Liberals Say Religious Voters Rejected GOP's "Old, Narrow Agenda"
From Cybercast News Service:
(CNSNews.com) - Following the Democratic takeover of Congress, some liberal religious figures are attributing the change in leadership to what they see as a too narrow definition of faith issues on the part of the Republican Party.My Comments:
"[Americans] want a broader agenda," said Jeff Carr of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, an evangelical group concerned about social justice issues.
"They want to see our Congress and our president take on the really important big issues, the great moral debates in our country, like poverty, like climate change, like genocide in Darfur, [like] how do we create renewable energy sources in our country so we can take care of God's creation?" he said.
"There are so many other issues that I believe that we're going to continue to push," Carr said during a teleconference organized by Faith in Public Life, a communication resource for religious leaders and organizations.
"Is the God gap gone?" asked Katie Barge, the group's director of communication strategies. "It appears to be so.
"Religious voters showed up and voted on faith and values issues like integrity in government, the war in Iraq, and economic opportunity and not the religious right's old, narrow agenda," Barge said.
Willliam Donahue of the Catholic League, a Catholic civil rights organization, rejected the idea that values voters were more concerned about environmental and poverty issues than they were about other typical values voters' issues.
"It's absurd. There's no evidence at all that that's the case," Donahue told Cybercast News Service . "I don't know of a single Catholic or Protestant that I've ever met in my entire life who ever told me that one of the pressing issues of the day was global warming. So I don't know where they are, these people."
[More]
More likely that religious voters stayed home or registered a protest vote for 3rd parties or perhaps even for a Democrat. Or, it could be that in those states where the Church wasn't outspoken on the issues the Holy Father refers to as "not negotiable", that many Catholics did see other issues as more important.
But Democrats and liberals would be making a huge mistake to believe that, with this one election, they've now erased the "God gap".
Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Rich Leonardi on Ted Strickland and the "Catholic" Vote
Vote Your Values
"NOT An Approved Catholic Voter Guide"
posted by Pro Ecclesia 11:35 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
The Democrats won for three reasons:
1) Iraq is still a mess.
2) Republican corruption.
3) Republican incompetence.
This wasn't an election about global warming.
The media will spin this point relenetless in order to make the Republican party more like Arlen Specter (what they want) and less like Sam Brownback (what it should be).
If you want to see the power of religious voters look at WI. We had gay marriage on the ballot. The pundits said if there was any state in which a gay marriage ban would fail it would be blue and "progressive" Wisconsin.
Despite voting in an embryonic stem cell researching fanatic, the good people of WI did manage to ban gay marriage with a 20% margin of victory.
The Bishops hit this issue hard with letters and in some cases recordings. When Priests refused to tow-the line, the Bishops did not back down, they just got tougher.
Newspaper editorials on every level decried this, liberal groups tried to get the Church in trouble, but that just means they are getting scared of the power of Bishops who stand up for the truth.
Let's just let them mis-analyze this one!
But... Or, it could be that in those states where the Church wasn't outspoken on the issues the Holy Father refers to as "not negotiable", that many Catholics did see other issues as more important.
Careful man, I am forefully informed that the American bishops did plenty in the last election.
While Pelosi and Reid may crow about a Democratic victory, they only did it by putting Dems in conservative makeup on the ballots.
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