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TRANSCRIPT:
Episode no. 411
November 10, 2000
LUCKY SEVERSON, anchor: Coming up, an assessment of the electoral impact of the religious voters.
And the faith-based movement urging sexual abstinence until marriage.
Mr. RICHARD ROSS (Founder, True Love Waits): Students, we gather today to call the nation to purity.
SEVERSON: Also, choosing a new religion -- what it means for converts and their families.
Professor LEWIS RAMBO (Author, UNDERSTANDING RELIGIOUS CONVERSION): The experience of conversion, I think, at its deepest level is a profound and pervasive reorientation of one's entire life.
SEVERSON: Welcome. Nice to have you with us. I'm Lucky Severson, sitting in for Bob Abernethy during this historic election week.
LUCKY SEVERSON: While the dust is still settling in the presidential race, results have come in on several state ballot initiatives; among them, many that were actively supported and opposed by religious groups.
Voters in California and Michigan defeated school voucher initiatives that critics said would have taken funds from public schools and opened the door to government funding of religious schools.
In Maine, voters rejected doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. They also rejected expansion of state civil rights law to specifically include gays and lesbians.
But in Oregon, gay rights activists claimed victory after voters defeated a proposal to ban public school teachers from encouraging homosexuality. Nevada and Nebraska defined marriage as being only between a man and a woman.
Californians, meanwhile, decided to allow non-violent drug offenders to get rehabilitation rather than jail time.
LUCKY SEVERSON: Kim Lawton has been covering the impact of religion and religious voters in this election. She spoke with Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center For The People & The Press about what the exit polling showed.
KIM LAWTON: Well, it's been a pretty interesting election. How did religion play into all of this?
Mr. ANDREW KOHUT (Director, Pew Research Center): Well, the religious voting patterns were clear in this election. Absent a compelling case between Gore and Bush from a voter point of view or absent big issues or proposals from the candidates, what the pattern of the vote really reflected are the ideological and partisan fault lines in the electorate, among them religion. So the most religious voters in the sample and interviewed in the exit poll on Tuesday night found religious people voting at a rate of 62 percent for George W. Bush. The least religious people, people who never attend church or religious services, voted only 31 percent for Bush.
LAWTON: How did you measure the religiosity of the voters?
Mr. KOHUT: Well, in terms of frequency of religious attendance and also in terms of the specific denominations of the people that were interviewed by the exit polls.
LAWTON: Prior to this election we heard a lot about the Catholic vote and that Catholic voters could be one of the most important swing votes. Were they?
Mr. KOHUT: Well, they were indeed. The Catholic vote divided just about evenly between Gore and Bush, tipping a little bit to Al Gore, but going a little less Democratic than they did four years ago, as the Catholic vote slowly becomes a little less Democratic and a little more Republican, seemingly with each election.
LAWTON: And that is a trend that we've been seeing, isn't it? At one time, Catholics were considered sort of the stronghold of the Democratic Party. That's shifting now?
Mr. KOHUT: Well, it certainly was, and it is shifting. They were part of the old New Deal coalition reflecting the ethnicity of many American Catholics in the '30s and '40s. But as these groups of voters became more assimilated, they have become more mainstream and therefore divide more evenly between the Republican and Democratic parties.
LAWTON: And in an election as close as this one, does that make a big difference in certain areas?
Mr. KOHUT: Well, it sure does because in as -- close election, all swing groups, among them Catholics and other groups who have a close partisan division, make a big difference in the vote.
LAWTON: What about the religious right? They were a little less visible this time around. Did they play a role in this?
Mr. KOHUT: Well, this was an -- this was in an election where both candidates tried not to be too ideological. And therefore, we didn't hear George Bush talking about a lot of things that would turn on the religious conservatives, yet they really voted for him at a high level. Something like 79 percent of the self-described religious conservatives said they voted for George W. Bush. Absent that vote, Al Gore wins the election by -- with a 52 percent majority.
LAWTON: So have they become, indeed, a permanent part of the Republican Party base?
Mr. KOHUT: I think there's little question that Christian conservatives -- white Christian conservatives are becoming a permanent part of the Republican base, just like African-American evangelicals are an awfully important part of the Democratic base.
LAWTON: And I was going to ask you about that. To what extent did black churchgoers go for Gore?
Mr. KOHUT: Over nine in 10 backed the Democratic candidate, which is as high a level as was the case for Clinton in 1996.
LAWTON: And that reflected the African-American community generally?
Mr. KOHUT: I think it reflected the African-American community generally, and studies that will be ongoing will try to assess how good a job the African-American churches did in turning out the vote for Al Gore and how crucial they were to his victory or near miss.
LAWTON: OK. Thank you.
Mr. KOHUT: You're welcome.
LUCKY SEVERSON: In other news, President Clinton signed a major debt relief bill to aid the world's poorest nations. At a White House signing ceremony, the president called the new law 'good for our souls.' He thanked both religious leaders and rock stars for pushing the measure. Pope John Paul II, Pat Robertson and U2's Bono were among the diverse coalition of supporters. The law supplies $435 million to forgive debts of the world's poorest countries. At least 20 should receive debt relief by the end of the year.
LUCKY SEVERSON: Now the growing faith-based movement for teen-age sexual abstinence. As parents, teachers and politicians debate the role of abstinence in sex education, religious teen-agers are making promises to themselves, their parents and to God to delay sexual intercourse until marriage. To date, the Southern Baptist group True Love Waits, a leader in the movement, boasts over one million pledges from teen-agers. The movement is nationwide. We begin our story in Washington, D.C.
Unidentified Man #1: Lord Jesus, with our hands extended on this glorious day as we stand upon the Mall of the capital of the United States of America...
SEVERSON: On the Mall in Washington this past September, a gathering of thousands of kids -- high schoolers -- not a party or a protest but a promise to remain pure. These are young evangelicals.
Mr. RICHARD ROSS (Founder, True Love Waits): God, through your generation, has won many battles. But the war is not over. Students, we gather today to call the nation to purity.
SEVERSON: This is Richard Ross, a middle-aged Southern Baptist preacher. In 1994, he founded a growing movement called True Love Waits for teen-aged kids. His message: No sexual intercourse until marriage.
Mr. ROSS: For teen-agers to be bold, standing up for abstinence -- yes, that still goes against the grain.
SEVERSON: And young people are listening.
Unidentified Woman #1: I made a commitment to stay a virgin until I'm married.
SEVERSON: In Philadelphia, another abstinence rally, another group -- this one called Pure Love Alliance, sponsored by the Unification Church, founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
KUNG SIU (Pure Love Alliance): My name is Kung Siu. I'm from New Jersey.
I'm 16 and I'm here to promote purity before marriage.
Unidentified Man #2: I really believe that that's God's will. You know, just one. One love. One life. One man, one wife. That's it.
SEVERSON: They're rapping, they're dancing, they're marching, they're upbeat and determined. One million and counting across America, kids swearing to abstain and saying it's cool.
Unidentified Man #3: We're up here trying to say that abstinence is not a boring lifestyle.
SEVERSON: At the Faith Temple Church in Omaha, a ring ceremony.
Unidentified Man #4: I give you this ring...
Group of Parents: (In union) I give you this ring...
SEVERSON: Moms and dads put a band on the ring finger of their sons and daughters, a constant reminder that true love waits.
TERRENCE: You can hug her, can give her a kiss, tell her goodbye, walk her up to the door, give her another kiss and go home.
SEVERSON: Karnetta Ennis is Terrence's mom and the youth minister at Faith Temple.
Ms. KARNETTA ENNIS (Youth Minister): He's a handsome young man, and he's very popular; the girls really love my son. But at the same time, I want to let him know that's OK and that's great. But abstinence, your education, God -- all those things should be first.
(Excerpt of pop performance)
SEVERSON: Look what kids today are up against -- a culture that seems preoccupied with sex. Sex is everywhere.
Mr. ROSS: School leaders have been so awed by the problems related to sexuality that they've invited people to come in and speak from a True Love Waits perspective, even though it is a Christian movement at heart.
SEVERSON: Since 1996, Congress has allocated $50 million annually for community-based abstinence programs. And an increasing number of public schools are now replacing comprehensive sex education, which includes abstinence, with courses that teach only abstinence. Movement leaders keep the momentum going by keeping it light, young and hip --even sexy. This is peer pressure of a different kind.
Unidentified Woman #1: I think it's a lot easier to stay abstinent once I've joined this alliance.
JACO GAVIN (Pure Love Alliance): I don't think of myself as a big geek or a nerd. You know, and I've had fun my whole high school.
SEVERSON: Jaco lives in Chicago's South Side. He and his five brothers all belong to the Pure Love Alliance, and he leads workshops to spread the message.
GAVIN: I've taught in five different schools in the Chicago area and the reflections show that, you know, all they needed was some positive reinforcement, that positive peer pressure.
SEVERSON: Whatever the reason, the number of teen-agers having sexual intercourse has dropped almost 10 percent in the last decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
But there are critics of the movement, even in the Bible Belt, who applaud the goal but not the method. They argue that teaching kids that abstinence only without sex education denies them the information they need -- physically and emotionally -- to make smart choices.
Debbie Chisolm is the youth minister at the Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas.
Ms. DEBBIE CHISOLM (Youth Minister): What concerns me more than anything is that a lot of people think that because of the True Love Waits movement, we don't need to worry. We have a lot of kids who are having sex. We have a lot of Baptist kids who are having sex. We have a lot of teen-agers getting pregnant in our youth group, teen-agers that signed True Love Wait cards, and now they're having babies.
SEVERSON: Debbie and her husband, also a Baptist minister, want their three teen-age daughters to stay abstinent until marriage, but they also want them to be informed.
Ms. CHISOLM: Sex plays a big part in the marital relationship, so we want to make sure that they feel comfortable with it, and they definitely know we feel comfortable with it, so...
(To teen) If you're going to have sex, don't be stupid about it.
Unidentified Woman #2: Right.
Ms. CHISOLM: Kids need to be educated not just in the diseases that can occur, but also how to use condoms, how to use birth control.
Unidentified Woman #3: If you're going to do it, we can't stop you but at least tell us so that we can get you birth control.
SEVERSON: A recent Kaiser Foundation report found that most parents want their teen-age kids to have more not less sex education. A whopping 84 percent want schools to teach kids about birth control. But leaders of True Love Waits and Pure Love Alliance argue that sex education doesn't teach about moral values and character.
Ms. MICHELLE MYERS (Tour Leader, Pure Love Alliance): The curriculum being taught in public schools is all about comprehensive sex education and all the other alternatives besides abstinence. And I don't think that that empowers young people to make a decision for their lives, and it's also devoid of any kind of belief in something higher than themselves.
Mr. ROSS: God himself said in Scripture, 'If you love me keep my commandments.' Well, that's what teen-agers want to do; they want to love God. Well, one of the commandments is you don't fool around until you're married, and that's what teen-agers have agreed.
SEVERSON: Critics argue that abstaining for kids today is a whole lot easier said than done.
Ms. CHISOLM: Now we're saying to kids, 'Your sexual interests and your sexual desires are going to get turned on at age 10 and we want you to say no to those until age 35, when you get married.' I mean, that's ridiculous. We have to have physical intimacy with other people; we are created to do that. And to deny that is unnatural.
SEVERSON: But these high schoolers and their leaders will tell you it is not curbing physical desire that's powering the abstinence movement. It's something higher.
GAVIN: Does God want me to go out and use his own children for my own pleasure? No, he doesn't. You know, he wants me to bring up his children to a higher level.
Mr. ROSS: It is the sense that I have promised Almighty God that I'm not going to have sex till I get married. That's where the teen-agers really find the power and the strength to keep that promise.
Ms. ENNIS: I'm looking at our nation today and looking at how gays are standing up for their rights and abortionists are standing up for their rights, so it's time for us to stand up for ours and encourage our young people to abstain from sex.
SEVERSON: Still no hard facts to prove that the abstinence message works in the long run. But the young people making the promise are fervently convinced that it does, and the movement continues to grow.
LUCKY SEVERSON: An update on the thorny ethical debate over whether to separate Siamese twins in England. As Catholics prayed outside the hospital, doctors this week performed the 20-hour operation to separate the girls. As expected the weaker twin died during the operation. The girls' parents, who are Roman Catholic and opposed the operation, arguing that it would kill the weaker daughter in order to save the stronger one. Supporters lit candles and prayed for the surviving twin. She remains in critical condition, but doctors are optimistic about her recovery.
LUCKY SEVERSON: The Vatican this week issued a position paper on the controversial subject of stem cell research. What the document said is that the research is wrong when the stem cells come from embryos. That would violate the church's teaching that life is sacred from conception. Using stem cells from adults is OK. Meanwhile, the UK's prestigious Royal Society takes the position that it is embryos that provide the most realistic hope for progress in stem cell research.
Also this week, the Vatican knocked down new speculation that Pope John Paul II will resign at the end of the year. The Holy See announced official plans for John Paul to visit Ukraine next June. The visit comes amid bitter disputes between Catholics in Ukraine's dominant Orthodox churches over the return of property seized by the government during the Communist era. In recent weeks, there have been a flurry of resignation rumors apparently prompted by the pope's frail health.
LUCKY SEVERSON: The famous religious conversion stories are full of high drama: Saul's vision on the road to Damascus or Constantine's fiery cross in the sky. Modern-day religious conversions can seem tame by comparison, but tolerant attitudes toward faith-seeking have made them more common. Still, choosing a new religion is usually a major decision for converts and their families. In the first of a two-part series, our reporter Stephen Dubner, himself a convert and author of the book "Turbulent Souls," looks at the experience of John Curry, principal of a school for at-risk students in New York.
Mr. JOHN CURRY: I grew up in St. Louis in a -- in the Bible Belt. My parents talked about religion constantly. They were in a Methodist church. They considered themselves born again and were very strict theologically.
Ms. RUTH PADAWER: I experienced Judaism kind of in two opposite ways. At home, it was this very, very pleasant defining part of who we were, and then we lived in a town that was not heterogeneous at all; it was very, very Christian. So I grew up very uncomfortable with my Judaism in that setting.
STEPHEN DUBNER: You met in college.
Mr. CURRY: Yes.
DUBNER: Was the fact that you were -- you came from different religions an issue for either of you?
Ms. PADAWER: Once we started thinking about living together and maybe marrying and maybe having children, it was an issue to me because I wanted to raise my children Jewish and I didn't want to raise my children in a house where Christmas was celebrated or recognized or whatever.
Mr. CURRY: And Ruthie at one point said, 'Well, you can have a Christmas tree if you need it to be in the house, but it'll be your Christmas tree and the children and I will just consider that Daddy's Christmas tree,' and I thought...
Ms. PADAWER: It'll be all right.
Mr. CURRY: ...I'm going to be sitting in the corner by the little Christmas tree, and I just thought -- I mean, I had an image that was just ridiculous and then I thought well, I'm going to be like a stranger in my own family is more what I felt, if that's the way we're going to proceed. And it really made me feel uncomfortable and I couldn't really see how to resolve it at the time.
DUBNER: Did you think at all back then about converting?
Mr. CURRY: I think I did in vague ways, but I just couldn't imagine really doing it. Not so much that it was something that I would really hate to do, but that I guess it's just that kind of feeling like I was going to -- even saying it, I was somehow being a wanna-be to somebody else's culture.
Professor LEWIS RAMBO (Author, "Understanding Religious Conversion"): The experience of conversion, I think, at its deepest level is a profound and pervasive reorientation of one's entire life. Starting in many cases with self image: Who am I as a human being? To: Who is God? What is the nature of reality?
Rabbi MARGARET MOERS WENIC (Rabbi Emerita, Temple Beth Am, NYC): I think it's as significant a decision as choosing a partner to spend many years of your life with, or deciding to have a child, for that matter.
DUBNER: We're probably in a country and a time when religious conversion is at an all-time high historically. Do you see this as a good thing? Conversion is rampant. Is that good?
Rabbi WENIC: I believe that human beings long for meaning, and many of us long for a relationship with God, long for community and are feeling an emptiness.
DUBNER: Tell me about this Christmas season visit to your sister's house in Seattle.
Mr. CURRY: At this particular Christmas service, they took a baby out of the congregation to put him in this manger for a Christian ceremony.
Ms. PADAWER: And that night I had a dream that I had a child and they took my baby out of my arms and used him or her for their Jesus, and I couldn't get him back.
Mr. CURRY: I'd always had this idea that somehow I wanted Christmas in my family's life to somehow or other bring happiness to my children. And I had had this horrible experience: My mother and my sister and father not getting along. Me feeling watched by my parents around, whether I was going to go up to the alter and profess my faith in Christ again, conflicts around our children and it just -- I felt like there was this whole ball of just tension and things I didn't know how to resolve. And I was lying in bed and I thought, 'You know, if I converted to Judaism, this would just go away.' And I said to Ruthie, 'You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking I should just convert.' And she said, 'Why would you want to?' And all of a sudden, I'm like -- her reaction was totally -- I expected her -- my fear was she'd say, 'That's wonderful,' and then I would feel like this responsibility to follow through and a certain amount of embarrassment. Instead, she just put the brakes on.
DUBNER: Did you think at all about if you did convert how your family would react or did you not carry it through with...
Mr. CURRY: Well, that was another thing, that I couldn't even imagine doing it because it would be like the bombshell of no longer being a Christian was one and this would be even bigger.
DUBNER: A midnight epiphany on Christmas Eve. That's what led John Curry and Ruthie Padawer from one minefield, intermarriage, to another, conversion. It used to be a rarity, but these days, it's a staple of American life. That doesn't mean it's simple. As their story shows, a religious conversion winds its way into every corner of one family's life.
Mr. CURRY: I was looking for something, and the idea of converting to Judaism I think subconsciously, maybe partially consciously, provided an option of rediscovering, let's say, spiritual text, the Bible. And as I continued with my study, I found more and more things that I could claim in a way that were very compelling to me, and I think it started vague and then became more and more specific and more and more exciting for me and helped me grow in my knowledge of Judaism.
Prof. RAMBO: In the past, a lot of people would talk about conversion as being sudden and dramatic. I think the influence of a conversion of Saul of Tarsus to being Paul the apostle is paradigmatic, whether people know much about the Bible, whether Christians or Jews or whatever. Everybody knows about Paul. But I think that most of the research now shows that conversion, while having dramatic events within it, is a process over time.
Unidentified Boy: (Singing in foreign language)
Mr. CURRY: OK. Slow down.
DUBNER: John immersed himself in Jewish learning, and it was John who became the architect of the family's Jewish practice.
Mr. CURRY: I think initially when I was considering converting what I wanted to give my kids was a history and a tradition that they could claim as their own. I couldn't imagine having them with no spiritual tradition at all in their lives, and I wanted to be part of that.
Ms. PAWADER: I think of him as a profoundly Jewish Jew. Yeah, I don't at all think of him as a convert. It feels very -- I guess the term 'convert' to me sort of seems like it's dipped in something, and he's from the core out, you know?
DUBNER: For now, John and Ruthie are finding a balance to their religious observance. What will be the ultimate effect of John's conversion? That won't be known for at least a few years until the next generation has its say.
Mr. CURRY: My daughter has just known the whole time that I've been a convert. And she's met my father, who's -- just passed away a couple of years ago, and my mother and knows how Christian they are and knows about the conversion. And I think she has a sense that things can be mutable and unchangeable and understands that I'm, you know, a Jewish guy. I don't think she really questions that. I wonder if that also gives her a sense that she's changed. I guess one of my worst fears is that she will convert at some point because she's interested in some parts of our Christianity, although I think she has, you know, Jewish...pretty clearly.
Ms. PAWADER: One of our children in particular, he loves going to readings and sits there and follows along in the prayer book even though he can't read either. I mean, he's a very deeply ethical, compassionate six-year-old and he would be a fabulous rabbi.
DUBNER: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I'm Stephen Dubner.
SEVERSON: In the conclusion of our conversion series next week, we'll look at the experience of an Orthodox Jewish woman who became an Episcopalian.
LUCKY SEVERSON: And finally, another birthday for evangelist Billy Graham. He turns 82 years old this week. Graham celebrated in Jacksonville, Florida, where he had just wrapped up a four-day crusade. The evangelist received best wishes from gospel hip-hop star Kirk Franklin and other artists who performed during the crusade. Health problems have kept Graham out of the spotlight and under doctor's care for much of the past year. But Graham says his health has improved, and he hopes to hold two or three crusades next year.
LUCKY SEVERSON: That's our program for now. I'm Lucky Severson.
To find out more about RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, log onto to pbs.org or America Online, keyword: pbs.
As we leave you this week, more from Kirk Franklin's concert at the Billy Graham crusades last week in Florida.
(Excerpt of Kirk Franklin concert)
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