Eric Gorski has written a fascinating article about religion in the 2008 elections. The main premise is that this year's politics has unfortunately used religion as a weapon to divide and mock. The country really became obsessed with the ideas of fringe religion and what the mainstream set of religious beliefs “should” be.
On this election day, it is worth reflecting on how religion has been front and center during the campaign, while substantive political issues and platforms that can be informed by religion have been missing. The American people were clearly preoccupied with the faith of their candidates but not about how religious beliefs would shape their specific policies over the long term. In fact the implications of the debate over Obama's connection to Islam were never honestly revealed as problematic to the whole concept of separation of church and state.
There were two events during the campaign season that allowed the country to inspect the beliefs of the candidates: The Saddleback Civil Forum was the most recent (between McCain and Obama) and the Compassion Forum between Obama and Clinton. After a two year marathon of campaigning, the real questions about religion in United States politics remain unresolved. Abortion may not be one of those “real” issues, but it was nevertheless relatively absent from the debate this year. Today, there is a Newsweek article that looks at why the abortion rhetoric has been missing. The reason given: "Real war abroad and recessionist anxiety at home."
Gorski says that exit polls will “provide a glimpse into what role religious voters played in electing the next president” but there will probably not be too much post-election consideration or reflection on why Jeremiah Wright's words were so important for people's judgments about Obama and his religious beliefs. Gorski quotes two scholars – both of whom were completely accurate about the results of the campaign – the first was that the “public have gorged themselves on religious issues of almost complete irrelevance while the country, deeply divided by everything from the Iraq war to how to control the price of gas, has spiraled toward economic downturn.” The second is the idea of Martin Marty (a religion scholar) that “the rancorous campaign has been bad for religion.” Religion became the scapegoat for a country that refuses to look intellectually at its structural and governance problems. Remember when Obama made the mistake of saying that people cling to their guns and religion? Just because people have genuine faith doesn't mean they don't also cling to it when they want to avoid temporal problem solving or nation-wide introspection.
Actually, it seems that the campaign was particularly bad for Muslim Americans, who were somehow targeted by continual insinuations that Obama would be un-American and unqualified for the Office of the President were he actually Muslim. Perhaps the public did focus on the Wright scandal because it would have been too difficult to have simple ‘faith’ in Obama's credentials. McCain, on the other hand, was clever enough to leave his personal faith out of the issues and to not discuss extensively his views on religion. But then again, there were no accusations that he might be a Muslim in disguise. (He did seemingly get less criticism for his endorsements from Hagee and Parsley.) Either way, McCain did a good job of convincing religious issues voters that he was on their side without continually vocalizing his position on tough religious topics like abortion. In sum, Gorski was right: "With a few exceptions, whatever seemed odd or fringe trumped serious discussion about how candidates' religious beliefs shape their approach to governance."
