{"id":8259,"date":"2003-12-30T00:08:11","date_gmt":"2003-12-30T00:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/speaking_of_americans_and_religion.html"},"modified":"2003-12-30T00:08:11","modified_gmt":"2003-12-30T00:08:11","slug":"speaking_of_americans_and_religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/speaking_of_americans_and_religion.html","title":{"rendered":"Speaking of Americans and religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s some of the great deal of ink spilled or bytes broadcast about Howard Dean’s profession of faith.<\/a><\/p>\n

On the eve of the Christmas holidays, Dean went public with thoughts about God — he believes in Him. While the Lord is probably relieved that the Episcopalian turned Congregationalist-almost-a-Unitarian believes in Him, Dean’s pandering had more to do with strengthening his position in the South after focus groups pulled together by his campaign revealed discomfort with a man of little faith.<\/p>\n

“[Dean’s] stump speeches weren’t working with the groups,” says a Washington-based Democratic Party consultant familiar with the focus group study that took place in early December. “When asked, they wanted to have a sense that the candidate shared their values, and in the South that means a candidate who believes in God, the Bible and the family.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking of the American Spectator website, I predict that I am going to be consistently amused by Shawn Macomber’s daily reports from New Hampshire over the next month<\/a><\/p>\n

PERHAPS THE MOST INTERESTING thing about the long event was Teresa Heinz Kerry’s inability to mask her boredom. While her husband was talking she sauntered out back and stared off into the parking lot. She slumped in a chair, head in hands, looking at the floor. She whispered back and forth with Time magazine’s Joe Klein.<\/p>\n

One of the last questions Kerry fielded was whether he would take month-long vacations while president, as George W. Bush has done. Kerry answered a plain “no,” and looked confused when the audience broke out into raucous laughter. Teresa had come to life, and was nodding crazily, “yes, yes, yes.” Kerry lost his smile for the first time in three hours. <\/p>\n

“No, really, the answer is no,” he said. But Teresa just kept bobbing, and the audience kept laughing, and John Kerry frowned, as if he couldn’t decide whether to draw his sword or his quill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s some of the great deal of ink spilled or bytes broadcast about Howard Dean’s profession of faith. On the eve of the Christmas holidays, Dean went public with thoughts about God — he believes in Him. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}