There’s a great article in the newest Washington Monthy about the Democrat’s inability to attract religious voters :

Learning to speak to and appeal to religious constituencies is not simply a matter of political calculation, but a quality Americans demand from their leaders. Even people who aren’t terribly religious know moral vision when they see it–agnostic liberals tear up when they see video clips of Martin Luther King Jr. holding forth on the National Mall–and they respond to faith when it’s sincere and tied to a politics in which they believe. A president who can talk about his personal faith and explain how it connects to his policy initiatives enjoys both the tactical advantage of attracting the “swing faithful” and the moral stature to excite and inspire all those, religious or not, who are already predisposed to support him on the issues. To become America’s majority party again, the Democrats will have to get religion.

If you have any doubt that it is still possible to charge up a senate-leaning audience with religiously tinged rhetoric, listen to the sermons at some liberal churches. When the Rt. Rev. John Chane, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, took to the pulpit this March, his sermon sounded like a blueprint for the sort of religiously minded critique of the Bush administration that Democrats might want to study. Imploring parishioners to take seriously their baptismal vows to “strive for justice” in the world, Bishop Chane raised the example of the Bush administration budget and found it wanting. “We are embarking on a draconian program of social welfare,” he declared, highlighting cuts in services to protect the poor, the sick, and the young. “This is not at all what Jesus Christ meant when he said, ‘Suffer the little children.’”

How is it that Republicans have been able to portray themselves as the true inheritors of Jesus’s teachings? It’s not that the Democratic party is lacking religious people. Clinton went to church every Sunday, but unlike Bush, he didn’t wear his religous beliefs on his sleeve.

The big difference is that Republicans frequently cite their religion (almost exclusively Christian) as inspiration for their policies, but Democrats tend to either pander to religious folks or just write them off repeatedly. Now I’m not saying the Democrats should pull a Lieberman (We get it Joe, you love God), but there’s plenty of room in the religious community for Democrats to attract voters.

In the book Stealing Jesus : How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity, Bruce Bawer makes a good observation about the state of Christianity in America today :

In recent years, [conservative] Christians have organized into a political movement so successful that when many Americans today hear the word Christianity, they think only of the [conservative] variety. The mainstream media, in covering the so-called culture wars, generally imply that there are only two sides to choose from : The God-ofwrath Christian Right and the godless secular Left. Many Americans scarcely realize that there is any third alternative.
. . .
[Conservative Christianity] has warped Christianity into something ugly and hateful that has little or nothing to do with love and everything to do with suspicion, superstition, and sadism. And, quite often, it denies the name of Christianity to followers of Jesus who reject its barbaric theology. In essence, then, it has stolen Jesus-yoked his name and his church to ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that would have appalled him.

If Democrats want to attract religious voters, their best bet would be a, for lack of a better term, divide and conquer approach. Democrats need to drive a rhetorical wedge between the religious right and religious moderates. By skipping the conservative extreme of mainstream Christianity, Democrats could appeal to the apolitical religious people who have become alienated by zealotry of Jerry Falwell and Par Robertson.

Once a religious mainstream has been established as a potential target, Democrats need to emphasize how their religious beliefs affect their policies and how those policies contrast with those of the Republicans. A simple way to show contrasts would be to invite Christians to apply the “What would Jesus do?” test to every Republican initiative.

For example, it would be hard to imagine Jesus (who spent much of the gospels showing compassion for the poor) referring to people living below the poverty level as “lucky duckies”. I can’t help but think he’d be more than a little disgusted with the Republican obsession with cutting social services and giving the rich “their money back” :

As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “I tell you the truth,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

As far as Jesus was concerned, it was more important for everyone to give what they can, not for everyone to give the same amount. If that wasn’t a good enough example of Jesus’s contempt for the greed of the rich, he makes it even clearer later :

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

He didn’t say “reinvest your wealth in a program that will help create jobs and empower the poor to pull themselves out of poverty”, he said “give to the poor” (there’s a reason Jesus didn’t give the fish and loaves to Pilate). As much as Republicans love to advocate the “touch love” approach towards those living in poverty, it’s clear that Jesus was a little more touchy-feely than that.

So if Democrats want to appeal to religious voters a good place to start would be have them ask themselves how Jesus would feel about a tax cut for the rich when 17% of American children are living in poverty? WWJD? Well, he wouldn’t be voting Republican!