E-mail
Print
RSS
G-bookmarks
Live
TechnoratiTheological defenses were mounted for Wright and Hagee, but the damage was done.
GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's faith appeals to social conservatives. Yet it became a distraction when footage emerged showing the Alaska governor invoking God's will to get a pipeline built and a Kenyan pastor praying that Palin be protected from witchcraft.
In an interview with Trinity Broadcasting Network, Palin said "faith — not just my faith — faith and God in general has been mocked through this campaign." She did not give specifics.
Mark Silk, professor of religion in public life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., pointed out that none of these problematic characters were media creations. All were welcomed into the candidates' orbits.
"When you have religious figures who want to play in the public square, some are going to say things that are not calm, cool and collected," Silk said. "It ought to be cautionary for politicians."
The thread linking the above stories: videotaped sermons posted online, sometimes by churches trying to reach bigger audiences but increasingly by political activists looking for toxic material.
"This year we invaded churches with cell phones and started putting sermons up on YouTube," said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown political science professor. "That's been troubling, because you would like to think a candidate would have a little privacy in church."
David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Georgia, said that more so than in past elections, religion became "a marker of identity" for candidates this year.
"It was disconnected from specific policy views and really had to do with whether this person was acceptable culturally because of their religious associations or identifications," said Gushee, author of "The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center." "All of this functioned in a pretty destructive and not terribly illuminating way in this campaign."
That was in part because the slate of candidates more resembled America's religious melting pot. For the first time, Gushee pointed out, there was a serious Mormon candidate in Mitt Romney, a serious candidate with roots in Pentecostalism in Palin and a serious candidate from an African-American church that preaches black liberation theology in Obama.
"Every time a candidate comes along who brings a religious background that is unfamiliar, the press and the culture does this digging around and trying it on for size," Gushee said.
Romney, more than any candidate, experienced that.
Some evangelical pastors said voting for Romney amounted to endorsing a cult. GOP rival Mike Huckabee, a populist Baptist, wondered whether Mormons believe Jesus and the devil were brothers. Romney was asked about polygamy and sacred Mormon undergarments.
Eventually, Romney delivered a major speech in which he declared that as president he would "serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause," and said calls for him to explain and justify his religious beliefs go against the wishes of the nation's founders.
"Personal opinion: historians will look back on 2008 with disbelief," Michael Otterson, head of public affairs for the Mormon church, wrote this month on a Newsweek-Washington Post blog. Continue »
Daniel Paul »
Agree: 
Disagree: 
