NEW YORK (ABP) — The Republican platform adopted Aug. 30 calls for reinstating prayer in public schools and banning all abortions. Meanwhile, delegates to the Republican National Convention heard prime-time speeches from leaders with more moderate views on some social issues.
Bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took center stage at the convention Aug. 31, delivering a speech before a large national TV audience that sounded upbeat notes in favor of the Republican Party.
“America is back,” Schwarzenegger told applauding delegates in New York's Madison Square Garden. “Back from the attack on our homeland, back from the attack on our economy and back from the attack on our way of life. We are back because of the perseverance, character and leadership of the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush.”
Schwarzenegger's speech was the second in a series of prime-time convention slots given to Republicans who are moderate on social issues — pro-gay-rights, pro-choice, and supportive of embryonic stem-cell research. The others included former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani Aug. 30 and an address introducing President Bush by New York Gov. George Pataki, scheduled for Sept. 2.
The announced line-up of moderate prime-time speakers led some of the party's base of religious conservatives to complain in the weeks leading up to the convention. In response, Bush-Cheney officials offered featured speaking spots to two of the party's standard-bearing religious conservatives — Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.
North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole also offered some words of encouragement to religious conservatives in her Aug. 31 speech. She defended the party's opposition — found in its platform — to abortion rights, marriage and legal unions for same-sex couples. She also touted the party's support for religious displays in public buildings.
“In the United States of America, we are free to worship without discrimination, without intervention and even without activist judges trying to strip the name of God from the Pledge of Allegiance, from the money in our pockets and from the walls of our courthouses,” Dole told delegates. “The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. The right to worship God isn't something Republicans invented, but it is something Republicans will defend.”
Dole's convention remarks were some of the few so far addressing religion or controversial social issues. At a closed rally for Christian conservatives earlier that day, however, the message of cultural conservatism was reportedly much more evident.
The “Family, Faith and Freedom Rally” at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel was closed to the press, but a New York Times reporter managed to get in. According to the Times, Brownback told the invitation-only crowd of Christian conservatives that the federal courts are leading a “40-year assault on the Constitution” by interpreting the separation of church and state to mean the “removal of church from state.”
Earlier Aug. 31, reporters were shown a documentary about Bush's personal faith, titled “George W. Bush: Faith in the White House.” The 70-minute video, produced by a company claiming no affiliation with the Bush campaign, purports to “tell the truth” about the genuineness of Bush's faith and argues against the separation of church and state.
Producer David Balsiger said the video will begin airing on Christian television networks and may be released in theaters prior to the November election. Narrated by Religious Right radio broadcaster Janet Parshall, the video sets up a dichotomy between Bush's recurrent public expressions of faith and Bush critics who have expressed dismay with some of the president's church-state policies. It also draws parallels between Bush and public expressions of faith by previous presidents, including the republic's earliest leaders.
“George W. Bush, it would seem, is right in line with the Founding Fathers,” Parshall says at one point in the video.
In an interview with an Associated Baptist Press reporter, Balsiger said he thought the video would inspire evangelical Christians who have been “fence-sitters” to vote for Bush. “We like the way he walks his talk,” Balsiger said.
-30-