Author Archives: Fred Yi

Responsible Medicaid Patients

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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Across the country, every state has a Medicaid program that provides health care for the poor. In West Virginia, there’s a lively debate about a new experiment with its program: giving patients extra medical and pharmacy benefits if they sign a contract to take better care of themselves. Is that fair? Does it leave out many of those who need care the most? Betty Rollin has our report.

BETTY ROLLIN: It’s a big night game in Charleston, West Virginia and, of course, food is part of the fun. But food is also one of the reasons that the state of health in West Virginia is so alarming.

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SHANNON RILEY (West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources): In West Virginia we have one of the unhealthiest populations in the nation. We have the highest incidences of disability, we have very high rates of obesity and obesity-related diseases — hypertension …

ROLLIN: In addition, West Virginia ranks among the highest in cases of diabetes. More than one-fourth of adults smoke and about one-fourth of adults do not exercise, and because the state is mostly rural and transportation is often unavailable, many patients seek medical treatment only for emergencies.

West Virginia recently began a controversial new program which is being offered to the 22 percent of the population on Medicaid. This clinic in Clay, West Virginia, is one of three which now provides enhanced Medicaid benefits to those who sign a personal responsibility contract. Critics find the plan punitive. Everyone should get the benefits, they say. They question the fairness of placing responsibility on patients who are least able to comply.

One of the requirements is to show up promptly for medical appointments, which many Medicaid patients fail to do because they lack transportation. Another requirement is to at least try to lose weight.

(Smoking Cessation Hotline): This is Jonna. How may I help you?

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ROLLIN: Those who sign up also pledge to stop smoking, and there’s help with that, too. And participants get full prescription coverage. That has meant a lot to 45-year-old Bonnie Duffield, who suffers from heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension and takes nine medications daily. The extra benefits stop if the patient fails to keep up with the requirements of the contract.

Dr. SARAH CHOUINARD (Medical Director, Clay Clinic, West Virginia, to Ms. Duffield): Tell me what brings you in today? Are you needing medications, or have you been sick? How have things been going?

BONNIE DUFFIELD (Patient): Well, ups and downs, but I need medication prescriptions.

Dr. CHOUINARD (to Ms. Duffield): Okay, are you just out or are you just low on things?

Ms. DUFFIELD: I’m just out.

Dr. CHOUINARD (to Ms. Duffield): Really. Completely out. Yikes!

ROLLIN (to Ms. Duffield): Has signing this paper made you eat in a healthier way?

Ms. DUFFIELD: Yeah, because it’s made me pay more attention to what I’m eating and see where — what foods are putting my sugar way up. My daughter’s overweight and, you know, I’ve been trying to encourage her to lose weight.

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ROLLIN (to Ms. Duffield): So this has benefited her as well as yourself?

Ms. DUFFIELD: And I’m encouraging good snacks for my granddaughter.

ROLLIN: Dr. Sarah Chouinard admits that getting patients to change their eating habits is extremely difficult.

Dr. CHOUINARD: And if you look at the menu at some of the restaurants here, you know, biscuits and gravy and chicken fried steak and those types of things are popular menu items, and there’s not been anybody to challenge that regularly or routinely.

ROLLIN: What critics see as placing unreasonable demands on patients Dr. Chouinard sees as empowerment.

Dr. CHOUINARD: So we used to take a real, you know, paternalistic role, and that was kind of what we were taught to do, and now we are saying, “Hey, we’ve had years and years of education, and we’re going to help you in any way that we can, but there’s plenty that you can do on your own in a good way.”

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ROLLIN: Dr. Amy Brodkey worries that the program harms the doctor-patient relationship.

Dr. AMY BRODKEY (Psychiatric Medical Director, Philadelphia): Everyone is in favor of people taking responsibility for their health. But what we know is that those behavioral changes take place within the context of a personalized, trusting doctor-patient relationship, not something that is contracted to the state.

ROLLIN: Dr. Brodkey thinks the contract is especially unfair to children.

Dr. BRODKEY: Children don’t sign the contract, the parents sign the contract. And the child can’t control what the parent does in terms of keeping appointments, taking medication and so forth.

Ms. RILEY: To say that children will suffer because their parents won’t do the right thing as a criticism of Medicaid, I think, is a bit disingenuous. A parent who won’t sign their child up for the enhanced plan, that child is still receiving very good health insurance, and Medicaid as a health insurer can’t police parental behavior. It’s beyond the scope of our mission.

ROLLIN: The patient responsibility contract has begun to expand statewide. If it is successful, other states are likely to follow.

Ms. RILEY: This is not about short-term cost containment. This is an investment in the health of our population. Will that save money in the long term? Yes, we believe it will, by controlling the growth of the program.

ROLLIN: Since the program is too new to have been studied, there are still two unknowns — whether a majority of patients will take better care of themselves and whether long-term costs, $2.7 billion a year in West Virginia alone, will decrease.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Betty Rollin in Charleston, West Virginia.

Muslims in the UK

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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: All over Western Europe, not least in Britain, the traditional majority is struggling to assimilate a fast-growing Muslim minority. Some of the Muslims, especially some of the younger ones, are said to be alienated and militant and, as Saul Gonzales reports from London, that is testing the tolerance of the majority.

SAUL GONZALEZ: In years past, this mosque in London’s Finsbury Park neighborhood was synonymous with extremism. Led by a firebrand cleric, it was a hotbed of Islamic militancy. Those who attended services here included 9/11 co-plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and “shoe bomber” Richard Reid. Worries about the mosque’s role as a center for terrorism became so serious police raided it in 2003, finding weapons and fake passports.

Imam AHMED SAAD (North London Central Mosque): This mosque has been hijacked by some extremists, and it has been dominated by them.

post02GONZALEZ: Egyptian-born Ahmed Saad is the mosque’s new imam, selected after a reformist board of directors was put into place. A religious moderate, Imam Saad has condemned Islamic extremism and terrorism.

Imam SAAD: You cannot kill people and slaughter them. I believe this is a criminal act that cannot be given any other name except criminal acts.

GONZALEZ: Although Imam Saad is working to change the once fearsome image of this mosque, concerns about Islamic radicalism still run very high in the United Kingdom. That’s because of such incidents as the July 2005 suicide bombings of the London mass transit system. Those attacks, which claimed the lives of 56 people, including the bombers, were carried out by four young British-born-and-raised Muslims. That was followed by this year’s failed terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow’s airport. Such incidents, say many British Muslims, have increased Islamophobia in the U.K. and unfairly placed their entire community and its religion under suspicion.

MURAD QURESHI (London Assembly): Race was, I think, the dominant issue in community relations, and now it’s religious identities.

GONZALEZ: Murad Qureshi is the only Muslim elected official on the London assembly, the city’s governing body.

Mr. QURESHI: There are a very, very small minority with an Islamist agenda, which the bulk of the Muslims of London don’t really have any truck with at all. To taint a whole religious community, from the orthodoxy to those who are more relaxed about their faith, I think, is a real tragedy.

GONZALEZ: However, despite anti-Muslim sentiment, the community has put down deep roots in Britain. Because of immigration from Islamic countries and the relatively high birth rates of native born British Muslims, Islam is now the largest minority religion in the United Kingdom, with more than 1.8 million members. London’s Muslim community is so prominent and diverse some have taken to calling the city the Muslim capital of Western Europe, or, more controversially, “Londonistan.” Take a stroll around some of the city’s neighborhoods, and it’s easy to feel like you’re in the Middle East instead of Europe.

AHMAD AL-DUBAYAN (Director General, London Islamic Cultural Center): I think the Muslim community now in the in the U.K. and in many other European countries — they are already now a part of society.

GONZALEZ: Ahmad al-Dubayan is director general of London’s Islamic Cultural Center. He says as his community grows in Britain, it must keep a balance.

Mr. Al-DUBAYAN: That means they have duties, but they have also rights — the rights, of course, guaranteed by the law in this country: practicing their religion, having their chances, of course, for knowing their faith. And at the same time they have duties, of course, to cooperate with others, to be integrated with the other communities, to have good relations with the other faiths. This is the balance that I think the Muslim community should really look and take care of.

post03GONZALEZ: However, many Britons are hostile to the idea of a growing Muslim presence in the country, arguing it threatens British values.

DAVID CONWAY (Research Fellow, Center for Social Cohesion): I believe it would be a sad thing were the form of life and society which has been in this country for centuries to cease to be, and I see a real threat in which we just become part of a greater “Eurabia.”

GONZALEZ: David Conway is a research fellow with the Center for Social Cohesion, a conservative London think-tank.

Mr. CONWAY: There are growing up very, very large communities of — with very high concentrations of people whose traditions and religion and customs simply don’t gel with native British traditions and customs and religions, and their allegiances would be sorely tested in certain sorts of situations.

GONZALEZ: (to Mr. Conway): The allegiances of Muslims living in Britain?

Mr. CONWAY: Yeah, or anywhere actually where they are in a minority.

GONZALEZ: Many Britons feel successive governments haven’t done enough to cultivate a sense of common national identity among the country’s religious and ethnic minorities. The result, they say, is a growing number of young Muslim citizens who feel alienated from mainstream British society. Poverty and high unemployment rates among British Muslims increase that alienation.

MUNIRA MIRZA (Sociologist): They are searching for an identity, and they want to belong to something, and I think the greater cultural threat is really in how we deal with that.

GONZALEZ: Sociologist Munira Mirza is a co-author of a recent study that tracked Muslim attitudes in the United Kingdom. Her finding that more than a third of young British Muslims would prefer living under Islamic law sparked a national debate in the U.K.

Ms. MIRZA: What we found with the report is, in fact, younger Muslims are much more likely to express strident religious views, much more likely to identify with their religion than their parents were. In fact, their parents were more likely to think of themselves as British than the younger generation. And so what we concluded from that was that the sense of alienation that Muslims do feel in Britain is not something that’s come from abroad. It’s not an imported phenomenon.

GONZALEZ (to Ms. Mirza): It’s homegrown?

Ms. MIRZA: It’s homegrown. Exactly.

GONZALEZ: Seventeen-year-old Muhammed Salah, whom we met in a London market, says he’s more religious than his Somali-born parents. Salah expresses his piety in his choice of clothing.

MUHAMMED SALAH (wearing “Soldier of Allah” t-shirt): By the writing it says “Soldier of Allah,” and to me it means, first, I am part of Islam religion. That’s firstly. Secondly, I just want to state that I am Muslim, and I want to show everyone that I am proud of being Islamic, a Muslim boy in London.

post04GONZALEZ (to Mr. Salah): Can you understand how some people might get the wrong impression, the wrong message from that?

Mr. SALAH: Yeah, yeah. Obviously people might think I’m a soldier. People come up to me often, but I am not going to do anything. It’s just a shirt that shows I’m Islamic, I’m a Muslim.

GONZALEZ: Many experts argue compared to Muslims in the United States it’s often more difficult for Muslims in the U.K. to feel fully accepted by British society.

Mr. MIRZA: The way in which the authorities treat them, that makes things worse, because it tells them you are different, you are a Muslim. This is your religion. This is your identity, and I think the effect is to reinforce the sense of difference that younger Muslims have.

GONZALEZ: However, some Muslim leaders in Britain actively encourage a separate Islamic identity and dismiss integration.

JAMAL HARWOOD (Member, Executive Committee, Hizb ut-Tahrir): Talking as a Muslim living in Britain, we see the Western secular values day-in and day-out, and we have a great amount of critique of those values.

GONZALEZ: Jamal Harwood, a convert to the Islam, is on the executive committee of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Muslim political group that some British politicians would like to see banned. Harwood believes Britain, like the rest of the West, has become a deeply immoral and materialistic society whose secular values harm Muslims living in the country.

Mr. HARWOOD: Now, I will accept that there’s also problems in the Muslim community, because unfortunately some of these notions of freedom and liberalism have actually tended to infect the Muslim community as well, so that unrestrained freedom has led towards this type of delinquency and looking out for number one.

GONZALEZ (to Mr. Harwood): You use the word “infect,” like it’s a virus?

Mr. HARWOOD: Individualism is a serious problem, and I think that is a very negative thing, and I think people could learn a lot from Muslims and Muslim society.

GONZALEZ: However, most British Muslims are trying hard to raise families, run businesses, and establish institutions that contribute both to their community and country. At his mosque, once a center of religious extremism, Imam Saad works to show that Muslim and Western values can and must co-exist.

Imam SAAD: What is needed here is the majority, the balanced majority, dealing with the extremist minority, and when we manage to get rid of this extremism, then we will have a very diverse culture that can accommodate, can act as a meeting point for the East and the West.

GONZALEZ: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Saul Gonzalez in London.

Debating Religious Belief

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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The recent parade of best-selling books by atheists has been followed, not surprisingly, by rebuttals from believers and now formal debates between the two.

We have excerpts today from a debate last week at Georgetown University in Washington. The believer was Oxford University professor of historical theology, Alister McGrath, a Christian. The atheist was journalist and author Christopher Hitchens, who condemns religious belief as dangerous and juvenile.

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Christopher Hitchens

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (Journalist and Author, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”): I can’t believe there is a thinking person here who does not realize that our species would begin to grow to something like its full height if it left this childishness behind, if it emancipated itself from this sinister, childish nonsense.

ABERNETHY: Hitchens took aim at the Christian belief that Jesus’ death atoned for everyone else’s sins.

Mr. HITCHENS: Is it moral to believe that your sins can be forgiven by the punishment of another person? Is it ethical to believe that? I would submit that the doctrine of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is utterly immoral.

The name for that in primitive Middle Eastern society was scapegoating. You pile all the sins of the tribe on a goat. You drive that goat into the desert to die of thirst and hunger, and you think you’ve taken away the sins of the tribe — a positively immoral doctrine that abolishes the concept of personal responsibility on which all ethics and all morality must depend.

On our integrity, our basic integrity, knowing right from wrong and being able to choose a right action over a wrong one, I think one must repudiate the claim that one doesn’t have this moral discrimination innately — that, no, it must come only from the agency of a celestial dictatorship, which one must love and simultaneously fear.

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Dr. Alister McGrath

Dr. ALISTER MCGRATH (Professor of Historical Theology, University of Oxford): For me God is a celestial liberator. The New Testament talks about the truth setting you free. It talks about the glorious liberty of the children of God. And I fully accept that Mr. Hitchens is very committed to the moral vision, has a real sense of what is right and what is wrong. But can one have a viable moral system without some sort of transcendent basis of morality?

ABERNETHY: McGrath said he is a former atheist.

Dr. MCGRATH: And in the end I came to faith, swapping my old faith of atheism for my new one of Christianity. It was like someone, I suppose, who knew water discovering champagne.

ABERNETHY: McGrath likened his own outlook to that of another Oxford professor — the late C.S. Lewis.

Dr. MCGRATH: “I believe,” he writes, “in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not simply because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”

I will gladly concede, because I think Mr. Hitchens is right on this, that there are some forms of religion that are pathological, that damage people. For every one of these atrocities which must cause all of us deep concern, there are 10,000 unreported acts of kindness, generosity, and so forth arising from religious commitment.

ABERNETHY: What became clear from the exchange was that the conflict was between two fundamentally different views of the world.

COVER . Scriptural Reasoning

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TIM O’BRIEN, guest anchor: Because of fundamental religious differences, people of different faiths have often had problems talking to each other about their beliefs. Some theologians are now trying a new approach. It’s called scriptural reasoning. Bob Abernethy reports.

BOB ABERNETHY: At New York’s General Theological Seminary, a celebration opening a new center for peace and reconciliation named for South Africa’s Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

DESMOND TUTU DESMOND TUTU (cutting ribbon): I declare the Desmond Tutu Education Center open.

ABERNETHY: But in the wider world, with many Muslims, Christians, and Jews fearing violence from each other, reconciliation between different religions can seem remote.

David Ford is a professor of theology at Cambridge University in England.

Dr. DAVID FORD (Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge, England): The divisions at present in our world, between Christians and Muslims especially, are so acute and so dangerous for the future of our whole world we have to take risks, it seems to me, to engage across the boundaries.

ABERNETHY: Rumee Ahmed is the Muslim chaplain at Brown University.

RUMEE AHMED RUMEE AHMED (Muslim Chaplain, Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life, Brown University): When we’re talking about relations between people of difference, you really only have a few alternatives. You can destroy them. You can make them all like yourself. Or you can engage them and try to understand them.

ABERNETHY: Ever since 9/11, all over the U.S. Christians and Jews have tried to better understand Muslims, searching for common ground in spite of theological differences. But some scholars now favor a kind of interfaith dialogue that emphasizes neither common ground nor differences, but the study of each other’s sacred texts. They call it scriptural reasoning.

Dr. FORD (at workshop): It is not about consensus.

ABERNETHY: At the Tutu Center opening, David Ford helped lead a workshop on scriptural reasoning, which he said creates a spirit that transcends theological differences.

FORD: We try to engage in such a way that there is understanding across those differences and trust across those differences. One of our phrases is “not consensus but friendship.”

ABERNETHY: Peter Ochs of the University of Virginia was another leader of the workshop.

PETER OCHS Dr. PETER OCHS (Professor of Modern Judaic Studies, University of Virginia): There’s a table. There’s a collection of readers from different traditions. There’s very small selections from each of the scriptures, and they interrupt and they challenge each other. The Muslim, the Jew, and the Christian look at each other and they learn after a couple of days, “My goodness, you too love God. I can trust you.”

ABERNETHY: All the scripture chosen for this workshop was about poverty and the obligation to help the poor and oppressed.

Dr. OCHS: Look at text 24 through 27: “If you lend money to any of my people, even to the poor with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor. Neither shall you lay upon him interest.” You mean charging interest is an example of oppression?

ABERNETHY: The Muslim discussion began with a recitation from the Qu’ran.

Mr. AHMED: The beginning is setting up the person who gives properly, the mindset of that person, and then after that the person who you are supposed to give it to, and then finally the right way that they’re supposed to give it.

ABERNETHY: Then, again, debate about the prohibition against charging interest on a loan.

Dr. OCHS (to Mr. Ahmed, in workshop debate): You can’t even give out a loan to a person who just wants to expand her farm?

Mr. AHMED (to Dr. Ochs, in workshop debate): Well, no, you can.

Dr. OCHS: Yeah?

Mr. AHMED: But you can’t have that loan based on usury.

Discussion Dr. OCHS: Usury meaning what? Usury meaning oppressive interest or just interest?

Mr. AHMED: That’s a good question.

Dr. OCHS: What’s your answer?

Mr. AHMED: Well, I honestly can’t say.

ABERNETHY: In this group, the relations were congenial. But what would they say to someone who insists only his or her religion is true?

Dr. OCHS: We would say, “Great. Therefore you respect revelation, right? What do you consider these other two here who also receive revelation?” If the individual simply says, “They’re infidels, let me at them,” we say, “I’m sorry, we don’t want you studying.” If there is someone who says, “I respect their tradition. If I sit and talk to them I’ll convert them,” we say, “Come on in,” because that’s what we want. We want individuals who believe they have the answers, who respect discussion, and we trust that the texts can take care of themselves.

ABERNETHY: And do they?

Dr. OCHS: They do.

ABERNETHY: Ochs and others have high hopes for scriptural reasoning. They’re trying to spread it to 1,000 cities. They also think it can encourage reconciliation.

DAVID FORD Dr. FORD: I think politicians in particular have just woken up to the fact that the religions are powerful. They shape perceptions. I think that unless we deeply understand the core identities of each of the traditions, and scriptures are essential to that, then you do not have the right starting point for engaging with religion in the public sphere.

Mr. AHMED: Scriptural reasoning says to Muslims, Jews, and Christians: We believe, and our belief is important, and we’re not the same. What Muslims need to see, and what the West needs to see also, are the vast numbers of people who are committed to reconciliation and who are committed to their texts, so they can see, well, there’s a Christian here who really cares about me and cares about my text and isn’t trying to convert me but just wants to understand me.

Interview: David Ford

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Read more of Bob Abernethy’s interview about scriptural reasoning with David Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity and director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme at the University of Cambridge:

Q: Let’s begin with a very simple definition of what it is that you have found so valuable in scriptural reasoning.

A: Scriptural reasoning is when Jews, Muslims, and Christians and sometimes others get together around a table and study their scriptures together. They have conversations around their scriptures — the Bible, the Qur’an, and the Tanakh — and they come together in the attitude that each is a host in relation to their own scripture, and a guest in relation to the others. In other words, there’s a form of mutual hospitality that happens in this. And another thing that we find extremely important has been that they each come together before God, and therefore they’re doing it fundamentally for God’s sake.

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David Ford

Q: And what is the result?

A: We’ve been doing it now for ten to 12 years, and during that time what we found is that we’ve begun to form a long-term community, if you like, of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who engage with each other regularly, who begin to trust each other across their difficulties, certainly to respect each other, and yet do not come to a consensus about many things. In fact, what we found is that scriptural reasoning is a very good way of airing difference, often very, very deep differences, between the traditions. We study our texts. We insist that the differences are rooted in discussion of our texts and how our particular communities have interpreted those texts down the centuries and around the world today. And, of course, each of our own communities also have deep differences within themselves.

Q: You may not solve a problem or work your way through a particular difference, but you come away with a new attitude toward the other person?

A: One of our basic wisdom saying, I suppose you could call it, in doing scripture reasoning is we’re not aiming at consensus so much as a friendship. In other words that as we engage more and more deeply with the texts of the others and our own texts, what tends to happen is that we understand each other’s texts more. We often see much more clearly where the differences lie, but we emerge from that with an understanding, a mutuality, and often friendship across those boundaries, even though the key issues of truth are not resolved.

Q: What are the principal differences between Christianity and Islam?

A: One could go on a long listing the theological differences, and one would begin with God, the Trinity, and so forth, their response to Jesus, who figures in both traditions, but understood very differently as regards divinity and crucifixion and so forth. But I just stop there because the scriptural reasoning approach to this is not to list theological differences and then discuss them. Our approach to it is to take texts, to try to understand how each tradition has come to their understanding of whatever it is that divides us, and then to speak from where we are about those differences. Now, in other words, we don’t tend to just headline all those major differences, but we engage in this conversation around text. And often what we find as we do that is that we reach into all sorts of different dimensions of Islam and Judaism and Christianity that we’ve begun with by headlining that issue. And it is far more moving and it leads to a deeper community…We don’t tend to start by focusing on the differences and then conceptualizing further about them, because what we find that often leads to traditionally is to a usual list of suspects as regards what divides these communities. We are more interested in engaging in these terribly rich texts, which are often not done justice to by just taking out these big theological differences, and as we engage with these rich texts we find we get a much richer understanding of each other and also of ourselves. I mean, the really remarkable thing, of course, that we find is that the deeper you go into engagement with the other, the deeper you need to go into engagement with your own tradition. And the ignorance that you discover about your own tradition is at least as great as the ignorance about the other.

Q: What do you make of the very common way many approach trying to learn something about another religion — by seeking common ground? How effective is that?

A: Well, we’re rather suspicious of that. We’re not against it, of course. If you can find common ground — great. But in our experience, if you start off by seeking common ground, you tend to get a lowest common denominator from each of the traditions. You abstract something fairly thin that’s not absolutely central to them, and you say, “This is where we can come together.” And then at the first sign of trouble, there’s an earthquake and the common ground dissolves. Now what we say as an alternative to seeking common ground in that form is to go deeply into the particular traditions of each, and try to find there ways of reaching towards things that have analogies in each tradition. In other words, that are similarities without being identities. You don’t claim identity, because these traditions are obviously so deeply different in the way in which they have developed and are practiced in the world today. But if you engage with the scriptures, you make sure that you’re on very different texts, that in relation to those texts you can never forget how different you are. And of course that can be more so in relation to Jews and Christians who share a common text. If you look at the different ways they interpret that text, then you see how deep the differences are there.

Q: There are enormous differences in the world between cultures and societies and religions, and a great need for solving the problems that exist between different religions. To what extent do you think what you and other scholars are doing with scriptural reasoning can have very real consequences in this world that is so divided and so violent?

A: I think the practical consequence of scriptural reasoning should be seen on two different levels, the shorter term and the longer term. And the longer term I think in many ways is the most important. But, of course, one also wants to have shorter term impact. On the longer term, these traditions have been engaged with each other for hundreds and hundreds of years. The differences between them have taken hundreds of years to form. And they will probably, if the world lasts, go on for hundreds more years being deeply different from each other and having to inhabit a common world. That means that it’s very like the environmental problem, you know, the ecological issues in our world. They are long term, and what happens in particular niches of the environment can be very, very important long term. And you might say that what we are trying to do is introduce a healthy niche into the environment of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and their relations to the rest of the world which enables something that hasn’t been there before. There has never been a location where Jews, Christians, and Muslims can engage year after year after year, and often in educational settings, but not just that, and really engage with each other about their core identities and how they understand reality and how they act in reality. Now that’s something that scriptural reasoning at its best can do, and so that’s why we’re trying to embed it in educational institutions like Cambridge University, where we educate century after century. And we hope that it really matters, the quality of education that goes on there. But the short term is also very important. And as we see it, that because scriptures are so central to the identity, to the worship, to the ethics, to the daily spirituality of people of these three traditions, to gather ordinary people, not just scholars, around their texts and let them get a sense of what these texts mean to each other, and to host each other in this mutual hospitality around them that enables a form of community that doesn’t happen in other ways. And it’s not aimed, as I say, at arriving at a consensus on any of the issues at the end of it. What it’s aimed at is arriving at a new sort of respect, understanding, and trust on the basis there can be collaboration, and so forth. But you don’t pretend that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all agree on something.

Q: And what about the opportunities for doing that, specifically between Christians and Muslims. Are they there? Can some of the terrible problems we have and the suspicions of each other be resolved or made less dangerous by this kind of discussion?

A: I hope it can be helpful in many different practical situations. Anything regarding scriptures in any of the three traditions is also dangerous. But you can see that these scriptures can go terribly wrong. They can be interpreted in all sorts of very harmful ways, and facing those difficulties in our texts — each of us has real difficulties in our own texts — is part of what scriptural reasoning tries to do. In other words, it tries to reduce optimism that there is some easy way forward on these things. But what we hope is that there is genuine practical outcome from this. Not in the immediate — we don’t claim to solve the Middle Eastern problem, but then nobody else has so far either. But to enable a quality of understanding and engagement and to continually return to the core identities of each, but to do that, it seems to me, can resource members of each of the communities to attack the problems in their own communities as well as between them and in the rest of society. And, as I say, it’s always at its best, because anything, really — just it’s always a matter of the corruption of the best is the worst. Nothing goes wrong worse than religion, except perhaps sex and money. But the fact is that in our world we have to take the risks, it seems to me, to engage across these boundaries. But, as you say, the divisions at present in our world, between Christians and Muslims especially, are so acute and so dangerous for the future of our whole world.

Q: Can you see this changing the way countries do diplomacy? Do you see a need for it in the way nations do diplomacy?

A: I think, yes, there is a place for it in that realm, as in every realm. All you have to think is whether the scriptures of each of the traditions have any relevance to the public sphere. And, of course, each of the three traditions, Jews, Christians, Muslims all say definitely yes. These are texts that should have implications there. Therefore those who are taking part in, those with responsibility for trying to handle the disputes and the possibilities in the international sphere should be able to form their understandings better by engaging with each other, or having that in the background when they engage in those practical problems. There won’t be simple linear solutions coming out of those scriptures in most cases. But to form a mind like this — in particular I think it is important that whole realm of religion is taken very seriously as a major motivating and shaping force in our world. I think we are emerging from a 20th century which was basically a secular century in its public ideology. You know, communism, fascism, and capitalism were the main headline issues there. Towards the end of that century we came into a situation where we were recognizing that the reality of our world is not just secular, but religious and secular. There are 45 billion people in the world who are involved directly in the major world religions. And I think politicians in particular have just begun to wake up to the fact that the religious are powerful. They shape perceptions. And if you leave out the religious element and just reduce it to the social, the economic, and so forth in the public sphere, then you have missed out on something that really does affect people’s actions and how whole societies react. I hosted in June of this year a conference in London on Islam and Muslims in today’s world with the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, and Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, the Grand Mufti of Egypt and so forth spoke at that. And for me one the most interesting outcomes of that conference was precisely the fact that the political class in Britain — and the leader of the opposition, David Cameron, also spoke at it, and Prince Charles sent us a message by video — were so eager to take part in an international conference with people from over 30 countries on Islam in today’s world. Now that said to me that we have entered a new age of the religious and secular world, and I would add the interfaith and secular world, and the politicians, diplomatists in all areas of public life — they have to reckon that this is now something that has to be taken seriously. And there are inadequate ways of taking it seriously and more adequate ways. And I think unless one deeply understands the core identities of each of the traditions, and scriptures are essential to that, then you do not have the right starting point for engaging with religion in the public sphere.

Interview: Peter Ochs

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Read more of Bob Abernethy’s interview about scriptural reasoning with Peter Ochs, professor of modern Judaic studies at the University of Virginia:

Q:What is scriptural reasoning? How do you define it? How does it work?

A: Scriptural reasoning is a practice for inviting participants in Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scriptural traditions to study together. They are people who study among themselves, and we want them to study their sacred texts with one another at the same time. The basic practice, which is very simple when you do it — it took us ten years to test it out, though, because there are many ways of not doing it right. But it looks very simple. There’s a table. There’s a collection of readers from different traditions. There’s very small selections from each of their scriptures. And they sit and they together act as if they each were experts in the other’s tradition, and they interpret and they challenge each other. That’s the method. If it’s done for an hour, okay, it warms up. If it’s done again and again, particularly for two days in a row or week after week for two hours, then they discover, only then, that their understandings of their own texts and of the others become transformed, and they start interacting in a way we call the reasoning part of scriptural reasoning. They actually think differently. We’ve tested this. What difference will it make? Well, this begins at what you see as often a very academic practice. You see, you know, scholars practicing this. It’s true. The scholars initiated it. They’re testing it. But the whole plan of this is for scholars to develop a method of study that the most traditional folk villagers who love their scripture anywhere in the world — that will later include Hindu scriptures as well — the most different people, untrained but love their scriptures, how we can get them to be able to study together with people very, very different than they are. The goal is a method of bringing very disparate peoples together for close study.

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Peter Ochs

Q: Why is that needed?

A: The world is at war.

Q: From what I’ve heard and read, people who do this begin with the assumption and acknowledgment that the other person also believes in God and looks at the world that way.

A: You might say that there are two poles in this study, both of which are important. One pole is an answer to the question how can we get traditional believers from folk societies around the world, people who really don’t like each other and believe their traditions bring them apart — how can we get them together? That’s one goal. That assumes believers. The assumption in that approach is that the Muslim, the Jew, and the Christian look at each other and they learn after a couple of days, “My goodness. You, too, love God. I can trust you.” The other pole is so that when educators, those who develop curricula even for the first grade, high school, programs in prisons, if they observe these traditional people studying, we feel, and we’ve begun this, they can observe methods of relating. How do individuals relate to their knowledge? How do they relate to strangers? How do they relate to each other while they’re learning? And we want to generate forms of learning unlike the classrooms most of us had when we grew up. And the method of scriptural reasoning will be that broad. It won’t be called scriptural reasoning always. When it’s that broad it will be called relational study — a different form of study, but we hope that would generate and nurture different forms of loving relationship in the classroom. That’s one of the goals.

Q: Spell that out a little bit. How does that differ from the way people are taught now?

A: The way most of us went to school, in the first grade and high school, or parochial schools — and today this applies all the more so to what schools people call fundamentalist, because many of the methods employed in so-called fundamentalist schools are borrowed from the West and applied to the religion, and what I’m referring to is this: The style of learning that says learning is something you get, you possess. It’s about ideas, and the smartest people know it. And our job as students is to sit in the classroom and receive that knowledge. Well, think of that day after day, week after week. What else is this student learning? The student is learning that knowledge is possession. That it comes with authority and that there are those who have it and those who don’t. All of those are traits that are being taught by educational systems organized that way, and we don’t think they’re good traits. They can translate into a notion of imperialism. If I’m now, after I’ve been educated, if I’m now part of the ruling body, I think of my knowledge as something that ought to be known by others, even by force. The approach that we hope can be derived from traditional people studying together is to show that knowledge, in religious terms, is God’s. But in more general terms knowledge is something that none of us possess, that each of us works cooperatively together to uncover. And part of the knowledge is about our relationship to each other, so that when you learn material, you’re also relearning how to relate to the material and you’re learning how to relate to each other.

Q: What the biggest theological differences are between Christianity and Islam?

A: Over many years of observing Muslim, Christian, and, in this case, also Jewish scholars and lay people studying together, I’ve observed certain differences that folks from different traditions have — tendencies. Not always the same, but, for example, the Muslim scholars I’ve seen as compared to the Christian scholars, the Muslim scholars will tend to take nature much more seriously, will tend to assume that when they’re studying that their scriptural texts are teaching them what they should also be seeing with their eyes when they look at trees, when they study through microscopes. It’s the same truth. The Christian [scholars], and in this case are more like the Jewish scholars, the two of them think much more no, this is a text. This is a revealed knowledge, apart from the world, that we can apply to it. That’s one difference. I won’t go through the obvious differences of Trinity, you know, a God with three persons in one. That we all know. But how does that apply itself to the texts? A second major difference I’ve seen is that the Muslim scholars believe that the text does not display itself clearly. It says other, as God is. It comes indirectly, so therefore you’re not going to get what you get with many Christian scholars, is a sense that, even in English translation, I the individual can see those words, and I kind of know what they mean. No Muslim scholar I’ve seen says here’s a text of the Qur’an; its meaning is self-evident. It takes a lot of indirect study and discussion and interpretation to be clear.

Q: What difference could this work make to the enormous amount of mistrust, misunderstanding, and antagonism between the West and Islam?

A: Well, I’d have a long term and a short term goal for Christian-Muslim relations through this approach. The short term goal is that in the thousand cities, which is what we want to do, there will be Muslims and Christians, not just scholars but ministers and congregants, studying together texts that they both recognize the other treats as sacred — environments in which many, many people will begin to care for each other even if they don’t agree with each other. That’s our first goal and that’s immediate. We have an urgent project, beginning to spread this to a thousand cities. And we have already done several. We know how to do that. The long range project is the one you see the scholars working on now. And that longer range project has to do with really disagreeing with and finding a practical way to change the general orientation in universities for the last 300 years — and high schools, because high schools often follow the patterns of universities. We have that much chutzpah, as we say, or that much pride to think that this is a method which, little by little, could change curricula, change ways of study so that different human beings come to care for each other while they study.

Q: And an example of that would be?

A: An example of that would be that in a public school setting, a university setting, a religious Muslim and a religious Christian as well as secular Muslim and secular Christian can talk about their traditions, and their talk won’t be assumed to impose itself on the other, won’t be considered — shouldn’t be talked about in public space. And because they’ll be talking about what they really care about privately at home when they are religious, it’s not that that will be imposed on the school. To the contrary. When our private religious beliefs are discussed publicly, they lose their own sense of separate and exclusiveness. They’ll become more available to the others. In a sense, we want to see people allowed to be in school who they really are, and we think we have a method to do that.

Q: And that would spread to politics and international affairs?

A: Well, I’d say there are two levels. One, if children have been schooled this way in grade school and high school, some of them will become doctors and lawyers, politicians, and we hope they’ll bear with them — this is a long range project, about a generation long — the memory of this. They’ll see the religious other as different, but somebody who shared something very, very precious. That’s one direction of the hope. I would say the fundamental difference between contemporary western education and what we see could be reduced to this — oversimplified but reduced to this: In the West, the notion is if we’re going to get understanding, we have to figure out something that we all have exactly the same. Difference is a source of tension. Difference is bad. So we’ve asked university faculty for the last 300 years to figure out the single clear truth, in a way, that will bring us together. Our approach says we’re different, and our differences sometimes are really troublesome. That’s mostly because we don’t — we haven’t developed techniques for dealing with them. We have an approach that takes the one example of religious difference, of the difference in scriptures, but we feel once we develop the techniques for studying those difference together it applies to other kinds of difference: biography, history, personality, race. It’s studying across a difference that’s good. That’s what we hope to do, and it’s not the way things are usually taught in our schools.

Q: Can scriptural reasoning work if some of those around the table are atheists?

A: There are different ways of study, different environments for study. If we’re in Southeast Asia or Brooklyn or Cape Town and trying to get a group of very traditional folks who hate each other to study, no. That wouldn’t be the place for an atheist to be a member of — we’re trying to do something else. But if we’re in the classroom — I teach classes in scriptural reasoning at the university, and there’s no requirement for any belief. One brings one’s mind to this form of study and plays at it. Anyone can. Another important dimension of scriptural reasoning is emotion. This is an environment where people reason really hard. If they’re philosophers, they reason philosophically. But they don’t detach that reasoning from what they really feel. They tell jokes. They cry. They get angry. They talk about their biographies. How is it possible? Because the other members of the group are there to balance any excessive subjectivity or excessive oddness on the part of one member. Everyone shares, and therefore we’re not worried about having a clean space of pure objectivity. That’s balanced out, and we think it’s hugely important to generate an educational system in which people can be whole people and use their deepest instincts and not just think from the neck up.

Q: And what about the things scriptural reasoning is not?

A: Scriptural reasoning — and this is important for individuals or groups who might want to start a scriptural reasoning group. It just looks like ordinary old chatting or your local community book club. And if it’s done well, it should look like that. What those who look at it don’t know is the group that worked as your old ordinary book club isn’t doing ten things that make it not work. For example, scriptural reasoning doesn’t work if individuals act like authorities — and even in a good sense. If we were studying and I said to somebody else, “Well what does your tradition mean?” — that’s not how it works. Once an individual in the circle is treated as an authority, people stop bringing their feelings. People stop bringing their own opinions. They sit back and become passive learners, which is just the educational environment we don’t want. Another thing you don’t do is impose yourself, interrupt others and say, “No, you shouldn’t read that way,” or “This isn’t how you read.” A third thing that shouldn’t be done — one respects the sacredness of the other’s text. It doesn’t mean that you’re worshipping it. It doesn’t mean that the folks at home, if they saw you, would know you’ve given up your tradition. It just means that the human being sitting next to you treats that text as something hugely dear, and you respect your neighbor’s feelings. You respect your neighbor’s sense of sanctity. And there are ways of training people to learn how to respect other people while they’re still acting like they can talk about that text, and that’s what we develop.

Q: What do you say, for instance, to a committed Christian who believes absolutely that Christianity is true, truer than all other religions, and that it is his duty, his obligation to God to try to spread the word about Christianity and convert other to it for their salvation?

A: Two comments. The first is that each setting of scriptural reasoning, whether it’s in a prison, in a grade school, among clerics, each has it’s own function and form. So there isn’t one answer for any one setting. But if I were in a setting in which there was a Christian — perhaps a Jewish and a Muslim colleague as well who believe God told us the truth, we’re here to convert the world — we would say great. Therefore you respect revelation, right? What do you consider these other two here who also receive revelation? If the individual simply says, “They’re infidels. Let me at them,” we say, “I’m sorry. We don’t want you studying,” because that’s a dangerous individual. If there’s someone who says, “I respect their tradition. If I sit and talk to them, I’ll convert them,” we say, “Come on in,” because that’s what we want. We want individuals who believe they have the answer who respect discussion, and we trust that the texts can take care of themselves.

Q: And do they?

A: They do. I mean, if all three texts are allowed to be in play, and members of each tradition want to use that session to convert the other, they keep at it for enough hours, they get pretty tired, because the other texts and its proponent can answer questions. No one wins. But we hope a little knowledge seeps in, and even more importantly — friendship. The modern western impulse — it’s the same impulse whether you fear it or you promote it, namely to believe that we get together only when we get rid of differences and disrespect them. That belief is shared by those who don’t want to come together because they fear, and we’ve talked to them, that when we come together we are going to lose our distinctness. And our response to them who want to preserve their traditional circle and to those who want to make everyone the same — we have the same response. These texts were revealed separately, differently. We respect that difference. We’re not here to reduce it. But we’re here to hear those who respect the God in those texts, to talk to each other. Difference is a context for dialogue. Not sameness.

Interview: Rumee Ahmed

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Read more of Bob Abernethy’s interview about scriptural reasoning with Brown University Muslim chaplain Rumee Ahmed:

Q: Tell me what scriptural reasoning is, how it works, and what the benefits of it are.

A: I think scriptural reasoning is a little different for everyone. But for me scriptural reasoning is an opportunity to sit down with people who take their faith very seriously, who take their scripture very seriously, who demonstrate a commitment to that scripture as the word of God, and to work out some of the same problems and same issues that I’m having in my own faith. The result is, number one, I understand my faith better, I think. I understand the stories in my texts better. If I’m studying the story of Cain and Abel, for example, I only understand the true fullness of it, the richness of it, in conversation with other people who share that story, even if their versions are a little different or their understandings of it are a little different. And then I can take the ways that they think about those stories back into my own tradition and see if that’s an authentic expression of it. But also, I’m able to understand how another views the world, someone who doesn’t share my faith tradition, so that whether I agree with them or disagree with them, at least I understand where they’re coming from and how they view the world and the same stories that I grew up with and I understand, but differently.

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Rumee Ahmed

Q: Have you had the experience of coming through a discussion of differences with somebody else of another religion and not resolving that difference, but somehow feeling close to that person?

A: Yeah. Probably the clearest example or most powerful, at least for me, was discussing grace in Christianity. I could not understand the concept of grace, and for Muslims and for Jews — we found it very, very difficult to understand, you know, the way it relates to their understanding of God. But when I was able to hear it a few different ways I actually — I could feel resonances in my own tradition…and in that way I was able to at least relate. When talking about God’s providence, when talking about grace, in the Christian tradition it’s a term that is vernacular. I mean, it’s understood by — you know, if you talk to any Christian theologian about grace it’s something that is commonplace. It’s a common term. It’s not in our circles, but it goes by a different name. There were debates throughout Muslim history between rationalists and those who would say that God is beyond rationality. And there were debates about predestination and about determinism that have very strong resonances [with] the history of Christian debate on this topic. And whether or not the terms are exactly the same, the ideas are, and that’s where we can start to feel a collegiality. I know I didn’t agree with the understanding of grace that was being presented. But at the very least I could understand and I could respect the position. Another example is the Jewish relationship with God. Well, not to say there’s one specific Jewish way of relating to God, but in the way that many Jews spoke about God and God’s relationship with Israel was one that I had a very hard time respecting until I understood the Hebrew behind the word. The word for “to turn towards, to turn from,” is very similar to the Arabic root, and so, again, I was able to understand where they’re coming from and what they’re saying.

Q: After 9/11 there were many efforts to learn more about Islam. People tried to seek common ground. It’s my understanding that approach seems inadequate to people doing scriptural reasoning. Why is that?

A: Scriptural reasoning understands that we have very deep-rooted differences, and though we may both believe in God, we may relate to that God very, very differently. So to say that you believe in God and I believe in God may mean very different things, and it isn’t particular to different faith traditions. Two Christians in a room may understand their God very, very differently, which leads them to different results and different ways of viewing of world. And so to simply stop at saying, well, I believe in God and you believe in God is to ignore all those latent disagreements in the way we view the world.

Q: What would be an example of different ways of thinking about God?

A: Well, let’s take scripture, for example. If one person were to say that scripture is the literal word of God for all times and all places in exactly the way it is now, and someone else who believes in the same scripture was to say, “Well, it’s to be understood allegorically” or “It was inspired by God,” that leads the person to view the way they act in the world very differently, though they both may be Muslim, or Jewish, or Christian. And so to stop at saying, “Well, we both believe in the Qur’an” is really not to hit at the core of beliefs, and it fails in understanding the other person.

Q: Identifying differences can often lead to the problem of worse relations with the other, but scriptural reasoning blunts that because of its assumption that the other person is devout, believes in God, worships God, and thinks his sacred text is very important. How can scriptural reasoning overcome that problem of exacerbating differences?

A: Well, one understands things other than oneself through difference. Otherwise it would be simply an equality. But when one explores that difference, one then sees also the similarities, and those similarities come out once you explore those differences. One sees, for example, the dedication, the love of God, in another person. That can’t be discounted. You can’t simply say, “Well, that person is disingenuous. They don’t really believe in God.” Well, that person really believes in God, and they really believe in their scripture in a way that I have to respect and take into account when I view that other person. So yes, it’s different, but I can recognize that devotion, that love, in the other.

Q: What are the biggest theological problems between Islam and Christianity?

A: Well, the clearest one is the doctrine of the Trinity. Are there three Gods? [Is] there one God? Islam predicates itself on radical monotheism — that both in word and in deed the Godhead has to be completely unified under all circumstances, and three Gods is anathema to that. I think the interesting question is does that theological difference automatically have practical consequences? That is, can the two never reconcile, then, if such fundamental doctrines are different? And my reading of the Qur’an is that, yes, the Qur’an criticizes the idea of saying that there are three Gods while at the same time recognizing that devotion within people who believe that, and saying that, well, your devotion to God is commendable even though we disagree with you. And that’s the same process that comes out in scriptural reasoning — that on the practical level people are known as servants of God. You can recognize a servant of God regardless of their tradition. But to say that we’re all the same based on that is incorrect. A Muslim would be perfectly within their rights to say, “I don’t agree with you. I think you’re wrong.” But that doesn’t mean that we can’t talk, or that we can’t live together, or that you have to be just like me.

Q: What are some of the other major theological differences?

A: The other theological differences, I would want to say, are as strong as the doctrine of the Trinity versus a more radical monotheism, but in practice you see a lot of the other doctrinal differences between mainstream Islam, as we see it today in the 20th century, and mainstream Protestant Christianity or even mainstream Catholicism — you see resonance of that in Muslim history, of different groups claiming to have similar doctrines whether or not they call them, you know, they recognize that or not, whether or not that similarity is conscious. You find those ideas throughout Muslim history and Muslim thought.

Q: Do you prefer to talk about other things than the differences between Islam and Christianity?

A: There are different types of difference. If someone were to have a very strict interpretation of the Qur’an, a very literalist interpretation of the Qur’an, then most things are different, because the Qur’an is not the same as the Bible and it’s not the same as the Torah. But on the spirit — the spirit is very similar, and Muslims throughout history have such a diverse understanding of the religion that to say there is one Islam, and to say that there’s one Christianity, and hear the differences between the two, would be to deny that entire rich history. There are differences in the way, however, we view the narrative of history — the reason why prophets came. There are differences amongst Muslims in their historical thought about the place of Jesus, but really the main doctrinal differences are monotheism and the doctrine of the Trinity — in its expression, not necessarily in its understanding. But those differences in narrative can’t be so easily fleshed out and said, you know, “This is the difference between the way I view the world and the way you view the world.” Nor can it be reduced to a singular view. There are narratives of Islam that different people have articulated throughout Muslim history, and narratives of Christianity that Christian theologians have expressed.

Q: Can you find in scriptural reasoning grounds for hope that discussing different scriptures, different beliefs, can have practical consequences in reducing tensions between lots of Muslims and lots of people in the West, many of whom are Christians? Can you see it trying to work out peaceful relations between Islam and the West?

A: I have seen it. But more importantly, I believe it. I have to believe that this is going to work because the alternatives are so dire. When we’re talking about relations between people of difference, you really only have a few alternatives: You can destroy them. You can make them all like yourself. Or you can engage them and try and understand them. This process of understanding is very, very immature, both in the Muslim world and in the Western world. And I don’t say that in the sense that the West doesn’t understand Muslims. But in our modern education system, we often don’t understand religion and religious people, and we don’t take their religious conviction seriously the way that they take their religious conviction seriously. We have people graduating from universities in political science departments, in economics, in sociology, where people are studying the practical impacts of individuals all over the world. And these people are given — these students are given very little religion vocabulary, if at all, to relate to their own tradition if not other people’s tradition. The idea that we don’t take religion seriously is, I think, the vacuum created that scriptural reasoning steps into, to say that, you know, your religious conviction actually is important and we’re going to approach you on that level, not as though we don’t have any differences and as though it’s a surface belief, but taking very seriously your conviction.

Q: Can you see scriptural reasoning playing any part in the development of better relations between the West and the most radical, violent, fundamentalist Islamists?

A: I love the belief that there are radical fringes in every community, and if history continues, there will always be radical fringes in every community. There are some who will be excited about scriptural reasoning, and there will be some who are not and are not interested in the project at all. I think scriptural reasoning is meant to give voice to those people who belief that dialogue is possible; that respecting individuals as human beings is paramount and to give those people voice. At the moment we say that the fringe radical groups of certain religions are a small minority, they’re fringe. But yet they’re the ones that we always hear from. Whether they be Muslims or not we are regularly hearing from these groups. The ones who are working on peace, the ones who are working on reconciliation, we very rarely hear from. And so the hope is that scriptural reasoning will give voice to these individuals. Oftentimes what happens, at least in Muslim circles, is that we don’t have the vocabulary necessary to converse with you, converse with Christians and Jews on a theological level. Scriptural reasoning allows that conversation to happen and allows those understandings to develop over time, whereas without it we would continue to talk past each other, even though the ideas might be exactly the same. Simply because we’re using different terms, and simply because we think that those terms are mutually exclusive, we talk past each other.

Q: What do you make of the apparent fact that an enormous number of people in the Muslim world think the West is out to destroy Islam?

A: Yes, that’s right. There’s a very prevalent view — that America is at war with Islam and Muslims in particular. And when you think about, well, where would they get that idea, well, what do we hear of the West? If you imagine a Muslim living in a Muslim country, what you see of the West is Afghanistan, is Iraq. It’s foreign intervention. What Muslims know of the West is their foreign policy. We don’t hear voices from the West saying to us, “You know, we value you as individuals, and we are not our foreign policy.” And it’s funny, because in America, we hear the same thing about Muslims: Where are the moderate Muslims? Where are their voices? And when I go to Muslim countries I hear the exact same thing: So many Americas are against the war? Where are they? We never hear about them.

Q: How can scriptural reasoning deal with this huge problem of millions of people in the Islamic world thinking the United States and Christianity are out to destroy Islam?

A: Scriptural reasoning allows the opportunity for Christians, Jews, and Muslims who are committed to each other, as they are committed to their texts, to demonstrate their commitment — at the round table. What Muslims need to see, and what the West needs to see also, are the vast numbers of people who are committed to reconciliation, and who are committed to their texts, so they can see there’s a Christian here who really cares about me and cares about my text and isn’t trying to convert me but just wants to understand me. And what happens then, the hope is that there will be a de-linking between a Christian in the West and American foreign policy. And hopefully there will be a de-linking between a Muslim living in a Muslim country and that Muslim country’s policies. It’s interesting that the rhetoric is so similar in the Muslim world as it is here — the way we talk about radicals and fringe movements as though they were normative, as though the foreign policy of different countries in the Middle East is equivalent to the sentiments of individuals in the Middle East or in the Muslim world. Similarly, when I go to Muslim countries I hear the same thing about an equation between the citizens of the countries of the West and their country’s foreign policies. So many Muslims have asked me where are the moderate Americans telling us that we’re not interested in your land, we’re not interested in your oil, we’re not interested in this war, we just want peace? As far as they’re concerned and as far as what they see and hear, the Christian West is invading Muslim countries and intervening in their policies, and so they don’t hear the voices of moderate, peace-loving Americans, and so they wonder, well, does that voice exist or do they really care about us?

Q: And how can scriptural reasoning help that, if at all?

A: Scriptural reasoning says to Muslims, Jews, and Christians we believe, and our belief is important, and we’re not the same, but we all want to live in peace, and we all want to understand one another. Not in a way that collapses our differences, but a way that celebrates them and allows them to come out and come forth so that we can live together. If the underlying ethos is that we want to live together, such dialogue will produce those fruits.

Interview: Mike Huckabee

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Read more of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly correspondent Kim Lawton’s September 16, 2007 interview with Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee:

Q: Well, I’m a little curious how your experience as a pastor is helping you on the campaign trail as you seek the presidency?

A: I think it’s a great background in part because there’s not any social pathology that exists today that I couldn’t put a name and a face to. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a teen girl who’s pregnant, hasn’t told her parents, or an elderly couple dealing with one of them being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Those are real people to me. Those are the people I dealt with every single day. So that period of my life where I was literally touching people’s lives from the cradle to grave is probably the best way I could have ever been prepared to deal with the job that ultimately is about dealing with people and understanding the incredible frailties and complexities of life.

Q: How does your faith inform your politics?

A: The best way is to say that as a Christian for me the essence of Christian faith is that you treat others as if you wish to be treated. That was the ultimate commandment of Jesus — to love God with your whole heart, to love others as you would love yourself, and to treat others as you would wish to be treated. That’s really the heart of the Gospel. So if a person is in public office your ultimate question is not how should this affect me, but if I were that person how would I want someone to deal with this issue in such a way as to best benefit that person? I think it gets easier for me. Public policy is pretty easy when you ask, you know, what would I have them do unto me?

post01Q: What role does prayer play in your decision-making process?

A: Prayer’s important, not just as some kind of a metaphysical exercise, but I think it’s a way to refresh one’s own mind and motive. If you’re praying, you’re really looking beyond your own personal thoughts and the pressures that are around you. You’re trying to get a focus on a perspective that’s higher than your earthly one. You’re trying to see things that are bigger than you, that are more important than you. You remind yourself that, you know, there was a world here before I came along, and there will be one after I leave. I’m not that important, but the decision I make may be, so I need to make the right one.

Q: Does it affect, though, how you come down? I mean, do you think that prayer has an impact on where you ultimately come down on your decision?

A: Oh, I would hope so. I would hope that prayer certainly lets me see things not so much from a selfish perspective. That’s the main thing, to take it away from my own nature, which is that of every person, to look at things from one’s own personal perspective as if the world’s about me. Prayer reminds me it’s not just about me. It’s about all the people with whom I share this planet, and all of whom God has created, and all of whom he cares just as much about as he cares about me. He loves me no more than he does anybody else. He loves them no less than he does me. So if I’m a person of prayer, I’m going to be reminded of that because that ultimately is what prayer does. It just takes us to a level of higher thought than our own personal selfishness.

Q: What do you say to people who believe that a minister shouldn’t — a former minister — shouldn’t be president? How do you reach out to potential voters who say, “I can never see myself voting for a former Southern Baptist pastor”?

A: I can’t imagine that there’s still that much bigotry in this country as it relates to religion. I would hope not. It would be like saying Martin Luther King should have kept his mouth shut ’cause, after all, he should have stayed in the church and not preached justice and righteousness. Do we really say that about him? I’ve never heard it said. Interestingly, most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were ministers or were very active in their church, but many of them were actual ministers in their church. For us to somehow act like that people of faith are disenfranchised from being in the public square, again, I would find that disturbing, as if there is sort of a unspoken bigotry toward people of faith. And, furthermore, if that’s the case then, you know, if I’m not going to be exempted from having to pay taxes and living in the real world like everybody else, then don’t shove me to the side. In the case of my particular candidacy, it’s not like I’ve just stepped from the pulpit to run for president. I was a lieutenant governor three years. I was a governor ten and a half. Among the Republicans, I actually have more executive government experience than any other single candidate running for president. Mayor Giuliani sometimes talks about his executive experience. He was a mayor eight years. I was in public office as an elected official for eleven and half, ten and a half of which was the chief executive of my state.

Q: How have you learned as a politician, or what guidelines do you try to employ in your language when you speak about religion so as to include or not alienate people who don’t share your particular beliefs?

A: I understand that there’s somewhat of an anxiety with certain people because I have an outspoken view on faith. I think I try to disarm people on the front side rather than wait on them to ask the question “how does it affect you?” And sometimes I’ll begin speeches in front of audiences that I can sense the tension by just sort of getting it out of the way and talking about look, don’t let this be something that you fear, and I’ll explain why it’s not to be feared, and that is, is because like every other person I’m being honest and open about my faith and how it impacts and how it affects me. I don’t worry about people who talk about their faith. I worry about people who say they have it but they refuse to say that it affects them. To me that’s disingenuous, or it’s somehow indicative of a person who’s almost ashamed of his or her faith. If it’s real faith it’s a part of our lives. We should be comfortable talking about it, just like I’d be comfortable talking about my allegiance to the Arkansas Razorback football team. That’s not difficult for me. Why should religion be so difficult for me to talk about? It doesn’t bother me if the person says, “I just don’t find it important to me. I’m running for office, but I’m an atheist.” You know what? I would rather a person be honest and be an atheist than claim to be a Christian but then act like they can’t talk about it ’cause they’re almost embarrassed to bring it up. That’s troubling. If a person says here’s a part of my life, it’s fundamental to every breath I take, that really defines my world view, and yet I’m uncomfortable discussing it with anybody, I’d worry about a person whose faith is so shallow or so insignificant that they can compartmentalize their entire faith as if it doesn’t matter to them.

Q: There actually has been a lot of God talk this campaign season. We’re hearing a lot from the Democrats who in the recent past have been a little maybe skittish about dealing with issues of faith. How do you assess the role religion’s been playing in this campaign, especially maybe compared to, you know, others in recent history?

A: I think it’s healthy. I’m glad to see that Democrats are talking openly about faith, and I don’t think it’s dishonest or disingenuous. I think it’s, frankly, refreshing. In the past it seems the Democrats were afraid to talk about faith from a personal perspective, and I don’t know why. I would think that it’s something, again, that helps people to get to know you. And whether a person says, “Look, here’s my faith and here’s what I believe and here’s how it affects me” or even to say, “I don’t really have much of a faith, so it’s not a big issue for me,” I think what people look for is candor out of their candidates. They just want somebody to be honest with them. So if a Democrat has faith, and they really personally practice prayer, and they’re regular church goers, why shouldn’t they tell us that? I think they should, and not a matter of that we ought to vote for them because of that, but just so that we get to know them a little bit. But I welcome it. I think it’s a healthy part of the discourse in this campaign.

Q: Does it — is there a danger that it might hurt some of the Republican base of religious voters?

A: I don’t think so, and if it does, it does. It’s still a good thing. You know, I was asked early on when there was a discussion that Hillary Clinton had about her faith, and someone asked me about that and did I think it was genuine and I said why wouldn’t I think that? She was candid enough to discuss it. I think it plays a very important part of her life, and I respect that and, you know, her faith is practiced in a Methodist Church and mine is in a more contemporary Baptist congregation where we’re in some ways more charismatic. But, as I said, some people eat their soup louder than others. It doesn’t mean that the soup tastes any better. It’s just a matter of how we approach it. That’s why I think sometimes it’s important for us to talk about it openly. Let people see that there are different, maybe, viewpoints and theologies and worship styles. The key thing, though, is being refreshingly candid so that we can let people look in on us, and if they decide that that makes us a nut because we believe there’s a God, so be it. Let them believe that. I’m more than willing to be laughed at for my faith if that’s what people wish to do. I’ve been laughed at before. But what I would, I guess, be more pained by would not be to be laughed at for my faith, but would be to be ignored for it.

post03Q: What do you — what does learning about a politician’s faith teach the voters? You know, why is that important information for a voter?

A: Mostly to let them know what their value system is. Where do they get their values? Is it from the latest opinion poll? Is it from an academic study which would change with every few years in terms of a new academic study? Or are there some things in a person’s life that they believe are inherently right, or things that are inherently wrong? And if so, why are they right or wrong? And what’s the basis of believing that? You know, if a person doesn’t have some type of sense of moral absolutes and everything is relative, that’s a signal to a potential voter that here’s a person that no matter what he tells you, just remember that he’s willing to adjust as culture and society adjust. If a person has a God-centered view of the world and believes that we really do have accountability ultimately not just to each other but to a Creator God who was here before us and will be here after us, then that does shape, in fact, how we look at life, and I think that’s important for voters to know.

Q: Why do you think religious conservatives haven’t rallied around you stronger than they have, given that you share so much of what they believe?

A: I think that in some ways the Christian conservative movement has maybe gotten off the track. I think that some of them, frankly, are more intoxicated with power than principle, and I know that’s a pretty outrageous if not rather bold statement to make, but I think it’s the truth. Some have become so acquainted now with power and have been so close to it that they forget that the purpose for which they got involved in politics was not to be close to power; it was to speak the truth to power. It was to hold those in power, to hold their feet to the fire over issues they said got them involved and motivated. Now I hear some of the so-called Christian leaders say, “Well, we love Huckabee. He really agrees with us, and he’s one of us in terms of views. But, you know, we’re looking for somebody that we’re confident is going to win.” Well, two things. First, a lot of these people if they would get behind me I’d be winning right now, and I think I will ultimately without them. But secondly, if they really are principled, it’s not about who might win, it’s about who stands with us. And, frankly, it’s a little disturbing, if not frightening, that some have forgotten the essence of what Jesus taught, and that is if you gain the whole world but lose your soul what does it profit you? And, frankly, some who would say, “Well, the presidency is so important.” You know, well, so what? The presidency is not as important as are your values and as are your deep principles from the heart. And I worry about people who have come to this sort of “it’s about winning.” No. It’s about standing for your convictions. And if it’s not about that, then I’m afraid that many people got involved for all the wrong reasons.

Q: Do you think they’re afraid of losing their place at the table?

A: Yeah, and the tragedy is that what place at the table is there if the people who are elected don’t share your convictions and therefore may give you some lip service in order to get elected? They’re not going to waste any of their time and capital and energy trying to accomplish your agenda, because it’s not their agenda, and that’s what’s happened to conservative Christians in the past. They worked real hard to get someone elected because the person knows how to go speak to them, but the person doesn’t know how to speak for them. A person maybe runs for office, and he goes and presents himself to that Christian community for votes. But there’s a difference if that person comes from that Christian community in really understanding it. It comes down to whether the language of the church is a second language for the candidate or if it’s the native tongue.

Q: Some of the issues that are so important to that community — abortion and gay marriage are two that seem to be up there. Are they as important in this election? Should they be that important?

A: They’re important from the standpoint of giving people an understanding of where your values are and where your convictions come from. Again, if you believe that there are certain moral absolutes in the universe, then you have to believe that to take an innocent human life for one’s own convenience sake would be immoral. And yet I think also the pro-life community of which I’m a part has to grow up and also articulate that being pro-life is not just saying that we care about a child as long as it’s the womb, but as soon as it comes out, “Hey, kid you’re on your own, and if you’re sleeping in the back of a car, if you’re getting the daylights whacked out of you by an abusive parent, well, that’s not of issue to us.” Well, it better be, because pro-life means more than just life inside the womb and during the gestation period. It means whether that child is living in a safe neighborhood, whether its schools are properly preparing him for a world out there, whether he’s hungry, whether he’s got a blanket over him at night. And so in many ways one of the things that I try to do is to articulate that being pro-life is not just about being anti-abortion. It’s being pro-life. It’s not articulating what we’re against but more focusing on that for which we are for, and that is the worth and the value and the importance of every single human life — that each person has intrinsic worth in and of themselves not tied to somebody else’s worth, but their own unique worth and value. That’s what separates us as a culture, as a people. It’s what makes us care about six miners in the womb of a coal mine in Huntington, Utah. But it also ought to make us care about that unborn child in the womb of a mother.

Q: Some evangelicals are trying to broaden the political agenda to include more than these issues and you’ve — sometimes a lot of your language seems like you’re doing that as well. Where do you see that, you know, broadening the values agenda?

A: Well, we had better broaden, ’cause I think Jesus did. Jesus was more concerned about people being impoverished and people being mistreated and exploited. Those are real issues, and if we as Christian believers, particularly those of us who get involved in public policy, if we turn a deaf ear to people whose lives are being exploited, whether it’s in some easy credit scheme, whether it’s in the fact they’re exploited for their labor and they work real hard for a company only to see the CEO take off with a $200 million bonus while they lose their paycheck and pension, for me that’s a moral issue. How can you justify a hedge manager making 2200 times that of the average worker or a CEO making 500 times that of an average worker? You know, I’m a capitalist, but capitalism doesn’t have to also equate with greed. And what we see in some cases today is not simply the good kind of capitalism that built a strong American economy. But it’s the raw, unadulterated, sheer greed that says I’m going to be a super winner, and I don’t care if all the people who help me get there are going to be super losers and can’t even feed their families. That ought to be a moral issue. And there are other things. We ought to be, as Christian believers, we ought to be concerned about the environment. I think, frankly, the Christian community has a lot to answer for, for not being stronger advocates of better care of the planet for the simple reason that if I’m true to my faith, I don’t believe this world belongs to me. Last time I checked it wasn’t mine. It belongs to the Creator, and I get to live here. I’m, let’s say, a guest, a visitor, but I don’t have the right to tear it up, not leave it in good shape for the next generation.

post02Q: I’ll move overseas. I know you’ve talked about the value — the war against Al Qaeda in Iraq has a real, you’ve said, theological aspect to it.

A: Yes.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: Well, part of this war is not geopolitical. Most wars are fought over borders and boundaries and maybe over political leadership –who’s going to get to be the king or who’s going to get to be the, you know, the dictator? This is not fought that way. This is really a war without national boundaries. We’re not fighting in a particular geographical location. Al Qaeda’s alive and well in cells all over the world, on every continent and in every country. And what I mean by a theological war, it’s been driven not by a goal simply to establish a geopolitical base for a country and a constitution, it’s being fought over by religious fanatics and jihadists who believe that there is total marriage between religion and state and that to implement one is to implement the other. That’s quite foreign to the American who doesn’t really sometimes understand what we’re up against and what the nature of the fight is about. Because they tend to want to westernize this whole war and make it like we would understand a war. Well, it isn’t, and if we don’t get that, it’s going to be a long and painful process for us.

Q: Some American Muslims are a little uncomfortable when they hear language about “the jihadists.” You know, they worry about how — the impact of that language on them in their community. Well, you know, how do you — what do you say to them?

A: Right after 9/11, I was governor [of Arkansas], and I called all the religious leaders of the Muslim faith to come and join me at the capitol for a meeting at the governor’s conference room, and I held a press conference, and I asked the people of Arkansas don’t hold these people responsible for what radicals within their greater umbrella of faith are about. I think you’d find an incredible of level of support in my home state among Islamic leaders because they know that no one was quicker nor more strong to their defense after 9/11 than I was. What I think that the Islamic leaders need to do — the legitimate and serious and moderate leaders — is to take a very bold and public stand against the jihadists. Nobody can do it with more credibility. No one can better help to show that there is a real difference between the radical jihadists and people who practice Islam as a matter of personal preference than could the imams and others who can articulate that.

Q: I’m wondering what you miss most about Beach Street Baptist Church [in Texarkana]?

A: I think probably the, just the sort of closeness of the community that one has in a local church. And as a pastor you really were such a part of the fabric of people’s lives, the best and the worst of moments. And there was a sense of belonging that was based not on people who are questioning your every statement and every move, but who loved and wanted you to be a part of their life. The big difference between politics and pastoral ministry is that in both cases you’re on a pedestal. But my wife once said it best when she said that you’re on a pedestal both places, but in the church they want you to be on that pedestal. They appreciate you’re being there, and they fight to keep you there. They want you to do well. In politics you’re on the pedestal, and all kinds of interests are doing everything they can to knock you off of it, so you’re constantly sort of having to be on your guard or fear of what’s out there.

Q: Are you able to get to church very often on a campaign trail? How do you try to do that?

A: Yeah. I try to always make it a point to be in worship. When I travel, I typically will try to make sure that I can be in a church on Sunday. If for some reason I’m traveling on Sunday and can’t, you know, there are times it’s unavoidable. But if I’m home in Little Rock I’m always in my own home church [The Church at Rock Creek], which I wish I could be at more often, because I absolutely love my church. We have a magnificent congregation. It’s only about 11 years old. It started with 25 people. It now has over 5,000 people worshiping there every weekend and just a phenomenal group of people who reach out to about everybody imaginable. And it’s quite a homogeneous church of people that I often say you just will find the greatest level of diversity there, and that’s what I think attracts me to it so.

Q: When you’re on the campaign trail and there’s so much pressure and everything, how do you keep your own spiritual fires burning?

A: I try to maintain a daily time of devotion in my own life, prayer and meditation, and try to read a chapter in the Bible every day. One thing I’ve done since I was 18 is read a chapter in Proverbs every day, and with 31 chapters you go through the whole book each month, and it’s a great source of wisdom to stimulate your thought and to make you think thoughts higher than what you’re going to get from the front page of the paper. But I also find that it’s just important to be surrounded, too, by people to whom you’re accountable, and there are several close friends that have been my friends long before I ever got into politics who have a sort of unfettered access to me and the right to challenge me personally, who will contact me either by phone or by e-mail or however they can get a hold of me and just to check up on me, and that’s important.

Q: What has running for president taught you spiritually?

A: Well, I guess the main thing I’ve learned spiritually is that it requires an extraordinary level of stamina that I don’t naturally have, and I don’t think anybody does. But the other thing I’ve learned maybe from a spiritual standpoint in running for president is that nobody has all the answers. People sometimes expect if you’re running for president you can answer every question about everything — that you’re going to know everything. The truth is no one of us do, and I think rather than fake it sometimes it’s just important to say I don’t know. I don’t know. And that’s the best answer, because it’s the most honest one.

Evangelical Indecision

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TIM O’BRIEN, guest anchor: As the race for the White House moves forward, religion is playing a prominent role in the campaign. We have been and will continue covering that. This week, we look at indecision among evangelical voters about which presidential candidate to support in 2008. Evangelicals have become a key part of the winning coalition for Republicans. They represented about 40 percent of George W. Bush’s total vote in 2004. But so far this campaign season, evangelicals haven’t united behind any of the presidential candidates. Kim Lawton has our report.

KIM LAWTON: On paper, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee seems like a perfect presidential candidate for conservative religious voters. He’s a pastor turned politician with longer executive government experience than any other Republican in the race. He’s solidly against abortion and gay marriage, and he speaks openly about his faith.

Mike Huckabee

MIKE HUCKABEE (Republican Presidential Candidate): If it’s real faith, it’s a part of our lives. We should be comfortable talking about it, just like I’d be comfortable talking about my allegiance to the Arkansas Razorback football team. That’s not difficult for me. Why should religion be so difficult for me to talk about?

LAWTON: But the majority of evangelicals haven’t embraced Huckabee’s presidential campaign or anyone else’s, for that matter. When it comes to picking a candidate in the 2008 elections, many are still seeking divine guidance.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN’S VOICE (Praying): I pray, Father, that you would make it clear who your choice is tonight; so that we your people, called by your name, can unify behind your choice.

Dr. JOHN GREEN (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life): Most evangelicals tend to be more Republican than Democratic, but they’re not behind any particular candidate. A few people are supporting each of the major Republican candidates. An awful lot of evangelicals are simply undecided.

LAWTON: John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says evangelical support was crucial to GOP victories in 2004.

Dr. John Green

Dr. GREEN: They made it possible for the Republicans to carry all of the states in the South and to win key swing states like Ohio and Missouri in what was otherwise a very, very close election. To have any diminution of that strong voting base in the Republican Party would be problematic for a Republican presidential campaign, and if it was diminished by a large amount it might spell defeat.

LAWTON: Many religious conservatives are reluctant to support Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani because of his stands in favor of abortion rights and gay rights. Although some evangelical leaders have endorsed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, others in the community are finding it difficult to support him because of him Mormon faith. Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson has some evangelical support, but he disappointed many with his recent admission that he does not regularly attend church, even though he said he is “right with God.” None of those three attended a values voter debate last month, sponsored by several conservative profamily groups.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN (at Values Voter Debate): I predict that because they snubbed us they will not win, because we will not follow their lead.

LAWTON: After the debate, organizers took a straw poll of those in the audience. Mike Huckabee was the runaway winner.

Mr. HUCKABEE: (at podium, Values Voter Debate): If the Republican nominate someone who’s an establishment Republican and who’s a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street or the K Street lobbyists, we’re going to lose the election. We’d better elect somebody who understands what it’s like to live on Main Street and real-world America.

LAWTON: For more than 10 years before he entered Arkansas politics, Huckabee was a Southern Baptist minister. He says being a pastor was a great training ground for being president.

post03-evangelical-indecision

Mr. HUCKABEE: There’s not any social pathology that exists today that I couldn’t put a name and a face to. So that period of my life where I was literally touching people’s lives from the cradle to grave is probably the best way I could have ever been prepared to deal with the job that ultimately is about dealing with people and understanding the incredible frailties and complexities of life.

LAWTON: Huckabee admits he’s frustrated that more Christian conservatives haven’t rallied around his candidacy.

Mr. HUCKABEE: I think that some of them frankly are more intoxicated with power than principle.

LAWTON: He told me he sees a focus on being pragmatic that he finds disturbing.

Mr. HUCKABEE: I hear some of the so-called Christian leaders say, “Well, we love Huckabee. He really agrees with us, and he’s one of us in terms of views. But, you know, we’re looking for somebody that we’re confident is going to win.” Well, two things. First, a lot of these people if they would get behind me I’d be winning right now, and I think I will ultimately without them. But secondly, if they really are principled it’s not about who might win, it’s about who stands with us.

HUGH HEWITT (Host, “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” on air): “Welcome back America, I’m Hugh Hewitt…”

Hugh Hewitt, The Hugh Hewitt Show

LAWTON: But author and conservative Christian talk show host Hugh Hewitt says electability does matter. He notes that Huckabee and other GOP candidates haven’t been successful enough in fundraising to prove that they are viable contenders.

Mr. HEWITT: We just better put forward the best candidate, and I think evangelicals will realize the stakes. There are going to be three retirements on the Supreme Court in the next eight years. That’s enough to capture anyone’s attention.

LAWTON: Hewitt believes many evangelicals could ultimately bring themselves to support Giuliani, despite his record on abortion.

Mr. HEWITT: Yeah, I wish he was pro-life, but the presidency and the life issue only comes down to judges, and he is going to be appointing pro-life judges because he is going to appoint strict constructionists, in my view. So it just does not have a lot of play with me. I think what matters more is, can they win? Can they look at Senator Clinton in the eye, beat her in a debate? She’s going to be the nominee.

LAWTON: But some religious right leaders are already floating the idea of a third-party candidate if Giuliani gets the Republican nomination.

Dr. GREEN: Many Christian right leaders, and indeed many conservative Christian voters, are very committed to the social issue agenda and the idea that the Republican Party would, in their view, abandon that agenda would be very, very problematic.

Senator BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): God bless you all…

LAWTON: At the same time, Democrats are increasingly courting evangelicals and other people of faith, emphasizing issues like social justice and the environment. Earlier this year, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean spoke to the evangelical Eastern University in Pennsylvania.

post04-evangelical-indecision

HOWARD DEAN (in speech): Part of my job is to reach out to the faith community to talk to them about Democrats, since we’ve been completely absent in the faith community for a long time. We’ve been afraid to show up. We’ve been cowed by people who denounce us from the pulpit.

LAWTON: Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s campaign has been holding a series of faith forums in key electoral states, inviting people to come together to discuss the role of religion in politics. Joshua DuBois is Obama’s director of religious affairs.

JOSHUA DUBOIS (Obama Campaign Director of Religious Affairs): People of faith are critically important to this campaign, as are all Americans who are hungry for change, hungry to bring people together across lines of division and really come together around our common hopes and our common challenges.

LAWTON: Evangelical author and activist Brian McLaren spoke at this Obama faith forum in Iowa.

BRIAN MCLAREN (Evangelical Author and Activist): You know, so many have assumed really for decades now that to be evangelical means that you’re a conservative Republican and that you have a whole package of ideology that’s centered on two moral issues, one or two moral issues. I represent a growing number of evangelicals who are completely unsatisfied with that characterization.

LAWTON: Evangelicals, and especially younger evangelicals, may not be as tied to the Republican Party as they were in other recent elections, but they’re not yet moving to the Democrats either.

Dr. GREEN: And therein lies one of the puzzles of the current presidential process. There is an opening for Democrats among evangelical voters, a strong Republican constituency, but they still have not yet made the sale.

LAWTON: Some wonder whether disenchantment may cause evangelicals to pull back from the political process altogether. Huckabee says it’s vital that people of faith stay engaged in the public square.

Mr. HUCKABEE: It’s about standing for your convictions, and if it’s not about that, then I’m afraid that many people got involved for all the wrong reasons.

LAWTON: Seventy-nine percent of evangelicals voted for George W. Bush in 2004 — nearly 40 percent of his total vote. That’s a lot of support still up for grabs in 2008.

I’m Kim Lawton in Washington.