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Media Apply God-Talk Double Standard
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Posted: Friday, July 18, 2008

ARTICLE
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Publication Date: July 17, 2008

For the past eight years, Americans have heard an awful lot about theocracy. The rumblings began in 2000, when candidate George W. Bush unveiled his plan for a faith-based initiative that would expand federal funding to religious organizations that perform social services for the needy.

Although Bush stipulated that faith-based organizations could not use federal funds to proselytize or discriminate against recipients of their services, critics on the left blasted his plan as a stealth step toward government-subsidized churches.

The theocrat charge surfaced again when Bush answered a debate query about his favorite philosopher by citing "Jesus Christ, because he changed my heart." Critics howled that Bush was pandering to religious voters, a charge they have repeated ad nauseum throughout his presidency. Over the course of his two presidential terms, nearly every religious reference Bush made -- from gentle allusions to the biblical good Samaritan to off-the-cuff quotes about his own prayer life -- has inspired warnings about his theocratic ambitions.

Yet something changed when Democratic Sen. Barack Obama began running for president: It became fashionable to mix faith and politics.

The shift first became evident during primary season, when Obama's deftness at couching arguments for liberal social policies in religious rhetoric set hearts aflutter among the Democratic Party's secular elites. His references to religious conversion, striving to "do the Lord's work" and plans to create a Kingdom of God "right here on Earth" would have given them shudders had the comments come from Bush. But coming from one of their own -- a man whom the non-partisan National Journal ranked as the most liberal senator in America --Obama's rhetoric had a different ring. It had the ring of victory.

Democratic leaders long have lamented the "God gap" that has led churchgoing voters to favor Republican presidential candidates over Democrats. For decades, party leaders ignored it, blamed it on voter ignorance or cited it as proof that their party refused to pander to the sort of religious rubes who worry about abortion, gay marriage and the banishment of God from public life.

But losing five of the past seven presidential contests shook up Democratic strategists and pundits; not enough to spur serious policy changes on social issues, but enough to make them search for new ways to sell those policies to religious voters.

It's not an easy sell. Bush enjoyed double-digit victory margins among weekly churchgoers in 2000 and 2004, and those voters tend to reject the socially liberal policies of Democratic presidential candidates.

Obama, who hews to his party's liberal orthodoxy on such issues as abortion, shows no sign of substantively changing his stances. He knows that the enthusiastic support of his secular liberal base could not survive it. But his base can survive a little God talk.

Obama has made such talk a staple of stump speeches as he works to convince conservative churchgoing voters that he shares their values, despite a record that says otherwise. In doing so, Obama has escaped all but the mildest criticism from pundits who once saw theocracy behind every Bush statement.

When Obama recently trumpeted his decision to "let Jesus Christ into my life" and make "faith-based" social service a "moral center of my administration," warnings about theocracy could not be heard. Nor did they dominate airwaves after Obama announced plans to expand Bush's faith-based initiative. Instead, pundits and politicians whose rejection of Bush's initiative forced the president to scale back his plans praised Obama for making good on Bush's promises.

Although some secular liberals have criticized Obama's newfound religious zeal and right-leaning rhetoric, most have overlooked it. They recognize what many of his religious listeners may not: Talk is cheap, and action -- especially a politician's track record of past action -- is what matters most.

-- Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St. Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.