadership position is the enemy. Is it any wonder that liberalism has lost much of it's luster?

Mort Zuckerman commented on current liberal values:

.. Americans rejected the hedonism of Woodstock, in which individual choice and uninhibited, personal expression trumped all. Hollywood came to epitomize for them this narcissism and repudiation of conventional values. They were tired of the new counterculture of radical change, seeing in the New Left contempt for middle America and its values, reflected in fathers abandoning their families, the delegitimization of the sanctity of marriage, raising children without clear moral guideposts — all of which, in their minds, led to increased criminality, drug abuse,people being recast as society's victims rather than accepting responsibility for their own actions. They yearned to restore the authority of public institutions and to remove some of the violence and sexuality in TV programs, records, and computer games, whose content they ascribed to the liberals who write the screenplays for TV and movies. Against this backdrop, the Democratic Party saw its leadership shifting away from its working-class and middle-class roots, away from moral traditionalists, especially families that go to church, away from those who live in unfashionable tract suburbs and even in working-class neighborhoods. The Democratic Party was increasingly identifying more with the rising elites of the information and entertainment age - what commentator Joel Kotkin calls the"hip-ocracy" of well-educated people, high-tech tycoons, Hollywood moguls and celebrities, Wall Street financiers, and an academic world of people with graduate degrees - a new social elite, much more liberal than the country at large. Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" and "It's the economy, stupid!" reflected the need to reconnect with the traditional Democratic middle-class constituencies, but then he exacerbated the concern over moral values and family issues with his personal behavior. The entire article can be found here.

As with Michael Lerner, you may not agree with Zuckerman's politics, but there is also a more than a kernel of truth in his remarks. Our post was not about liberal and liberal ideas. It was about what has become liberal ideology and and liberal leadership. If liberals want to regain the credibility they once had with the American people, they need to reclaim their party.

We have noted that we are 'attacking each other with a ferociousness and using tactics never before seen. There is no semblance or pretense to civility or exchange; there is just a visceral hatred that permeates the debate. In another time, it could be said that this is the stuff that revolutions are made of. It is a Jihad of sorts, American style. The real issues aren't being discussed. The only things that count are winning and subjugating opponents. The merit or veracity of any argument is irrelevant- if the origin is ‘the other side,‘ it is to be discarded and treated as if it were toxic. There is no mercy for the dissenters and no room for compromise.'

The Democrats have paid the price for that attitude. Thankfully, it appears as if they are reconsidering that ideology.

...The Dems are attempting to mainstream faith into that party's reality. Clearly, the Democrats are trying to tap into the bloc of voters they had abandoned. They had chosen to abandon the party faithful and replace them with the faithlessness of Hollywood values and ideologies. As it turns out, the democrats have learned that just because People magazine has a big subscriber base, Americans will not adopt the lifestyle of the people in People.

Why? Well, simply stated, Americans (for the most part), want their children to have very different values than those found in Hollywood. Britney Spears is not the model for mothers and Angelina Jolie, for all her well scripted and staged remarks, is a dysfunctional idiot - and every body knows it. All the PR people in the world can't change that. Ms Jolie is no more an expert on world affairs than is a canned ham. The difference between them is clear: With a canned ham, you know what's in the can.

People understand that what Susan Sarandon has to say about world events is less meaningful than what Condaleeza Rice has to say. Susan Sarandon barely graduated High School. Condaleeza Rice was the Provost at Stanford.

Americans want their children to look up to people like Condaleeza Rice, not to people like Susan Sarandon. Americans understand that Susan Sarandon and Barbra Streisand are probably very nice people. They also understand that Hollywood is the village of Court Jesters.

No one prays the cast of Grey's Anatomy will be manning the hospital emergency room if they need real medical attention and no one really believes because Martin Sheen can read cue cards well, he'd be a great president in real life.

If the Democrats really want to appeal to people of faith, that appeal will have to be more than window dressing. As The Anchoress recently remarked, we live in times that require serious people. Serious people are not found in Hollywood. Role models come from Stanford and not the silver screen. There is no room for the values of the Hollywood court jesters. The Democrats will have to make a choice. They can choose to share the values of middle America- those voters that were loyal to their call for decades before they were unceremoniously dumped, or they can continue to share the values of Hollywood.

We once asked, Why does religion work? Why are religious values so hard to eliminate?

To be clear, religion, such as it is, cannot be easily defined. Many who do not attend religious services refer to themselves as religious or spiritual. Argue that they are not really religious or spiritually connected because they don't mind orthodox religious P's and Q's and your likely to end up in an even bigger argument.

To understand the why of religion, one needs to understand what religion accomplishes. (To be clear, we are not discussing faith. That is an entirely different topic). Simply stated, religion provides two necessary ingredients (though by no means exclusively) that feed and nourish the human condition.

Religion provides order- and it provides chaos.

In a world where everything is questioned, day in and day out, religion provides a sense of order and purpose. Like the traffic lights and speed limits, religion- and for that matter, all moral behavior- provide 'rules of the road' keep the system from imploding on itself.

Religion also provides chaos. Like art and literature, religion today asks those things that challenge the status quo and demand we respond. It is in those responses that we often see new horizons- John Paul II, JB Soloveitchik, Kierkegaard and host of lesser known current religious thinkers have forced a kind of 'chaos' upon us- the status quo was not good enough. Like the School of Paris painters at the beginning of the 20^th century that forced us to look at the world in a way that wasn't necessarily representational, religious thinkers provide the chaos we need to grow. God may be found in Mozart and Rembrandt, but He is also found in Picasso and Coltrane.

We have noted that when Nietzsche declared that 'God is dead,' he was to a large degree correct. The God that Nietzsche referred to was indeed passing. The Church, once repressive and oppressive, was undergoing a transformation. It was understood that God no longer demanded uniformity or wanted to obliterate self expression. In fact, God celebrated the very things that were foundational to the Age of Enlightenment. As it turned out, God was perfectly able to look out for his own interests, without agendized human interventions. That is a truth rarely referred to- and it is an important truth. The founders of this country were fleeing religious persecution and in fact, the principles and guarantors of freedom in this country were deemed to be religious rights and not just secular rights. God made room for all kinds of believers and non believers. Free will no longer had any fine print attached to it.

Still, secularism, and all it's derivatives, were understandable reactions to being held underfoot by a Church and faith that remained behind the curve in accepting change and challenge science was to provide. When a slave broke the chains of his bondage, he didn't stay long enough to have tea and say good bye to his master. He ran, as far and fast as he could, never to look back.

Secularism hasn't been able to eliminate God because secularism no longer offers a viable alternative to God. Ideas, art, philosophy and even God, can now be challenged by believers, too.

What is different is that many secularists are bound and determined to kill God. They are not satisfied coexisting with believers. The reasons are many and varied, but one thing is clear. Unlike many secularists, Christians, Jews and Buddhists do not lose sleep because they pray differently. God as described by secularists very rarely, if ever, resembles the God of the believers.

In fact, religion is like DNA. It gets passed on, generation to generation and while there are the inevitable losses, by and large, religious belief perseveres because religious people obviously benefit from their beliefs. If they didn't, religion would have disappeared long ago. What secularists do not realize is that their cause is not helped when in the attempt to demystify God, they dehumanize religion, those beliefs that provide both the chaos and order in their lives. Dehumanize and attempt to demystify religion and you dehumanize the believer.

Obviously, while religion is not for everyone, it is clearly a part of the DNA of many, no matter what secularists argue.

Religion and secularism address man's understanding of self. As we noted, secularism has been unable to get rid of religion because secularism does not offer an understanding of the self that is to superior to that offered by faith.

Why dadaism came about is as much as mystery as how the Sistine Chapel's ceiling ended up the way it did. Religious inspiration differs little than secularly inspired expression.

The horsehair bow that coaxes music out of a violin is as much mystery as it is science, and nothing can change that.

Notwithstanding premature announcements of the death of religion, it would appear that religion- or religious values- are alive and well.

Secularism- and to a lesser extent, moral Humanism, have gotten a bad rap because a hard core of secularists have had a harder time in making their case and as a result, they have resorted to less than honest arguments, reinforced with immoral behavior as being representative of secularism.

The strands of religious DNA have are in no danger of extinction.