In response to exit polls in Iowa that asked Republicans numerous questions about their religious beliefs, but asked Democratic voters nothing about their faith, several religous leaders, including Joel Hunter, David Neff, Jim Wallis and Brian McClaran have written an open letter to media political and polling directors.
Whatever we make of it, today competition dominates our ideology, shapes our cultural attitudes, and sanctifies our market economy as never before. We are living in an age that prizes competition and demeans cooperation, an era more narcissistic than the Gilded Age, more hubristic than the age of Jackson. Competition rules.
After the caucus results came in, it was natural to assume that reporters would tell us about the Democratic Party’s commitment to religion. So what did reporters tell us? Well, the major papers told us . . . nothing.
There was a great deal of reaction to the results of the Iowa Caucus last Thursday. Among the more interesting comments, however, was by Diana Butler Bass, who notes that Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee come from the two very different “poles of Protestantism.”
One consequence of Western societies’ obsessive preoccupation with the apocalypse-to-come is that less and less creative energy is devoted to confronting the all too important problems that exist in the here and now, writes Frank Furedi.
Angelina Jolie, Bono, George Clooney. They all have their causes. There is no doubt that celebrities have the ability to raise the profile of issues near and dear to their hearts. Highlighting a problem is not the same thing as solving it, however—and the celebrity track record at affecting policy outcomes could best be characterized as mixed.
With a week to go before the Iowa caucuses, clergy and other religious organizations are donating more to Democratic campaigns than they are to Republican ones, according to an article from Religion News Service distributed on the Pew Forum site. Four years ago, the opposite was true. Barack Obama seems to have garnered the most financial support, according to the article.
Mark Silva of The Baltimore Sun writes: For a presidential contest in which religion – and indeed the religious faith of at least one candidate – will play a certain role in the choices which many voters make, two questions loom large here: Is every word in the Bible true, and “what would Jesus do’’ about capital punishment.
As proof of his potency in Washington, one need only look at the crowd that Bono, 47, draws one fall evening … on Capitol Hill. Surrounded by administration officials and Hill staffers — Democrats and Republicans — and musicians from Mali, he mixes easily with these folks, most of whom he knows and greets by first name.
After the 2004 elections, religious conservatives were riding high. Newly anointed by pundits as “values voters” — a more flattering label than “religious right” — they claimed credit for propelling George W. Bush to two terms in the White House. Even in wartime, they had managed to fixate the nation on their pet issues: opposition to abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.