By Jeffrey Weiss
Politics Daily
January 3, 2010
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/03/the-top-10-religion-politics-stories-of-09-catholicism-at-the/
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espite America's legal wall between church and state, the mixing of faith and politics is all but unavoidable. This past year was typical in the number of major stories with aspects of religion that had powerful public-policy and cultural implications.
David Gibson and I, who filter the news stream for faith 'n' values items here at Politics Daily, have produced our top 10 list of religion-politics stories for 2009. We make no claim of infallibility, of course. Feel free to weigh in with your opinions in the comments section. But please, let's be civil out there.
1) The Catholic moment. After a brutal decade for the bishops that began with a sex scandal tsunami and ground toward defeat when the hierarchy's preferred presidential candidate was beaten by Barack Obama, the prelates got their groove back at the very end. Or at least to a remarkable degree they did, thanks to the year-long legislative obsession with health care reform -- which the Catholic Church supports -- and the pivotal question of whether it should include funding for abortion -- something the bishops oppose. That made the bishops political dealmakers/breakers they hadn't been since, well, the Mass was in Latin (the first time).
Some liberals cried "Theocracy!" while others, including Catholic progressives, criticized the bishops for hindering what could be the social justice advance of the last generation. Many conservatives, on the other hand, some of them also Catholics, urged the bishops not to support the kind of health care reform the Democrats were pushing.
The ironies were everywhere. If it weren't for the election of a president that leading bishops continued to excoriate -- most notably in May when Notre Dame invited Obama to give the commencement speech -- then an issue the bishops have backed for decades, health care reform, wouldn't even be on the table. And the bishops' clout is also due in large part to the almost perfect divide in the Congress, and the leverage of a cohort of pro-life Democrats that works closely with the bishops' conference.
Is this the dawn -- or sunset -- of the Catholic moment? Check back in 2020. But it was clear to us that this was the top religion-in-politics (or was that politics-in-religion?) story for 2009.
2) Terror in the name of Islam strikes the U.S. -- again. Start with the Fort Hood shooting. While the facts are not all known, the public record seems pretty clear that the accused, Nidal Malik Hasan, was acting in accord with his understanding of Islam. Until that day, he might have been an iconic success story for how Muslims are threading themselves into the fabric of America. Born in Virginia, an MD and an Army major, he had demonstrated his ability to excel in two of America's central institutions: education and the military. But several witnesses said they heard him utter the Muslim prayer "Alahu Akbar!," meaning "God is great!," before starting his murderous rampage on Nov. 5. He killed 13 people and wounded at least 32 others.
His religious declaration instantly transformed what might have been a story about a crazy attack into the return of terror in the name of Islam to U.S. soil. Many Muslims in this country responded with immediate condemnations. And some radical Muslims elsewhere embraced Hasan as a hero. In any case, the killings -- and Hasan's survival -- re-activated a political problem. How can America monitor Muslims who might turn to violence without infringing upon rights of the many, many lawful Muslims in this country?
Then in the waning days of the year, a Nigerian man with ties to radicals in Yemen tried to kill himself and a planeful of passengers. Like Hasan, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's background seemed better suited for a peaceful secular career than for terrorism. That he failed made the attack less tragic. But the impact on the lives of every American traveler -- and the political implications for an administration that clearly wanted to dial-down the focus on Islam and terror -- are still playing out.
3) Reinhold Niebuhr's star turn. When was the last time the Oval Office echoed so clearly with the complex thought of a theologian-philosopher? Barack Obama may be one of the most intellectually and theologically sophisticated presidents in memory, but that's not necessarily a good thing when it comes to politics -- most folks like their theology safely locked in ivory towers or church rectories. Nor does it make it easy for pundits or the public to figure out what you're up to. Enter Reinhold Niebuhr, the leading Protestant theologian of the 1940s and '50s, who expounded the notion of "Christian realism" and the reality of evil in the world -- and the need for American humility when it comes to deploying power.
Obama is a disciple of Niebuhr, whose writings, most notably in "The Irony of American History," are a key (though not the only one) to understanding the chief executive's approach to the world. At the very least, perhaps more Americans will learn to spell (and pronounce) Niebuhr's name (nee-boor). And those who disagree with Obama (and Niebuhr) might take solace in Niebuhr's best-known work, the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things that I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.
4) The continuing decline of religion in America. Poll after poll released in this year indicated that the percentage of people who self-identify as some particular religion keeps dropping . Ditto for those who do identify as some religion and frequently or regularly attend religious services. Even the Southern Baptists, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, reported a slight decline in membership this year. On the other hand, the percentage of people who identify with some of the trappings of faith -- belief in God, angels, heaven and hell -- remains very high.
To the extent that religious participation correlates with politics -- and it does, according to pretty much every poll you can name -- this represents a slow reworking of the political landscape as well as the religious. People who say they attend church at least once a week are far more likely to identify as Republicans. While religion is hardly the only factor that correlates with political identification, it is one of the more reliable.
However, most of the increase in the None of the Aboves happened during the 1990s. While the trend is continuing, the pace has slowed dramatically. It's likely that regional differences in religious adherence will play themselves out in electoral politics, with the relatively non-religious Northwest and Northeast leaning blue and the more religious South staying red.
5) Gay rights, in so many contexts. Start with the fracturing of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The ELCA voted in October to allow openly gay clergy. Most members support the decision but dozens of churches vote to leave. This tracks closely with what has happened over the past several years in the Episcopal Church (USA.) Both the ELCA and the ECUSA used votes – church politics, if you will – to make their decision.
Religion entered into secular politics about this issue, too. The Catholic Church declared that it might not be able to support charities in Washington, D.C., if the city council went through with plans to approve same-sex marriage. The council rebuffed the church with its vote earlier this month. Catholic Charities has not yet announced how it will respond. And religious opposition was key to other votes this year: in a referendum in Maine and in legislative battles in New York, and New Jersey. In all three, opposition to same-sex marriage prevailed.
Finally, in international politics, a move in the Ugandan legislature to criminalize homosexuality -- including the death penalty for something called "aggravated homosexuality" -- pressured American pastors who have generally been allied with conservative Christian leaders in Uganda to speak out. The Rev. Rich Warren may be the best-known American pastor who has condemned the proposed Ugandan law.
6) Religious philanderers. The names of Ensign, Edwards and Sanford were on the list this year of politicians caught up in sexual scandals. What makes this a religious issue is that each prominently included his Christian faith in his public, political persona.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and Nevada Sen. John Ensign are both Republicans. And both are connected with the Washington-based secretive Christian organization known as The Fellowship, aka The Family. For former Sen. John Edwards, a Democrat, the sex scandal that bubbled up last year only got worse in April when news reports said that a paternity test reportedly determined he was the father of his mistress's child. Back when he was a serious candidate for the presidency, he talked a lot about his faith.
Whether these are stories of hypocrisy or simply about the fallen nature of humanity, they focused attention on the disconnect between how many politicians employ professions of faith for political gain and the way that some of them actually live their lives.
7) The Cairo speech. If Reinhold Niebuhr was the eminence grise behind Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, the president clearly brought his own experience and ideas to another landmark address, his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo in June. The address was one Obama had promised to make as a candidate, yet it carried much peril for a president who was prosecuting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and one who was believed to be a Muslim by 10 percent or more of the electorate.
Obama is a Christian, of course, and he made that clear in his Cairo speech. And he also managed to deliver another remarkable address on an excruciatingly difficult topic (see "Wright, the Rev. Jeremiah" for a previous example). The remarks were calibrated to challenge all sides in the Middle East, Israel included, while attempting to re-establish American bona fides with Muslims -- and all without alienating every domestic constituency. Once again, Obama was widely recognized for his rhetorical gifts. But words can have limited impact in politics and other forms of warfare, and as the year closed, with the U.S. surge set for Afghanistan and a terrorism attempt in the United States dominating post-Christmas headlines, the echoes of Cairo were growing fainter.
8) Abortion-related murders. Dr. George Tiller, easily the nation's most famous abortion doctor, was murdered at his church in May by a man with a long record of opposition to abortion. The brazen and brutal murder brought near-unanimous condemnation, even from many religious leaders who opposed Tiller's practice.
James Pouillon was far less famous when he was murdered in September. He was known in his community for his consistent display of particularly gruesome pictures of abortions, brandished in protests that he often carried out near schools. The man charged in his murder has a murky past, with no strong record on abortion. Plus he's accused of killing another man the same day, a murder with no political overtones. But both killings were used by partisans on both sides to decry where the rhetoric about abortion may drive unbalanced people.
9) Pope Benedict XVI makes his mark. When Joseph Ratzinger was elected Supreme Pontiff in 2005, everyone knew he was conservative -- and that's all most people knew. Now people know he's also patient. Slowly but surely, Benedict has been taking deliberate steps to "reform the reforms" of the 1960s and '70s, bringing back the old Latin Mass and reinforcing old-fashioned views on the central authority of the pope over the church and the priest as the center of the parish. But 2009 also saw some of the most dramatic steps -- and missteps -- of the pontiff's reign. He made headlines -- and created controversy -- in October with the unprecedented creation of a special rite within the church to allow conservative Anglican dissidents to bolt Canterbury and bring their traditions with them. Sheep-stealing or ecumenical generosity? Either way, many Anglicans were not amused.
Most notable, however, were the disputes Benedict provoked with the Jewish community. In January, the pontiff sought to heal a schism with a splinter group of right-wing traditionalist Catholics known as the Society of Saint Pius X, or SSPX, by unilaterally lifting excommunications against four of their bishops. The move stunned most Catholics, but especially Jews, as Benedict's unconditional amnesty put a spotlight on the anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish beliefs of many in the SSPX and in particular one of the bishops, Richard Williamson, an unreconstructed Holocaust denier.
Then, just before Christmas, the Vatican announced that Benedict was moving ahead with the canonization process for Pius XII, the wartime pontiff whose actions regarding Jews in the Holocaust have been a constant source of debate and Jewish-Catholic friction. The bookend controversies were especially unfortunate given Ratzinger's childhood under the Nazis and the expectations -- so far largely unfulfilled -- that he would use his first-hand experience to further Jewish-Catholic relations.
Still, the 82-year-old pontiff is nothing if not resilient. After he was tackled by a mentally unbalanced fanatic at midnight Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, he got up and finished the liturgy. And he seems likely to continue, undaunted, to mark the fifth anniversary of his election (and his 83rd birthday) in April.
10) Michael Jackson, demigod. We often grant celebrities god-like status while they are alive, in recognition of their seemingly divine talents. Few celebrities had become so tarnished, however, as pop icon Michael Jackson. Which made the apotheosis after his shocking death in June that much more debatable -- and it was a debate of near-religious fervor. Everyone from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to pop spirituality prophet Deepak Chopra parsed the spiritual gifts of Michael Jackson.
So what happened to the riveting circus-freak aspects of Jackson's lifestyle, not to mention the charges of sexual oddity and impropriety that dogged him to the end? Gary Laderman, author of "Sacred Matters: Celebrity Worship, Sexual Ecstasies, the Living Dead and Other Signs of Religious Life in the United States," told USA Today that Jackson's "life story, though troubling in many ways as it unfolded, will become a morality play of sorts. Like other saints, he will be forgiven by his public, and I expect, an inspiration and role model, in some ways, for those who want to make music, become famous, or leave a mark in this world."
Indeed, Jackson's passing may have been one of the year's most powerful reminders of the redemptive -- and religious -- aspects of celebrity in American culture.
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