By David Gushee
It’s all over but the shouting. Millions have already voted, and the retrospectives on the 2008 presidential election are already beginning. Some of these will involve reflection on the way that faith played out in this election cycle.
Here is what I have seen.
There was little thoughtful discussion in this election season of the complex issues related to how a candidate’s personal faith informs their moral values and, in turn, their policy choices. The high-water mark of such discussion during this campaign occurred at the “Compassion Forum” hosted by Messiah College and Faith in Public Life in April. Rick Warren’s August event at Saddleback Church was also quite thoughtful.
But religion more often served as a game of guilt-by-association. Obama was guilty because of his association with Jeremiah Wright. Palin was guilty because of her association with Pentecostalism in Wasilla. Romney was guilty because he was a Mormon. McCain was guilty when he accepted the endorsement of John Hagee. This dimension of the campaign was not a high-water mark in our public discussion of faith and politics.
Religion was also used as a marker of identity, as a reason to vote for a candidate. This was most notable in the case of Sarah Palin, who was selected by John McCain, in part, as a point of identification for conservative evangelicals. They responded as desired.
It could be argued that Joe Biden was selected, in part, to appeal to Catholic voters.
Obama’s long association with the black-church tradition helped to eventually solidify his appeal to the African-American Christian community and its leaders. He did not always have their support.
As an exception that proves the rule, John McCain’s understated religious involvement hurt his appeal among religious conservatives.
Of course, there are real questions to be asked about whether religious affiliation per se should function as a reason to vote for a candidate. Certainly it is easier for candidates to claim religious affiliation than to live out its implications in any especially constructive or informed way.
Christians have often been deceived by mere claims or appearances of religious identity. The right question is not whether someone shares my particular brand of religious faith, but how their faith informs their worldview, leadership and policies.
Beyond the candidate level, there is the more interesting question that has to do with the churches. How did the churches and their leaders bear public witness during this campaign?
This is a harder question, partly because religious life in this vast land is so decentralized. We will know more after the election about the extent to which pastors, churches and parachurch organizations became involved in efforts to affect the election.
My sense is that the Christian Right has undertaken its customary efforts to define the moral choices in the election so that a vote for the Republican ticket is more or less the obvious choice.
A stronger organizing effort on the Christian Left has been visible this year to define the moral choices in the election in such a way that a vote for the Democratic ticket seems the better choice.
And some voices have sought not so much to urge a vote for one side, but to blunt the approach of partisans on either side.
Priests, bishops, and other leaders in the Catholic Church have struggled with a question that also troubles evangelical voters — whether abortion is the ultimate issue determining one’s vote. A secondary question is whether overturning Roe v. Wade is the ultimate policy response to this problem.
For those who answer “yes” to both questions, a vote against Obama and for McCain has been treated as a moral obligation. Other evangelicals and Catholics are not so sure. This divide will undoubtedly continue after the election, and seems to be a major demarcation point between the Catholic and evangelical right and those to their left.
I published my book on faith and politics in January. There I suggested that there is an evangelical right, center and left and that the fractures between the evangelical approaches to politics were becoming deeper. I offered some hope that evangelical centrists could serve as a point of unity and a bridge between the more polarized right and left.
We’ll see how the landscape looks after the election, but right now that hope seems faint indeed.