By Kimberley Heatherington
In the unique blend of ritual and spectacle that characterizes American presidential elections, the ever-shifting enigma of voter opinion fuels an incessant cycle of analysis, strategy and response. So when a recent poll indicated that more than two-thirds of U.S. citizens identify religious conviction as a necessary trait for the occupant of the Oval Office, even an unseasoned political pundit can forecast that faith will be traveling the campaign trail.
A survey released in September by the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reported that 69 percent of Americans agree that "it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs." Additionally, Pew found that "voters who see presidential candidates as religious express more favorable views toward those candidates than do voters who view them as not religious," with 61 percent replying that "they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who does not believe in God."
But in the poll, 63 percent said they oppose houses of worship endorsing specific candidates, and 43 percent are "uncomfortable when politicians talk about how religious they are."
If the data reveal a slightly conflicted electorate, the reason may lie in a distinctly American idea of a faithful president. To explore the connection between religion, the presidency and the 2008 presidential election, Our Sunday Visitor spoke with scholars from Georgetown University, the University of Notre Dame and the Catholic University of America.
"A 'faithful president,' it strikes me, is one who understands the limits of politics," Father James Schall, a professor of government at Georgetown University, said in an e-mail interview. "But the term 'faith' is in principle mostly useless until we know what someone is faithful about, what the faith means, and how it relates to reason."
Nor is observance alone a comprehensive criteria. "Religion and its practice might indicate that a man has a religious soul," Father Schall said. "But if he does not live up to the criteria of his own religion, it may very well indicate the opposite."
Yet in a nation characterized by a plurality of faiths and denominations, the president's spiritual role is accordingly tempered. "The president is not a priest," Father Schall said, issuing a caution about the overt religious expectations people of faith can realistically have of the commander-in-chief. "He should be a prudent and magnanimous man, a man capable of making a decision, of explaining to us the real dangers that face us -- including the moral dangers of the ways of life that, when carried out, militate against the very good of those who live them."
"We're still a religious country," said John Kenneth White, professor of politics at the Catholic University of America. "But it's the location of religion that's the biggest divide now in our politics -- between those that find religion within traditional religious organizations and those who say, 'Well, my spirituality can be within.'"
White cited a 1988 Gallup poll that asked respondents if it was possible to be a good Christian without attending church. The majority replied yes. In the almost 20 years since, the trend has been consistent.
"We are becoming a more secular society, but not necessarily a faithless society," he said. "So it doesn't surprise me that people still want their president to be guided by religion; to have religious faith; to incur the values that stem from religion."
White, who employs the phrase "E pluribus duo" to depict America's political polarization, said frequency of worship has a direct correlation to voter opinions on the issues still prominent in the 2008 presidential campaign. "The real division in polling when you look at voting behavior is between those that attend church regularly and those that don't," White noted. "That transcends Protestant, Catholic, Jewish -- and transcends the way we've thought about religious divisions historically in the country, as between Protestant and Catholic."
For example, the Pew survey found that those who attend church weekly, by a 73 percent to 43 percent margin, are "significantly more opposed to gay marriage" than those who attend less frequently. Support for the death penalty was only 55 percent among white Catholics attending church weekly, while the figure jumped to 73 percent among the same demographic who attend less than once a week. But weekly Mass attendance appeared no reliable indicator of doctrinal adherence; in spite of the Church's explicitly stated ban, a startling 46 percent of weekly Massgoing white Catholics responding to the Pew poll favored embryonic stem cell research. The poll did not link opinions concerning abortion to frequency of church attendance.
"We happen to live at a time when the issues that themselves are correlated with religiosity happen to be on the political agenda," said David Campbell, associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. "Religion has mattered [to the presidency] for a long time," Campbell noted. "What's different today than perhaps elections in the past is that the emphasis is not on a particular religious affiliation. Today, the emphasis is on whether or not you are a person of faith, or just yourself religious, with the specific religious affiliation mattering much less."
The rapid rise of intentionally nondenominational, evangelical mega-churches has, Campbell said, altered the political landscape as well. "With that going on in the religious environment, it makes sense that, when many voters are making connections between religion and politics, they're not making that connection mediated by denomination."
Such a reality poses a special challenge for the 2008 presidential field, Campbell explained, whatever their own faith. "It's not just talking about it -- it's having your party associated, in the voter's minds, with that group of people that we think of as religious Americans."
Kimberley Heatherington writes from Virginia.
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