The current Nation includes two provocative pieces on religion and politics. Ronald Aronson, in Agnostic, Atheist Votes Matter in November, notes the "continuing vigor of conservative Christianity and the political power of religiosity" as exemplified by the "electrifying arrival of Sarah Palin". So what are the implications of the recent efforts of Democrats to court the evangelical vote? It's not only that Dems are doing this, but
they are treating secularists as if they are invisible... They seem blithely willing to undermine our constitutional commitment to the separation of church and state... Perhaps it's because they take no notice of the broad community of secularists and believers who strongly support our secular Constitution. These two streams add up to at least half of all Democratic voters.
So, what's the religious temperature of kossacks? The poll below uses categories from this article. Pick one that fits you best, and we can lump together various flavors to draw some possibly interesting conclusions.
There's more below the fold about Obama's nuanced approach to religion, the non-religious "outing themselves" and questions raised by about where this all is leading.
Aronson puts forward this interesting proposition:
The election of either party may generate the urge for nonbelievers to "out" themselves. Imagine that a significant fraction of atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and skeptics overcame their inhibitions and made themselves seen and heard. Imagine that large numbers connected with one another organizationally in ways that multiplied their overall visibility and political heft. Fed-up secularists might become political about their concerns and figure out how to work with the openly religious.
Do kossacks agree?
Sarah Posner's focus in the second article is: Democrats Chase Evangelical Votes. She starts off by noting the recent efforts of the Democrats to court progressive evangelicals, and then raises a very interesting question:
When Barack Obama proclaimed that "we worship an awesome God in the blue states" at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he sent a tingle through many young evangelical Democrats... By the time Obama accepted his party's presidential nomination, many more pieces of a Democratic religious revival had been put in place... Their outreach does not hinge on a theocratic fantasy that would replace the Constitution with the Bible but on portraying Obama's progressive values on healthcare, the economy and the environment as rooted in his strong faith...
And here's the question:
But even if Obama's courtship of evangelicals and Catholics succeeds in smoothing over this sticking point, is it a wise strategy? By emphasizing their religious credentials, Democrats are implicitly buying into the right's phony charge that Democrats hate religion.
What do you think? Is this embrace a transparent device that backfires? Does the effort to be more openly welcoming of evangelicals to the Democratic fold, even to the extent of continuing "faith-based" efforts, undermine our commitment to a secular constitution and the separation of church and state? Or is this a wise and necessary political move to strengthen the Democratic base and facilitate our broader agenda? How much discomfort is there when our Democratic leaders embrace open religiosity in their political discourse, like the now obligatory "god bless us all" at the end of every speech? Should the secularists amongst us actually organize, as suggested by Aronson, to help better educate the public about the meaning and values of secularism and help restore a better balance? -- once the elections are over, of course. :-)
(I'm hoping that this diary will stay visible for long enough to generate some good discussion and get more than a smattering of poll responses. It may be interesting to follow this up with some additional, related polls and discussion.)
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Update: The poll of course contains categories that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It's not meant to be a scientific poll, but to at least be inclusive (sorry, Buddhists -- I didn't mean to leave you out!) Don't worry about which flavor of "atheist" you might be, or which specific religion you may belong to. Just pick something you're comfortable with. The results are already interesting in terms of broad groupings. I'd also love to see some more discussion of the larger questions of the role of religion in Democratic politics, the implications of the Democratic current efforts to court evangelicals, and whether secularism should have a more overt presence. Thanks for the comments!