RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA PAGE 1

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1 PAGE 1 JOHN SHATTUCK: Good evening and welcome again to the John F. Kennedy Library. I m John Shattuck, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation. And on behalf of myself and Tom Putnam, the Acting Director of the Library, we are pleased to present tonight a special forum that will explore an issue at the center of our nation s political life, the relationship between politics and religion. Before introducing tonight s forum and our distinguished panelists, I d like to thank the institutions that make these forums possible, starting with our lead sponsor, the Bank of America. We re also grateful to Boston Capital, the Lowell Institute, the Corcoran Jennison Companies, and our media sponsors, The Boston Globe, NECN and WBUR, which broadcasts all of our forums on Sunday evenings at 8:00. And we all know that religion and politics have had a long and complicated relationship in America. And we know, I think, as Thomas Paine wrote at the time of the American Revolution, that This new world is the asylum for persecuted lovers of religious liberty from every part of the old world. We also know, as the First Amendment to the Constitution says, that the government is prohibited from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. What most people don t know is that the Constitution actually goes a step further towards separating religion and politics. It says, No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. That s what the Founding Fathers said in Article 6 of the Constitution.

2 PAGE 2 Now when John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic to be elected President, there were plenty of people who had argued during his campaign that he should be disqualified because his religion might require him to take orders from the Pope. Candidate are often judged today in the other way; not on the basis of whether they pledge to separate their private faith and their public office, but on whether they wear their religion in a very conspicuous way, and pledge to follow a higher authority in making political decisions. Now to set the stage for tonight s discussion, I d like to take us back briefly to the 1960 campaign. No obstacle to the presidency handicapped John F. Kennedy more than the widespread belief that putting a Catholic in the White House would be like electing the Pope. At first, Kennedy tried to dismiss this charge by making fun of it. At a campaign dinner in New York in April 1960, he said that he had sat next to Cardinal Spellman at dinner the other evening. And I asked what I should say when voters question me about the doctrine of the Pope s infallibility. I don t know, the Cardinal told me. All I know is he keeps calling me Spillman. [laughter] So as the campaign went on and the charges kept growing, and the anti-catholic prejudice ran deep, Kennedy decided to address the issue head-on. And in an historic speech on September 12, 1960, he went before the Greater Houston Ministers Association, and talked about the relationship between religion and

3 PAGE 3 politics in America in a way that few other politicians ever had. Let s watch a brief film clip from that speech. [video] So as we know, John F. Kennedy persuaded a majority of voters that his religion would not dictate his politics once he became President. Today, however, many politicians go out of their way to convince voters that religion is at the heart of their politics. Tonight we have assembled a distinguished panel to discuss and debate where to draw the line between religion and politics in America, the urgency of getting it right, and the danger of getting it wrong. Our first panelist, who is actually seated to the left and next to the last panelist, is Senator John Danforth who represented the state of Missouri in the U.S. Senate with great distinction for 18 years. A long time leader of Republican moderates, Senator Danforth is an ordained Episcopal minister with strong views on where to draw that line. He spells this out in a new book, Faith and Politics: How the Moral Values Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together. Last year, in an op-ed in The New York Times, Senator Danforth wrote, and I quote, I do not fault religious people for their political action. The problem is not with people or with churches. The problem is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.

4 PAGE 4 Since leaving the Senate in 1995, Senator Danforth has continued his public life as an author, a diplomat, a peacemaker and a minister. He was appointed by President Clinton to head a review of events surrounding the 1993 assault on the compound of a heavily-armed religious cult in Waco, Texas. In 2002, as President Bush s special envoy to Sudan, he brokered a peace agreement to end the brutal religious conflict in the southern part of that country. Senator Danforth served for a time as President Bush s Ambassador to the United Nations. And in June 2004 he officiated at the funeral services of former President Ronald Reagan at the Washington National Cathedral. Senator, it s a privilege to have you with us here tonight. [applause] Our second panelist, who is seated two seats to my left, is the Reverend Richard Cizik, Vice President of Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, the largest Christian evangelical organization in the United States, with a membership of 43,000 churches and 27 million adherents. Reverend Cizik has served the Association for 24 years. And he directs its public policy positions and advocacy before the Congress, the White House and Supreme Court. He has long been involved in international issues on behalf of the Association, particularly religious persecution. And he s been influential in getting the Congress and the State Department to include the promotion of religious liberty as a U.S. foreign policy objective.

5 PAGE 5 I met Reverend Cizik when I was serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. And he was organizing a religious leader s delegation to the People s Republic of China in Needless to say, that was not an easy mission. And I was impressed by the diplomatic way he went about it. In recent years, he s expanded his international advocacy by calling for steps to combat global warming and to promote international development. And he s also called for greater political activism by the evangelical movement in his book, The High Cost of Indifference: Can Christians Afford Not to Act? Richard, we re delighted that you could be here today. [applause] Our third panelist is the Reverend Barry Lynn, seated to my far left, the Executive Director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The Reverend Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and a widely respected activist and lawyer in the defense of civil liberties. He and his organization have long been at the center of the debate over religion and politics in America. And they were strong proponents of the absolute separation of church and state mandated by the First Amendment of the Constitution. He had led the opposition to prayer in public schools, to vouchers paid for by the government to support education in religious schools, to faith-based

6 PAGE 6 initiatives promoted by the White House to support religious organizations, and to other political efforts to get the government to pay for religious activities. I ve known the Reverend Barry Lynn since his days as legislative counsel to the ACLU. And I could tell you, he is the kind of advocate that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote that religious freedom would never be self-enforcing. It would need people like Barry Lynn to be out there. In a new book, Piety & Politics, Barry Lynn outlines Jefferson s vision and why it s threatened by those, he says, who would mix religion and politics. He appears frequently in the national media as an expert on church/state issues. It s great to have you here, Barry. [applause] And to organize tonight s discussion, we re very fortunate to have as our moderator the distinguished editorial page editor of The Boston Globe, Renee Loth. As the person who formulates all The Globe s editorial positions, Renee is probably one of the most influential people in our city. Under her direction, The Globe editorial board interprets what s happening in Boston, the country and the world. Before her appointment as editorial editor in 2000, Renee was an award-winning reporter for The Globe and, before that, an associate editor for New England Magazine, a political reporter for The Boston

7 PAGE 7 Phoenix, and editor of The East Boston Community News. She didn t think I was going to bring that up. A wonderful publication. She has been a fellow at Radcliffe s Public Policy Institute and Harvard s Institute of Politics. And I cannot imagine a better person suited to lead our discussion here tonight. So please join me again in welcoming Senator John Danforth, the Reverend Richard Cizik, the Reverend Barry Lynn and Renee Loth to the stage of the Kennedy Library. [applause] MS. RENEE LOTH: Well thank you very much for joining us tonight. This is a terrific topic. And I think, as the clip of Senator Kennedy shows, we ve come a long way since And I think we can stipulate that politics today is thoroughly untrammeled with religion. Sometimes it s referred to as moral values. Sometimes it s called the culture war. But it s religion. And it s informing our debate on public policy issues now from school vouchers, as we heard, to stem cell research, to gay marriage, to what would Jesus drive, to whether evolution or sex education ought to be taught in the public schools. And on the international scale, which I think we ll also address tonight, it could even be keeping us in an unpopular war. It s a topic that really engages people s passions. But I don t know how much it engages their minds. And so that s why we re here tonight, to engage our minds.

8 PAGE 8 So I think my first question has to be to Senator Danforth. In your experience, your political experience, your faith experience, do you think that it is possible to inject religion into the public debate or for a public man, a politician, to be informed by religious views? Is it possible to do that without being divisive or discriminatory? SENATOR JOHN DANFORTH: Sure. I don t think people who have deep religious faith are expected to check their faith at the door when they leave their church or mosque or synagogue. Religion is something that infuses all of our lives, hopefully our personal lives, our family lives, our business lives, and our political lives. The problem is that, when religion becomes a political agenda, it can be very, very divisive. So I think that the question isn t whether religion informs whatever we re doing in the world, but does it do so in a divisive way? Or does it do so in a way that allows us to hold ourselves together as one country? I think that, in turn, depends on the degree of certainty or the degree of humility with which we go about practicing our faith. Do we think that we have a monopoly of God s truth? Do we believe that we can translate our perception of God s truth into a political agenda? If so, then we tend to approach politics as God s way versus the enemy of the people of faith. On the other hand, if religion brings with it a sense that God s truth is bigger than any of our perceptions of it, then it creates the kind of humility which makes it possible for us to find common ground.

9 PAGE 9 MS. LOTH: I bet that Reverend Lynn has a somewhat different view of that question. REVEREND BARRY LYNN: A somewhat different view. I do like, very much, what Jack Kennedy said in 1960, that he believed in an America where the separation of church and state was absolute. Because I think we are talking about a fundamental principle, but not a fundamental principle that necessarily requires anyone, as Senator Danforth just said, to check their religion before entering the legislative chamber in Massachusetts, or even the Oval Office in Washington. But it does mean that people whose policies are going to be based at all on their religious beliefs need to recognize that the scriptures of no particular church, not even the Christian Bible, holds any special place in the governance of the United States of America, and that every decision made politically must be tested against, first and foremost, the Constitution of the United States. And if someone s understanding of truth comes from a source, a biblical source, another spiritual source, but it comes into conflict with the demands of the constitution in a secular democracy, I believe it is the constitution that has the final say. And moreover, when you have people in public office I really don t want to bash President Bush tonight. But he s the only President we ve got. So, I have to say a few things. He is a man who has said to at least two of his members of his cabinet that he believes he was selected by God to serve at this time in history. We had similar sentiments from the Secretary of Defense just recently. This troubles

10 PAGE 10 me a great deal. Because it s very easy, if you have that as the truth which guides you, to avoid having to test those ideas that you re expressing, among other things, against the demands, the rights and the responsibilities that the constitution imposes on elected officials. MS. LOTH: Reverend Cizik, you want to try that? REVEREND RICHARD CIZIK: Religion and politics are and always will be-- I think it was André Malraux who said many years ago, If the 21 st century is not religious, it won t be. How prophetic could you be? In other words, religious values are not just front and center here in America, they are front and center around the world. And it s true. The question is how do these two relate, religion and politics? And frankly, they do pretty well in this country. For all the liabilities and for all the excesses and the mistakes And believe me, I m the first to say that the evangelicals probably specialize in the excesses. Maybe a lot of people here would agree that the evangelicals specialize in the excess of religion and politics. But it is a reality that you cannot take these issues of faith and values out of politics. I m a Presbyterian. The black robes of the revolution were the references made to the preachers who set us on this course of independence. And that is the same influence, the same kind of passion which gave us, you see, abolition and, after that, the suffragette movement and, after that, the civil rights movement and, today,

11 PAGE 11 the new human rights movement that carries its values and the causes for freedom for people now being persecuted with genocide in Darfur. And so the question is, yes, Barry, how far do we go? George Will says in his book, Statecraft as Soulcraft, that the four most important words in answering the question, How far do we go? the answer, ambiguously he says, is up to a point, up to a point. Well what is that point? Well we would all disagree. But we have to find, I think, a better point, a resolution, than we have had heretofore in the last few years. MS. LOTH: Well, you know, it s interesting that you bring up the abolition movement because the Bible, like the Qur an or like any I don t want to get into quoting scripture with this audience, that s for sure, with this panel. But it can be interpreted in any number of ways. So there s a liberal agenda in the Bible, as well as there is, what we call today in our modern interpretations, a conservative agenda. Why do you think, though, that our politics right now -- and correct me if you disagree -- are driven by a conservative interpretation of religious teachings, and not that liberal agenda? Is it because the Bible has been hijacked by the conservative movement? REVEREND CIZIK: I think the Republican Party uses evangelicals in the same sense, frankly, that the Democratic Party has used those in the mainland Protestant movement at times, or Catholics.

12 PAGE 12 Look, Republicans are in power. They have been for the last eight years or more. And 40% of the GOP base is evangelical. And so, look, these evangelicals are carrying their values into the public arena. And there is pushback. Obviously, there is pushback. And some of it is legitimate and some isn t. And so answering what is that point where you find this proper balance is every man or woman s definition. But this is why, in my opinion, we have this out in front today, because evangelicals have assumed a greater place in public life than ever before. And I don t think that s going to change. MS. LOTH: President Kennedy made an explicit reference, in that prescient -- because I don t know if this was an issue at the time in to taxpayer dollars being used to advance faith organizations. REVEREND CIZIK: Barry noted that real-- MS. LOTH: I m sure. REVEREND LYNN: I noted that. [laughter] MS. LOTH: And so here we are with a situation now, though, where taxpayer money is explicitly now going for faith-based organizations both locally and abroad. And I don t think anybody questions the value of the work of some of these organizations. Some of them are right here in Boston, very important, very

13 PAGE 13 successful, working with poor people in urban crises, and overseas as well, in Africa. But The Boston Globe s recent reporting and also The New York Times reporting has found that, unfortunately, these organizations are not adhering to the requirements that they not proselytize or that they not discriminate based on people s religions and employment or in the services they provide. So it raises a question about whether it s even possible to reconcile the idea of public taxpayer money going for faith-based organizations. You re nodding, so I m going to ask you first. REVEREND LYNN: I mean it is certainly possible that there can be partnerships between religious institutions and government entities, but they have to be done very carefully. And what we ve seen over the course of the President s Faith-Based Initiative has been quite the opposite. In 2002, I made allegations in The Washington Post that the monies being spent in the Faith-Based Initiative were, in fact, being used to promote seminars in particular congressional districts and particular states with very close races between the Republican and Democratic candidate. The White House, of course, and all of its spokespeople denied that. But now we learned from David Kuo, the gentleman who was the number two person in the Faith-Based Office, in a new book that he came out with just two

14 PAGE 14 weeks ago, that that was the sole purpose of those seminars, to lure primarily African American churches into believing that, if they came to these seminars, a) they might get some money from the government -- most of them did not -- and then also that they would be reminded that this was a Republican program, and that they might carry that with them into the polling place or into their congregations where they would suggest that others might vote in the same direction. This was a scam. This was like walking around with money in Chicago when Democrats actually would go up to preachers and say, Here are a few bucks. Can you bring a few more parishioners to vote for the Democratic machine? It was corrupt then, and it s corrupt now. And it s very difficult when you have a relatively small amount of money to hand out, and you re playing this religion card, not to end up giving money to the people who are going to help you. A corruption of the church itself, and a corruption of the political process. A twofer. And it s bad news for the constitution when that happens. MS. LOTH: Reverend Cizik. REVEREND CIZIK: I couldn t disagree more. MS. LOTH: I thought so. REVEREND CIZIK: Look, the President doesn t pick the recipients. He doesn t even know who they are. There has been, in my opinion, little that has ever been proven, Barry, to have been wrong. I know you can say that there are those who

15 PAGE 15 have violated the prohibitions against sectarian worship and instruction. But frankly, if they were aware of the lawsuits that have shown this and been successful in doing so-- REVEREND LYNN: Well, I m filing them. REVEREND CIZIK: I m sure you are as we speak. But David Kuo s book has maybe a piece of the elephant s tail, but he doesn t have the whole picture, in my opinion, of the Faith-Based Initiative which was on a principled level. It was about leveling the playing field between secular and religious service providers, leveling the playing field. And I think most Americans believe in that; not to fund religion for religion s sake, not for worship or instruction, or to proselytize, but rather to empower those groups which we have seen in most recent days in Katrina, that the faith-based providers, including the Salvation Army, were in fact the most effective, the most efficacious. And that is what, I think, most Americans support. MS. LOTH: Senator. SENATOR DANFORTH: Well I m no expert on the Faith-Based Initiative. And I haven t read the famous book that the other two panelists are talking about. So I don t have much to offer.

16 PAGE 16 I think that the problem I see with the Faith-Based Initiative is that, unless there is an unlimited amount of money to give to every applicant who comes through the door, there is a picking of winners and losers. There must be if there is a finite amount of money. And that troubles me. I would like to, if I could, get back to an earlier question, maybe a broader question than the Faith-Based Initiative. And that is the whole question of how this came to be, and this phenomenon now of the religious right and its involvement in politics. I think that this is a strategy on the part of each of the two political parties, namely to appeal to the base. The concept is that the center doesn t matter anymore. And there was a newspaper article in The New York Times a month or so ago that said something like 6% of the voters are Independent or undecided. And I can remember in 1994, before the election, attending a Republican strategy meeting where it was said that we re not going to think about the undecided so much. We re going to try to energize the base of our party. Well the base of the Republican Party is the Christian right. And the strategy of the Republican Party has been to energize the Christian right. And how is that done? It s done by focusing on what are called wedge issues. Wedge issues are designed to be very appealing, very emotionally appealing to the base of the party. And the meaning of wedge is exactly what the word says; that is, to pound something until it drives the country apart.

17 PAGE 17 So we have this emergence of all of these hot issues. The hottest of them all right now, the question of gay marriage, and the appeal of that. Why was there a vote on the floor of the United States Senate this summer on the question of gay marriage as a constitutional amendment? I can t imagine that people in the United States Senate truly believe that this belongs in the Constitution of the United States. So why have a vote on it? Well it s the summer of an election year. And it s therefore a very, very blatant appeal to the base of the party. So this is the phenomenon I see. I don t think that it s just that conservative Christians are active in politics. More power to them for being active in politics. But it s a manipulation of the political system by this very divisive appeal to the base. MS. LOTH: But that s my question. Isn t it precisely the insertion of religious questions that makes it polarizing, that makes it divisive? SENATOR DANFORTH: Well there s nothing more divisive, potentially, than religion. If religion is, I m on God s side and you re not, there is nothing more divisive than that. There is nothing that makes politics more impossible. If politics is compromised by its nature, how can you compromise if you believe you re on God s side? So what s happened in America today is the center of American politics has become marginal as the common ground has been cut out from under us. And it s very deliberate. And by the way, it s done by each of the political parties. It s

18 PAGE 18 done by the Republican Party by appealing to its religious base. It s also done by the Democratic Party in appealing to its base. It just doesn t happen to be religious. And I think that most people in this country believe that American politics now is so polarized that it s become dysfunctional. And part of that polarization has been this religious appeal by the Republican Party. REVEREND LYNN: You know, Senator, I agree with everything you said. But I think it s actually much worse than that because the appeal on some of these issues then leads into a wholesale criticism of the very institutions that make America America. For example, when the judicial courts in the state of Massachusetts decide that same-sex couples can, in fact, be recognized as a marital unit, then not only does the religious right come in and say that s ungodly, but they also begin to criticize the very nature of the courts. So the whole judicial system becomes demonized with the phrase the unelected black-robed judges. And that creates a much bigger and broader enemy to attack. The same thing goes on in public schools. Jerry Falwell says-- many agree with him-- he says, I hope to live to see the day when there will be no public schools left in America because the church will run all of them, [which is] a fundamental attack on public schools because they teach critical thinking, something that most of us think is a good thing, but which the far right thinks is a very dangerous thing.

19 PAGE 19 You go on to other institutions, medicine. We re having debates on the floor of the United States Senate on stem cell research that sound like they re medieval, theological debates about when life begins. We are ignoring the evidence of medicine and of science when we try to teach intelligent design, in replacing evolution in schools, and in discussing what contraceptives should be available to American women. So this separation of church and state idea becomes a rope. It s more than a thread. It s a rope that starts to twist together, in a very dangerous way, into many of the social controversies we have in America today. SENATOR DANFORTH: I don t want to-- Sorry. REVEREND CIZIK: Go ahead. Go ahead, Senator. SENATOR DANFORTH: But just on this business of the alleged demonization of the judiciary, I don t agree with that at all. I mean I think it s a basic question of American jurisprudence. What is the appropriate role of the judiciary? And I did not read the Massachusetts case. But it seems to me to be reasonable to say that if the issue of gay marriage is taken out of the legislative branch, and turned into some sort of constitutional issue, that that is something that s fair game for criticism. It s just the basic question of how powerful should the judiciary be,

20 PAGE 20 and how literally should it interpret either the state constitution or the federal constitution. My criticism of this gay marriage issue is that, whatever it is, it clearly does not belong in the Constitution of the United States. This sort of social value question is not a U.S. constitutional issue. Therefore, why was it voted on? Well because it was red meat in an election year. REVEREND CIZIK: I would suggest it was voted upon because you have around the country states that have adopted amendments to their own constitutions, which they have done overwhelmingly so, 12 to 13 states in the last electoral go around, and will have seven or eight states do the same thing again this election cycle. And they re overwhelmingly adopted because the American people are saying-- not that they want religion unduly injected into this debate, not at all-- that rather they have a traditional understanding of marriage as between one man and one woman. And that s what they would like their state laws to reflect. So I would suggest that rather than the assault, you see, that I hear from you, Barry, by the religious right, the radical right upon all of our judicial institutions, I simply see the American people responding not by, you see, a radical right, but by large percentages simply saying, Hey, here are our values. We want the state we live in to reflect them.

21 PAGE 21 And when judges, be it in Massachusetts or elsewhere, want to dictate to the rest of the nation what the rest of the country ought to do, they say, No. We want these values in our state. Okay. Let s say, if it s not right, Senator, to be in the Constitution, in the federal constitution, then by all means, let the states decide. And I m sort of one of those who would say that will maybe be the solution here. REVEREND LYNN: Well, you know, neither one of you would say the same thing about race. But it was in 1967 that miscegenation laws finally were declared unconstitutional. These were laws that prohibited African Americans and white people from marrying. There were still laws like that in Virginia and Tennessee. And the voters in those states continued to ignore them or to continue to reenact them. But finally it took a court to say something. The court said, We are going to get over this. And we are, in a sense, going to take a new value. The value says if two people accept the rights and responsibilities of marriage, we re going to use and accept that that s the power of the state to declare it a marriage. I think, now, it s time to get over this other problem of not recognizing two men or two women who want to take on the rights and responsibilities of marriage. And frankly, it is a value to say what I have just said. And I don t think that we delay justice or the acquisition of just values just because we can t convince the majority of people in Tennessee that they should see it the right way. And I think it is the right way if the goal is justice for every American, and not having some religious group be able to dictate how he or she should live his life.

22 PAGE 22 SENATOR DANFORTH: Well, it s hardly some religious group. REVEREND CIZIK: Amen. SENATOR DANFORTH: It really isn t. It is a question of values. I agree with you, sir. I think that it s essentially a legislative issue. It s not a judicial issue. There are times when values are so broadly accepted. And a country race would certainly be one of them that that does become a judicial issue. But clearly this particular marriage issue has not reached that point yet. But I really am not here to debate the issue of gay marriage. I recognize that people have different views of that. But that s fine with me. What I am saying is how did this vote occur in the United States Senate? And it occurred because it was a very, very blatant effort to win votes by appealing to a particular block of people. And it was highly divisive to do it. And I think that was wrong. MS. LOTH: The only thing I wanted to say about gay marriage is that it was no secret why those ballot questions were put on each individual state ballot in the 2004 presidential election. It was to galvanize the anti-gay marriage constituency, legitimate or not, in the states which tended to vote for Republicans. And it was put upon those ballots by the Republican operatives.

23 PAGE 23 So here is another example where a social value issue is being injected into an explicit political matter, and nothing gets more political than a vote for president. And so, I m just wondering-- and it is a tremendously divisive issue-- so I m just wondering what role these personal and private and social issues really have in an explicit political activity like voting. REVEREND CIZIK: Politics is not bean bagging. We express our values through politics. We do that through the candidates we select. And by and large, I don t buy this argument that America is in the midst of a great culture war. Now I think Barry would think so. He said so. I think the evidence is to the contrary. If you read, for example, Patrick Hynes s book, In Defense of the Religious Right, and the polls that are even conducted by The Pew Center for Religion & the Public Life, of which I serve on the Board, the evangelicals themselves in this country, Renee, do not want a culture war. Now that s maybe the most surprising thing that you would hear from evangelicals. We don t want a culture war? Absolutely not. We, in fact, are more intentionally aimed at this time in history, I think, at common ground issues than, say, in the 70s or 80s. And so rather than, I think, being more contentious, more vigorously opposed to one another as Americans, I think evangelicals are saying, Let us find common ground. And we have done so, for example, in the United States Congress over the last eight years on subjects such as Sudan, passing the International Religious

24 PAGE 24 Freedom Act for international religious freedom, the Sudan Peace Act, as you know, Senator, to help bring peace in the south, the North Korea Human Rights Act to address in a new way the human rights violations in North Korea, and on and on, the President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, working with the ACLU on prison rape, and with feminists on the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. So I would suggest that rather than this being the most difficult time in American politics and religion, it might in fact be a stellar time that is maybe setting the stage for what is a common ground that we, as Americans, all ought to find unity on. So that would be my optimistic...(inaudible). [simultaneous conversation] MS. LOTH: And I think some people here would like to know more about your activities around global warming and the global environmental issue because I do think that may be an area of common ground. REVEREND CIZIK: Well I get attacked because I m simply saying that climate change is a sanctity of human life issue, that it is an issue of the rights of millions and millions of people not to be the victims of change which is largely the result of America in which we, 4% of the world s population, contribute over 25% of the greenhouse gases. So isn t that a human rights issue? Isn t that a sanctity of human life issue? And to my critics on the right who, frankly, have said to me, We will not allow mercury poisoning in our rivers to be a sanctity of life issue, I ve said, absolutely, Why not? Why? Because there are people-- I would concede, Senator-- there

25 PAGE 25 are people, yes, who do want to use a very select list of issues, the litmus test issues of the right, if you will, same sex marriage and abortion, to aid and abet one party. And to these people on the right, I say, since when is our agenda that of any political party? Shouldn t we as evangelicals, shouldn t we as Christian people, shouldn t we as Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims or whatever, be saying to both political parties, Here are our agenda concerns. Now, tell us what you think, not simply to say, Well, we ll use one political party to further our cause. MS. LOTH: Well put. REVEREND CIZIK: That s an entirely different kind of scenario for the future. And it s a different kind of methodology, I would say, as well, which is increasingly accepted by evangelicals in this country. MS. LOTH: Senator. SENATOR DANFORTH: I just want to say I really agree with that. And I think that that s correct. And I clearly saw that when I was the President s Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan. This was an issue that was pushed positively on the national agenda by all kinds of people, people of all kinds of religious persuasions, and particularly by evangelical Protestants. And it was totally admirable. And I believe that if you were to ask the

26 PAGE 26 American people, Do you believe that religion should be used to divide us as a country? most people would say, Absolutely not. Not here. Not in America. Other places in the world it happens. It is not going to happen here, including evangelical Christians. I don t think they want this kind of divisiveness. REVEREND CIZIK: No, they don t. SENATOR DANFORTH: I think it is really a political manipulation. REVEREND LYNN: It is. But it s also true that, during much of the time that we re talking about, at the United Nations, the United States would vote with Sudan on other issues involving health, involving women s rights in a way that made them indistinguishable from the Sudanese government. SENATOR DANFORTH: Oh, baloney. REVEREND LYNN: What do you mean, baloney? What do you-- SENATOR DANFORTH: Well, I don t know. I was six months there. I never voted with the government of Sudan on anything. REVEREND LYNN: Well, how about condom distribution in a third world? How about all of the efforts that should be international efforts to make sure that we deal not with a comment made in the State of the Union Address about what the President might do about AIDS, and money he might get, but to actually get

27 PAGE 27 United States funding and international funding to the people who desperately need it without a sermonette attached about what they can and cannot do? So I agree with you that we should find common ground. I spent two and a half years trying to find common ground at the invitation of Senator Rick Santorum, someone whom I certainly don t agree with about much, on the Faith-Based Initiative. We came up, and right and left, the Association of Evangelicals involved as well, 37 specific programs and ideas to be implemented by Congress. Not one of them has passed. They all were common ground ideas about how to preserve the civil rights of people, as well as to get more money to the poor. It was the Congress that blocked it because they didn t want to resolve that issue. So I say, when common ground is reasonable, when it s directed at creating kind of new compromises, not idiot compromises, but new compromises, new ways of thinking, we can all move forward. But we cannot forget the fundamental constitutional rights of American citizens in the process. REVEREND CIZIK: Barry, I am a principled pluralist. Now, in defining that, I say I believe that no religion deserves a privileged place in American public life. No one religion, not even my own deserves a privileged place. I not only believe in tolerance, which is respect for people of other faiths, but I go beyond that to say not just principled pluralism. But frankly, there has to be a place, Renee, in American life in which you even show partnership for those with people of other faiths.

28 PAGE 28 Now this may get me into hot water with some people. But I actually believe that God uses people of other faiths for His purposes in the world. And if that s the case, then why would I be objecting, even in this world of civilizational conflict, to collaborating with people on behalf of common objectives which we can agree upon. And so I happen to think that, yes, the 21 st century will be religious or it won t be at all. Yes, Malraux, I believe, was right. But the kind of world will not be the Sam Huntington world. John Shattuck has spoken earlier, invited us here. Mr. Shattuck, I would say I don t believe Sam Huntington s thesis, we are inevitably headed towards civilizational conflict. In fact, I would say just the opposite. MS. LOTH: Well, okay. Now we re on the international stage. So how has the post-9/11 conflict We re supposedly at war with Islamic terrorism. How has it complicated these questions? REVEREND CIZIK: Are you asking me? MS. LOTH: I m asking any one of you. REVEREND CIZIK: Let the Senator take that one. MS. LOTH: Okay, I ll start. I actually have been dismayed-- and maybe this will be surprising to some Globe readers-- I, personally, am dismayed to see that

29 PAGE 29 in Western Europe, for example, very liberal, supposed, societies are having a difficult time assimilating their Muslim immigrants into their societies. And there have been violent clashes. And certainly, in London and Madrid, there have been terrorist acts linked to Islamic citizens, in some cases, who had just not been able to assimilate into those Western European cultures with their Western European values. And so, for example, in France and in England, there are movements to try to get women to not wear their veils, Muslim women not to wear their veils. And I disparate this. You know, one of the few things I ve been proud of, in the United States in the last several years, has been our ability to comfortably assimilate people of different faiths. But I worry that that pluralism that you talk about, this precious pluralism, is jeopardized by the insertion of too much rhetoric and activity on the part of our government leaders. REVEREND CIZIK: I happen to think there is a place here for the releasing of values that doesn t happen elsewhere in the world. In other words, I think that you have Turkish communities in Germany -- I ve met with Angela Merkel about this issue -- in which they listen on their computers and on their televisions on programs that are beamed in, exclusively Muslim programs. They do not assimilate. And that is, to me, the heart and soul of the challenge that we face. Will we integrate in ways that Europe has not? And I happen to think that America has shown itself an example to the rest of the world since 9/11. MS. LOTH: That s right. So far.

30 PAGE 30 REVEREND CIZIK: So far. But it requires a dialogue, I happen to think, on our deepest differences, not just as, I think, interfaith dialogue has occurred over the last 50 years on behalf of faith and justice, faith and justice. I am almost tired of hearing about faith and justice. I think what we need is dialogue on the subjects which are our deepest convictions. And they do, yes, involve issues of proselytizing, yes. Because fundamentally, both Islam and Christianity are proselytizing faiths. And that has to be on the table. Is it the first issue that you address? Of course not. But do you have to eventually get to that subject? Yes. And thus, how we work this through will depend, I think, on whether or not we have 50 to 100 years of conflict, or whether we have something else. REVEREND LYNN: I mean it certainly makes, in some ways, it easier for us to identify the enemy after September 11 th. And now we ve got a new name for the enemy in the last six months, and that s Islamofascists. But there s really no sense of understanding that fundamentalism-- as Dr. Martin Marty at the University of Chicago did in a whole series of books-- fundamentalism is a strain in all of the world s religions. And it also has the potential for causing the very same problem. You literally die for a cause that you would not die for, but for the sense that your religion compels you to do it. And I think for us to ignore that fundamentalism is real and alive in the United States, that it has a tremendous impact on political decisions at all levels is foolish and dangerous.

31 PAGE 31 So I agree that we have to have this dialogue. But you know, one thing, Richard, that you said that I m a little concerned about, you ve talked about interfaith dialogue. There are 20 million Americans who have no religious faith. They re first-class citizens in America. They re humanists and free thinkers and atheists. And when you start with the assumption that this is the century in which we will have religion, you kind of cut them out of the dialogue. And you almost suggest -- I hope you re not doing this -- almost suggest that you can t really have a moral framework in which to talk about Darfur or anything else unless you also have a religious connection to make. And I think that s something that does disturb 20 million Americans. SENATOR DANFORTH: I don t think he was saying that at all. Look, I mean, one thing we learned in 9/11 is that people hijack planes and fly them into buildings because they think that God wants them to do that. We ve got a religious problem in the world. We ve got people killing each other. This is not a new phenomenon. It s been going on a very long time. In Iraq right now, Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other. They ve been killing each other for 1400 years. Religion can be a cause of violence. And we better figure out how to do with this. I don t think that that means ignoring people who are not religious. But it does mean that somehow we ve got to come to some sort of understanding of this cause of violence. I saw this in Sudan. It wasn t the whole of the problem, but it was part of the problem. It was people fighting each other over religion.

32 PAGE 32 So how is this going to be resolved? Is there some kind of understanding out there about the just war theory? Is there some sort of common understanding out there about non-combatant immunity? If there is a religious problem, we ve got to face it as a religious problem, and not sort of say, Well, you know, let s talk about general concerns. REVEREND LYNN: Senator, when the late Pope John Paul II discussed the possibility of an invasion of Iraq by the United States, he condemned it in probably the strongest and most personal terms of any Pope in modern history, saying that the people who would be the architects of that invasion would have to answer directly to God. It was within a few days that President Bush called in some theologians on the right, is probably the best way to describe them, to come meet with him, then hold a press conference at which time they came out and said, Well, the Pope s wrong. We ve reevaluated this just war doctrine. We think the war in Iraq is just and justified. He was using a theological lynchpin. Instead of spending time gathering more intelligence, he decided to go theologically shopping. And because of that, there are 2,879 families today whose sons and daughters will not be with them for Thanksgiving. And to act like there s no religious motive And I want to ask you this. Do you think we have no perceived religious motive being used to justify our invasion of Iraq?

33 PAGE 33 SENATOR DANFORTH: I am not debating the war in Iraq. That is, obviously, a very, very big issue. I don t think it s the issue for this one-hour program. I think that the issue is how religion can be destructive or how it can be reconciling. And it s clear to me that, in many parts of the world, it has been destructive to the point of terrible bloodshed. It was certainly true in the past in Northern Ireland. It s true right now in Kashmir. It has been true in Bosnia. It is true right now in Iraq. We have, now, a situation in the Middle East between the Sunnis and the Shiites, in a part of the world where geographical boundaries, political boundaries don t mean all that much, where this can escalate into something very, very serious. And I absolutely don t understand thinking that this, somehow, isn t a religious issue that shouldn t be addressed as such. Of course it is a religious issue. Does that mean that it s our side versus God s side? No. But it means how do we stop from blowing each other up because we think that God wants us to blow each other up? MS. LOTH: Can I just say that, in a few minutes, we ll be taking questions from the audience. So if you have some questions for the panelists, you want to line up at these two microphones. And I ll be taking questions in a minute, but not quite yet.

34 PAGE 34 REVEREND CIZIK: I believe, Renee, religion is the missing dimension in foreign policy. I would even go so far as to say that, because I don t believe those who crafted this war entirely understood the role of religion, that we may be in this in a way we wouldn t have been otherwise. Now am I saying, if they had understood religion, would we have not gone to war? No. Because I believe there were perceptions -- wrong, we ve discovered -- about weapons of mass destruction. Some would say the information was misused to deceive the American public about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. But whether that s the case or not, I think it s safe to say, from my perspective, that if we don t understand religion as the missing dimension, if our State Department staffers, the National Security Council, and even the United States Senators don t come to a better appreciation for the role of religion in world life, then I think we will face Huntington s conflicts of civilization for the rest of the next 100 years. Now that is an awesome thought. But I think it reflects, in my mind, how little our policymakers do understand religion. And even some of the best thinkers in Washington admit as much, that our policymakers don t get it. REVEREND LYNN: You re right. You re right. And you re right internationally and you re right nationally. I mean how many Americans, when they really think about it, would like the United States government to pass a constitutional amendment to return prayer to public schools so that their children could be praying on a random day to Allah one day, to God, Jehovah the next day, to Odin a third day? I mean this is not even sensible. But it is--

35 PAGE 35 REVEREND CIZIK: And evangelicals don t support it. I know this will come as a surprise to you, Barry. REVEREND LYNN: No, I know you don t. I know you don t. Senator Danforth never supported it either. REVEREND CIZIK: But evangelicals do not support a constitutional prayer amendment. REVEREND LYNN: But you know that it s something that, as soon as the new Congress convenes, no matter who is in charge, there will be 100 people cosponsoring such an amendment to the Constitution because they don t-- REVEREND CIZIK: That is simply patronizing to those people who happen to believe in religious freedom. REVEREND LYNN: Of course it is. REVEREND CIZIK: And, in fact, I once told the staff to George Herbert Walker Bush, I said, Don t come to the NAE and patronize us with support. Why? they asked. I said, Because, even in the early years of the Reagan Administration when the Reagan people had offered a school prayer amendment, we came back, this is amazing, as evangelicals to say, There should be no government influence