BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome, I’m Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us. Today, a special report on the events and issues we see ahead in 2011. We do this with the help of Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, the Washington Post, and Georgetown University. Before we begin our discussion, as we close out the first decade of the new millennium we remember some of the stories that set the stage for the news we expect to cover in 2011 and beyond. Our managing editor Kim Lawton took a look back at the events of the last decade.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were perhaps the defining moment of the decade, and the repercussions are still being felt on many fronts. In the wake of the tragedy, mainstream Muslim leaders tried to spread a message that Islam is not synonymous with terrorism. But those efforts were complicated by an expanding extremist movement that recruits over the Internet, as well as several high-profile arrests of Muslims plotting more attacks. American Muslims worked to define their place in US society, but many felt unfairly targeted by enhanced security measures and what they saw as a rising tide of Islamophobia. President Obama made improving relations with the Muslim world one of the priorities of his new administration.

The 9/11 attacks led to American involvement in long and difficult wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Religious and ethical leaders debated whether each conflict was just. President George W. Bush argued for a doctrine of preventive war, the idea that it was moral to attack a country to prevent it from attacking us first. The ethical debates intensified with revelations that the US was using torture as a means of getting information. After thousands of deaths of troops and civilians, President Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq and the intention to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan.

Economic crises dominated much of the end of the decade as recession, unemployment and foreclosures took a toll on faith-based groups and the people they serve. Religious institutions were forced to slash their budgets and lay off staff even as they were asked to do more to help needy people.

Religion continued to be a potent force in politics. In 2000 and 2004, President Bush rallied religious conservatives. He set up a new White House office to expand government partnerships with faith-based social service organizations. Analysts spoke of a God gap, with voters seeing the Democratic Party as unfriendly toward religion. In the run-up to the 2008 elections, Democrats and the Obama campaign developed an unprecedented outreach to compete for religious votes. Many in that faith coalition were disappointed the Democrats didn’t build on the momentum in the 2010 midterm elections. Meanwhile, religious conservatives were energized by the Tea Party movement and vowed new activism leading up to the 2012 elections. Religious groups across the spectrum were involved in policy debates, from health care to immigration and gay marriage.

Issues surrounding homosexuality provoked bitter debates within religious institutions and American society as a whole. The 2003 election of Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the US Episcopal Church brought the worldwide Anglican Communion to the brink of schism, even as other denominations continue to debate the role of gay clergy. In 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, with four other states and the District of Columbia following suit. The issue continues to work its way through the courts.

For the Roman Catholic Church, a dramatic changing of the guard with the 2005 death of John Paul II, who had been pope for more than 25 years, and the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. For the US Catholic Church, much of the decade was focused on addressing a massive clergy sex abuse crisis, enacting new guidelines to prevent abuse, and confronting litigation that saw more than two billion dollars in payouts to victims. In 2010, the clergy abuse scandal exploded across many parts of Europe and posed new challenges to the Vatican and top church leaders.

The new millennium began with a sense of relief that a predicted Y2K computer meltdown never materialized. It ends with the development of social media like Facebook and Twitter offering new online possibilities for personal connection and outreach, enabling information to be disseminated at lightning speed—both for good and for ill.

ABERNETHY: Kim, many thanks for that. Welcome to you, to Kevin Eckstrom, and to E.J. Dionne. E.J., we have a new Congress, Republican control of the House, more Republican votes in the Senate. Walk us through that a little bit. What do you expect that will mean for some of the social issues that are of most concern to religious communities?

EJ DIONNE (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): You know, watching Kim’s set-up piece I was thinking of Yogi Berra’s great line: ‘Predictions are hard, especially when they’re about the future.” And who would have imagined a decade unfolding the way this last decade just unfolded? So I think we’re all in a difficult situation here. I think when you look forward to this Congress, so much of it is not going to be about social issues. The last Democratic Congress kind of acted to get some of those out of the way, notably don’t ask don’t tell. I think they really wanted that through because they knew it was going to be very difficult this time over. You may have some debate about abortion around the healthcare bill. Republicans want to repeal it. I don’t think they’ll be able to but they going to have a variety of ways of trying to hem in President Obama in sort of putting it into effect. So I think you may see it there. I think one of the sleeper issues will be fights we might have around the National Endowment of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, where you have, if nothing else for purely political reasons it’s a question where conservatives can talk about it as an economic issue: should we be spending the money? But there are always issues related to cultural values that get into those debates. So I suspect you are going to see some of those arguments around the humanities and arts endowments. Personally, I hope it doesn’t happen that way, but I think that is going to happen.

ABERNETHY: How about immigration?

LAWTON: Well, I was going to say that I am going to be watching to see how some of the evangelical political activists maneuver with the Tea Party politicians that got elected. You know, in this last election there was so much talk about how the Tea Party was so ascendant and there were a lot of religious conservatives that were supportive of the Tea Party. But when you get to issues like immigration or some of the other issues involving a social safety net for the poor, evangelicals don’t always line up as economic conservatives. And so while they might be hoping for some action on abortion or maybe even some of the gay marriage type issues—I don’t know that that’s going to come up in Congress, but I’m going to be watching some of the economic issues that do have some moral implications to see how much evangelicals, and some Catholics who were supportive of the Tea Party—where they come down.

ECKSTROM (Editor, Religious New Service): Right, and there are a lot of moral issues that a lot of religious groups care about. And so I think what you’re going to have is maybe a different set than what we’ve seen in the last couple years. Whereas under the Democratic Congress we were talking about moral issues like the environment and the minimum wage increase and things like that, you’re probably not going to see as much of that with a Republican House. Instead, you’ll have issues that maybe more conservatives tend to latch on to. But it’s not that these social issues are going to disappear, it’s just that there are going to be a different set of them.

DIONNE: That’s a good point, because you are going to talking more and more about budget deficits and cuts in government programs, and I think it’s going to be fascinating to see how religious groups that sometimes seem to be aligned with conservatives on some of the cultural questions are actually going to be saying no, you can’t cut this program for the poor or that program for the poor, because there are a lot of Catholics, a lot of evangelicals, and many in the rest of the religious community—mainline Protestants, Jews, Muslims—who really want to protect some of those programs. So I think their voices are actually going to be very important at a time of budget stress.

ECKSTROM: And one issue I think that’s worth watching that we’ve already seen indications of is that House Republicans want to hold hearings on American Muslims and the radicalization of American Muslims – sort of home-grown terror threats – and what’s going wrong within American Islam that it’s allowing this to happen? So it’s a different kind of religious issue but one that’s already going to be on Congress’s agenda.

ABERNETHY: Before we leave that, E.J., what about the tone, the spirit that you expect. Is it going to be awful?

DIONNE: I’m not very optimistic that we’re going to see an outbreak of comity and friendship across party lines. On the Muslim hearings, having Congress sort of investigate a religious group in the country raises all kinds of questions, which I hope get raised. I’m not sure that the deal that President Obama reached with the Republicans on taxes can be easily replicated across other issues. After all, tossing out about $858 billion is a lot easier than cutting $400 billion or whatever they decide to do. So I think it’s going to be a very difficult couple of years.

LAWTON: And also, sort of in the backdrop, this coming year in politics is going to be the run up to the 2012 presidential election, and so that’s going to be complicating anything anyone wants to get done because there’s going to be a lot of posturing as people try to set themselves up for the next presidential election.

DIONNE: Which brings us to some very interesting debates inside the Republican Party. Your point about the Tea Party and the Christian conservatives overlapping but distinct groups—how are they going to play those roles inside the Republican fight for the nomination?

LAWTON: And a lot of religious conservatives were very unhappy with the Republican establishment, felt like they took them for granted, Republicans took the religious conservatives for granted—wanted them to come out and work and vote but didn’t necessarily take care of their issues. It will be interesting to see whether they feel the same way about the Tea Party as well.

ABERNETHY: And back on this question of tone, everything perhaps is going to be made more dramatic by the fact that it’s going to be, this year, the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

LAWTON: It’s hard to believe that it was almost 10 years ago when those attacks happened and that really did set up a lot of difficult issues for us as a country, both in terms of the war and as well as in terms of interfaith relations. I know a lot of Muslim groups are sort of bracing after seeing in the previous year a lot of protests against mosques and things of that nature. They’re concerned about the atmosphere and a lot of Muslims I’m talking with are worried about what’s going to happen leading up to the 9/11 anniversary.

ABERNETHY: But Kevin, you or E.J. have made the point that we have this real problem of trying to deal with homegrown terrorism and terrorism here that just emerges out of the suburbs some place, and on the other hand protecting the civil rights of a whole group of people.

ECKSTROM: This is a huge challenge for American Muslims and one of the big debates within the American Muslim community right now is how much do they cooperate with law enforcement on trying to prevent these sorts of attacks that nobody wants to see? How much should parents report their kids if they’re acting strangely or going to bad Web sites or talking in radical terms? And there’s a lot of Muslims who are afraid of being entrapped by the FBI and being led into plots that they might not otherwise do. But then they also know that if they don’t report them nobody else is going to and if there’s an attack, things are only going to get worse.

DIONNE: You’ve got tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Muslims living in American suburbs, living middle-class lives, and if one or two or three or five of those thousands of kids is discovered to get involved in terrorism, suddenly we’re talking about these very middle-class, classically American places being breeding grounds for terrorism. I think one thing that is going to sort encourage that is if we make this big American Muslim middle class feel excluded from the rest of us, and we’re really going to have to think that through. Of course we don’t want home-grown terrorism, but we’re nowhere like where the Europeans are, because we have this great tradition of upward mobility and inclusion in our country.

LAWTON: And this has been a challenge for American Muslims themselves within their communities. If we launch programs to combat homegrown terrorism, homegrown extremism, if we launch programs in our mosques, does that appear like we’re giving in to the stereotype that all Muslims are potential terrorists, and so they’ve really struggled within their community how to approach this problem. They want to look proactive. They want to look like they’re addressing this as good, loyal Americans, but how do you do that without giving into the perception?

ABERNETHY: Kevin, what do you expect to happen with the cultural center/mosque near Ground Zero?

ECKSTROM: Well, it’s going to be a challenge. They presumably have all of the zoning things that they need. They’ve got their permits and the city is going to allow them to build it. What they’re missing right now is the money. And it’s going to take them a while to raise as much money as they’re going to need, but it’s also going to be difficult to get, I think, a lot of people to support that because that center is so radioactive and it’s generated so much heat that there’s going to be a lot of people who maybe don’t want their names associated with it. And on the flip side, there’s a lot of Americans who don’t want the money coming from some foreign anonymous donor somewhere, so they have a big challenge there.

ABERNETHY: Now you were referring earlier to the fact that the beginning of 2011 may well seem like the beginning of the election campaign of 2012, E.J.

DIONNE: Right, and I think you’re going to see some sort of interesting positioning inside the Republican Party. I mean, we still don’t know if Sarah Palin is or is not going to run for president. Sarah Palin seems to be more representative of the Tea Party side of the right, although she has clearly some Christian conservative support. Mike Huckabee is going to be competing with her as the spokesperson for Christian conservatives, but every Republican running for president wants a piece of that vote, because it is such an important vote in the Republican primaries, and that’s going to start right now. It’s already started, before the show went on the air.

ECKSTROM: And I think something worth watching there is Mitt Romney, who is at the front of a lot of these polls, these straw polls, whether or not he tries to make the case about his Mormon faith again with the evangelical base. A lot of people say, you know, he did that; he doesn’t need to do it again. Other people say that he’s never going to win them over; there’s a certain amount of the base that’s just never going to accept a Mormon candidate. So I think it will be interesting to watch how he navigates the Mormon question.

ABERNETHY: And meanwhile, E.J., every pundit worth his salt is giving Obama advice about what he needs to do, how he needs to change himself, how he needs to change his language. Talk about that.

DIONNE: Well, the range of advice goes from you must be nicer to the Republicans and look like you’re a centrist to you’re political and moral obligation is to confront these guys and have a big argument so that the issues can be clear to the country. And I think he’s going to try to do a little of the former to say I’ve reached out my hand to them, and when the hand is rejected on certain issues, he’s going to flip to the second. But I think one of the things to look for is whether he does speak more in a moral and spiritual language both about himself and the underpinnings of his policies, but also about this sense of America can grab its position in the world back after a period when Americans felt we were in decline. I think there’s going to be some John Kennedy-esque rhetoric coming out him getting the country moving again in the coming year.

LAWTON: And the Democratic Party is going to have to figure out what it wants to do in terms of faith-based outreach. There was a lot of criticism from Democrats about how the party handled that in the last midterm elections and a lot of faith-based moderates and liberals and even some conservatives that don’t consider themselves Republicans felt that the party didn’t do enough to reach out to them, so that’s going to be something they’re trying to figure out as well.

ABERNETHY: Meanwhile the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan is supposed to begin n 2011. What are your expectations there?

LAWTON: Well, there’s some really difficult ethical debates still lingering in terms of what America leaves behind in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of civil society and …

ABERNETHY: And safety and protection for the people who helped us.

LAWTON: Exactly. Religious minorities and people who were seen as being part of the American offensive—what’s going on with them and what responsibility does America have within that? And those are going to be difficult questions. I’ve been surprised how little the religious community has been focusing on these issues of war. It seemed like last year, in the last election, people just didn’t really talk about those ethical, moral issues.

ECKSTROM: And, you know, we’ve heard a lot of talk about the president’s problem with his base—you know, the liberal base is dissatisfied for any number of reasons. But it’s worth remembering that a good chunk of that base voted for him because he said he was going to close Guantanamo Bay, and it’s still open, and that he said he’d get us out of Afghanistan, and he actually sent more troops in. So there’s, I think, some ethical problems that he faces in terms of not moving fast enough on that issue.

DIONNE: Actually, he said he’d get us out of Iraq, and he said Afghanistan was the good war, and we’ll presumably continue to pull out of Iraq. My hunch is that if we have a withdrawal this year from Afghanistan it’s going to be very small. It’s clear that the new timeline that the administration wants seems to be 2014. And there’s going to be some opposition in his own party to not withdrawing more quickly. I also think some of the new conservatives who are less interventionist in Congress may also be a surprising opposition to a long commitment there.

ABERNETHY: Let me ask you to look at Europe and the Vatican. What do you expect there in terms of this ongoing struggle about the sex abuse of kids by priests? Anybody?

DIONNE: Everyone is silent.

ECKSTROM: Happy topic. Well, this pope has the unfortunate possibility of his legacy being presiding over this sex abuse scandal that reared its ugly head—that the church didn’t learn anything from the first time around. And I think he has made some progress in sort of admitting that the church needs to do some introspection and figure out what went wrong so that we don’t make this happen again. But the pope is going to be 84 in 2011. I don’t know how much more time he has left in that job, but probably a few years, and I think he’s going to be doing some legacy-making, because this is now at the point where he can still do some things and see what happens.

LAWTON: Well, so many people in the church are frustrated because they want to get beyond this issue but they just can’t do it, and so that’s been something they’ve all had to confront.

DIONNE: I think it’s sort of an argument between people who defend the Vatican and the church say look, they understand, they’ve tried to fix this, they’ve made some moves versus others who say that they still haven’t fully taken responsibility for changing the structures of the church. It’s a classic argument between more conservative or traditionalist people and people looking for greater change in the church because they think it needs it, and I think that is an ongoing struggle and that the sex abuse scandal is a piece of that larger struggle.

ABERNETHY: Our time is almost up, but before we quit, in this coming year do you see something happening or that might happen or do you see some person that you’re going to be paying particular attention to?

LAWTON: Well, we should also point out that last year a lot of the things we discussed we didn’t predict. So, as E.J. said, it’s hard to know that. I think it is going to be a pivotal year for religious groups and issues surrounding homosexuality, whether we’re talking court cases around gay marriage or whether we’re talking denominations still really struggling over how to handle gay clergy and gay bishops. And the Anglican Communion, which has really been torn about by this subject, is also going to have to face some tough questions this coming year.

ECKSTROM: I’m going to keep an eye on Archbishop Tim Dolan in New York, who is the new president of the Catholic bishops conference. He’s a media-savvy guy, he gives you a bear hug, he’s sort of a telegenic face for the church. But he’s no shrinking violet. He will take on the issues of the day, but in sort of a friendly kind of way. It will be interesting. The only real power he has is the power of the megaphone, and which issues he chooses for the bishops to emphasize.

DIONNE: I think that’s an excellent selection. I would say if I could combine Palin, Huckabee, Obama, Romney—we’re going to see if the nature of the discussion of religion in our politics changes substantially this year or not. As we’ve already said, there are challenges to each of those figures, and it will be interesting to see how they deal with it.

ABERNETHY: I have been wondering with respect to Iraq and now Afghanistan why there was no peace movement—not more of a peace movement. Do you think with Afghanistan, as we begin to come out of there, that there will be such a thing?

DIONNE: I think going into Afghanistan there was very broad support when we started because many people, except for pacifists and a few others who have legitimate reasons for opposing all war, most people thought this was kind of a just war response, so you didn’t have a big opposition. I think now a lot of people say God, this is a terrible mess. I don’t have a good answer coming out of it, and I think that sort of undercuts what might otherwise be a big peace movement.

ABERNETHY: Thanks, E.J., our time is up. Many thanks to Kim Lawton of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution. That’s our program for now. I’m Bob Abernethy.

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DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: Winning the Catholic vote could be the key to victory in the swing state of Pennsylvania where Jewish voters are also being courted. The contest in working-class areas of the state like Scranton is particularly intense, as Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Mary Kate Culkin is a single working mother in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a devout member of one of the largest religious voting blocs in the U.S.

MARY KATE CULKIN: I’m a Catholic. I went to Catholic school. I went to a Jesuit college. I’m pro-life, but I also believe that I should not instill my views on the masses of other people.

SEVERSON: She is a Democrat, first for Hillary Clinton, now for Barack Obama even though Obama is pro-choice and the Catholic bishop in Scranton wrote a letter saying that voting for a pro-choice candidate amounts to endorsing murder. But Mary Kate says the Democratic Party best reflects the ideology of Catholic social teaching, such as caring for the poor and working for the common good. Abortion is not the only important issue for her, although it seems to be the most important issue for many Catholic Church officials.

George W. Bush won the Catholic vote in 2004 even though his opponent John Kerry is a Catholic. Almost one out of three voters in the Keystone State are Catholics.

Mary Kate thinks the selection of Senator Joe Biden, a native of Scranton, as Obama’s running mate will help the campaign even though the Scranton bishop recently said Biden shouldn’t even ask for Communion because he is pro-choice.

Ms. CULKIN: I also think that what happens in church on Sunday and while you try and live that message for the rest of the week, the issues that come up on Monday morning are not abortion. They are feeding your kids or stretching that paycheck, or getting gas in your car, or shipping a kid off to Iraq. We temper what we hear on Sunday with what we have to do for the other six days of the week.

SEVERSON: In the Pennsylvania primary here in Scranton, Hilary Clinton trounced Barack Obama three to one. A lot of those were Catholic working class voters who identified closely with Hillary. The Obama campaign has been trying to swing those voters over to his column, but it hasn’t come easy.

Obama is not going to give up the Catholic vote this year without a fight. The Obama campaign office downtown is humming with volunteers, many of them young, handing out pamphlets, manning the phone banks. It’s a busy place.

The McCain campaign office is not so busy. We had to wait for workers and voters to show up. That’s not to say that the McCain campaign is not active and determined to hold Scranton. Listen to Paul DeFabo, another Catholic, strongly in favor of John McCain.

PAUL DEFABO (Vice Chairman, Luzerne County Republican Party): He is going to win. You know, I’m not afraid to make that statement.

SEVERSON: Paul DeFabo is a real estate agent and the vice chairman of the Luzerne County Republican Party. He was recently extolling the virtues of Sarah Palin on public television station WVIA in Scranton.

Mr. DEFABO (in an interview on WVIA-TV): She’s a real talent, this woman. She’s a real talent. She’s a quick learner. She will handle this job. She knows what she’s talking about, and for them to compare Senator Obama with her lack of experience, I don’t even know where their argument comes from.

SEVERSON: DeFabo says as a Catholic his biggest concern is abortion. He’s also upset at illegal immigration. Choosing a president who will appoint the next Supreme Court justice to overturn Roe v. Wade is important to him. He has attended eight Republican conventions and says this last one was extraordinary because of, you guessed it, Sarah Palin.

Mr. DEFABO: When she came on and I listened to her that first night, I mean it was like you couldn’t believe the enthusiasm. I mean, there were women crying. I mean, there were literally tears running down their eyes.

SEVERSON: DeFabo’s enthusiasm for McCain and Palin is matched by his disdain for Obama, and he can’t understand why Catholics could support him, especially nuns.

Mr. DEFABO: There are a group of nuns that are pushing for Obama. I don’t understand that at all.

SEVERSON: It drives you crazy?

DEFABO: Drives me nuts!

SEVERSON: DeFabo says he’s not happy about it, but he thinks race will play a role in the outcome of the election in Pennsylvania and in other states.

Mr. DEFABO: Yes I do. I’m being honest. I think it does. I’m not saying it’s going to happen. I’m just saying it’s a good possibility it can happen. Is it fair? Absolutely not. Should it be an issue? Absolutely not. But are people human beings? You know, our frailties and mistakes and whatever reason they think, yeah, it’s true.

SEVERSON: Mary Kate Culkin says she is certain that after Scranonites get to know Obama, race won’t be an issue.

Ms. CULKIN: I think he’s got more in common with the working people here in Scranton than initially they believed, and I think they are starting to come around and see that it doesn’t matter what color you are. We’re all pretty much the same.

SEVERSON: Although Jews make up only two percent of the U.S. population, they do get out and vote, especially when it comes to issues like the security of Israel. That’s why so many of them, including Lori Lowenthal Marcus, were here at the United Nations protesting the visit of the president of Iran.

This is Elie Wiesel:

Professor ELIE WIESEL (during UN Speech in New York): President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is a threat to world peace. He should not be here in New York. His place is not here, but in Europe, in Holland in a UN prison cell.

SEVERSON: Lori is a mom, a lawyer, a writer, and always was a pro-choice Democrat until Sept. 11, when terrorism became her defining issue.

LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS: I am a registered Democrat, and the reason why is that I believe in a lot of ideals of the Democratic Party. But since 2001, I have begun to focus on foreign policy. McCain and Palin are much better on national security and foreign policy, more in line with mine, and I don’t trust Obama in those areas.

SEVERSON: Jewish votes have almost always heavily favored Democratic presidential candidates. In 2000, Al Gore got nearly 80 percent of the Jewish vote. Four years later, John Kerry received 75 percent. But Obama has been struggling, and Lori thinks it’s because, among other things, he said that after lower level negotiations he would be willing, as president, to sit down with leaders of countries like Iran without preconditions.

Ms. LOWENTHAL MARCUS: We’re all in great danger from Islamic fundamentalist extremism and terrorism. So it’s not just Israel. Israel happens to be, I hate this expression, the canary in the mine. They’re first. Ahmadinejad has said repeatedly, “We’re going to wipe Israel off the face of the map.”

SEVERSON: It didn’t change her mind when Obama spoke to the influential Jewish public affairs committee AIPAC two days after John McCain.

Senator BARACK OBAMA (D-IL, speaking to American Israel Public Affairs Committee): As president, I will never compromise when it comes to Israel’s security.

SEVERSON: She says she’s not worried about Sarah Palin assuming the presidency because she would inherit John McCain’s advisors.

Ms. LOWENTHAL MARCUS: So many of my friends and almost everyone in my family is terrified of Sarah Palin. I find Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, far more frightening, far more frightening than anything Sarah Palin has said and done.

SEVERSON: Unlike Sarah Palin, Lori is pro-choice and in favor of gun control. She’s very worried about the economy, but again, the threat of terrorism trumps all.

Ms. LOWENTHAL MARCUS: I know people who have lost their jobs. It’s terrifying. But the idea of an entire nation being wiped off the face of the earth — if we are not alive, doesn’t matter how much money we make or what kind of job we have.

SEVERSON: Not far from Lori’s house, David Broida, a writer who also runs a tennis center for kids, is a devoted Jew for Obama. He was there at the convention. Broida supports Obama for the same reason that Lori opposes him.

DAVID BROIDA: I am just as concerned about Israel, Israel’s security, but in my judgment Barack Obama is the better candidate on Israel for American voters.

SEVERSON: Why is that?

Mr. BROIDA: We’re interested in negotiations. Israel is in a very precarious position, with Iran being armed with nuclear weapons probably or going to be. So we need to be thinking in terms of diplomacy, and we need the best diplomatic team out there.

SEVERSON: He worries that Sarah Palin would inject religion into government, violating one of the more important Jewish concerns — the separation of church and state. Broida is worried about the sorry condition of the economy but says it should not be the only issue that drives Jews to the polls.

Mr. BROIDA: From a Jewish point of view, it’s more about the environment than it is about the economy. We shouldn’t go into the voting booth and vote our own economic interest. We should listen to the Torah, and we should listen to Jewish values. We will all get along with the economy, more or less. I know the Great Depression was devastating, and I know the current economic crisis is serious. But I know that global warming and the environmental damage that it can cause is more serious.

SEVERSON: We were surprised to hear voters themselves raise the race issue. Broida worries that it will also be an issue among Jewish voters.

Mr. BROIDA: In most instances, Jews are not bigoted in a way that would get them to vote one way or another. In this case, Jews are just like other Americans, white Americans in general. There’s going to be a certain percentage of those Americans who will not vote for a candidate on the basis of race.

SEVERSON: If history repeats itself, whoever wins Pennsylvania will have a very good chance of winning the election, and winning the Catholic and Jewish vote will be crucial to winning Pennsylvania.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Scranton.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Religion’s role in the campaign is at the center of our program today, beginning with a special report from Kim Lawton on the religious beliefs of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

KIM LAWTON: All four candidates describe themselves as Christians, but they talk about their faith — and apply it to their politics — in very different ways.

Barack Obama has been the most outspoken about matters of faith, even though a survey last month found that 46 percent of Americans were still unable to correctly identify him as a Christian.

Obama says he was not raised in a religious household. But when he arrived in Chicago as a young community organizer he says he realized something was missing from his life. He visited Trinity United Church of Christ and went forward during an altar call given by its controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Senator BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): The skeptical bent of my mind didn’t suddenly vanish, but kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will and dedicated myself to discovering His truths and carrying out His works.

LAWTON: Obama easily offers testimony about what that means to him.

Sen. OBAMA (at Saddleback Church): I believe in — that Jesus Christ died for my sins and that I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis. I know that I don’t walk alone.

LAWTON: Obama believes that his personal spiritual journey has public consequences, and he often talks about the importance of putting faith into action.

Sen. OBAMA: That I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I went out and did the Lord’s work.

LAWTON: Reverend Adam Hamilton is author of a book about religion and politics called “Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White.” He says Obama embodies several streams of Protestantism.

Reverend ADAM HAMILTON (Author, “Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White”): He’s a picture of what mainline Protestantism, I think, should strive to be, and that is somebody who does have an evangelical experience of Christ, a personal walk with Christ, and a compelling desire to work for justice.

LAWTON: Obama often cites Scripture in outlining his agenda.

Sen. OBAMA: We need to heed the biblical call to care for “the least of these” and lift the poor out of despair.

LAWTON: He says that’s something he learned from Jeremiah Wright during his more than 20 years of membership at Trinity UCC. But earlier this year, after months of controversy surrounding Wright, Obama formally cut ties with the church. An aide says Obama and his family have been visiting a variety of congregations on the campaign trail and will select a new home church after the election.

Faith may cause divisions, but Obama says it can also play a key role in bringing Americans together.

Sen. OBAMA: What is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another.

LAWTON: John McCain has said faith was important to his family when he was growing up, but they didn’t talk much about it. He still doesn’t. Nancy Pfotenhauer is one of McCain’s senior advisors.

NANCY PFOTENHAUER (Senior Advisor, McCain Campaign): I think it is sometimes a challenge to get Senator McCain to open up about his journey, and in part because he — I think he considers those acts to be, if you will, quiet acts of courage and faith.

LAWTON: McCain was raised in the Episcopal Church and attended an Episcopal school in Virginia. He learned the Anglican liturgy and memorized the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed, two of the oldest statements of traditional Christian doctrine. McCain says he drew heavily on those for spiritual strength during his captivity in North Vietnam.

Senator JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ): I had to have faith in something greater than myself, not only to survive, but to survive with my self-respect intact.

LAWTON: For nearly 20 years, the McCain family has attended the North Phoenix Baptist Church in Arizona, although McCain spends much of his time in Washington. McCain has never officially joined the North Phoenix congregation because he has not been baptized as an adult, something Baptists require.

During a candidates forum at Saddleback Church in California in August, Pastor Rick Warren asked McCain what his relationship with Jesus means to him.

Sen. MCCAIN (during Candidates Forum at Saddleback Church): It means I’m saved and forgiven, and we’re talking about the world. Our faith encompasses not just the United States of America, but the world.

LAWTON: McCain has spoken with several high-profile religious leaders, but it’s not clear whether he gets personal spiritual counsel from them. At a pro-Israel event in 2007, the senator suggested he did receive such advice from evangelical megachurch leader John Hagee.

Sen. MCCAIN: And I thank you for your spiritual guidance to politicians like me who need it fairly often. It’s hard trying to do the Lord’s work in the city of Satan.

LAWTON: Nonetheless, earlier this year McCain rejected Hagee’s endorsement because of controversy surrounding past statements the pastor made about Catholics and about the Holocaust.

McCain hasn’t spoken much about how his faith affects his policy positions, except when it comes to abortion. Sen. MCCAIN: The consistent message of the Gospels calls us to recognize that all life is sacred because all human beings are created in the image of God.

LAWTON: He does frequently link his faith with his patriotism.

Sen. MCCAIN: Faith in my comrades, faith in my country, and faith in my God. That faith helped me not only to endure, but to understand and respect the values it encompassed.

LAWTON: McCain frequently tells a story from his days in the North Vietnamese prison camp.

Sen. MCCAIN: I was standing outside of my cell, and who comes walking up and stood next to me but the gun guard. And then with his sandal, in the dirt, he reached down and he drew a cross. And he stood there for about a minute, and then he reached down and rubbed it out of the dirt and walked away. For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshipping together. I’ll never forget that moment.

Senator JOE BIDEN (D-DE): John held a press conference saying we’re in an economic crisis. We Catholics call that an epiphany.

LAWTON: On the campaign trail, Joe Biden frequently identifies himself as a Roman Catholic, but he rarely speaks in-depth about religious issues.

TOM BROKAW (Moderator, “Meet the Press”): You’ve talked often about your faith and the strength of your feelings about your faith.

Sen. BIDEN: Actually, I haven’t talked often about my faith. I seldom talk about my faith.

Sister SIMONE CAMPBELL (National Coordinator, NETWORK Lobby): We Catholics don’t talk a lot about it. It’s been hard for us to learn how to talk about our faith in a public forum, because we believe that it’s the living of our faith is the key issue. But what I’ve seen in Senator Biden has been quite touching.

LAWTON: Sister Simone Campbell is national coordinator for NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby group. She works on Capitol Hill and has known Biden for several years.

Sr. CAMPBELL: His faith, I think, has done a couple of things. One is it has sustained him in hard times. But it’s also given him a sense of caring for those who live at the margins of our society, and trying to make our nation a nation of peace-making.

LAWTON: Biden spent his early childhood in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where St. Paul’s Catholic Church was a central part of his family’s life. He went to Catholic schools and even briefly considered becoming a priest.

In his book, “Promises to Keep,” he wrote: “My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion.” He attends Mass nearly every Sunday and says he carries a rosary.

But Biden has been in conflict with the Catholic Church over the issue of abortion. Earlier this year, the U.S. Catholic bishops took him to task for what they called his “flawed moral reasoning” in saying he’s personally opposed to abortion but supports a woman’s right to choose.

Sen. BIDEN: I’m prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society.

LAWTON : Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput and several other bishops said because of those views Biden should not seek Communion.

Archbishop CHARLES CHAPUT (Archdiocese of Denver): He really should change his mind if he says he’s a Catholic. He should believe what the Catholic Church believes.

LAWTON : Sister Simone Campbell says Biden has been a leader is promoting the Catholic concept of seeking the common good, and she says he has applied other elements of Catholic social teaching, such as pursing peace and helping the poor.

Sr. CAMPBELL : He wants things solved and done, and I think his faith helps create an urgency in him for responding to the needs of those — especially those who live at the economic margins of our society.

Sen. BIDEN : The 92nd psalm we use as a Communion hymn in our church: “And may he lift you up on eagles’ wings and bear you on the breadth of dawn and make the light the shine upon you.” Folks, as corny as it sounds, it’s within our capacity to lift us up, to let the light shine on corners of the country where people have been left behind.

LAWTON : Church has played an important role in Sarah Palin’s life, although she too has been very private about her personal faith. As an infant, Palin was baptized a Roman Catholic, but then her parents began attending the Wasilla Assembly of God Church. That local congregation is part of the Assemblies of God, an international Pentecostal denomination which has a conservative evangelical theology and emphasizes manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

KAYLENE JOHNSON (Biographer): It was really the fabric of their social life and their faith life really informed who they were and how they lived their lives.

LAWTON: Fellow Wasilla resident Kaylene Johnson wrote a biography of Palin. She says Palin’s beliefs were reinforced from a young age through Christian clubs and Bible camp, where Palin asked to be re-baptized.

Ms. JOHNSON: Sarah Palin was baptized when she was 12 years old in the little Beaver Lake outside of Wasilla here, and she took that commitment of her baptism very seriously from the time she was a girl.

LAWTON: Palin and her family continued attending Wasilla Assembly of God until 2002. Since then, they’ve attended several other evangelical churches, most frequently Wasilla Bible Church, a nondenominational congregation.

McCain campaign officials say Palin does not consider herself a Pentecostal, and they are angered by questions about whether she has ever had the Pentecostal experience of speaking in tongues.

Palin’s specific beliefs are unclear. During a June 2008 visit to the Wasilla Assembly of God, Palin asked the audience to pray for her son and other men and women in the military.

Governor SARAH PALIN: (from YouTube video): We’re sending them on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan.

LAWTON: ABC’s Charlie Gibson asked her what she meant by that.

Gov. PALIN (during ABC News interview): The reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is. And I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words. But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

LAWTON: Johnson says Palin incorporates that kind of prayer in her own life.

Ms. JOHNSON: She really commits her decisions, and the decisions she makes, to God.

Gov. PALIN: We are expected to govern with integrity and good will and clear convictions and a servant’s heart.

LAWTON: During her political career in Alaska, and on the campaign trail now, she has made few overt statements about religion. Like her running mate, she does express the belief that America was created for a special purpose.

Gov. PALIN: That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism, and we are to be that shining city on a hill.

LAWTON: Does it matter what a candidate believes? According to an August survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, nearly half of all Americans say they get uncomfortable when politicians talk about how religious they are. But at the same time, more than 70 percent of Americans say they do want a president with strong religious beliefs.

I’m Kim Lawton in Washington.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We examine now how the media should cover candidates. Should religious beliefs, or anything else, be off limits — a candidate’s family, personal life, pastor?

Michael Getler is a longtime correspondent and editor at The Washington Post. He’s now the ombudsman for PBS. Tom Rosenstiel directs the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington. He’s co-author of the widely used textbook, “The Elements of Journalism.” And Kelly McBride heads the ethics department at the Poynter Institute in Florida, which trains journalists. She joins us from Tampa.

Welcome to you all. Kelly, some candidates say, or used to say, that their religious beliefs are their private business. You say it’s important to report what those beliefs are. Why?

KELLY MCBRIDE (Ethics Department, The Poynter Institute): Well, I think religion is important in American life. We’re a very religious country. Everybody has some form of belief system, and I think to examine that belief system and how it informs a political candidate and how he or she might make decisions is information that voters deserve to know.

ABERNETHY: How a person in office might be guided by religious beliefs in decision-making?

Ms. MCBRIDE: Yes, or not guided. I don’t think we should presume that a certain theology dictates that a candidate who belongs to that church would act in a certain way. But I think it’s entirely appropriate to ask the question.

ABERNETHY: Tom Rosenstiel, how are we doing this year?

TOM ROSENSTIEL (Director, Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism and Co-Author, “The Elements of Journalism”): Well there is no systematic coverage or examination of the belief systems of these candidates…

ABERNETHY: Why not?

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: …when it comes to their religion. What we’re seeing is episodic coverage that — Mitt Romney will give a speech about his religion, or tapes will come out of Obama’s pastor or from Palin’s church, and often the coverage of that relates to the political impact of how they deal with these tempests. The reason for that is, I think, twofold: one is that we have political writers covering these candidates, not people who understand the nuance of religion. It’s not, however, because the candidates don’t want to talk about this stuff. Barack Obama’s made a special effort, I think, this year to talk about faith in his life because he thought that this was a failing of Democrats that was limiting their appeal.

ABERNETHY: Michael?

MICHAEL GETLER (PBS Ombudsman): I’m sorry, I was going to say I think it’s also — while it’s very important to focus on this, as Kelly pointed out originally, it’s also good to keep in mind that there are millions of people who are not terribly religious in this country, and other religions that are not mainstream, and too much of a focus on it, it seems to me, works against people who may be very good at what they do. They may be very good politicians. They may be very good at governance, and yet for somehow the religious issue becomes almost too prominent. So that bothers me a little bit.

ABERNETHY: And is anything off limits in terms of religion and everything else but a personal life? Is anything off limits anymore? What about…

Mr. GETLER: Yes, there are things that are off limits, but it’s less than it use to be. I mean, I think part of the understanding that is that the press is no longer the way it used to be. It used to be just a couple of major newspapers and magazines and wire services and whatnot. Now it’s an enormous world including the Internet, which is just vast, and cable television and everything else. So where they used to be gatekeepers, which was The New York Times and The Washington Post and AP and others, those newspapers try to stick to their same standards, but it’s very hard to do that now because information comes out all over the place and it’s very, very — so there are things that should be off limits, but it’s very hard to keep them off limits.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: I would say in presidential politics there really is no zone of privacy anymore. The one exception to this that is sort of holding is children. Politicians will use their kids and their families as visual images. We see that all the time. But the press proactively examining the backgrounds and experiences of children is still the one area. But in terms of anything else about a public figure and his or her life, I think there is no zone of privacy. There is less of an appetite among these mainstream outlets that Mike’s talking about to get into it. But they will now be pushed into it.

ABERNETHY: Kelly, what have you seen in this campaign about the way in which things relating to religion or privacy were reported? I’m thinking about the way everybody was fascinated by Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s relationship to him, about…

Ms. MCBRIDE: Yeah, I think…

ABERNETHY: Go ahead.

Ms. MCBRIDE: I think most of the reporting on religious issues has had a distorting effect. Most of the time in a political campaign when the media does focus on a religious issue, it’s as a distortion, or something that’s exotic or weird. So Reverend Wright was outside of the mainstream belief system, and there was a lot of focus on him and what the implication might be for Barack Obama when, in fact, Obama had spent weeks and months describing how his personal belief system and his faith guided him and influenced him. And Wright’s behavior and his theology, his belief system was really not much of a part of that. But because of the focus on that, it ended up distorting in the public’s mind Obama’s belief system. And I think you can say that almost every time.

ABERNETHY: And Mormons, Mitt Romney and Mormons, Tom, wasn’t that…

Ms. MCBRIDE: Mormons, yeah, Mormons and Mitt Romney. In Sarah Palin’s case, her previous life as a Pentecostal, all of that, extremely distorting.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: And a lot of this is because politics is about comfort. Am I comfortable with this person? Are they like me? Will they understand me? Particularly as we get to the general election phase when people who are not political junkies begin to check in and make decisions.

Mr. GETLER: Also Bob, in the past again, you would hear about this on your evening news broadcast, or you would read about it in your morning paper. Now you can see it a hundred times a day, and it adds to that sense of tension over it.

ABERNETHY: And what about the coverage of John Edwards’ affair? What did you make of that? Was it fair?

Mr. GETLER: Well, it was certainly fair once he acknowledged it on television. As you know, The National Enquirer pursued and broke the story, and eventually — but the main newspapers and magazines really did not cover it. And they didn’t actually even pursue it much, which I think was wrong. I think Edwards is a major national figure, and there was some reporting, as the Charlotte Observer showed, that you could do on public records that would at least move this story forward.

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: What the press needs to do is, in this environment, the mainstream reportorial press, is to be actually more aggressive about these things. Otherwise the agenda will be set by outlets and forces that don’t have the kind of professional standards that I think we would hope for.

ABERNETHY: More aggressive about what, about personal behavior?

Mr. ROSENSTIEL: About reporting allegations about personal behavior and then coming to a judgment, a professional, journalistic judgment about whether this is relevant or not. If they don’t report these things, then others will, and they’ll be reacting and writing about stuff that they might otherwise have said, “No. We’ve looked into it and this isn’t relevant.” The traditional press still has the power to take things off the table. This has happened numerous times. The Washington Post and Bob Dole said, “We’ve looked into it. It’s not relevant,” and that was the end of that. The rest of the press followed that lead.

Mr. GETLER: Yeah, that’s the difference between reporting and publishing, and right now the resources are diminished in a lot of papers, so that, I think, is a factor as well.

ABERNETHY: Michael Getler, Tom Rosenstiel, Kelly McBride, thanks to you all.

The words and records of the candidates are always subject to the spin experts. Lately, the spin doctors have had a run at an answer Sarah Palin provided on a questionnaire for the conservative Eagle Forum Alaska during her run for the governor’s office in 2006. The question posed by the forum was, “Are you offended by the phrase ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance?” “Not on your life,” Palin responded. “If it was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it’s good enough for me, and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.”

Without going into much detail, the Anchorage Daily News quickly pointed out to its readers (October 16, 2006) that Palin evidently had false assumptions about history. The founders, of course, did not have anything to do with the Pledge of Allegiance. Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, authored the pledge in 1892 as part of an effort by President Benjamin Harrison to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America. Bellamy and the magazine he was associated with hoped to use the pledge to promote the sale of American flags to public schools in order to raise money for their work. A joint resolution of Congress codified the pledge into public law in 1942. Later, following many years of lobbying efforts by the Knights of Columbus and the American Legion, Congress amended the pledge in 1954 by adding the words “under God.” The amended version became official on Flag Day that year, but prior to then the pledge, even though written by a minister, did not mention God at all.

In late August, shortly after Senator McCain’s selection of Palin, the blogging started. The Daily Kos, a liberal blog, responded to Palin’s pledge to the pledge by describing her as a “female George Bush,” a phrase meant to describe someone who is not particularly bright and who has no literate sense of history. In mid-September, Ann Coulter, the conservative political analyst and lawyer, responded with her spin that Palin did not, by her comments, mean to imply that the “founding fathers’ wrote the pledge of allegiance, but rather that “the founding fathers believed this was a country ‘under God’.” “Which,” wrote Coulter, “um, it is.”

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the right is right (perhaps a stretch, but…). If Palin did not intend to imply that she thought the founders authored the pledge, she meant to emphasize that they believed wholeheartedly in the proposition that America is a country “under God,”  just like, one must also assume, Palin believes is the case today. It is certainly defensible to argue that most of the founders believed America needed to take God seriously. Even the deists, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, hardly conventional Christians in the loosest consideration of that description, believed America was subject to the judgment of God. Evidence of the founders’ sense of God’s judgment on all nations and peoples is evident throughout their writings. Though they could connect God’s will to particular national enterprises, as in the case of the American Revolutionary War, they usually used language about the divine to emphasize accountability of the country (and all countries) to God.

Handwritten pledge

The founders were certainly comfortable with language about God, but they did not use the phrase “under God” (there is no written record of the founders ever using it). Instead, “under God” became commonplace in American public life only after World War II, particularly during the Cold War, when America sought to convince itself and the world that God was on America’s side in opposing “atheistic communism.” This twentieth-century notion, shared by Sarah Palin and other socially conservative Christians, emphasizes that “under God” means that God stands with America, that America is God’s chosen country. It developed naturally out of twentieth-century events, like the victories in two major world wars and the rapid accumulation of wealth after America successfully dealt with the difficulties of the Great Depression. The rise of the religious right since the 1970s has only solidified these assumptions.

This developing American belief in God’s automatic blessing also possesses significant roots in the previous century. The events surrounding American expansionism during the nineteenth century, including Manifest Destiny, imperialism, and rapid urbanization and industrialization, caused Americans to turn more comfortably to using God-language to describe America’s goodness and to communicate how America was better than any other country in the world because it was “under God.”

The point here is that the founders’ notion of what it meant to be a country that takes God seriously is, historically, quite distinct from the notion that operates in many Christian and political communities today, which is much more like saying God takes America seriously.

Palin’s pledge to the pledge and to “under God” has other interesting implications. In a 2004 Supreme Court decision about the constitutionality of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, the Court temporarily avoided the issues in the case by stating that Michael Newdow, the atheist suing on behalf of his daughter, did not have standing to sue because he was not the custodial parent. The arguments of the case, however, contained an ironic twist that Sarah Palin has likely never considered. The two attorneys arguing to keep “under God” in the pledge did so by stating that the phrase “one nation under God” is simply a “political philosophy,” merely “ceremonial” in nature and not at all a “religious exercise.” Ironically, it was Newdow who argued that the words are truly religious and should be taken seriously. In fact, a brief submitted by religious leaders supported Newdow’s efforts to remove the phrase precisely because, as currently understood, the Pledge of Allegiance forces Christian children to take God’s name in vain every day. Using God’s name ritualistically, or in simply ceremonial fashion, is to take God’s name in vain.

Perhaps those like Sarah Palin who consider themselves committed Christians who believe in the holiness of God should reconsider their resolve to support national and cultural tendencies to use God’s name merely ceremoniously or as a way to provide divine sanction for all things American. Genuine concern for the holiness of God just might demand it.

– Mark G. Toulouse is professor of American religious history at Brite Divinity School at texas Christian University Fort Worth, Texas, and the author of GOD IN PUBLIC: FOUR WAYS AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY AND PUBLIC LIFE RELATE (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006).