Whose side is God on this time?
Almighty always a running mate in American politics Praying for votes hits new heights in Bush's campaign
TIM HARPER
06/20/04 "Toronto Star " -- He won't be on the ballot on Nov. 2, but God is being hauled around to campaign stops all across America as the presidential election heads into its summer stretch.
He's already done a lot of the heavy lifting during George W. Bush's term in office and is taking on stature as the incumbent president's invisible running mate and political adviser.
But the perception in this country that one must invoke the Almighty to reach voters is also dragging John Kerry, who will be confirmed next month as Bush's Democratic challenger, into religious realms that are clearly not the preferred turf of the Massachusetts senator.
The religious undertones of American politics will come as a jolt to anyone raised in almost any other Western democracy.
But Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and himself a United Church minister, says this '04 campaign is rapidly becoming the most religiously infused in modern American history.
"Politicians in virtually every other Western culture would never dream of talking about their religion the way George W. Bush does," he says.
"They don't wear their religion on their sleeve, or in the case of this president, both sleeves."
The tone is clearly set by the man in the White House.
Bush credits God with helping guide him toward war in Iraq.
Freedom and liberty are gifts of the Almighty to be bestowed on the Middle East, the president says.
God is constantly at Bush's side as he reaches out to voters.
"We pray always for God's guidance and strength in our lives and for this great nation," he told Southern Baptists last week, invoking an oft-heard refrain that God is on America's side.
The day before, he brought Him to the annual congressional picnic. "We're a great country because we are blessed by the Almighty God," Bush told the revellers.
According to published reports, following a meeting with Pope John Paul II this month, Bush whispered a plea for a little bit of help from the Vatican to prod American bishops to get in line behind his social agenda.
And, a Republican e-mail leaked to the New York Times earlier this month appears to encourage religious congregations to band together to back the Bush-Cheney campaign, asking its Pennsylvania backers to "identify 1,600 friendly congregations ... where voters friendly to President Bush might gather on a regular basis."
This insidious merger of the Republican campaign and the country's churches could endanger the tax-free status of some congregations that are not supposed to be mixing politics and religion.
Yet Bush told reporters at the White House last week that he believes in the separation of church and state — although he said it after quoting from the Bible in the previous sentence, then left to address the Baptists by satellite.
"I've always said I think it's very important for someone not to try to take the speck out of somebody else's eye when they may have a log in their own," Bush said. "In other words, I'm very mindful about saying, you know, `Oh, vote for me, I'm more religious than my neighbour.'
"I think it's important for people of religion to serve. I think it is very important for people who are serving to make sure there's a separation of church and state."
The race to curry favour with religious voters is also tugging at Kerry, who will be the first Catholic to run for the White House since John F. Kennedy more than four decades ago.
Kerry, whose public backing of a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion, has some in his own church wanting to deny him the sacrament of communion.
The American Life League took out full-page ads in national newspaper USA Today, informing its readers that 500 pro-abortion Catholic politicians will receive holy Eucharist today "because Catholic bishops have chosen not to enforce Church law."
The league's Joe Giganti says his group is not specifically targeting Kerry.
"It doesn't matter if you're a trash man or if you're a politician, if you work in the media for a living. It doesn't matter.
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`Whole election has the feel of being decided by a rousing game of Bible Jeopardy . . .'
Barry Lynn, Americans United for Separation of Church and State
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"If you're Catholic and you want to be a Catholic in good standing, you can't support abortion."
Lynn firmly believes church and state should not mix, because when they do, the integrity of both is sullied.
Americans want a man of values in the White House, he says, not a biblical scholar.
"This whole election has the feel of being decided by a rousing game of Bible Jeopardy in the first days of November."
Although Bush must relentlessly court his conservative religious base to win re-election — and the country's 63 million Catholic voters could be a key to victory — the president's self-portrayal as a messenger of God is drawing fire.
The debate began anew a week ago at the private funeral service for the late Ronald Reagan, whose son Ron appeared to take direct aim at Bush, who had spoken of Reagan's deep religious convictions earlier in the day at the state funeral.
The Bush speech raised some eyebrows because it appeared to go out of its way to link the president as a direct heir of the Reagan legacy.
"Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man," Ron Reagan said.
"But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians: wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage."
The Reagan family, led by the former president's widow, Nancy Reagan, is pushing for an end to limits on stem-cell research, which Bush instituted in 2001 because, as he reiterated to the Baptists last week, life is "a creation of God, not a commodity to be exploited by man."
Meanwhile, the Kerry camp says Bush's "lobbying" of the Vatican clearly crossed the line.
"While people of faith are important to the foundation of America's value system, politicians should not exploit religious organizations for personal political gain," campaign spokesperson Michael Meehan told the Boston Globe. "Dimming re-election prospects are included."
A poll published in Time magazine last week illustrates the great religious-secular divide in American politics.
Respondents who call themselves "very religious" back Bush over Kerry, 59 per cent to 35 per cent; and those calling themselves "not religious" back Kerry over Bush, 69 per cent to 22 per cent.
Should a president be guided by his personal faith in developing policy? Again the gulf — 63 per cent of Democrats say "no" while 70 per cent of Republicans say "yes."
Bush's "intense religious views" worried 2 per cent of those who will vote to re-elect him, but worry 34 per cent of those who told the pollsters they would vote Kerry.
Similarly, only 5 per cent of Bush voters agreed the president's faith made him too closed-minded, while 65 per cent of Kerry backers agreed with the statement.
Beyond his opposition to stem-cell research — which he opposes on moral grounds because it requires the destruction of human embryos — America's born-again president needs his religious base to help sell other items on his socially conservative agenda.
He won wild applause when he reminded the Baptist convention that he backs a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
He touted his so-called Partial-Birth Abortion Act, which bans a late-term abortion procedure, even though a California court has deemed it unconstitutional.
He also won applause when he told the assembly about his Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which now creates a second crime if an expectant mother and her unborn child are harmed or killed.
Religious groups also applaud Bush's $1.5 billion (U.S.) expenditure on programs pushing abstinence among teens and promotion of "healthy marriage."
"I will keep working to build a culture of life in America," Bush said to loud applause.
"My administration is defending the sanctity of marriage against activist courts and local officials who want to redefine marriage forever."
That was the public pitch.
The next day at the Baptist convention in Indianapolis, Republican officials had 100 pastors signed up pledging to endorse Bush and reach out to other pastors to do the same.
Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.
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