Hotmail
Messenger
My MSN
MSN Directory
Transcript for April 16
MEET THE PRESS NETCAST & PODCAST |
Get Meet the Press when & how you want Click here to see Sunday's MTP netcast. (After 1pm ET each Sunday) |
MR. RUSSERT: I want to turn the conversation to politics, Jon Meacham, and cite a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and read it for all of us. “By far the most powerful new reality at the intersection of religion and politics is this: Americans who regularly attend worship services and hold traditional religious views increasingly vote Republican, while those who are less connected to religious institutions and more secular in their outlook tend to vote Democratic. ...
“This divide was very much in evidence in the 2004 presidential election. Voters who attend church more than once a week,” which is about 16 percent of us, “supported President George W. Bush over Senator John Kerry by a margin of 64% to 35%. ...
“Among those attending a house of worship once a week,” about 26% of us, “the margin was 58% to 41% in Bush’s favor. The candidates were virtually dead even (Bush 50%, Kerry 49%) among monthly church attendees, 14% of us, “and among the 28% of voters who attend church a few times a year, Kerry had the advantage by a margin of 54% to 45%. The senator’s lead was widest among the estimated 15% of the electorate that never attends worship services; Kerry pulled 62% of that group, compared with 36% for Bush.” What does that tell us about politics and religion in America?
MR. MEACHAM: I think the Democrats have lost their historic claim to the language of faith. Franklin Roosevelt, the founder of the modern Democratic Party, the only thing he said on D-Day 1944 was to read a prayer of his own composition that he used from the—wrote using the physical “Book of Common Prayer.” John Kennedy’s speeches were rife with theological references, the kicker of the great inaugural, “On Earth, God’s work must truly be our own.” Lyndon Johnson clearly saw himself as a deliverer of captive peoples, whether they be African-American or the poor or those who lacked health care. I think that the Democratic Party in the last 30 years has lost that capacity to speak in terms that resonate with people who hold a religious view of the world.
And what’s—to me, what’s very important about America, and to go to Father Neuhouse’s point about the Catholic Church, is the country has its arms open. George Washington said, “We shall give to bigotry no sanction, to,” excuse me, “to persecution, no assistance.” And it’s very important that we remember that the idea of religious freedom has a religious basis, which is that if God himself did not compel obedience, then who are we to try? And I think in our political realm, we have to both practice mercy, we have to practice charity, we have to be forbearing or we risk slipping into a more theocratic way of being.
MR. RUSSERT: Rabbi Lerner, you wrote this in your book, “Most of those on the Left ... feel queasy even thinking about allying with spiritual and religious progressives. ... Many on the Left, to be blunt, hate and fear religion.” Why?
RABBI LERNER: Well, there’s a long history of this, first of all, because the left emerged in the struggle against feudalism and sided with the emerging capitalist class and adopted a world view that said that that which is real is that which can be verified through senses or measured. But there’s another more immediate experience, and many of the people on the—who have come into liberal or progressive movements have had the experience of being in oppressive, hierarchical, patriarchal, sexist, homophobic or racist churches. And that experience has led them to, I think, draw the wrong conclusion, namely that they’ve said, “Well, this is all religion.”
They forgot the voice of Martin Luther King Jr., where the left was strongest when it was speaking from a religious perspective. In other words, they, in, in a way, bought what the political right has succeeded in doing: convincing people that religion only means right-wing politics. So they focus on a wedge issue, like abortion or stem cell research, one of those, those kinds of issues, homosexuality, and they forget that the Bible also is calling every 50 years for a redistribution of wealth, every seven years to forgive all sins. Where are the fundamentalists on that? Well, the fundamentalists are suddenly forgetting about the word, the exact word of God, when it comes to financial redistribution of wealth to the people in the, in the society, but they are very exacting over their narrow issues.
And the left then ends up—those people who fled from repressive forms of religion identify all religion that way and don’t understand that, in fact, the aspiration to connect to the holy is a central need of human beings, a central aspect of reality that must be validated. That’s why we’re creating this Network of Spiritual Progressives to not only challenge the religious right, but also to demand a space in the liberal and progressive world for a spiritual consciousness.
MR. RUSSERT: Sister Joan, do you agree with Jon Meacham that Democrats have lost their way in terms of their ability to articulate spiritual and religious issues? And should the Democrats adopt the Sermon on the Mount, Beatitudes, as a way of connecting with the American voter?
SISTER CHITTISTER: Well, the Beatitudes are my standard of life. I happen to agree with both Jon and, and Rabbi Lerner. I, I think that what is happened is, yes, the Democrats have lost an, an aura of spiritual awareness, no doubt about that. At the same time, I don’t see the religious right as any more religious. They have, indeed, chosen a few of these new scientific issues, and they are defining that as religion. I’m saying, who deleted the rest of the commandments? How is it that you can do—that, that, that, that you can simply absorb corporate greed, political greed? That, that you can sit by and say nothing about a doctrine of preemptive war that is already been proven wrong before it, it’s even, even become old? How, how can you do those things and not find that moral?
How can, how can you say so inconsistently that if a legislator votes for this, he’s not Catholic? But I didn’t hear it said about Supreme Court judges. I don’t hear it said about prison guards or wardens, where capital punishment or war is concerned. We’re, we’re, we’re shifting. We’re moving. We’re, we’re focusing. I’m not saying that what we’re focusing on is even wrong; I’m just simply saying it is not religion. It is not the totality of religion. It’s often the totality of denominationalism. It’s, it’s going to erode the, the real religious foundation of this country.
MR. RUSSERT: Father Neuhaus, when Samuel Alito was nominated to the Supreme Court, you said that he did not have an obligation to follow his Catholic teachings on the bench. And that, in fact, would be a violation of Catholic teaching. What about United States senators? Why is there a different standard for them in terms of voting for legislation?
REV. NEUHAUS: Tim, if I may just preface that with saying, as I said earlier, the hard thing to achieve is disagreement. So much that passes for disagreement is simply confusion. And a hard thing to achieve is civil discourse. And it does trouble me deeply that we’ve heard in this conversation, if I may politely and gently say, some terrible things said about people who presumably belong to the religious right, or fundamentalists, that they are hypocritical, that they are selective in their faith, etc., etc. I don’t find that to be the case. God knows I don’t know, but I know a lot of evangelical Protestants, and the marvelous convergence and civility and deepening of Christian faith with Catholics and others, it’s one of the wonderful things that’s happening in our time.
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
- Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS |
 Meet the Press Section Front |
| Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: |