{"id":53,"date":"2008-08-07T10:14:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T10:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/religion-the-election-and-the.html"},"modified":"2008-08-07T10:14:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-07T10:14:00","slug":"religion-the-election-and-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/religion-the-election-and-the.html","title":{"rendered":"Religion, the Election, and the Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life have published a report<\/a><\/b> that confirms my suspicions about the use of religion on the campaign trail. The study found that we are in the midst of an election for a Pastor-in-Chief rather than a Commander-in-Chief.<\/p>\n

An analysis of over 13,000 news stories from January 2007 through April 2008 revealed that religion is playing a disproportionate role in this election.  Religion accounted for roughly ten percent<\/a><\/b> of all stories that did not focus on political strategy or tactics.  By comparison, foreign policy issues garnered 14 percent of these stories, and stories about race and gender only made up 11 percent.<\/p>\n

The United States is in the midst of two wars, one of which is costing our taxpayers $6 billion every month.  Terrorism represents the greatest foreign policy crisis of our generation.  At the same time, American society is being transformed as Senators Clinton and Obama challenged traditional stereotypes of who is best fit to be president.  And despite these profound changes and challenges, religion is receiving almost as attention in the media as foreign policy and race\/gender issues.  And the scary thing is that George W. Bush, who revolutionized using religion for partisan gain, isn’t even on the ballot.<\/p>\n

There is much blame to go around that explains this troubling trend.  The presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle were more willing than ever to seek the endorsement of religious leaders, incorporate religious rhetoric into their speeches, and promote their religious affiliation as a misguided proxy for sound judgment and clear vision.  <\/p>\n

Both Senators McCain and Obama had some buyer’s remorse after seeking the support of controversial clergy<\/a><\/b>. But candidates cannot have it both ways. They cannot continue to use clergy for political gain and then discard them when it no longer fits their agenda.<\/p>\n

The media deserve much of the blame as well.  Last summer, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien asked Senator John Edwards to name his biggest sin.  Multiple debate moderators asked various candidates to name their favorite Bible story.  <\/p>\n

These types of questions have no bearing over a candidate’s ability to serve as president.  The media are the staunchest supporters of the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and press, yet it appears they have not read Article VI<\/a><\/b> of the Constitution, which prohibits imposing a religious test for public office.<\/p>\n

The problem is not that religion is being incorporated into the presidential campaign.  Rather the problem is that religion is being used as a divisive tool instead of a unifying power.  The candidates need be less concerned with appearing “holier than thou” and focus instead on explaining the role their values play in their political worldview.  The media needs to stop asking irrelevant (and irreverent) questions about the candidates’ religion and start asking the candidates to outline their views on the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.  <\/p>\n

If we can nurture a more positive relationship between religion and politics, a survey result like this one would be encouraging rather than lamentable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life have published a report that confirms my suspicions about the use of religion on the campaign trail. The study found that we are in the midst of an election for a Pastor-in-Chief rather than a Commander-in-Chief. An analysis…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08","category-media"],"yoast_head":"\nReligion, the Election, and the Media - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/religion-the-election-and-the.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Religion, the Election, and the Media - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life have published a report that confirms my suspicions about the use of religion on the campaign trail. 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Dr. Welton Gaddy, leads the national nonpartisan grassroots and educational organizations, The Interfaith Alliance and The Interfaith Alliance Foundation and serves as the Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster (Baptist) Church in Monroe, Louisiana. Rev. Gaddy is the host of State of Belief, a weekly radio show by The Interfaith Alliance that is carried on AirAmerica. State of Belief is based on the proposition that religion has a positive and healing role to play in the life of the nation. Rev Gaddy is one of 20 international religious leaders on the Council of 100 Leaders, a group created by the World Economic Forum to improve dialogue and understanding between the Western and Islamic worlds. In addition to being the author of over 20 books, Welton provides regular commentary to the national media on issues relating to religion and politics. Some of his appearances include CNN Presents: The Fight Over Faith; PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers; PBS Frontline's The Jesus Factor; PBS's The Newshour with Jim Lehrer; NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw; CBS Evening News with Dan Rather; ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings; numerous National Public Radio stations including KQED's Forum in San Francisco and KCRW's The Politics of Culture in Los Angeles; CNBC's Capital Report; CNN's The World Today with Wolf Blitzer; CNN's Inside Politics with Judy Woodruff; PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly; CBS's Freedom to Pray; C-SPAN's Washington Journal; NBC's Dateline. He is the former host of Morally Speaking on NBC affiliate KTVE in Monroe, Louisiana. Founded in 1994, The Interfaith Alliance (TIA) has grown into a national grassroots organization of 150,000+ individuals of faith and goodwill drawn from more than 75 different religious traditions or beliefs with a cyber-network of 10,000 activists and 75 local activist groups. Dedicated to promoting mutual respect, cooperation and civility, TIA strives to promote religion as a positive and healing force in the life of the nation. While ministering to churches with a message of inclusion, Welton emerged as a leader among progressive and moderate Baptists. Among his many leadership roles, he is the immediate past President of the Alliance of Baptists and is a twenty-year member of the Commission of Christian Ethics of the Baptist World Alliance. His past leadership roles include serving as a member of the General Council of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, President of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and Chair of the Pastoral Leadership Commission of the Baptist World Alliance. Prior to the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, Welton served in many leadership roles in the SBC including membership on the convention's Executive Committee from 1980-1984 and Director of Christian Citizenship Development of the Christian Life Commission from 1973-1977. Welton received his undergraduate degree from Union University in Tennessee and his doctoral degree and divinity training from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/wgaddy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}