Q: Why speak out on religion and politics now? Why this speech [at Pepperdine University] now?
A: Because it's not in a campaign. I'm not a candidate for anything right now, and I think it's important to assert some views about how religion is appropriate to a discussion and where it's inappropriate. And I think, to some degree, the discussion has been abused and somehow distorted some of the central themes and principles of Judeo-Christian, Muslim, whatever religion ethic. There is an universality in those, and I think we've lost a little of that.
Q: Why is this such a hard topic for politicians to deal with?
A: Well, I think it's hard for a lot of reasons. First of all, people will inherently be suspicious of anybody in public life, number one, which is why when someone asked me, "Are you sorry that you didn't give this speech during the campaign?" I said no, because during a campaign is not sort of the appropriate moment at least to begin that conversation. Secondly, it's obviously complicated, because it goes to your deepest, most personal beliefs, and faith by definition is faith. It is an article of faith that is sometimes not definable except through the faith itself, through your belief, and that can challenge people in a lot of different ways. So how it fits and where it fits and how it is tolerant of other beliefs that are different is a central clash that's gone on for a long, long time. It's not new.Q: You mentioned you did it because you are not a candidate. When you were a candidate, what were some of the pressures that were brought to bear? Did you feel conflicting pressures from different wings of people wanting you to talk about it and not wanting you to talk about it?
A: Sure. I mean, there are always different views, but the job of somebody running is to sort through them and express your own view, and I didn't have any problem with that. What I felt very deeply was that it was inappropriate to overstep a certain line of discussion, and what I found was if you don't explain what your foundation is and you don't share with people the fullness of how you come to whatever faith it is you have or don't have, then people fill in the gaps for you, and that's even more dangerous, because it has been made, forced into the political dialogue in a lot of ways. Now, that's even tricky. It's appropriate, if you have a moral foundation, you can't leave your moral foundation over here and come to public life and say, "Hey, that's over there, this is over here." And I think that, to a degree, the debate over the last year has helped to make that clear to people. I think there was a little bit of, sort of, what's the word, there was sort of an ease with which people were kind of pushing them apart. And the discussion of recent years, I think, has forced a lot of us to realize, wait a minute, maybe there is a correctness in forcing you to think about how you don't separate them, but at the same time how you don't step over certain lines that had been drawn since this nation was founded, and that's really the discussion, if you will.
Q: Is there a risk of alienating people who feel this doesn't belong in the political sphere?
A: Sure. We have a very strong tradition in the U.S., obviously, and for somebody of a different faith, they are nervous of people of one faith or another asserting theirs as the primary basis of any particular action or another. And obviously the establishment clause of the United States constitution says very clearly that there will be no establishment of religion. So you have to draw a line between what motivates you morally and what pushes you in terms of your values versus what you are trying to achieve in terms of the public sector.
Q: Some surveys suggest that Democrats are perceived as not being friendly toward religion, that the Republican Party is seen as being more open, more favorable to religion. Is that true? What do Democrats need to do to reach out to people of faith?
A: One of the reasons that I wanted to have this conversation is that I think that is profoundly not true, and I think that's part of the distortion that has taken place. There are people of all kinds of faith, very deep faith, whether it is Jewish, Christian, or Muslim or Confucian or Hindu or something else -- there are people of extraordinary range of faith on both sides of the political aisle of America. But on our side there's been a greater reluctance to push that in a religious context in the public sector and to potentially be viewed as stepping over that line that we've talked about that the Constitution draws. And I think what's happened is in the absence of a willingness to at least assert the values and assert the moral basis of some of the choices that we make, other people have pushed this notion that they are in fact godless or non-spiritual or whatever. And we can't allow that because it polarizes and divides and in fact distorts the debate that we ought to be having in America. Let me be very specific. The Christian principles that I grew up with brought me to public life. The Christian conscience that I saw worked in the public sector with Martin Luther King and his discussion of the civil rights movement on moral terms, William Sloane Coffin and his discussion of the peace movement and the Vietnam War in moral terms, and others had a profound impact on a lot of us. And I think whether -- for anyone who has read and reread the Sermon on the Mount and you look at sort of the list of moral imperatives that Jesus talked about that you have to embrace in order to be a real Christian. I think you can talk to anybody on the Democratic side and they are moved and impacted and motivated by those. But that's not talked about enough, and it is also not recognized in the breadth of the agenda that we see. The agenda is not one or two issues; the agenda is poverty, housing, environment, the just and unjust war, children, our responsibilities for families, our responsibility to community. I mean there are a whole host of things that are embraced in those principles, and they are all part of the full practice of that faith.
Q: What do you encourage your party to do to get that message out?
A: Just be honest and talk about whatever is underneath that has had an impact or an effect on somebody's choices in the course of their life. The worst thing is to force it or push it and try to become something that you're not. But I think that for those who share those motivations, I mean, look at in the Jewish faith: tikkun olam -- the notion of one person can save the world and you go out and make that kind of a difference. I mean, there are unbelievable linkages between all of these faiths, and yet we don't search enough for the common ground that links us and for the ways in which we can come together and actually make progress. We see too much of an exploitation, and in some cases of distortion, of some of the commands of our faith, all faiths.
Q: You have been meeting with various evangelical leaders over the past months and talking with them. What have you learned about evangelicals? A lot of people think evangelicals are firmly and completely in the Republican Party. What have you been hearing from them?
A: Well, let me say first of all how impressed I've been by the activities that so many of the evangelicals I've met with are involved in. And many of them are -- they're not in anybody's corner, so to speak. They don't want to be. Some of them even have very strong feelings about television evangelism and others have very strong feelings about a single-issue politics or two-issue politics. These are people who are really trying to put Jesus first and politics way behind that, and they're doing it in many different ways. I'll give you an example. The greatest, best response, immediate response to Katrina came from the faith community. Today, you have someone like Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church in California who wrote THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE who has engaged in an absolutely extraordinary effort to reach out across oceans, as well as here at home, to mobilize people to deal with poverty and with AIDS, something that his church and some others hadn't embraced enough. I think you are seeing a huge amount of effort put in among the evangelical movement in America to deal with our environmental responsibilities. So I think there's just a -- I think an ability for a lot of us to have a conversation that we haven't had that honors that common ground more effectively and finds ways to really make progress and respect each other's work.
