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After serving as a minister for 20 years, Jill Wiley retired from her Massachusetts-based church last summer and spent two weeks in Iowa, collecting names of likeminded believers to mobilize for the 2008 presidential race. She\u2019s likely to head to New Hampshire in the next few days to do the same. \u201cMy commitment is to make sure pastors become involved in the political process,\u201d Wiley says. \u201cThey\u2019ve been reluctant to become too visible in a campaign because of congregational pressures not to and because they fear the IRS.\u201d\nIn conservative Christian circles, particularly among evangelicals, such talk is commonplace for activists. But Wiley is no conservative. She\u2019s a liberal Methodist, and the \u201cpriority issues\u201d she says stem from her faith are universal health care and ending the Iraq war. The candidate she\u2019s promoting in early primary states is Hillary Clinton. \u201cSenator Clinton expresses the social principles of the United Methodist Church in her policies,\u201d Wiley says.
\nOver the course of the last year, the Clinton campaign has compiled lists of hundreds of Methodists activists who, like Wiley, have been moved to support the New York Senator largely out of their common Methodist faith and values. While the Clinton campaign declined to comment on the record, an aide said the campaign\u2019s network of Methodist activists was especially strong in early voting states like Iowa and South Carolina, home to some of the largest Methodist populations in the country.
\nRather than engaging in targeted outreach and messaging to the Methodist community, the Clinton campaign\u2019s Methodist network was built almost entirely by responding to activists who\u2019ve contacted the campaign. It\u2019s a significant departure from John Kerry and the other Democratic presidential candidates running in 2004, who lacked designated staff to coordinate with religious supporters during the primaries. Such staff has been de rigueur for Republican presidential hopefuls since the 1980s.
\nWiley has been in touch with the Clinton campaign\u2019s religious outreach director a half dozen times in the last year and is kept apprised of Clinton\u2019s faith-based activities via emails from the campaign\u2019s \u201cFaith, Family and Values\u201d team. She forwards those updates to others in her network, which now includes roughly 200 names, mostly Methodist ministers.
\n\u201cI personally feel that her theology is just exactly where I am,\u201d says Bill Cotton, a retired Methodist minister based in Des Moines who remains active in the church and is promoting Clinton in door-to-door canvassing and among his own social network. \u201cShe will not over-insert it into her public life but she\u2019s able to go to the church for her conscience and her values. She\u2019s not hung up on gay rights or immigration, because as a Methodist you understand your tradition is to be open to all people.\u201d
\nThe largest mainline Protestant denomination in the country, with roughly 8.5 million adherents, the United Methodist Church is politically diverse. Methodists split their votes evenly between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004, according to John Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron. Methodist public officials include conservatives like Vice President Dick Cheney and liberals like John Edwards, one of Hillary Clinton\u2019s chief rivals for the Democratic nomination.
\nPartly to avoid exposing ideological fissures, Methodist clergy shy away from discussing politics in the pulpit. \u201cIt\u2019s different than Roman Catholics and evangelicals, who are very open about their politics,\u201d says Jan Love, Dean of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. \u201cWe have a range of official church stances that are very democratically determined, but the discipline among members about following that stance is loose at best.\u201d
\nStill, the church leadership voted to strongly oppose the Iraq war, and Methodists are broadly concerned with social welfare causes like alleviating poverty, strengthening public education, and increasing access to health care.
\nBeyond aligning with the church on those issues, Clinton has talked a good deal about her personal faith on the campaign trail. \u201cShe talks about how important her prayer is to her, and about her ideas on social justice and family as coming out of her religious background,\u201d says the University of Akron\u2019s Green. \u201cThe things she\u2019s doing publicly are things mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics are likely to find attractive.\u201d
\nGreen notes that like Clinton, many Methodist baby boomers were raised in conservative congregations but migrated to the church\u2019s social justice wing as adults.
\nSome liberal mainline Protestant activists complain that the Clinton campaign has declined to court them, even as it has amassed a network of supporters who have sought the campaign out. \u201cIf she\u2019s so concerned about the faith vote, why hasn\u2019t she met with us?\u201d says Paul Turner, who leads A Mid-Iowa Organizing Strategy, a coalition of progressive religious activists that has met with Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
\nSo far, the Clinton campaign’s ties to Methodists and other religious communities have been less formal. Much of the effort is geared to merely raising awareness of Clinton\u2019s faith life; a recent poll by the Pew Research Center showed that Clinton is viewed as the most secular of the presidential candidates.
\nBonnie Campbell, a Clinton campaign co-chair and active Methodist based in Iowa, has made sure Clinton stops in at various Methodist churches as she campaigns in the Hawkeye State. \u201cIf she\u2019s in Iowa on Sunday, I find her a church to go to,\u201d Campbell says. \u201cI guarantee that that gets around really quickly in a small state like this.\u201d
\n\u201cHillary\u2019s not the kind who would say her faith is superior or that everybody has to believe something,\u201d Campbell continued. \u201cBut for some people it\u2019s important, and it\u2019s important to me.\u201d<\/p>\n