{"id":726,"date":"2009-02-26T10:15:20","date_gmt":"2009-02-26T10:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/joe-bidens-ash-wednesday-smudg.html"},"modified":"2009-02-26T10:15:20","modified_gmt":"2009-02-26T10:15:20","slug":"joe-bidens-ash-wednesday-smudg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/joe-bidens-ash-wednesday-smudg.html","title":{"rendered":"Joe Biden’s Historic Ash Wednesday Smudge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"biden<\/a><\/span>
\nWe’ve seen many historic Presidential “firsts” in this administration, what with the first African American President taking leadership.
\nYesterday we had another: the site of the Vice President of the United States leading a White House meeting with a smudge of ash on his forehead. The only other Catholic to hold one of the highest offices was John F. Kennedy and, as far as I’ve been able to tell, was never photgraphed at a public event with the marks of Ash Wednesday.
\nThis is worth spending a moment to ponder and celebrate. Opposition to, and persecution of, Catholics was common through much of our history. Indeed, while researching my book Founding Faith<\/a>, one of the things that surprised me most was the ways that some anti-Catholic sentiment fueld the Revolutionary War.<\/a>
\nAnd yet here we are with the Vice President not only being Catholic (as John Kennedy was) but appearing<\/em> Catholic. Another milestone for religious freedom and pluralism.
\nOne thing I suspected but could never prove about the politics of all this was that Biden would help pull more Catholics than John Kerry, a Catholic, did. Though theologically they’re both similarly in the doghouse with the Church (over abortion), Biden was a full-blown cultural Catholic, and Kerry wasn’t.
\nA new study of the religious patterns of the election doesn’t touch on a possible Biden role (which I suspect was minimal in the way vice presidential picks always are), but it does show something stunning: the ticket improved dramatically among traditional<\/em> Catholics — <\/a>the ones who go to mass most, pray most, believe in most Catholic doctrine. Obama-Biden improved on Kerry’s performance by a staggering 17 points according to a new survey by Prof. John Green of University of Akron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve seen many historic Presidential “firsts” in this administration, what with the first African American President taking leadership. Yesterday we had another: the site of the Vice President of the United States leading a White House meeting with a smudge of ash on his forehead. The only other Catholic to hold one of the highest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nJoe Biden's Historic Ash Wednesday Smudge - Steven Waldman<\/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\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/02\/joe-bidens-ash-wednesday-smudg.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Joe Biden's Historic Ash Wednesday Smudge - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We’ve seen many historic Presidential “firsts” in this administration, what with the first African American President taking leadership. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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