When the votes are counted on Nov. 2, will religion be the loser?
Some people clearly think so. They agree with Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis in his classic Democracy in America. Already in the 1830s, Tocqueville had divined much of what has recently been rediscovered about the religious faith of Americans.
"From the beginning, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved," he wrote.
He believed that for Americans, religion offered crucial moral support for democracy; indeed, it was nothing less than "the first of their political institutions."
But Tocqueville attributed this power, as well as the very religious faith of the people, to the fact that "religion in America takes no direct part in the government."
Members of the clergy here, unlike those of Europe, did not normally seek office, and churches kept their distance from partisan politics.
This year, Tocqueville would almost certainly feel that by widespread entanglement in the presidential election, religion has inflicted on itself wounds that will not heal quickly.
The handful of vocal Roman Catholic bishops who suggest that voting for Senator John Kerry would be a deed gravely wrong in the church's eyes, a sin akin to actually performing abortions, has certainly swollen the ranks of Catholics deeply alienated from their Church. No such obvious price is being paid by politically militant evangelicals, but some thoughtful evangelical leaders have begun to warn of the long-run cost of identifying their faith with one political party.
Of course, the opposite case can be argued. Not long ago, political scientists were not even interested in gathering data about how different religious groups voted. Well-educated Americans had absorbed the idea that religion was something to be kept private. Talking about your faith was like leaving the bedroom curtains open, and thinking about your neighbors' faith was like peering into their windows.
By demonstrating political relevance, religion has finally gained a little respect.
"Thus may some good come out of this often rancid campaign," the inveterately optimistic E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote this week in his syndicated Washington Post column.
Noting the bumper sticker announcing that "God is NOT a Republican or a Democrat," Dionne welcomed the recognition that "religious people are not monolithic in their views." Likewise, "the myth that religion lives only on the political right is being exploded."
The upshot, he concluded, is that "honest debate among believers will again be a normal part of the nation's public life," a development that would be "a benefit to democracy and to faith communities, too."
John Carr, director of the US Conference of Catholic Bish-ops' Department of Social Development and World Peace, entertains a similar hope. Carr finds that Catholics are "really wrestling" with the moral issues posed by the election: abortion, yes, but also the war in Iraq and other issues.
The depth of moral pondering is far beyond what he encountered four years ago, he said; and the abbreviated lists of what some conservative Catholics term "non-negotiable" issues haven't eclipsed the broader range of "moral priorities" outlined in Faithful Citizenship, the brochure that the bishops issued on the eve of the election year.
No doubt the media are less interested in an honest debate among believers than should be the case. But religious leaders will have to contend with that reality if they do not want their faith to fall victim to the kind of partisan squabbling and discrediting that Tocqueville believed had occurred in Europe.
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