Campaign Blog: News & Updates

Stuff to read and watch later. Gotta make a living in the meantime. Goddard notes the positive pub the speech has gotten so far. "Surprisingly," Andrew Sullivan think it rocks and underscores why the Obama campaign walks on water. Look, I'm open to the possibility that the guy can occasionally hit a home run, but we're long past time for folks to drop the kool-aid.

And always high atop my reading list ... Amy Sullivan returns to blogging at the Washington Monthly. OK, so it's just a bit to discuss her book. Good enough, though.

The rest of the reading list isn't kind. A new book by Shane Claiborne is continually beckoning me ... a bio by freshman Congressman Patrick Murphy ... and I still need to finish off "Branding Faith" by Phil Cooke. Beyond that, there's an exciting web project that awaits me on the sidelines. Anything more piles up on me and I'm going to have to invest in luggage to get to and fro.

Interesting ...

The Gallup Poll conducted the most recent poll and found a correlation between religiosity and support for Clinton among Democrats. The organization did not distinguish evangelicals from other highly religious voters, but more white religious Democrats -- defined as those who attend church weekly -- supported Clinton (46 percent) to Obama (43 percent).

"It's a bit counterintuitive," Green said. "It's interesting because conventional wisdom says they would be for Barack Obama, who speaks so comfortably about his faith."

I knew there had to be some demographic group that explained my Clinton loyalty.

ADD-ON: This is also a pretty interesting read re: Hillary and more politically conservative Christians.

A little Sunday "faith & politics" linkage if I might ...

» Is It Still a Wonderful Life? - Building a new politics on the old values of generosity, compassion, and community. (EJ Dionne)

» Without A Prayer - How the Democratic Party lost its faith in faith. (Amy Sullivan)

Both serve as teasers for their respective books currently on the shelves. Naturally, I have nothing but kudos to offer on both.

» BoGlobe: The politics of religion in America (James Carroll)

Here I was, saying "no time to blog, no time to blog" ... and then I stumble onto this BoGlobe article. It essentially captures the crux of what I see as the problem with Mitt Romney's "Faith in America" speech. I don't accept much of Carroll's view of faith, but I do think he captures how Romney's speech misses the mark on how faith & politics ought to operate in concert with one another. I do think that Carroll gets more correct on the founding of the US, though.

I don't think Carroll's take reflects some sort of anti-Mormon point, or anti-Romney point. What truly concerns me as one who certainly appreciates how faith informs one's politics is that there's been this artificial fusing of faith AND America as two indivisible entities. As Greg Boyd might put it, that's the misguided fusion of "cross and sword." Recently, I attended an event put on by the Houston Area Pastor Council where I got an up-close look at how this view was rationalized and put into practice.

The root of it is that the Constitution is given the air of religious authority and hence, accepted as firmly as any book of the Bible. Idolatry be damned. You see this in moments where, for instance, Mike Huckabee will point out - erroneously - that the majority of the signers of the Constitution were clergymen. There's also a reference to a study by Univ. of Houston PoliSci profs that the most relief-upon document for the Constitution isn't some French Revolutionary thinker ... but the Bible. You prop up the Constitution as something akin to the final book of revelation, and the argument for "strict constructionism" cannot be viewed as a worldy viewpoint, but rather a religious one.

Below is an audio recording of David Fannin, pastor of Nassau Bay Baptist Church, elaborating on the concept. The audio isn't all that great - I just used my cheapy MP3 player's recorder. But if you've got the patience to endure the audio quality, the argument Fannin makes is essentially the same as above.

David Fannin [mp3]