BOB ABERNETHY (Host): Welcome. I’m Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us. Our panel of top reporters looks to the year 2012, and the top religion and ethics stories they see ahead. Kim Lawton is managing editor of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Kevin Eckstrom is the editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. And E.J. Dionne is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a professor at Georgetown University. Welcome to you all, and Happy New Year.

ALL: Happy New Year.

ABERNETHY: E.J., the Iowa caucuses take place in just a few days. What do you see there and what is the role of religious conservatives in the Republican campaign?

E.J. DIONNE (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): Well, in the Iowa Republican caucuses religious conservatives always play an important role. And what’s been striking for most of this campaign is how fragmented they’ve been. There’s been a real argument among them about who the better candidate is. There’s no national champion as we talked about last week, Mike Huckabee, four years ago really emerged as a unifying candidate for Christian conservatives. Some of that also I suspect has to do with other forces in the Republican Party. There is the Tea Party which includes a lot of evangelical Christians, one should say, but is a kind of different thrust and you have a campaign built much more around economics and the role of government than around the issues that specifically inspire religious conservatives, such as abortion and issues related to gay marriage. So I think that there is not going to be the kind of clarity about their role this time as there was four years ago.

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly): And of course, we do have two Mormon candidates and that’s still an issue. It hasn’t been front and center this time around for evangelicals as much as it was last time around but there has been talk about Mormonism is a cult or Mormons aren’t Christians and that’s a prevailing attitude among many voters which makes them maybe in a primary a little more hesitant to vote for a Mitt Romney or a Jon Huntsman. One interesting comment last time, a couple months ago, was from when Cain was getting all the support but then all the allegations starting coming forward about him and one evangelical pastor said so, our choices are we vote for a Mormon who’s had one wife, we vote for a Catholic, Newt Gingrich, who’s had several wives or we vote for an evangelical, Herman Cain, who apparently had a whole harem. So, you know, they’re not liking their choices.

DIONNE: You know what’s interesting this time compared with the last time is Mitt Romney ran into I think some real anti-Mormon prejudice the last time. The Latter Day Saints church has really made a very aggressive effort this time to kind of fight against that by explaining its faith. I was at a session that they organized by the Poytner Institute over at the Pew Forum where they were talking about here’s who we are and here’s who we’re not and I think it’s obviously very useful for the church but I actually think it’s a useful way to combat religious prejudice generally.

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor -in-Chief, Religion News Service): One of the things I’ve been struck by and may be worth watching is the difference it seems of the Mormonism between Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Everyone knows that Mitt Romney is a Mormon and an outspoken one. He was the equivalent of a church pastor for a long time. He built a temple in Boston. He’s very Mormon. Jon Huntsman is also Mormon but to a different kind of way. It’s almost like oh yeah and he’s Mormon, too. And so I think it will be interesting to watch to see if Huntsman actually goes anywhere whether or not he will face the same sort of Mormon scrutiny that Romney has.

ABERNETHY: Why should he be considered not as great a Mormon as Romney?

ECKSTROM: Well I think it’s mostly because people just don’t know much about him or don’t even know who he is. I think he’s a relative unknown. It’s not that he’s any less devout or any less of a good Mormon that Romney. But, Romney, I think took the brunt of the anti-Mormon sentiment.

DIONNE: But I also think Romney was a real leader in the church. I think that’s right. And I think this is a very important part of his identity and he’s been very clear about that.

LAWTON: And we should say too that while evangelicals in the primaries might say I don’t know if I want to vote for a Mormon, if you put a Mormon up against Barack Obama, they’re going to vote for the Mormon most likely, because there’s so much anti-Barack Obama sentiment out there within conservative voters. And so I do think that it’s more of an issue in the primaries than it would be in a general election.

ABERNETHY: Has there emerged yet what looks like a great underlying theme for the election of 2012? Is it going to be jobs? Is it going to be the role of government? What do you see?

DIONNE: Well, the economy is always an issue in American elections. And when the unemployment rate is this high and when you’ve gone through such a terrible economic time since 2008, since the crash of 2008, it’s inevitable that the economy is a central issue. But I thought one of the most interesting events of the year in terms of speeches that politicians give was Barack Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, where Teddy Roosevelt, a hundred and one years ago, gave his New Nationalism speech which set him up for his run as a progressive third party candidate in 1912. And I think Obama was really sending a signal there that he wants this election not just to be a referendum on the past and he has some interest in that because the economy is still, even if it improves, is going to be less than people want. But he wants it to be about the future and about the role of government in the economy, what should government do to make opportunity available to the middle class? What should the rules of the economy be? And I think that, I happen to like the speech, whether you like the speech or not, I think it set a really interesting framework for the election because the Republicans in this election will clearly but running as much more pure free market candidates without government interference, lower taxes, less regulation. I think there could be a clarity to this campaign and to the argument that we haven’t seen in a long time.

LAWTON: And religious groups have been involved in these economic debates and in the economic campaigning, political campaigning, as well, on both sides, which makes it interesting to have that moral injection on both ends of the debate and so you have people from a more moderate, more liberal standpoint talking about the immorality of hurting people who are already vulnerable, cutting programs that would hurt the poor, cutting programs for foreign aid and so there’s been a lot of concern about that which is translating into politics. But you also have it in the conservative side. It’s immoral to leave a lot of debt to our children. A lot of that kind of language and that is seeping into the campaigning as well.

ABERNETHY: It’s interesting that, E.J., maybe you can note this. It’s not winner take all, is it, this year? Is it? Can’t you come in second and still have a lot of delegates and be influential at the convention?

DIONNE: Historically, Democrats got rid of winner take all which is one of the reasons why the ’08 race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton went on so long. Republicans have, at the front end, have tended to get rid of winner take all though there is some of it still at the back end of this process. But it could mean that the Republican race will last longer this time.

LAWTON: Or never end.

DIONNE: Yes, or maybe never end. I mean it’s the first time I’ve heard talk of a brokered convention which journalists love because that would be fun but it never happens. And I still don’t think it will happen.

ABERNETHY: I wanted to ask you about that.

DIONNE: If no one gets a clear majority, in other words, if there were at least three candidates with significant blocks of delegates, I still don’t think it will happen, but it’s more plausible it seems, at this moment, more plausible than it’s been in a long time.

ABERNETHY: What about somebody being nominated who is not now running?

DIONNE: Well, there are a lot of Republicans who long for that. I have been very struck by some of my conservative friends who are genuinely unhappy with the make-up of this field. And, I’ve been reminding people, maybe just showing that I’m getting older, there was a write-in campaign for Henry Calbot Lodge that carried the New Hampshire primary way back in 1964. And you wonder if something like that will happen. Again, still unlikely but this has been such a strange contest I don’t rule anything out anymore.

LAWTON: And I’m going to be watching too, on the other side, the Democratic side, how President Obama is going to reach out to people of faith. That was a huge issue in the 2008 election. President Obama had mounted a campaign of faith-based outreach, unprecedented for a Democratic candidate in a really long time. And, you know, is he going to continue that? Is that going to be as robust? And how are people of faith feeling about him? And I know you’ve also looked at the fact that there is some dissatisfaction with him.

ECKSTROM: Right, both on, obviously on the right, but also on the left. There’s a lot of progressives who saw him as the knight in shining armor who was going to come in and right all the ills of the world and obviously that hasn’t happened. And so I think the President’s biggest challenge is, when it comes to religion, is not speaking in Catholic terms, or Jewish terms, or mainline Protestant terms or anything like that, but is getting anybody out to vote for him. I mean, getting his base and getting just any of his supporters, whatever faith they may be, getting them motivated enough to go out and vote for him.

DIONNE: And I think you saw in 2010 that Democrats on the progressive side really fell down in terms of their organizing among religious people compared to what they did in 2008. And they have some ground to make up now.

ABERNETHY: What about gridlock in Washington? Is there any possibility, any even remote possibility, that in this election year coming up there will be any change in that?

DIONNE: Do you believe in miracles?

LAWTON: This is a religion show.

DIONNE: It is a religion show.

ABERNETHY: But look, there is a new poll, Pew poll, I think, that says there’s the greatest disapproval of Congress now that there has ever been in the past. So where does that lead? How does that affect the election?

DIONNE: First of all, those of us who are journalists can be grateful to Congress because somebody can poll lower than we do. I mean, my sense is that the only way you really could see some systematic breaking down of the gridlock is if it looks like President Obama is going to win the election, in other words, if by the middle of the year, he got what looked like a reasonably big lead a lot of the Republicans in Congress who have wanted to block his programs say wait a minute. He’s going to win. We’ve got to get reelected. We’ve got to start working with him. That happened with Bill Clinton in 1996 where the gridlock broke up. If, on the other hand, the election continues to look competitive in the middle of the year, as if you were to place a bet, that’s probably where you would place it, then I’m not sure there’s a lot of political interest on either side in sort of making concessions. I think they will fight it through to the end and then see what happens.

ABERNETHY: What do you imagine the future to be for the Occupy movement?

ECKSTROM: Well it will be interesting a, whether they can make it through the winter. It’s cold out there. But then b, sort of what do they become? One of the big sort of criticisms of this movement has been that nobody quite knows exactly what they want or what they stand for or what they’re even demanding. And so I think the big challenge for them in 2012 is going to be saying OK this is what we need to happen. It’s an election year, there’s a lot of people paying attention, so they probably have a better chance than not. But, the questions that they raise, the moral questions about fairness and equity and corporate responsibility, those aren’t going away, whether or not the movement is able to harness that into something kind of tangible, I think, is still a little unclear.

ABERNETHY: It’s been seen as very secular movement even though religious people have helped it in many ways.

LAWTON: Well, that’s what I want to watch. That’s exactly what I want to watch. Because it does have this perception that it’s a bunch of you know secular, I don’t know, unemployed people hanging around but there’s a strong religious current in it. And that was growing toward the end of 2011 and so you saw African American clergy getting involved, wanting to liken it to the Civil Rights Movement. You had a lot of mainline Protestant, Catholic, other church leaders providing support on the edges. Some of them told me that they didn’t want to be too out front, they didn’t want to look like they were high jacking the movement, but they are there and how is that going to affect what they do, what the rhetoric is, and is that going to continue.

ECKSTROM: It’s also worth noting that one of the most iconic images from this movement was when they paraded around a golden calf, modeled on the bull of Wall Street. When the marched that around lower Manhattan and here in Washington, D.C. That’s clearly a Biblical image so it’s not a completely secular kind of loosey goosey movement.

DIONNE: God and mammon is a rather old theme.

ABERNETHY: What about the extremely interesting cases that are going to be coming down from the Supreme Court, beginning with Obama’s healthcare? The Supreme Court’s going to hear that case and hand down a decision about it right in the middle of the election campaign.

DIONNE: And there’s some much speculation about how a court that often goes five to four in a conservative direction but doesn’t always go five to four in a conservative direction will rule. And, some of the judges in the circuit court who have upheld the healthcare plan have been conservatives and they were, in some ways, you felt they were writing to justices like Scalia and Thomas and Roberts and Alito and saying wait a minute it would not be conservative to overthrow this law. Then the other debate is which way would Republicans or President Obama be better off? Would it be a stinging defeat for Obama and therefore hurt him or would it take this issue off the table or even allow him to go on the offensive and say well we do need a national healthcare plan again so it is going to be an extraordinary day when the court rules on that.

ABERNETHY: Are religious groups involved in that, have they got appeals going for them?

ECKSTROM: Quite a few, especially from the conservative side. One of the first, original challenges to this healthcare law came out of Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell. But there’s a lot of conservatives who, not only for their conservative political ideology, but their religious ideology, don’t like the idea of the government telling them you have to have insurance. And, that’s really what the fight is over is the mandate to purchase individual health insurance or pay a fine. So there’s a lot of conservative groups who are against it. But there’s also a lot of progressive groups who are very much in favor of this, in fact don’t think it went far enough. The interesting group to watch is actually going to be the Catholic bishops because the bishops fought tooth and nail over provisions of this law but then after it was passed and signed into law they said well, we’re not going to fight to remove it.

DIONNE: And then you also have the Catholic Health Association which runs a very large share of hospitals in the United States, a minority, but they have a vast system and there other religious hospitals, religiously sort of affiliated hospitals, in the country who in general supported the healthcare reform because it would expand coverage of poorer Americans, working class Americans, who use their facilities.

LAWTON: But, one of the more contentious parts of that, sort of a lesser aspect, was coverage of contraception. And the Catholic Church was very concerned about being forced to cover things they don’t agree with, such as contraception. And so, that was a battle that’s still going to be played out on some of the local levels.

ABERNETHY: The Supreme Court is also going to consider and hand down an opinion, presumably, about immigration.

LAWTON: Well this has been a really difficult issue, especially for a lot of people in the religious community. A lot of people of faith have been actively helping immigrants and some of the laws, the Arizona law is going to be up before the Supreme Court, there was also a law in Alabama that a lot of religious groups were involved in. And people of faith are helping immigrants, they don’t want it to be criminalized to help immigrants, they are also don’t want the people that they are trying to help be considered criminals. I am interested that even evangelicals seem a little divided on this issue. Technically they tend to me more law and order people and therefore against loosening up on immigration. On the other hand, you have a lot of evangelical congregations that are seeing an influx of Latinos in the pews. And, so it’s a personal issue for a lot of these people. And you know, the kids in the youth group might be, their parents might be undocumented. So you’re seeing some wiggle room in the religious community.

DIONNE: Latinos, immigrants, illegal as well as legal, are among the most vibrant parts of both the evangelical world and the Catholic world. And I think you, the truth of the matter is a lot of the churches are in competition with each other to try to win the allegiance of Latinos which I think helps explain why a lot of Christian groups, regardless of their views on other matters, have tended to be more open to immigrants cause these are the people in their congregations.

ECKSTROM: And speaking of courts, another case to watch, it’s not at the Supreme Court level just yet, but the Prop 8 battle in California. In 2008, voters passed basically an end to same-sex marriage and it’s gone through the courts so far. Federal court has ruled against Proposition 8, saying that it’s unconstitutional. Now it’s going to the federal appeals court and regardless of what the federal appeals court decides, which could very well come in 2012, it’s probably going to go to the Supreme Court very soon after so this is going to be a crucial decision to watch for where that debate’s going to go.

LAWTON: And speaking of gay issues, we have in 2012 a couple of mainline Protestant denominations that are going to be meeting and this has been a tough issue for them and it’s going to continue to be tough in 2012. The United Methodists will be meeting and one of the issues before them is going to be can they marry, can their clergy marry same-sex couples in the states where that is legal. They can’t do that right now. There has been a group of retired United Methodist ministers that is doing that because active ministers could face penalties or the possibility of being defrocked. And, so that’s going to be up for grabs. In the Episcopal Church, you still see this slow breaking apart in the whole worldwide Anglican Communion over some of these issues, interpretation of scripture, and there are a lot of court battles and individual congregational battles going on there too.

ABERNETHY: And E.J., the Pope is scheduled to go to Mexico and to Cuba.

DIONNE: You know, the Vatican’s relationship with Cuba has been fascinating. I happen to be in Rome when Pope John Paul’s trip to Cuba was announced and there have been some interesting differences of opinion. The Vatican has tended to be in favor of a gradual, peaceful transition from the Castro regime. And the fact that the Pope is willing to go there speaks to this desire for a gradual change. Some of the Cuban community in the United States, the Catholic Cuban community one should say, are very uneasy about this. They would like a sort of harder push to get that regime out. So there have been some arguments over the years between our Cuban community, particularly in South Florida, and the Vatican. It will be fascinating to see how exactly, what Pope Benedict says about alterations in that regime and religious freedom. Castro himself, is a dictator, he also has had this kind of lifelong fascination with religion. He seems to be an atheist “but”. Maybe the “but”’s getting bigger as the years go by.

ABERNETHY: Folks, our time is almost up and in the couple minutes remaining I want to ask you, in addition to what we’ve just been talking about, what else are you watching? What are you really keeping an eye on that you think is going to be happening in 2012?

DIONNE: Well I’m looking in the campaign, I think it could be a very good campaign or a really terrible campaign. The good campaign, as I said, is because the parties will probably be as philosophically divided as they have been since 1964. We could have a really fundamental debate where we decide on a direction for the country for some time ahead and that could be a great thing. I also worry that with all of this advertising, the money that can be spent by outside groups because of the Citizens United decision, we may have more outright lying on the air and I know a lot of people think well campaigns are full of lies. It could be much much worse this year and I am very worried about what that’s going to do to us and what it might, how people will feel about this process at the end.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, are you looking at anything that might be a little brighter than more lies?

ECKSTROM: Well, actually I was going to say the end of the world because in 2011, Harold Camping famously said that the world was going to end on May 21st and then it was October 21st. It didn’t happen. 2012 apparently is supposed to be the year that the world will end according to the Mayan calendar so I don’t expect it to happen.

ABERNETHY: Mayan?

ECKSTROM: Yes, the ancient Mayan calendar. So, a lot of people are wondering if that’s actually going to happen. I don’t think it will but doomsday stories are always fun.

DIONNE: That’s the boldest prediction I’ve ever heard on this show.

ECKSTROM: That’s right.

ABERNETHY: Kim?

LAWTON: Well, I’ll take it back to a more serious note, hopefully, I don’t know. That was pretty serious. Another case before the Supreme Court is a church state case that looks at who gets to define who is a minister. Does a congregation get to decide who their ministers are? Or does the government have an input? And this makes a difference when you talk about clashes between religious beliefs and civil rights law. So, for example, if you are a congregation that believes only in a female pastor does that violate gender, anti-gender discrimination laws? And so, there’s been a lot of differing opinions in the court and how broadly does the definition of minister go. If you perform ministry in the church by running the screen in the front, does that make you a minister? If you are the janitor, some people say that’s a ministry, does that make you a minister? And what was really surprising to a lot of religious groups was that the Obama administration argued that there should be no exceptions. That religious groups should not be exempted from these civil rights laws and that had a lot of religious groups upset so I’m going to be watching that and especially the reaction to that decision.

ABERNETHY: Our time is almost up. Is up now. Thanks to Kevin Eckstrom, to E.J. Dionne and to Kim Lawton. Happy New Year to you all and to all our viewers. I’m Bob Abernethy.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: During this week’s debate, Mitt Romney said voters should not select candidates on the basis of their faith.

MITT ROMNEY (Presidential Candidate): That idea, that we choose people based upon their religion for public office, is what I find to be most troubling, because the founders of this country went to great length to make sure, and even put it in the Constitution, that we would not choose people who represent us in government based upon their religion.

LAWTON: Romney was responding to recent remarks by Dallas evangelical megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who told reporters he believed that Romney, as a Mormon, is part of a “theological cult” that is not Christian. At the Values Voter Summit earlier this month, Jeffress introduced Rick Perry, referring to his evangelical faith.

REV. ROBERT JEFFRESS (First Baptist Church of Dallas): Do we want a candidate who is a good moral person, or do we want a candidate who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ?

LAWTON: Jeffress’ comments stirred controversy, even among other religious conservatives.

WILLIAM BENNETT (Conservative Commentator): Pastor Jeffress, do not give voice to bigotry. Do not give voice to bigotry.

LAWTON: Romney’s Mormon faith was also an issue in the last presidential campaign, prompting his 2007 speech saying that while he will be true to his beliefs, they would not dictate his presidency. It’s an issue of particular concern to many evangelical voters. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, almost 60 percent of white evangelicals believe that Mormonism is not a Christian religion. Although Romney does have some high-profile evangelical supporters, it appears he still hasn’t caught on at the evangelical grassroots. But neither has Perry, who has been openly touting his evangelical faith, so much so that Perry’s wife told supporters she feels he’s come under unfair attack because of his beliefs. Meanwhile, Herman Cain, who describes himself as a conservative Christian, is also making a play for evangelical voters with several recent faith-based stops, including a book signing at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.

Evangelicals are a key GOP constituency, especially in the primary season. In 2008, 44 percent of all Republican presidential primary voters were self-identified evangelicals, with even higher percentages in several early voting states. This time around, evangelicals are still undecided. At the Values Voter Summit, Ron Paul won the straw poll, followed by Cain and Rick Santorum. Perry and Michele Bachmann tied for fourth. Romney came in sixth.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

The striking thing about 9/11 was the sense of unity it produced. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Americans were united. We had the sense that we had all been attacked, that we were all in this together, and that we all knew what we were defending.

References to Pearl Harbor sprang readily to mind. This would be our moment to stand up and stand together, the way our parents and grandparents had come together to defend freedom in the middle of the last century. And because we knew that the values of democracy, and liberty, and personal choice that we were defending are universal human aspirations, we were confident that the rest of the world would stand with us.

At least that was how it seemed at the time. The striking thing, ten years later, is the polarization of our domestic politics and the fragmentation of our global alliances. The historical analogies that now seem most appropriate come not from our times of national unity, but from the decades when we were most divided against ourselves. The news as I hear it from Washington almost every day does not remind me of the “greatest generation” or even of the crusading years of the Cold War. For someone who reads a lot of history, the news from Washington recalls the bitter ideological divisions that gridlocked our national government in the decades before the Civil War. The economic news of the day reminds me of the conflicts of race, class, and ethnicity that marked the end of the Gilded Age.

What went wrong? I think that where we find ourselves today reflects a lack of moral and political realism in our adjustment to the world after 9/11. Our immediate reactions were unifying and effective, but our long-term response has often been dysfunctional.

In some respects, this lack of realism after 9/11 was merely a continuation of the unrealistic way that we were relating to the world before 9/11. Ten years and one day ago, we were still celebrating the tenth anniversary of the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era of prosperity and global democracy. No one imagined that global capitalism would diminish America’s power in the global economy, rather than expand it; and nobody seemed to be thinking that the end of superpower rivalry might unleash new kinds of threats that had been kept in check by the superpowers trying to watch their own backs. Afghanistan became a terrorist haven because of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and 9/11 happened in part at least because we weren’t being sufficiently realistic about the new world situation to see that problem coming.

So we weren’t being realistic about the new global realities before 9/11. We tend to talk about 9/11 as “the day everything changed.” And so it did, in many individual lives and in some ways in our politics as a whole. But that simple phrase that we have heard so often this week slogan masks a more complex reality. William Dobson wrote an essay in Foreign Policy a few years back that he titled, “The day that nothing much changed.” That’s too simple, too; but what Dobson was trying to point out is that the changes that we began to take seriously on 9/11 had begun at least a decade earlier, and we had not begun to think about how the world would be different over the long run because of them.

We still haven’t done that.

Immediately, we responded well to the crisis, and many of the remembrances on this 10th anniversary reflect a kind of nostalgia for the unity, effectiveness, and courage of those first responses. But just as a political realist knows that history does not end, a moral realist has to recognize that courage keeps fear in check. It does not eliminate it. And an effective response does not mean that all of our problems are solved. It means we have gained some breathing space to figure out what the next problem is going to be.

There was courage and unity after 9/11, but there was also fear and suspicion. Fears provoked by the background of the hijackers spilled over into ethnic profiling and helped to fuel a general antagonism toward immigrants. Fear also gave rise to aggressive expressions of Christian nationalism. It was confusing to watch military operations targeted against a terrorist network and its individual leaders, rather than against another state. We were not sure who the enemy was or how we would know when the war was finished, and the early assurances that this was not a war against Islam did not always hold up against the crusading rhetoric that takes over precisely when we are not quite sure what we are doing. We have decided that we like these ultimate choices between good and evil, God and the devil, because they spare us the trouble of understanding the ambiguous realities and interim choices that will have to be made on the way to a different kind of world order than we had before 9/11, and, more importantly, before 1989.

We are still waiting for a strategic vision that can guide us in a multipolar world where states are not the only actors, and where religion and business seem to be competing to determine which of them will fill the vacuum created by the diminished powers of government.

Business and religion each claim a comprehensive solution to the disputes that split communities and set political parties against one another. Business insists that the market can best allocate resources and, over the long run, do the most to increase our wealth, so we should all agree, whatever our individual preferences might be, to live by the judgments of the market. Religion, at least some versions of religion, insists that it has a way of life that transcends cultural change and moral uncertainty, so we should all agree, whatever our individual preferences might be, to live by the judgments of God. Both Islamic and Western religious movements, usually characterized as “fundamentalist,” insist that market forces and the desires they create must not be allowed to shape the lives of the faithful. And business around the world insists that religion must not interfere with freedom, meaning especially the freedom of people to desire what business has to sell and the freedom of business to sell it.

Meanwhile, the wider public, unpersuaded by either religious or economic fundamentalists, is like an individual suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. We are unable to return to the old world we thought we understood, but we cannot tolerate the noise and uncertainty of the new world, either. There are no quick solutions to these problems, and certainly no simple ones. But the future of freedom may depend on whether a traumatized American public can tolerate a higher level of ambiguity, a world of interim solutions and recurrent problems where nothing is as black and white or as red, white, and blue as we would like it to be.

Robin Lovin is the Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: All week, financial experts in and out of Washington warned of the catastrophic consequences if Congress does not raise the country’s debt ceiling by August 2. After that deadline, the government would not be able to pay all its obligations for the first time in history. Officials warned that that could trigger financial chaos and vast hardship. By week’s end, there were signs of a temporary fix to the debt ceiling problem, but no agreement on a long-term deal on spending and taxes, which many had wanted, including the president.

President Obama: And I think it’s important for the American people that everybody in this town set politics aside, that everybody in this town sets our individual interests aside, and we try to do some tough stuff.

ABERNETHY: In the midst of the financial debate, where are the churches? Can religious leaders influence the politicians? Author and activist Reverend Jim Wallis is the editor of Sojourners magazine. His is a leading religious voice in political debate. Jim, welcome.

JIM WALLIS (President, Sojourners): Thanks, Bob.

ABERNETHY: There are two big questions that people have been arguing about in this town. One is the debt ceiling. The other is long-term. The debt ceiling is something has to be done now, but long term, how do we bring the country’s spending and taxes in line? You’ve been working very hard lobbying to protect government programs that help the poor. How are you doing?

WALLIS: Well, I think I’m happy with what we’ve seen so far. We started with a provocative question: What would Jesus cut? That got attention to the question. Then we fasted for almost a month in Lent. That brought more attention to it. Then we formed a “circle of protection”: Roman Catholic bishops, Salvation Army, National Association of Evangelicals, many people, not the religious left here, almost everyone saying that you can’t balance the budget on the backs of the poorest people. And I think that voice is now being heard. We’ve talked to Republicans, Democrats, and the White House right along on this.

ABERNETHY: You are trying, I think, to get a meeting with a lot of the players in this?

WALLIS: We have been meeting right along.

ABERNETHY: Well, what do you say to them?

WALLIS: We say, you know, there are principles here, that a budget is a moral document and must be evaluated by those from the bottom up. That’s our point of view. And the common good has to outweigh ideological political battles in this town. But we also ask them what their faith means. If they are people of faith, and many say they are, what their faith means, their moral compass, how they decide things.

ABERNETHY: You take that argument, what does your faith mean, to Republicans in the House who insist on no compromise?

WALLIS: We sure do. The Catholics, evangelicals, Republican side, Democratic side. Now we don’t get involved, Bob, in which bill we are going to support. We don’t lobby for bills. But we say there are principles here. You can’t just have the benefits all go to corporations and wealthy people and nothing for those who are most vulnerable.

ABERNETHY: But the common good. This idea of the common good, very important in religious and ethics. How do you define it, and who says what the common good is?

WALLIS: Well, this week we’ve organized 5,000 pastors to say let’s look at the real people in our congregations and our communities, what’s going to happen to them, as opposed to the Washington, D.C. question, who’s up, who’s down, who’s going to be the Speaker of the House next time, who’ll win the next election. The common good is about the real people, the people we have to always take into account. And pastors, I think, I wanted to talk to people whose job it is to have re-read the Bible to get to the focus on who the real people are here.

ABERNETHY: But this argument about how to cut spending, what could be cut, how to raise income, this is a very technical, very political argument. How do people, how do religious leaders feel? Do you feel that you have the ability to get in and be influential in something as technical as this debate?

WALLIS: You know, the details are technical and not difficult, really. Once you agree to some principles, the details can be worked out by the politicians. We say “let justice roll down like waters.” Let the politicians work out the plumbing here. You know, we don’t get into all the details. We’re saying there are principles here. If this is going to focus on targeting poor people, we say that’s wrong. It’s got to be shared sacrifice here. How you do it, this really isn’t rocket science. We could solve this if the principles were clear from the start.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine.

WALLIS: Thank you, Bob.

KIM LAWTON: Faith-based groups stepped up lobbying efforts as Congress continues to battle over potential budget cuts. Religious conservatives maintain that addressing the government’s massive debt is a moral issue. Meanwhile, a diverse interfaith coalition urged members of Congress to consider how cuts would hurt poor people in the US and around the world. As part of that effort, several prominent Christian leaders launched a new ad campaign asking “what would Jesus cut?”

Joining me with more on this is Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service. Kevin, there’s been a huge mobilization, it seems, from many quarters of the religious community on these budget issues.

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): Right and you’re seeing it from both the left and the right. From the left, the more progressive side, you see traditional lobbying to keep programs like home heating assistance and school lunches and aid for, you know, women and children, sort of your bread and butter domestic issues. On the right, you’re seeing a lot of action to try to protect the international development assistance, money to buy mosquito nets to prevent malaria and to fight AIDS in Africa, and food for the hungry and refugees and things like that. So you’ve got various groups lobbying for various issues, each hoping that their preferred pot makes the cut.

LAWTON: And a lot of those folks, both on the left and the right, are using moral language and scriptural language, saying, you know, the Bible urges people to care, look out for the vulnerable, the widows, the orphans, and the least of these, and so you are seeing this sort of biblical language.

Watch evangelical author and activist Jim Wallis on budget cuts, debt, deficits, and economic priorities

ECKSTROM: Right, and it’s biblical language on both sides. The more traditional churches, Catholic bishops and your mainline churches and your Jewish groups are saying, you know, we have a biblical and ethical, moral obligation to care for people who can’t help themselves. On the other side, from the more conservative side, especially from the Tea Party, you have arguments saying that it’s actually immoral to leave debt to future generations. And they sometimes chafe at the notion of, you know, what would Jesus cut? They say, well, Jesus didn’t have opinions on this, you know, that it’s up to us to sort of make the decisions on what to cut. But you get various moral arguments from both sides, and we’re just waiting to see who wins the day.

LAWTON: Well, I was at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention this week, and one of their keynote speakers was House Speaker John Boehner, Catholic, who used a lot of biblical language in his speech. He had a very receptive, mostly evangelical audience, and he quoted Scripture. He quoted from Proverbs, “A good man leaves behind an inheritance to his children’s children,” and he said Republicans want to not just be hearers of the word, but doers of the word, another scriptural reference there. And, you know, I found that very interesting, that you had the congressional leadership on the right also trying to seize the biblical and moral language on all of this.

ECKSTROM: Yeah, and it’s going on on both sides in sort of different directions, even I think one of the more interesting splits has been within the evangelical community, where you have sort of small-government evangelicals who want to cut, you know—we need to balance the budget, we can’t have this debt. And then you have another portion of the evangelicals who say, well, we can—government can do good things, and government can make a difference in parts of the world where we have interests, and it’s not just moral interests, it’s strategic interests, and so let’s protect the programs that actually work. Let’s not cut from AIDS funding, for example, which President Bush poured a lot of money into. So you get this interesting divide within especially the conservative religious community over their political loyalties and sort of their religious underpinnings.

LAWTON: And some of those moral arguments I’ve been hearing—I’m sorry, the pragmatic arguments I’ve been hearing, in additional to the moral ones, are that it’s in America’s national security, that folks around the world who have food and a decent job and a place to live and have a good, stable social situation are less likely to be recruited by terrorists. Or they also just say America’s reputation as well. I know when I was in Sri Lanka after the tsunami and the US poured in so much help, or Haiti—US poured in so much help. That really want a long way to improving America’s image around the world.

ECKSTROM: Right, I mean, you’ve been to all these places, you can see the difference that it makes when you’ve got these bags of rice that come in with the American flag on it and people look at that and they see us as a good country. But there are sort of national security arguments to be made and think they are fairly effective, that people who are fed, who have good schools, and who don’t have to worry about what they are going to eat that night are less likely to be recruited into extremism.

LAWTON: And we’ll both be watching in the weeks to come. Thank you, Kevin.

ECKSTROM: Thanks.

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Can Islam make its peace with modernity and democracy? We highlight from the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly archive some comments over the years from scholars and experts on the compatibility of democratic values and Islam:

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic studies, George Washington University:

The Muslim people do not like freedom and democracy any less than anybody else. It is in the nature of human beings to like freedom. The problem is sometimes these terms are defined exclusively upon the basis of the Western experience, which is culturally bound and has taken many historical transformations to become what it is. The question isn’t whether Islam can live with modernism. There’s a much more profound battle afoot. It isn’t that modernism has won the day and now everybody has to conform to it. Modernism itself is floundering. Islam as a value system, not only as a religion, has to be thought about as a contending way of looking at the universe. Islam can live with modernism on a practical level. But there has to be an intellectual exchange. The idea that modernism is reality and everything else has to conform to it—that has to be challenged.

Karen Armstrong, author of Islam: A Short History:

Muslims have to modernize their societies, and they’ve only just begun. It’s a long, painful, difficult process. They are having to do it far too quickly, and they are experiencing many of the same traumas we did in Europe: wars of religion, revolutions, reigns of terror, exploitation of women and children, despotisms, basic alienation and anomie as conditions change and nothing new takes their place. We are watching people in some parts of the Islamic world going through a process that we went through ourselves but have forgotten. We think that anybody can just create a democracy in no time at all, forgetting that it took us hundreds of years to develop our secular and democratic institutions.

Omid Safi, professor of religious studies, University of North Carolina:

The Qur’an is clearly not a political constitution as we understand the term today. Nonetheless, it envisions a society devoted to justice for all and to aiding the oppressed in light of a collective responsibility before God. Historically, Muslims have relied on monarchies (whether in secular sultanates or religious caliphates) that have been open to abuses of power. Today Muslims are seeking newer models of government that offer the greatest possibility of self-determination and living a life free from injustice. The question for any society trying to reconcile religion and liberal democracy is whether it will ensure for women and religious minorities the same civil liberties it would mandate for its own male members. This is not an abstract, theoretical question for Muslims. It is timely and urgent, and it will need to be answered in the affirmative.

Roy Mottahedeh, professor of Islamic history, Harvard University:

What is the place of Islam in the travails the world is going through? Sometimes I’m inclined to agree with a sentence Mary McCarthy wrote in her Memories of a Catholic Girlhood—that religion makes good people better and bad people worse. Perhaps religion has added intensity to many of the struggles that are going on, but I don’t believe the actual struggles are primarily caused by religion. They have all almost naturally attained a religious flavor because the majority of the world’s people are now engaging in some way in politics, and their identity is more religious than nationalistic. It is popular to say that the Muslim world has not had a reformation, which is not quite correct. Some forms of Islam are very Protestant in character. Some are more Catholic in character. But Islam has not seen the elements of Enlightenment that passed from the West into the Muslim world fully absorbed into religious learning. That’s a revolution that is taking place now. It’s a gradual revolution, but I have no doubt that, 25 years from now, it will be a revolution that is largely accomplished.

Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle East politics and international relations, London School of Economics:

The genius of the West lies in sustaining an open society with constitutional checks and balances that protect individual rights, freedoms, and obligations. But the Enlightenment was not a coincidence. It occurred as a result of trade and cross-fertilization of cultures, particularly with the world of Islam. History shows that Islam’s decentralized institutions carry within them the seeds of democracy. The challenge is to rejuvenate Islam’s previous forms of local autonomy and decentralized authority—to limit the reach of the tyrannical state, empower the individual, and free the creative spirit. This ambitious project requires cross-cultural fertilization and receptiveness to universal currents.

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