BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Yes, Senator, freedom
from religion, too. Religion is starting to sneak into the
presidential campaign in a fairly rancid way. The latest example is
Joe Lieberman, who, according to this
article in the New York
Times, is going after Howard Dean for being too
secular.
In what Times reporter Diane
Cardwell calls a "veiled swipe" at Dean, Lieberman reportedly
said:
I know that some people
believe that faith has no place in the so-called public square.
They forget that the constitutional separation of church and
state, which I strongly support, promises freedom of religion, not
freedom from religion. Some people forget that faith was central
to our founding and remains central to our national purpose and
our individual lives.
The good senator, of all people,
should know that religion is treacherous territory in public life -
and that if religiosity is a good, old-fashioned American value, so
too is anti-Semitism. If Lieberman were actually in a position to
win, his Orthodox Judaism might prove to be a problem with some of
the very people he's trying to win over. It's unseemly of him to go
after a fellow Democrat on religious grounds.
Still, Lieberman's outburst is not
without context. This week's New Republic features a
cover
story (sub. req.) by
Franklin Foer arguing that Dean simply isn't religious enough to get
elected in November. Foer notes a survey showing that "70 percent of
Americans want their president to be a person of faith."
"Howard Dean is one of the most
secular candidates to run for president in modern history," writes
Foer, citing Dean's switch from the Episcopal to the Congregational
church over his anger at the Episcopal diocese's opposition to a bike
path he was championing; his admission that he rarely goes to church;
his marriage to a Jewish woman, Judith Steinberg, whose religious
views also appear to lean secular; and his frequent attacks on
religious fundamentalists. (Representative Dean soundbite: "I don't
want to listen to the fundamentalist preachers anymore.")
But is it the religion of the
politician that matters, or the politics of the religious? Earlier
this week, the Boston Globe published a column by its former
Washington-bureau chief, David Shribman, on a well-known phenomenon:
the overwhelming preference that Christian fundamentalists have for
Republicans. (You can find it here,
on the website of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where Shribman
is the executive editor.)
Shribman notes:
In the 2000 election, Bush
swept more religiously observant voters by large percentages -
and, in the case of white evangelical Protestants, by a margin of
more than five to one.
Shribman doesn't quite connect the
dots, so I will: this wide split took place despite such
Gore-ian ick as his wearing a WWJD ("What would Jesus do?") bracelet.
For the fundamentalists, it's not whether you were born again; it's
where you stand on such cultural issues as abortion rights and
same-sex marriage.
It doesn't matter to me whether a
candidate is a secular Protestant, such as Dean; a Catholic, such as
John Kerry; or someone like Wesley
Clark, whose father was
Jewish and who apparently switches to a different Christian
denomination every couple of years.
Then again, I suppose I'm one of
those secularists who Joe Lieberman's mother warned him
about.
A close encounter with mad-cow
disease. News that a downer cow in Washington State has been
diagnosed with mad-cow disease has brought this low-simmering story
back to a boil. Here
is the story from the
hometown Seattle Times.
Two years ago I identified mad cow
as a shamefully undercovered story and urged the media to get off
their butts and start reporting. You can read it here.
The best - and most horrifying -
overview remains Ellen Ruppel Shell's piece in the Atlantic
Monthly of September 1998, "Could
Mad-Cow Disease Happen Here?"
So put down that burger and start
reading.
And have a Merry Beef-free
Christmas!
posted at 8:59 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
