WASHINGTON (ABP) — A group of Christians who vote Democratic have launched an Internet forum aimed at making religious voters question whether the GOP is really the more faith-friendly political party, as polls show many believe.
And they're doing it just in time for the 2006 midterm congressional elections.
The site, www.FaithfulDemocrats.com, was officially christened on Sept. 5. It contains featured opinion articles by popular Christian authors and theologians, a blog focusing on elections, a “candidate spotlight” and links to left-leaning blogs and sites for donating to Democratic candidates.
The website also has pages that collect articles of particular interest to each of four “affiliation” groups: Catholics, evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and African-American Protestants.
According to Adam Segal, a spokesman for the organization running the site, Faithful Democrats is not an official part of the Democratic Party apparatus.
Its co-chairmen are Roy Herron, an attorney and United Methodist minister who serves as the Democratic floor leader in the Tennessee Senate, and Romal Tune, a Maryland Baptist minister and public-policy consultant.
In the website's lead article the day of its launch, Herron explained their reasons for the undertaking.
“I am tired of politicians, partisans, and preachers spelling God 'G-O-P,'” he wrote. “But make no mistake — regardless of how wrong they are or how false their doctrine is, they have been frighteningly effective. Now many Americans think Jesus never rode a donkey and today rides only an elephant.”
But proving that may be an uphill struggle for Herron and his ideological cohorts. In the comments section following Herron's article, an anonymous poster wrote, “I appreciate your sincerity. Perhaps you could share your conversion experience and explain how your relationship with Christ squares with various positions taken by the Democrat party that have caused conservative, evangelical Christians to walk away from your Democrat party. You know what they are.”
Polls in recent years have shown most voters find the Republican Party much more religion-friendly than the Democratic Party, including a study released Aug. 26 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that showed Republicans with a 47-to-26 percent advantage over Democrats.
Exit polls after voters re-elected President Bush and a Republican Congress in 2004 suggested a large turnout among conservative religious voters who voted overwhelmingly Republican. The polls also showed that wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion helped turn out those voters, causing much hand-wringing among Democratic leaders over the perception the Democratic Party was not friendly to religious voters and values.
But Herron, in a Sept. 6 telephone interview, said such attitudes are mistaken. “I should tell you, first of all, I'm pro-life,” he said. He noted that he and his wife — also a Methodist minister — chose to carry her first pregnancy to term, even though they had been advised by a doctor to abort because the twins in her womb were likely to have birth defects.
“By the grace of God, those babies made it,” he said. “Yesterday they ran their first cross-country meet of the season. So, I mean, there is a wide variety of views within the Democratic Party, just like there is within the Republicans.”
Herron noted that many of the showcased speakers at the 2004 Republican National Convention, such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, support abortion rights and gay rights.
He also said he opposes gay marriage. But one of the aims of the website, he said, is to get beyond religious debates over such “wedge” issues — used so successfully in recent election cycles to turn out religious voters for the GOP.
“The divorces, the children out of wedlock, the abortions — all three of those are problems cause by heterosexuals. Those are the problems facing families in Tennessee right now,” the state senator said.
The Bible has plenty to say about social justice and poverty, Herron said, and he hopes his site can help Christians realize that no political party has a monopoly on moral issues.
“Since the Bush-Cheney administration went to office, in my rural district of 185,000 people, we've had 29 plants close or have mass layoffs,” he said. “We've had thousands of people lose their health insurance. We've got children who are struggling in single-parent families and no-parent families.”
He continued: “The Matthew 25 judgment passage, in the words of our Lord himself, says we will be judged by how we treat the least of these. I think some in the church have lost sight of that. I think some in the church have been used — very skillfully — by politicians who would care to convince church people there are only two issues [abortion and homosexuality].”
Several Republican and Religious Right leaders pooh-poohed the launch of Faithful Democrats' site. “It's demeaning to speak of God in political terms, but there are moral standards that emanate from the Bible, and Republicans have adopted more of them,” said Tom Minnery of the conservative group Focus on the Family in a Sept. 4 USA Today story.
Herron said he was wary that Democrats may make the very mistake — co-opting religion for partisan means — for which they criticize Republicans. However, the website is necessary to level the playing field, he added.
“I agreed to be the co-chair of FaithfulDemocrats.com reluctantly, but out of a sense that, unless Christians tell the truth, other Christians will believe the falsehoods that are being spewed forth. I do so hesitantly, quite frankly prayerfully, one more sinner hoping that I don't commit the same sin of those who say you have to be in a particular party to be in the Kingdom.”
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