On September 9th 2009 a historic event took place here in Washington. In the bowels of the legislative branch of the U.S. government, House Representatives, congressional staffers, religious leaders and community members met in the Rayburn office building to commemorate Ramadan. In the past few years, Iftar receptions have become a common occurrence in most of the major executive branch agencies across downtown Washington, but this one was different. Ironically it fell on the same evening as president Obama’s healthcare speech to a joint session of Congress. As I sat in the largest House of Representatives office building taking in the scene I couldn’t help but notice that although we were all Americans, the diversity of races, faiths, countries of origin and political persuasions could have only been matched by the UN general assembly.

For about the past 20 years diversity has become an inherent part of America’s brand all over the world as well as here at home. But eight years ago, on a fateful Tuesday morning when I was awakened by a startling phone call like so many other Americans, I doubted whether our nation would take a turn back to the darker chapters of our history. To be completely frank, we have in some ways, but the tragedy that befell our nation in 2001 has certainly not broken the spirit of our country. One thing that most Americans who don’t happen to be Muslim may not have realized is that 9/11 was a moment of truth for Muslim Americans. For too many of us 9/11 was a wakeup call to get out into our neighborhoods and tell our fellow Americans who we are what we believe. For those of us who were already prodding our fellow Muslims to vote, run for office, volunteer in our neighborhoods, reach out to other faith and ethnic communities to build bonds around common interests and concerns, it was time to go into 5th gear and reach out to our nation on every level.

But aside from diversity, the one thing that gave me the most pride at that Iftar on the Hill was to see the cadre of Muslim staffers who had organized the event. In 2001, it was unthinkable to see such a diverse and robust group of Muslims from every corner of the nation working on every major issue our country and Congress is now grappling with. These staffers are not in DC serving Muslim Americans alone, they are not all working on solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or some other far away foreign policy issue in a Muslim majority country. They are working on fixing health care, education, lowering the unemployment rate, improving the tax code and ensuring that their constituents’ local needs and concerns are being addressed. They are serving their nation.

Although we as Muslim Americans have so much more to do in getting our intra-faith house in order, all Americans should stop and reflect on the fact that so many of our community’s brightest have stepped up to serve our country.

Take a look at Michelle’s coverage of Senator Ted Kennedy’s passing. As a powerful and influential Senator, Kennedy shaped many pieces of important legislation. Many religious freedom groups say they’ve also lost a fierce advocate for the separation of church and state.

“He deeply understood that only a high and firm wall of separation between church and state could protect our liberties,” said Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “He knew the reasons why our Founders established church-state separation and why we need to preserve it. He got how church-state separation protects the rights of both religious and non-religious people.”

In 1983, Kennedy, a Catholic and a liberal Senator, was invited to speak at Liberty University, a conservative school with fundamentalist Baptist roots. The beliefs of Kennedy and the Chancellor of the school, Jerry Faldwell, on issues ranging from school prayer to abortion, couldn’t be more different. (Check out this 1985 article about their unlikely friendship.)

In the speech titled “Faith, Truth and Tolerance in America,” Kennedy said:

“I am an American and a Catholic; I love my country and treasure my faith. But I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct, or that my convictions about religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic society. I believe there surely is such a thing as truth, but who among us can claim a monopoly on it?”

Do you agree with Senator Kennedy’s thoughts on religious freedom?

Watch the You Tube video of Kennedy’s speech here.

Eboo Patel, who has contributed to this blog, today wrote about Obama’s anticipated speech in Cairo on June 4:

“Obama will be addressing the 930 million Hindus in India, and the 5 million Jews in Israel, and the 38 million Catholics in Spain, and the 500,000 Muslims in his own city of Chicago. Tomorrow, Obama does more than discuss how the United States will relate to the Muslim world. He sets the precedent for how diverse peoples and nations should interact in the 21st century.”

See the full article here.

What do you hope to hear Obama say about faith and religion in his speech tomorrow?

President Barack Obama, in his Inaugural speech January 20, outlined diversity in America this way: “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth;”

Check out Eboo Patel’s new post “Obama Reaches Out to the Muslim World” for some thoughts on the speech and the prayer service the President attended on January 21 at the Washington National Cathedral. The service included more than 20 clergy representing Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other denominations. Also, for the first time at a post-inauguration prayer service, a woman delivered the sermon.

Guest Blogger

R Gustav Niebuhr

Associate Professor in Religion & the Media at Syracuse University

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R Gustav Niebuhr is Associate Professor in Religion & the Media at Syracuse University in New York. With over a 20-year career in journalism, most recently at the New York Times and, prior to that, at the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Niebuhr has established a reputation as a leading writer about American religion.

Amidst the vast variety of religious identities claimed by Americans, one label just doesn’t seem to sit well–atheism. In national surveys–including large samples of the American population taken in 2001 and 2007–very few people claim not to believe in a god or some divine power. It’s usually no more than 1 percent who so describe themselves. And the proportion would be even smaller when it comes to people who seek a public role in political life.

Other surveys–the ones that probe Americans’ opinions about religion and politics–typically find an outright majority of Americans say they would never vote for an atheist. There’s nothing particularly new about that: Indeed, it was our first president, George Washington, who once said that personal religious belief was an essential if individuals were to possess the “virtue” necessary to govern themselves in a republic. Ever since, it has been exceptionally rare for any politician to assert that he or she lacks some form of religious identity. Doing so would be the equivalent of swallowing political poison.

And because of that, it’s rare to hear of a candidate being called an atheist, even by his or her opponent. That’s not to say it can’t happen. Throughout his campaign for the White House in 1800, Thomas Jefferson was repeatedly accused of being an “infidel” by supporters of his opponent, John Adams, then the incumbent president who had strong backing from New England’s clergy. Jefferson won; still, the calumny he endured stung him personally.

This week, another politician found herself accused of atheism, this time in the hard-fought contest for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. The incumbent, Republican Elizabeth Dole, unleashed a television advertisement against her Democratic challenger, State Senator Kay Hagan, accusing her of having ties to an organization called “Godless Americans.” Hagan took the charge seriously enough to strike back hard on two fronts. She put out her own commercial, unequivocally stating that she believed in God and had taught Sunday School. And she also took the matter to court, filing a defamation suit against Dole.

It may help to know here that North Carolina has long been considered part of America’s Bible Belt, where evangelical Protestantism is dominant and religious belief and practice is widely considered even more important than in other regions. Is it a place where an accusation of a weak or non-existent religious belief could pass unchallenged in politics? As Hagan has shown, the answer is emphatically no.

Guest Blogger

R Gustav Niebuhr

Associate Professor in Religion & the Media at Syracuse University

Read More

R Gustav Niebuhr is Associate Professor in Religion & the Media at Syracuse University in New York. With over a 20-year career in journalism, most recently at the New York Times and, prior to that, at the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Niebuhr has established a reputation as a leading writer about American religion.

As I noted in a previous posting, the religious/political landscape can be highly dynamic in the United States when it comes to how broad religious groups seem to side with political parties. Yes, as I said earlier, the Mormons tend to vote Republican, as African-American Protestants tend to be reliable Democrats.

But that evidence of stability should not obscure larger changes in the political affiliation of religious groups. The biggest of these shifts has occurred over the last three decades and can be described in three parts. First and foremost, white, evangelical Protestants–a group that comprises more than 20 percent of the population–steadily moved from mainly supporting Democrats for president in the 1970s to going overwhelmingly for Republican presidential candidates in the last two elections, an obvious benefit to the current incumbent President George W. Bush. Evangelicals are generally defined by their regard for the Bible as their highest authority and their experience of being “born-again”–that is, making a conscious decision to accept Jesus as their savior.

Secondly, non-Latino Roman Catholics, another once-reliable Democratic constitutency, moved toward the center, to the point that those Catholics–another fifth or more of the electorate–now reflect American voters in general. That is, if a Republican wins the election, analysis of the results finds that a majority of non-Latino Catholics supported him; if it is a Democrat who wins, it is with the same Catholic majority. That pattern has held true since the early 1970s.

Finally, in the third trend, mainline Protestants–Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians–have become slightly less Republican in their voting preferences than they were three decades ago.

Where are these groups now, with the 2008 presidential election only a week away? Well, an answer may come from a survey released a week ago by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The center reported that according to its polling between October 16 through 19, evangelicals favored Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate, by 67 percent to 24 percent for the Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama. (Notably, this is a smaller percentage than the proportion of evangelicals who supported Bush in 2004.) Non-Latino white Catholics were supporting Obama 49 percent to 41 percent for McCain. And mainline Protestants were backing Obama, too, albeit by a slightly smaller percentage, 48 to 43.

Will those numbers hold? We’ll know soon enough.

Guest Blogger

R Gustav Niebuhr

Associate Professor in Religion & the Media at Syracuse University

Read More

R Gustav Niebuhr is Associate Professor in Religion & the Media at Syracuse University in New York. With over a 20-year career in journalism, most recently at the New York Times and, prior to that, at the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Niebuhr has established a reputation as a leading writer about American religion.

With only a week left to go in a very long presidential campaign, pollsters are working intensely to gain a clear sense of voters’ moods. With something like 200 million Americans aged 18 and older scattered among 50 states, no shortage of ways exist for professional politcal surveyors to take apart and examine the electorate.

Unsurprisingly–in a population that values religious identity–one way is to study how people affiliated with a particular religious group vote.

The results can affect the electoral map, a crucial consideration given that the U.S. Constitution ensures that presidents are elected by a majority of votes assigned to the states. In setting up the Electoral College–which these days assigns 55 votes to California and eight to South Carolina, for example–the nation’s Founders ensured that no American president would be directly elected by a simple popular majority. The race between major party candidates is to see who can get a minimum of 270 electoral votes.

How does religion play into this? Well, the members of some faith groups tend to be more closely identified with a particular party than those in others.

Take the Mormons, for example. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tend to vote Republican in a greater proportion than almost any other major religious body. And that matters in states where there are high concentrations of the church’s members–in Utah, home to the church’s headquarters (5 electoral votes), Idaho (4 electoral votes) and Nevada (another 5). Of those three, only one–Nevada–has lately been identified as a “battleground state,” for grabs between the campaigns of Senator Barack Obama, the Democrat, and Senator John McCain, the Republican. Nevada’s status as a poltical “toss-up” has much to do with a recent and ongoing influx of Latinos, a largely Roman Catholic group who tend toward the Democrats.

If Mormons have a counterpart in party loyalty, it may be among African-American Protestants, who in a higher proportion than any other religious group, trend Democratic. Their numbers in certain big metropolitan areas–southeastern Pennsylvania, northeastern Ohio, southeastern Michigan and the swath of Maryland that connects Baltimore with Washington’s northern suburbs, to name a few–gives Democratic politicians a solid leg up in any contest.

But the religious/political landscape is hardly as static as that might make it appear. If anything, some major changes have taken place in recent years that have deeply affected politics in the United States. But that will be the subject of my next post.

Guest Blogger

R Gustav Niebuhr

Associate Professor in Religion & the Media at Syracuse University

Read More

R Gustav Niebuhr is Associate Professor in Religion & the Media at Syracuse University in New York. With over a 20-year career in journalism, most recently at the New York Times and, prior to that, at the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Niebuhr has established a reputation as a leading writer about American religion.

We’re excited to announce that R. Gustav Niebuhr, Associate Professor in Religion & the Media at Syracuse University in New York, will be a guest blogger for a full week here at the Talking Faith blog starting today.

With over a 20-year career in journalism, most recently at the New York Times and, prior to that, at the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Niebuhr has established a reputation as a leading writer about American religion. He’ll talk about religion and the election, and some upcoming religious holidays.

Do you have questions for Professor Niebuhr about religion in U.S. Society? Just leave us a comment here and we’ll try to get them answered.