Who Is Playing "The Religion Card?"

Who Is Playing "The Religion Card?"
by James Hall

"Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell on the right."
- John McCain

"There are a lot of conservative people in this state who happen to profess Christianity, and I'm working hard to win their vote."
- George W. Bush

By attacking George W. Bush's connections to Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and the Christian Coalition, Senator John McCain opened a debate on the role of religion and religious organizations in national politics.

In response, Bush accused the Senator of playing "the religion card," and called on McCain to stop reminding Catholic voters of the Governor's visit to Bob Jones University. "It's the kind of politics John F. Kennedy rejected in the 1960s," Bush said, referring to the nation's only Catholic president. "It's the kind of politics we thought we put behind us in America." But Bush himself mixes religion and politics, and the Christian Coalition and other religious right organizations have done so for years. So who's really playing "the religious card?"

Senator McCain's speech responded to Robertson's role in Republican primaries in South Carolina and Michigan. By attacking Robertson in his own and the Christian Coalition's hometown, Virginia Beach, McCain clearly contrasted his leadership style with George W. Bush's stance at Bob Jones, where the Governor came to praise conservatives without reflecting on the University's rules against interracial dating or his founder's view on Catholicism.

McCain's anger with the Christian Coalition is reasonable. After his victory in New Hampshire, he expected that they would remain relatively neutral in a Republican primary where the remaining candidates--McCain, Bush, and Keyes--have similar positions on conservative issues like the importance of moral character, right-to-life, prayer in schools, school vouchers, a strong defense, and other issues close to the hearts of Coalition members.

Instead, he found the Coalition and other religious right organizations spending enormous sums of money and effort in South Carolina to oppose him-sending out half a million letters attacking his candidacy, canvassing neighborhoods with volunteers supporting Bush, flooding television and radio with criticisms of the Senator's record. Some organizations went further, calling McCain an adulterer and discussing his wife's past drug addiction.

Then in Michigan Pat Robertson sent out recorded phone messages urging Christians to vote for George W. Bush and against John McCain, accusing the Senator of choosing a "vicious bigot," Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, as his national chairman.

Why does the Coalition oppose McCain so vigorously? Perhaps because if McCain gets his way with campaign finance reform, interest groups face a reduced role in the political process. Both the Christian Coalition and the National Right to Life Committee publicly oppose limits on soft money, as do other organizations that rely on it for their staff, lobbyists, and 'issue advertising' in political campaigns-like this year's Republican primary.

Barbara Leonard, who chairs the National Coalition for Life in South Carolina, voted for McCain because of his pro-life record. But she said that the antiabortion establishment, who ran a lot of ads against the Senator, is more concerned with their ability to keep on receiving soft-money donations than with eliminating abortion. "I do know they are upset about campaign finance reform," she said in a CBS interview, "This pro-life business has become a moneymaking business."

George W. Bush hasn't shied away from religious issues, either, professing his faith and making frequent allusions to it. (Not that it is unusual for fundamentalists to profess faith-Jimmy Carter, for example, frequently reminded us that he was 'born again,' and made public confessions of his sins-his 'lust' for women other than his wife, for example.)

And if the Coalition likes Bush's forthright confession of faith, they must love his faith-based policies, which could mean billions of federal dollars for ministries. Bush policies would turn over welfare programs, prisons, and schools to religious organizations, giving them billions of dollars and forums with which to proselytize the unconverted.

One Bush campaign statement, for example, says, "Governor Bush envisions a different role for government-a role based on the belief that government should turn first to faith-based organizations, charities, and community groups to help people in need. Resources should be devolved, not just to the states, but to the charities and neighborhood healers who need them most should be available on a competitive basis to all organizations-including religious ones-that produce results. This is the next bold step of welfare reform." (Emphasis mine.)

The Governor's program would remove barriers to the participation of religious groups in federal programs. It would establish an "Office of Faith-Based Action" in the Executive Office of the President. It would open federal after-school programs to community groups, churches and charities, make "faith-based and other nonmedical drug treatment programs eligible for federal funds," and set up "faith-based prerelease programs for prisoners."

Bush has pledged in the first year of his administration to dedicate 8 billion dollars to provide new tax incentives for charitable donations. And he also supports the use of tuition vouchers to divert students and dollars to private religious academies. Senator McCain, who supports only a pilot program to see if vouchers can work, falls far short of that kind of religious support.

With programs that would enrich religious organizations with federal dollars and involve them in government programs at all levels, is it any wonder that the Christian Coalition and other religious right organizations stand behind Bush and not McCain? The Senator's words, however, remind us that political/religious organizations like the Christian Coalition have a lot at stake in this election. The religion card has been played, but whose hand is it in?

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