Associated Baptist Press - 10/3/2009

Associated Baptist Press
October 3, 2008 · (08-95)

David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, News Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer

In this issue
VP debate explores little on hot-button social issues
Challenge to ban on church politics may not excite Americans, polls say
Young evangelicals differ from elders on gays, similar on abortion rights


VP debate explores little on hot-button social issues
By Vicki Brown

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (ABP) -- Voters hoping to know more about the vice-presidential candidates' faith-influenced views on contentious policy issues probably learned little from the Oct. 2 debate between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin.

Only one question posed by moderator Gwen Ifill, host of PBS's Washington Week in Review, in the debate dealt directly with a religiously contentious social question -- same-sex marriage. Instead, the only scheduled debate between the Democratic senator from Delaware and the Republican governor of Alaska focused mostly on the economy and foreign policy.

When asked about benefits for same-sex couples, both candidates seemed to agree that couples, regardless of sexual orientation, should be granted the same civil benefits.

Biden emphasized that same-sex couples should not be discriminated against for insurance and other benefits. He also said gay partners should enjoy the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts in areas such as hospital visitation and jointly arranged legal contracts.

"In an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple," Biden said, referring to running mate Barack Obama.

Claiming she has not discriminated against same-sex couples as Alaska's governor, Palin said she is "tolerant of choices adults make in their relationships."
But, she added, "in that tolerance also, no one would ever propose -- not in a McCain-Palin administration -- to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated, between parties." Her running mate is John McCain.

"But I will tell Americans straight up that I don't support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman," she added, "and I think through nuances we can go 'round and 'round about what that actually means."

He, too, opposes the use of the term "marriage" for same-sex couples, Biden said. "And I take the governor at her word that she wouldn't discriminate" in civil matters.

However, the two have differing records on gay-rights issues. Although Biden did vote in favor of a 1996 federal law that defines marriage in exclusively heterosexual terms, Obama has vowed to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. Biden has also voted in favor of other gay-rights measures.

Palin's record has suggested she is more opposed to gay rights. As an Alaska gubernatorial candidate in 2006, she listed "preserving the definition of marriage as defined in our constitution" as one of her top three legislative priorities. She supported Alaska's decision to amend its charter to ban same-sex marriage.

She also said, during her gubernatorial campaign, that she disapproved of a recent Alaska Supreme Court ruling that the state had to provide spousal benefits to same-sex partners of government employees. While Palin later signed legislation that enforced the decision, she said at the time that she would support a ballot initiative that would effectively overturn the court ruling by banning gay spouses from state benefits.

She vetoed a legislative attempt to overturn the ruling, but said at the time she was doing so only because attorneys informed her the law would have been unconstitutional.

Nonetheless, gay supporters of Palin have noted, she has devoted very little political capital to opposing gay-rights measures during her term as governor.
Voters looking to the candidates' stand on Israel would have learned that both Biden and Palin seek to protect that nation through diplomatic means, if possible. However, they were sharply divided on the primary threat to peace and stability in the world.

Palin focused on McCain's insistence that the United States must win the war in Iraq, and that a timeline to withdraw American troops could not be established. Withdrawal, she said, must be based on Iraq's ability to assume its own protection.

Although she did not specify what a McCain-Palin administration would do about it, she insisted that a nuclear threat from Iran, particularly against Israel, must be stopped.

"Israel is our strongest and best ally in the Middle East," Palin said. "We have got to assure them that we will never allow a second Holocaust, despite, again, warnings from Iran and any other country that would seek to destroy Israel -- that that is what they would like to see."

McCain is "wrong" in his insistence that Iraq is the primary threat, Biden responded, emphasizing his "passion" for Israel.

"John continues to tell us that the central war in the front on terror is in Iraq," Biden said. "I promise you, if an attack comes in the homeland, it's going to come as our security services have said, it is going to come from al Qaeda planning in the hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Throughout the debate, Biden hammered at Bush administration policies, suggesting that a McCain-Palin ticket would simply perpetuate Bush's mistakes. He emphasized the Obama-Biden ticket as the true agents of change.

Palin repeatedly alleged that Biden "only looked backward" to criticize the Bush administration, rather than being "forward-looking" to move into the future, and called the McCain-Palin ticket the true "team of mavericks."

The debate was held at Washington University in suburban St. Louis.

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-- Robert Marus contributed to this story.

Challenge to ban on church politics may not excite Americans, polls say
By Bob Allen

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- While just 33 churches signed up to participate in a conservative Christian group's "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" Sept. 28, planners viewed it as a success.

That is, organizers said, because its stated purpose was not to inject politics into the pulpit, but rather civil disobedience aimed at prompting a legal battle over an Internal Revenue Service restriction against churches endorsing candidates as a condition of their tax exemption.

However, new polls show that Americans are increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of injecting partisan politics into the pulpit.

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund said they are prepared to defend any pastor targeted by the IRS for endorsing a candidate Sept. 28 based on the First Amendment guarantee of the right to free speech.

Meanwhile, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed complaints with the IRS against six churches for violating federal law by endorsing candidates from the pulpit. "These pastors flagrantly violated the law and now must deal with the consequences," said AU Executive Director Barry Lynn.

Rob Boston, AU's assistant director of communications, said if any church loses tax exemption because of the event and files suit, the church-state watchdog group would file friend-of-the-court briefs opposing partisan politics in America's pulpits.

"It's a shame it has come to this," Boston said. "But now the issue is engaged, and Americans United intends to see it through."

In his Pulpit Freedom Sunday sermon, Curtis Parker, pastor of the independent First Baptist Church of Avoca, N.Y., compared voting records of McCain and Obama on four issues: abortion, stem-cell research, homosexuality and marriage.

"As we evaluate the candidates' stand on these issues, we can make our decisions easy," Parker said. "We can kind of do away with the rock-star personality, with the generation of excitement that comes along with individual candidates and kind of cut right to what's important.

"After everything you've heard about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, is it possible that, as a believer [in Christ], you can cast your vote in their favor?" Parker asked. "I would say no."

At Bethlehem Baptist Church in Bethlehem, Ga., Pastor Jody Hice endorsed John McCain for president, telling worshipers the Republican candidate has a more biblical worldview than Obama when it comes to issues of abortion and gay marriage. "These are not political issues," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted the Southern Baptist pastor and local talk-radio host as saying. "These are moral issues."

"According to my Bible and in my opinion, there is no way in the world a Christian can vote for Barack Hussein Obama," said Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif. He used Obama's middle name, which is a common Arabic name. Allusions to it have fed unfounded rumors that Obama is a Muslim. He is a practicing Christian.

Instead of endorsing McCain, however, according to the Los Angeles Times, Drake suggested that his parishioners vote for a different presidential candidate -- himself. A past vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Drake is on the ballot in California as running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate Alan Keyes.

The pulpit initiative comes at a time when many Americans are growing increasingly wary of politics in the pulpit.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that for the first time since the question was first included in their poll 10 years ago, a majority of Americans said churches should stay out of politics instead of expressing their views on social and political concerns.

Another poll, conducted by the Southern Baptist Convention's publishing arm, found that 59 percent of Americans disagreed with the statement: "I believe it is appropriate for churches to publicly endorse candidates for public office."

"We saw a very strong response that Americans don't want churches to be actively campaigning for political candidates," commented Ed Stetzer, president of the research arm of LifeWay Christian Resources.

Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said that's because the ADF initiative was "misguided" and a "brazen attempt to blend the worship of God with electoral politics."

"This initiative certainly will politicize churches more than it will Christianize politics," Walker wrote in an opinion article prior to the event. "It will assuredly turn our pulpit prophets into political puppets. It will, no doubt, convert our churches into virtual political action committees -- where candidates will line up at the church door to seek endorsement, especially those that are on television."

None of that fazed Eric Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. "The issue is not necessarily whether a pastor should or should not endorse or oppose a candidate from the pulpit," Stanley told CBN News.

"The issue is who gets to regulate that," Stanley said. "It's our contention that the government should not be the one regulating what a pastor can and can't say from the pulpit. It's the pastor's job to determine the content of his sermons, not the IRS."

Stanley believes that if challenged, the Johnson amendment -- inserted into the federal tax code in 1954 -- would be ruled unconstitutional. Championed by then-senator Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas), it instituted the ban on partisan political endorsements by churches and other non-profit organizations.

Americans United's Lynn isn't so sure. He says tax exemption is a privilege granted by the government, not a right.

"Houses of worship exist to enrich people's spiritual lives, not act like political machines that issue marching orders to voters," Lynn said. "They are tax-exempt because their work is religious and charitable, not political."

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Young evangelicals differ from elders on gays, similar on abortion rights
By Bob Allen

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A new poll says white evangelicals under 30 are just as opposed to abortion as their older counterparts, but more liberal in their views on same-sex marriage or civil unions for gays.

The survey, conducted for the PBS show Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, found that only 25 percent of white evangelical Christians in the United States believe that abortion should be legal in most cases. Another 46 percent support limits on abortion rights, while 25 percent believe it should be completely illegal. The figures were similar among both older and younger evangelicals.

But on that other hottest of hot-button issues in America's culture wars, homosexuality, the age groups differed significantly. One in four (26 percent) of white evangelicals aged 18-29 believe that gay and lesbian couples should have the same right to marry as heterosexuals. That is two-and-a-half times as many as hold that view -- only 9 percent -- among their 30-and-older evangelical counterparts.

Older white evangelicals are more open toward legal arrangements that provide most or all of the same protections and responsibilities as full marriage. More than one-third of older evangelicals (37 percent) support legal recognition of civil unions. Nearly half of the older group (49 percent) said there should be no legal recognition of relationships between gays and lesbians, compared to 41 percent of those under 30.

The survey, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, also found that young white evangelicals are less likely than the older generation to vote for John McCain for president. While support for the Republican nominee is solid among white evangelicals overall -- 71 percent compared to 23 percent for Democrat Barack Obama -- McCain's support slips nine points among members of the under-30 group.

McCain still holds a winning margin among evangelicals aged 18-29, by a margin of 62 percent to 30 percent for Obama. Among evangelicals over the age of 30, support for McCain runs 73 percent compared to 22 percent for Obama.

Younger evangelicals are also more likely to rate Obama the more religious of the two candidates -- 20 percent compared to 13 percent of older evangelicals. Fewer than half of young evangelicals (48 percent) said McCain is more religious, compared to 55 percent of older evangelicals.

The poll also revealed a generation split among evangelicals about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, picked as McCain's running mate in large part to excite conservative evangelical voters. Nearly two-thirds of older evangelical women (65 percent) expressed warm feelings toward Palin, compared to 46 percent of those under 30.

McCain's favorability rating is also lower among young evangelicals. Slightly more than half (54 percent) of those under 30 give McCain a positive rating, while 68 percent of those 30 and older view him warmly.

President Bush is far less popular among younger evangelicals than their older counterparts. More than half of 30-and-older evangelicals (57 percent) view Bush favorably, while only 39 percent of those under 30 gave him a positive review -- approval figures approaching his historic lows among the U.S. population at large.

David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University's McAfee School of Theology who has studied the political thought of the next generation of evangelicals, said the findings match up with both other polls and trends he sees in teaching and visiting Christian college students around the nation.

"I think younger evangelicals are less reflexively loyal to the Republican Party and its candidates," Gushee, who also writes a regular column for Associated Baptist Press, said. "They are also now drawing a distinction between the life issues like abortion and violence over against the issue of homosexuality. Or perhaps they are properly seeing that the treatment of all people as sacred in the sight of God does require deep concern about abortion but also requires the humane treatment of homosexuals."

Gushee, author of The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center said younger evangelicals in this particular presidential race might be attracted to the relatively youthful Obama and to "the chance to make a historic step toward racial progress in America."

The survey was conducted by telephone with 1,400 adults Sept. 4-21. Margins of error ranged from 3.1 percent to 5.5 percent, depending on age group.

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