You Don’t Say?!
Report: Religion rivaled race, gender coverage during primaries
Religion rivaled race and gender combined during media coverage of this year’s primary campaign season, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center.
Excluding “horse-race” coverage of campaign tactics and strategy, religion accounted for 10 percent of nonpolitical-process coverage, barely trailing race and gender at a combined 11 percent, the report concludes.
The spring campaigns featured extraordinary coverage of Sen. Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Sen. John McCain’s struggle to win over evangelical voters and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith.
So begins a story from the Pew Forum’s “Religion News Service.” For any regular reader of this blog that is the least newsy news encountered in some time, but it is good to have some data. Pew reports that the Jeremiah Wright controversy accounts for more than half of the coverage of religion/politics which makes me wonder seriously about how they defined “coverage” and the time frame they examined. The Wright story lay there, undiscussed, for a couple of years and was the subject of very intense, but relatively short- lived coverage. Romney’s faith – The Question – was a virtually constant meme in all Romney coverage from at least 9 months before he was a declared candidate. There is also the fact that the issues with Wright were NOT religious statements but political ones.
I wonder if otherwise normal political coverage stories, but which simply had to drop in “but . . . Mormon” phrases were counted in this study? I’m betting not. The study raises an interesting question about whether media reports or creates news.
The concluding paragraph is a whopper:
“These findings suggest a continuing discomfort among news organizations in tackling deep questions of how candidates’ personal faith may influence their public leadership.”
Boy, I don’t see that, at least not when it comes to Romney. We were treated to article after article on Mormonism attempting to explain it to us all. I read about celestial marriage in Newsweek, for crying out loud. When was the last time they reported on the theology underlying the idea of gay marriage (OK, there is none, but you know what I mean), or opposing for that matter?
What is certain is that the media is now willingly, almost lustfully, analyzing the religion question as just another form of identity politics. Witness this bit of analysis from the WSJ:
Here is a guide to the religion factor in the vice presidential selection.
That, frankly, is just sad. Think how it cheapens religion. The American ideal was one where separation freed religion from the restraints of politics to truly explore its power to make better people. From this analysis we have instead reduced it to mere label. Rather than improving ourselves with the help of the Almighty, religion is just another club with which we affiliate. I hold God too dear for that.
Lowell adds: I hate to point fingers, because I’d have to point them in many directions. To a certain extent, this all started with a small slice of the religious conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has seemed bent on scrutinizing candidates’ religious beliefs. In 1988 I recall George H.W. Bush apparently feeling obliged to tell such a group that he, a life-long Episcopalian, had had a born-again experience. That seemed so forced, so odd, almost comical at the time: A born-again Episcopalian?
I remember losing some respect for both Bush the elder and those who had put him in that position, and thinking, “The last unabashedly ‘saved’ man we had in the White House was Jimmy Carter, and that didn’t work out so well. Why is this important?” I don’t think Bush the younger helped matters by his well-intentioned but sometimes cringe-inducing open religiosity.
I believe deeply in Jesus Christ, but I don’t talk about Him when I am doing my job. I wish presidents would do the same. It’s kind of the way we do things in America, you know, Lincoln’s “public religion” and all? In my opinion it was a travesty that Mitt Romney had to give his “Religion in America” speech, as splendid as that speech was.
End of rant. Now back to John!
Speaking Of Which, Where Was This When It Mattered?
From the Chicago Sun-Times yesterday:
What got me thinking about this question was a recent commentary by the syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, based in part on an interview I did with Barack Obama about his spiritual life back in the spring of 2004.
Analyzing what Obama had to say to me, Thomas concludes that Obama is not really a Christian. He says, “Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian, and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement.”
This puzzles me. When I asked Obama to describe himself spiritually, he said he was a Christian, that he has a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” and that he believes Jesus was an actual man (a “historical figure,” is how he put it) who is “a bridge between God and man . . . and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.”
[...]
Much has been made of Obama’s statements about his faith, and I think the interest in his spiritual life is not only warranted but a good thing. A man’s faith should have a bearing on how he conducts himself, makes his decisions and leads.
But the level of scrutiny of Obama’s faith has surpassed what is helpful and veered into dangerous territory. At the end of the day, no one really knows what transpires between a person and his God. We must depend in large part — trust, really — what the man says about his beliefs.
[...]
It is dangerous to try to judge the quality of a man’s faith. That is God’s purview, not ours.
But, of course, this is an MSM source defending a Democratic candidate, which probably explains why we saw virtually nothing like that written about another candidates whose faith was deeply scrutinized.
Lowell: Amen and amen!
Readers Strike Back . . .
The Washington Times printed a letter in response to last week’s piece on the “Evangelical Warning.” It speaks for itself.
Lowell: The author of the letter, L. Ralph Mecham, now retired, served for two decades as director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and had a long and distinguished career in public service. He’s well-known in LDS and Washington circles.
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