Sen. Barack Obama recently gave a
much-discussed speech in which he sought, among other things, too peel off the label that the religious right stuck on the Democratic Party -- that it is somehow antireligious. Along the way he blamed various unnamed liberals and said: "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square."
While I don't think the party has ever been irreligious, and the vast majority of Dems are in fact, religious, and our last two Democratic presidents were famously religious, church going men; part of the reputation for being irreligious has nevertheless been earned. The reason may surprise you. (And goes way back before the blogosphere.)
I wrote about this reason here on
The Daily Kos nearly a year ago; and that in that piece, I referenced my writing that goes back a decade; as well as writing by my colleague Chip Berlet. While we have mostly directed our attention to understanding the religious right, we have also concerned ourselves with misunderstandings of the religious right by progressives and Democrats, and wrong approaches in addressing the growing political movement.
Here is part of what I
wrote:
What is the Dem Strategy towards the Christian Right?
by Frederick Clarkson
Mon Sep 12, 2005 at 09:38:23 PM PDT
Lately Democrats have been going through all kinds of gyrations to try to make themselves seem more religion friendly. But Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst at Political Research Associates , reports at Talk to Action that it isn't working. And thinks he knows why too.
Less than a third of Americans think the Democratic Party is friendly toward religion. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in July of 2005, only 29% of those surveyed thought Democrats were "religion-friendly;" down from 40% in 2004. More than half of those surveyed--55%--thought the Republicans were friendly toward religion.
At the same time, 45% of those polled thought that "religious conservatives" had too much control over the Republican Party, while 44% thought that "non-religious liberals" had too much control over the Democratic Party.
These results can be interpreted in many ways, but I think they show that the Democratic Party and its allies need to spend more time thinking about how the average American perceives their attitude toward religion.
Indeed. Chip and I have been beating this drum for a long time.
There is an odd psychology in play here. Some Democrats, particularly some inside the Beltway, publicly pander to "people of faith"... But on other occasions, Democratic leaders and aligned interest groups will trot out focus-group tested slogans with which to label everyone remotely associated with the Christian Right. On one day we love them because they are people of faith. But on another day we hate them because they are out to destroy America as we know it. Or something like that.
No wonder the polls are weird on this.
I wrote about this in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy in a subsection titled "Its the Substance, Not the Slogan." I called for use of accurate descriptors instead of the language of demonization.
"Demonization is a two way street," I wrote in Eternal Hostility, "and is engaged in by demagogues for purposes of their own. Sometimes, it simply adds a B-movie excitement to the normalcy of politics. [But] Whatever the outcome of the political struggles of the day, people still need to live in the same communities when it is over. This does not mean that debate and political mobilizations need to be meek and mild -- only that those who would speak for democratic values need to effectively and forcefully speak for those values, in ways that demonstrate those values in action."
There are pols who think that cheap slogans can substitute for the inherent persuasiveness of people who know what they are talking about, and who care enough to speak in ways that communicate values that connect with people's interests. They have been around forever. But in our time, cheap sloganeering has substituted for acquiring relevant knowledge and putting it to use in evolving political strategy in response to the growing strength of the Christian Right.
Berlet continues about the particulars of the slogan industry:
"Every week I get postal mail and e-mail solicitations for donations that use demonizing buzz phrases such as "Radical Religious Right," or "Religious Political Extremist." That type of rhetoric may scare some people into writing checks in the short run, but it makes it harder in the long run for grassroots organizers to build a broad-based movement for social change that includes people in progressive, liberal, and centrist religious groups.... Most Christian evangelicals, however, are not part of the Christian Right. I know from talking with evangelicals and fundamentalists across the country that they are offended by the rhetoric from some liberal and Democratic Party leaders who do not seem to be able to talk about religion without chewing on their foot."
Part of what now seems to be afoot is a shifting of the blame from the consulatantocracy and those who pay for their services, to unnamed "secularists." If the party and aligned interest groups have gained a reputation for seeming anti-religious, it is at least in part because the demonizing labels used as sound bites in the national media over many years made Dems and liberal interest group leaders come off as antireligious.
Chip Berlet wrote:
Stop Labeling and Start Organizing!
More than a decade ago I sat in a conference room in Washington D.C. and was told I had to start using the phrase "religious political extremist."
This was the new way for people on the political left to frame our opponents on the political right. It made me unhappy. I already had problems with language such as "radical religious right," "lunatic fringe," and "wing-nut." This new phrase just seemed wrong to me.
I'm uncomfortable when I hear people of sincere religious faith described as religious political extremists.What does that term mean? I worry that many people hear it as a term of derision that says we're good and they're bad. There is no topical content. It's a label that says folks are outside the mainstream; and it lumps together leaders and followers, and blurs distinctions within the Christian Right that I think are important. Most conservative Christian evangelicals do not want to impose a theocracy on our country. I'd like to be able to talk to them about the issue of Christian dominionism within the Christian Right.
Polls show that most people in the United States do not agree with the narrow legislative agenda of the leaders of the Christian Right. Polls also show that most people think of themselves as part of an organized religion, and that as many as 100 million of our neighbors think of themselves as Christian evangelicals or "born again." Why would an organizer start out by offending half their potential audience with language that is abrasive?
Just today, Chip further advances the conversation by taking a look at how Tim LaHaye, best known for the Left Behind series of novels, (and most recently, a video game based on the novels) has demonized secular humanism.
He thinks that we all need to do our homework.
For Tim LaHaye, the term "Secular Humanism" is elastic enough to include the sins of abortion and homosexuality; the fact of creationism over the theory of evolution; the dangers of comprehensive sex education, the subversion of public schools, the myth of separation of church and state; the moral depravity of liberalism, and the moral superiority of Free Market economics. And that is just the "A" list.
More than any other author in the Christian Right, it is LaHaye that has popularized the false notion that secularists and humanists are by definition antagonistic to religion and spirituality. Don't be a dope and be duped by the definitional deception. Do some on the political left trivialize or even ridicule religious belief? Yes. Have some Democrats failed to do their homework and adopted the false frame about secularism and humanism erected by LaHaye and others on the Christian Right? Yes.
"Here," Chip writes, "is some homework."