Inside PBS Blog

As part of our continuing "Five Good Questions" series, Kim Lawton, managing editor and correspondent for PBS's "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly," agreed to field questions from the PBS Engage audience. Kim is a Beltway reporting vet who's covered all the big beats, including the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court. At "R&E," she specializes in helping viewers understand the role of religion in the public square.

Her answers to five good questions are below.

Care to continue the conversation? Use the "Comments" section beneath this entry. Feel free to talk among yourselves.

Why do you think religion is so central in politics? Should it be? Joy Pavelski

Religion has been involved in American politics to one extent or another since the founding of the country. Many religious traditions teach that practitioners have a moral obligation to vote and to be involved in trying to make the world a better place. Religion deals with people's deepest-held beliefs, how they see the world, and that will inevitably affect how they see political issues too.

One activist I interviewed recently told me, "My faith influences the friends that I have, the woman that I married, it affects my decision for a career, so why wouldn't it affect how I vote?"

I think the question up for debate is not whether religion should be part of politics, but rather, how the two should interact, and what the appropriate boundaries should be. I think as a nation, we're still trying to work out the answers to that.

One attitude that I sometimes see among my journalistic colleagues is a failure to see the religious dimensions or implications of a story, and because of that, they may miss the "guts" of the story.

What the perception is in the Muslim community regarding the discussion about Barack Obama's faith? How does it feel to have "Muslim" be used as a slur? How large is that voting base? Do they feel included in the conversation? Mary L. Rothschild

Many American Muslims that I've been talking with feel very marginalized this campaign season. They are angered that Obama's political enemies keep fomenting this "whispering campaign" that the senator is really a closet Muslim. While they understand Obama's desire to set the record straight about his Christian faith, they resent the implication that being a Muslim would be a bad thing for a presidential candidate.

And they are frustrated that Obama has visited a synagogue and numerous churches during the campaign, but he has yet to visit a mosque, perhaps out of concern about how such photos would be used--and possibly abused--in the blogosphere.

At the same time, many Muslims in the U.S. have been put off by John McCain's frequent references about the need to combat what he calls "the evil of radical Islamic extremism." They feel such language plays on fears and misunderstandings about their faith.

American Muslims are still trying to develop their political clout. Community leaders have been urging voter registration and more participation in the political process. This has been happening, but Muslims don't yet have the political influence of Christian and Jewish groups.

Do you feel given your knowledge of the Rev. Wright/Obama story and past treatment of politicians with controversial pastors, that it was fair for media pundits and public opinion to force Obama to leave his church? Yevette Brown

The Wright/Obama story has been one of the most complicated and fascinating religion stories of this campaign. I think it's absolutely fair for the media to ask a candidate about his or her religious beliefs and to explore how those religious beliefs may affect their politics. In this case, Obama certainly opened the door to that when he began to speak so openly about his personal faith.

Knowing about candidates' religious associations can tell voters something about their values, how they think and what's important to them. But I don't believe individuals congregants should be held accountable for everything their clergy say and do.

The religious connections of other politicians in the past have not received the level of scrutiny that Obama and his church came under. Much of that scrutiny presented an incomplete and distorted picture of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ. But their responses didn't always help matters either.

Some people I've interviewed say that politicians deserve a "zone of religious privacy" for their personal worship. But I think we as a nation are still wrestling with what's fair game when it comes to these issues.

Polls show that Americans would rather have a gay president (not that there's anything wrong with that) than an atheist president. Yet the culture we live in is by and large a secular one that is more obsessed with "American Idol" than worshipping idols. And nobody likes the semi-theocratic administration we have now. Will we ever have an atheist president? What will we have to do to get there? A. Boyer

You're right, polls have consistently shown that Americans say they want a president with strong religious beliefs. Yet there's a lot of ambivalence in that as well. The same polls show that Americans are also uncomfortable if a politician talks too much about his or her specific religious beliefs.

People who describe themselves as atheist, secular or religiously unaffiliated are one of the fastest-growing segments of American voters. Their numbers now rival the number of evangelicals in the electorate, and their influence on electoral outcomes, party platforms, and candidate selection is growing as well.

What questions do reporters often overlook in religion reporting, and why? Joy Pavelski

Often, the devil, so to speak, is in the important details that get overlooked.

Just today, my colleagues and I were complaining about a story that described a rabbi who is running for public office. The article never said what denomination the rabbi is. Similarly, I often see people described as "Protestant" or "Christian," but what specific kind of "Protestant" they are can make a huge difference in their political and religious point of view.

Reporters can also sometimes forget that religion is not just another political movement or lobby group. It's something deeper and more transcendent than politics. Of course, religious leaders can sometimes forget that too.
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