"Faith Matters in Election '04"... FOTF and Kerry...

[mumon]

The Rev. Doug Tanner of the Faith and Politics Institute said it's clear that voters want their president to be a person of faith. But the content of a candidate's faith is what's truly important, he added, issues like "what is the vision, what are the values, what is the spirit that emanates from that faith and with what integrity are those things held together?"

Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for Time magazine, which recently polled voters about how important a candidate's faith is to them, said President Bush's faith is one of the driving forces behind his passionate support.

...

Kerry's faith is also an issue, she added, though perhaps not for the reasons he would like. What's being noted are the differences between Kerry's voting record and the positions of the Catholic Church....


The Catholic Church, meanwhile, is no longer allowing Catholic politicians to have it both ways — to separate their personal and political positions. Even the pope is getting involved in the debate, indicating just how concerned the Vatican is over the gulf separating Kerry's political beliefs from his Church's teaching.

The fact is, I saw the Bush Jesus Factor program on Frontline last week, and I personally believe - this is NOT conventional wisdom- that this constituency can be peeled off of Bush in a heartbeat.

What Kerry needs to do is to basically appropriate Christian terms and arguments into his campaign. Hell, there's alot more stuff that Jesus said about helping the poor than about stem cell research!


The fact is also, though, Kerry's got to do this without it seeming contrived. But it can be done.

Finally,he should address the Catholic Church issue square on: in fact, there is nothing in "Catholic teaching" that specifically enjoins Kerry to legislate against abortion! Nothing!

And it's time he screamed that!

[LoZoccolo]

1. Not conventional wisdom.

The fact is, I saw the Bush Jesus Factor program on Frontline last week, and I personally believe - this is NOT conventional wisdom- that this constituency can be peeled off of Bush in a heartbeat.

I read part of a study somewhere that 39% of evangelical Christians are Democrats, so I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as people, say, putting together a story for a documentary would put it. But in the very far right-wing section of that there is some really deeply entrenched conspiracy theories and what-not that you'd really have a lot of trouble getting past. There used to be a book about them called Architects of Fear that I found very informative, and went over a lot of the history of conspiracy theories about the Masons, etcetera. But the more moderate religious right is basically focused on abortion (really a very simple argument about this is - well what have the Republicans done about it in the last thirty years, and is it worth all the other uncharitable things their policies promote) and sometimes some church/state issues (which you could argue, the separation of church and state is there to protect their religion as well as separate the government from it - they often bring up the ACLU, but there are cases where the ACLU took the "freedom to practice religion" side of the coin as well; they even helped Jerry Falwell in 2002).