Author Archives: Fred Yi

Prisons for Profit

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LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: In the United States there are more than two million citizens locked up behind razor wire and prison bars.

MARK MAUER: We lock up our citizens at far greater rates than any other industrialized nation or any other kind of nation in the world.

SEVERSON: Mark Mauer is the executive director of The Sentencing Project. He says that when it comes to lock ups, Louisiana is easily the toughest state in the nation.

MAUER: Louisiana has been at the top of the pack and just incarcerating people at rates that are just unimaginable any place else in the world.

SEVERSON: Richard Crane is the former chief counsel to the Louisiana Corrections Department. He says there was a push nationwide in the early 1980s to crack down on crime, and Louisiana took it seriously.

Richard CraneRICHARD CRANE: You could always get votes by increasing sentences, and Louisiana more than any other state just went wild with that.

SEVERSON: Today there are about 40,000 people behind bars in Louisiana. That’s one out of 86 adults. The prison population doubled in the last two decades, and the state prison system simply couldn’t keep up. So in the early 1990s the state gave local sheriffs an incentive to build their own prisons. Cindy Chang first reported about prisons-for-profit for the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper.

CINDY CHANG: In Louisiana, you’ve got all these prison entrepreneurs who are mostly local sheriffs who have built these prisons. The prisons function just like hotels—that they get a payment per person per day, and if they don’t keep the beds full they’re going to lose money.

SEVERSON: The Louisiana Secretary of Corrections Jimmy Le Blanc:

JIMMY LE BLANC: We didn’t have the means; we didn’t have the funding to accommodate building prisons. We didn’t have the money so that partnership, that cooperative endeavor of agreement together was a means to build additional prisons and have the beds that we needed to house prisoners.

SEVERSON: It works this way: County or parish sheriffs get about $25 a day for inmates that would have otherwise ended up in state prisons. Some of that money goes to house and feed the prisoners. What’s left over goes to the underfunded sheriffs’ departments to use for much needed equipment and for manpower.

(to Crane): At one point that was a real good thing, because they didn’t have bulletproof vests; they had bad or old or used equipment.

CRANE: Well yes, you know, but is that the way to finance those things, you know by increasing sentences for the sole purpose of filling of up local jails. Is it ethical to incarcerate people for the sole purpose of making money?

SEVERSON: Burl Cain, warden of one of the country’s biggest prisons, Angola, says he has reservations about profiting from incarcerations.

WARDEN BURL CAIN: Yes, the profit motive bothers me when the profit motive is the motive to not provide the necessary essentials for the inmate. You feed them with a thimble, is a term I use. You try to cut them to 1800 calories a day, and so those things bother me, and they do that in the private sector more than the public, because they measure every little thing they give you. They’re cutting costs, they’re cutting dollars, and when they cut your quality of life by doing that, that’s wrong.

SEVERSON: The approximately $25.00 payment the sheriffs receive per inmate per day is less than a third of the average daily prison costs nationally, so there is very little or no money left over for rehab or education programs.

Cindy ChangCHANG: The term that’s often used is warehousing, that these people are just being warehoused during their sentence.

MAUER: Going back to Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century, the Quakers and other religious reformers invented the penitentiary system from the word “penitence,” and their idea was you could take sinners, lock them in a prison cell, give them a Bible or have someone read the Bible to them and they would repent for their sins. So it was well-intended; it didn’t work out very well in practice. What’s sort of striking is that the model of incarceration has not changed that much 200 years later.

SEVERSON: One reason for Louisiana’s huge prison population is that the state leads the country in the percentage of inmates sentenced to life without parole. Life without parole for a young inmate who lives to be 72 years old can cost Louisiana taxpayers more than a million dollars.

Mark MauerMAUER: More than one-in-ten people in prison in Louisiana are serving life without parole. The only way you can get out is getting a pardon from the governor, and that is something that rarely happens.

SEVERSON: Here at Angola, 97 percent of the over 5,000 inmates sentenced here will die here, no matter how young they were when they arrived.

LE BLANC: We probably have more than our share of lifers in Louisiana, and there are some nonviolent lifers, I mean, like three strikes and you’re out. We have quite a few of those, and those are the ones in my opinion that we need to be looking at.

CAIN: They should not necessarily be released, but they should have a hearing. They should be reviewed, and our situation and in a lot of states there’s no hearing.

SEVERSON: Louisiana did recently close down a prison and transferred the 900 inmates, who were in for lesser crimes, to Angola. It turned out to be a positive move, because the warden can use the lifers as mentors for the short-timers in the prison’s re-entry program.

John Sheehan has served 26 years of his life-without-parole sentence for second-degree murder. He’s the lead mentor for automotive students. Heyward Jones, also in for life-without-parole for second-degree murder, is a social mentor.

JOHN ANTHONY SHEEHAN: They can look at us different than other men that come in. You can have a church group that comes in and tells them one thing, but you have somebody like Heyward here and myself that have a life sentence that’s actually living here all the time, and tell them if they don’t do the right thing they can wind up here. Our message comes across a lot realer to them than what messages of other people do.

SEVERSON: But the re-entry program the warden is so proud of is not in the budget. The funding comes from the annual prison rodeo. The Louisiana Corrections Department, like those in other states, relies on churches to provide many re-entry programs. Still, Louisiana spends almost $700 million a year for corrections, money that could go toward other programs in a state that has some of the worst poverty and schools in the country.

LE BLANC: I’ll give you a good example. Our prison intake is 15,000 a year. Our high school drop out is 15,000 a year. I mean, that tells you the story of what is happening to us. They’re coming out of these schools and coming to prison.

CAIN: And you shouldn’t pay more for corrections than you do for education, but you are, and you’re keeping the wrong people in prison because you’re keeping everybody.

MAUER: I think it’s a very disturbing development that the world’s wealthiest society, the United States, a society that prides itself on its democratic traditions, is also the world’s leading imprisoner. There’s something fundamentally wrong, I think, with that picture.

SEVERSON: The picture is slowly changing, in part because states can no longer afford to imprison so many people. Legislatures are gradually reducing sentences for nonviolent crimes and turning more to rehabilitation programs. That includes Louisiana to a lesser degree, partly because of push-back from local sheriffs, whose budgets rely on keeping their jails as full as possible.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Angola, Louisiana.

Religion and the New Congress

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: The new 113th Congress, which was sworn in Thursday (January 3), includes several religious firsts. Democrat Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is the first Hindu member of Congress. Mazie Hirono, also of Hawaii, is the first Buddhist senator, although she describes herself as non-practicing, and Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic representative from Arizona, is the first member of Congress to publicly describe her religion as “none.”

Joining me with more on the new Congress is our managing editor, Kim Lawton, Kim.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: There was another religious first this week as well. The new Hindu member of Congress was actually sworn in with the Bhagavad Gita, which is a sacred text for Hindus. Now members of Congress generally use a Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures, some use the Constitution. Some don’t use anything they just do an affirmation as opposed to swearing in, but this was the first time we know of that the Bhagavad Gita was used.

ABERNETHY: And there was no controversy about it. I remember a couple of years ago when a Muslim was sworn in. There was a huge controversy about his using the Quran. This time?

LAWTON: Well when Keith Ellison was elected and then sworn in in 2007 he did choose a Quran. Of course there are sensitivities with Muslims and so there was some controversy. He ended up using a Quran that was owned by Thomas Jefferson, which helped dampen some of that controversy.

ABERNETHY: Is this the most religiously diverse Congress there’s ever been?

LAWTON: It is considered the most diverse Congress ever. That sort of reflects the changes in American society. Although Congress hasn’t kept up with all the changes exactly in American society. Think about Protestants. Congress is still majority Protestant, about 56 percent.

ABERNETHY: But Protestants went, the number of Protestants went down a little bit, the number of Catholics went up.

Managing editor Kim LawtonLAWTON: Exactly, but for the first time ever Protestants are less than half of the country, but they still make up most of Congress. Catholics went up this time around as well. So they make up about 30 percent of Congress.

ABERNETHY: What about people who say they have no religion?

LAWTON: They’re the most unrepresented group right now in terms of religion in Congress. About 20 percent of the country say they have no religious affiliation. We did have one atheist member of Congress a few years ago. Pete Stark was the first person to say I’m an atheist. Kyrsten Sinema is the first person to say I have none when you know asked what’s your religion, but that doesn’t represent the number of people of America.

ABERNETHY: And quickly, does it make a difference?

LAWTON: Well you know that’s hard to quantify. For some people it’s an identification, but for some people it does affect how they think about issues, how they govern. Think about last year when Congressman Paul Ryan was doing the budget he tied it to his Catholic faith. Other members of Congress do that. But for some that’s a personal thing and politics is something different.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

Alawite Anxiety in Turkey

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FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Turkey is predominantly Muslim, but residents of the southern Hatay region like to tout its rich, historic, religious mosaic. Christ’s apostles, Peter and Paul, spent time in Hatay’s main city, Antakya, the biblical Antioch, which is often called the cradle of Christianity.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1: (through translator) Antakya is a city of tolerance. We have tolerance for every different culture and religion.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN 2: (through translator) We have been living in Antakya with Arabs, with Sunnis, with Armenian people, with Kurdish people all together.

DE SAM LAZARO: But beneath the appearance of business as usual, there’s deep anxiety here as events unfold a few miles across the border in Syria. In furniture shops and truck repair shops, business has actually been terrible since the Syrian conflict began.

Ali AskarALI ASKAR: (through translator) Of course, there was a friendship. There were organic ties between Antakya and Syria. People were coming and going between the two countries.

DE SAM LAZARO: The Syrians used to come as traders and shoppers. Now they come as refugees, and there’s a new fear of sectarian or inter-religious conflict. The refugees—some 100,000 have arrived in southern Turkey—are predominantly opponents of the Assad regime in Syria. In Hatay, that’s made for a guarded welcome.

(to Mohammad Manzalgi): Do you think many people in Antakya are sympathetic to the Assad regime?

MOHAMMAD MANZALGI: Yes, only the Alawi, yes, yes, sure, sure. Absolutely.

DE SAM LAZARO: Mohammad Manzalgi, a Sunni Syrian, said he’s tried without success to rent an apartment in Antakya as he attempts to resettle family members fleeing from Syria.

MANZALGI: The majority here in this town are from Alawi, and when they hear that you are from Syria—or you are Sunni—they tell you directly no, we don’t want to rent to you, and they meet you with anger.

Mohammad ManzalgiDE SAM LAZARO: He’s convinced this anger is rooted in sympathy for Syrian President Bashar Assad who is Alawite—an offshoot of Shia Islam. Perhaps fifty percent of Hatay’s residents are Alawite.

Many Turkish Alawites say their concerns are driven less by sympathy for the Assad regime than a fear of what might replace it.

SERIT LIF (Newspaper Columnist): (through translator) I am an Alawite, but I do not approve of what the Assad regime is doing. I believe in the rule of law and democracy, but I don’t think this is the right approach to achieving it.

DE SAM LAZARO: He and many others fear that religious extremists have infiltrated the Syrian opposition force.

ALI YERAL (Alawite Association): (through translator) One group is chanting things like, “Christians should go to Beirut, and Alawites should go to cemeteries.” This group consists of Salafis, Al Qaeda members, and if these terrorists are able to change the Assad regime, then there will be a huge massacre against the Alawite people.

DE SAM LAZARO: Experts agree the Syrian conflict has drawn Islamic radicals, though they aren’t certain of their number and influence in the opposition forces. But the Alawite fears are well-founded in their history.

Alawites typically don’t fast during Ramadan and prayers are conducted privately or in small groups, not in mosques. They’ve not always been recognized or accepted as Muslim, especially among the Sunni majority, and at times during the Ottoman period they were put to death as infidels.

Alawites have long lived in this region that straddles the borders of modern-day Turkey and Syria, minorities in both nations. But their imprint in Syria has been huge since the 1960s after the rise of a military officer named Hafez al Assad. He spawned an Alawite military and security elite that his son, the current leader, inherited. Even though both Assads discourage sectarianism, Syria’s conflict is increasingly seen in such terms: an Alawite-dominated military against a majority Sunni opposition.

Turkey’s government has made no secret of its support of the opposition, offering not just refuge to civilians, but apparently in-and-out privileges to opposition fighters.

Mohammad RajboMOHAMMAD RAJBO (Free Syrian Army Fighter): (through translator) People on the Turkish side received us very well. They really helped us. I go to Syria for 15 to 20 days to fight, come here for 5 days at a time to rest.

DE SAM LAZARO: The close proximity of fighters and others who may have scores to settle has brought the Syrian conflict uncomfortably close for many in Hatay.

ALATTIN TAS: (through translator) Both Sunni and Alawi people have relatives or roots in Syria that have remained since the Ottoman period. So we know that any uprising, any tension in Syria is bound to have an impact here.

DE SAM LAZARO: And some of the conflict and antagonisms have spilled over onto the Turkish side.

SEMSETTIN GUNAY: (through translator) When Syrian refugees started to come here in greater numbers, we saw some of those conflicts between families spilling over on this side of the border, too.

Semsettin GunayDE SAM LAZARO: Semsettin Gunay, who is Sunni, and Alattin Tas, an Alawite, helped start a multi-sectarian civic group. They’ve used media messages to plead for calm to preserve the tolerance this community has enjoyed for decades. And they’ve worked with government officials to disperse refugees to other cities away from Alawite communities or to confine them to camps to keep the conflict from escalating here.

GUNAY: (through translator) Alawites in Hatay have a real fear, especially as the number of Syrians increased, with their different clothes and religious outlook, and there were rumors of assaults. We have succeeded in making these people less visible.

DE SAM LAZARO: They say they’re proud of Turkey’s humanitarian role and want to keep the country’s door open to refugees of all religions, but not their political issues.

The vast majority of Syrians who’ve sought refuge in Turkey have been Sunni Muslims. They hope for the imminent fall of the Assad regime. They hope to soon return to their country. The question for Turks, yet unanswered, is whether there’ll be a new wave of refugees, this time from the Alawite and other minority communities in Syria.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro along the Turkish-Syrian border.

Look Ahead 2013

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome. I’m Bob Abernethy, and this is our look ahead at the top religion stories we expect to be covering in 2013. We do this with the help of Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program; Kevin Eckstrom, editor in chief of Religion News Service; and E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a professor at Georgetown University, and a columnist for The Washington Post. Welcome to you all. One of the big events of the new year will be the inauguration of Barack Obama to a second term, so we asked a wide variety of religion leaders what they hope for during the president’s next term.

REV. SAMUEL RODRIGUEZ, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference: If President Obama would revert back to the—that young, powerful, fiery spokesperson in the 2004 Democratic National Convention who talked about reconciling the blue and the red state, about the God of the blue state and the God of the red state, then I believe that he has a chance to really emerge as a transformative, catalytic president reconciling our nation. We are more polarized today than ever before.

REV. JOIQUIM BARNES, New Hope CME Church, South Carolina: I’m hoping that he would be able to work well, that Congress would be able to work with him to come up with a real budget that’s going to help the least of these, and because when you help those who are in the most vulnerable situation, you end up helping the whole country.

Sister Mary Ann WalshSISTER MARY ANN WALSH, US Conference of Catholic Bishops: Foreign aid is 1 percent of the budget, and we talk about cutting that, and that’s a frightening thought while some of us are eating at banquets while people are starving outside our door. That’s not right.

REV. RICHARD LAND, Southern Baptist Convention: To pass a comprehensive tax reform that would get rid of most of the deductions. Not charitable deductions, however. Charitable deductions are critical to civil society, but to eliminate a lot of loop holes and to bring about a bipartisan effort to get the government on a sound footing.

REV. JIM WALLIS, Sojourners: The principle is you’ve got to protect poor and vulnerable people as you find a path to fiscal sustainability. Both are moral issues.

BISHOP GENE ROBINSON, Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire: It’s hard to overestimate the importance of getting healthcare to 40 or 50 million people who did not have access to it before. That’s just huge, and as the wealthiest nation in the world, not to have healthcare for all was just a profound embarrassment.

BISHOP JAIME SOTO, Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento: As bishops we’ve been working on healthcare reform for years. Now there are issues about the healthcare reform that’s been passed, the Affordable Healthcare Act, that we have concerns about, one, some of the conscience issues.

Rev. Samuel RodriguezRODRIGUEZ: I hope he protects religious liberty. I hope he defends the right and protects the right and advocates for religious pluralism.

RABBI SHIRA STUTMAN, Sixth & I Historic Synagogue: The issue of marriage equality, because I think he’s already started to take that on in his first administration, and I just feel like we’re so close we can taste it as we saw, as evidenced in the past election with more and more states, thank God, passing legislation about marriage equality

REV. LUIS CORTES, Esperanza: We have a coalition of people of faith who are actually trying to get both the Republicans and the Democrats to have a conversation on immigration. The president did promise that he wanted to address it. We’re hoping that Congress can work together and this year we can come to an agreement on a more comprehensive immigration reform package.

ARCHBISHOP GEORGE CAREY, Former Archbishop of Canterbury: If we can solve the problem of Israel and make sure that Israel has a proper, proper nation with safe borders and so on and yet at the same time allow the Palestinians to have their own state. If we can solve that one, then many of the world’s problems in terms of interfaith dialogue will be resolved.

Sayyid Syeed, Islamic Society of North AmericaSAYYID SYEED, Islamic Society of North America: It’s very critical for America to have good reputation, to have good liaison, with the Muslim world.

HODA ELSHISHTAWY, Muslim Public Affairs Council: We do hope that the president could maybe visit a mosque or attend an American Muslim institution and really show that direct engagement, that hey, listen, you are part of the American framework and part of the building of this country.

RAJDEEP SINGH, Sikh Coalition: We’re cautiously optimistic that the Obama administration will finally allow Sikhs to service in the U.S armed forces with their articles of faith intact. It would be a very important and historic step.

LAUREN ANDERSON YOUNGBLOOD, Secular Coalition for America: We’d like to see the Obama administration take the lead in acknowledging and including nontheistic Americans in the decision-making process.

WALSH: Pro-life issues are always a concern. Someone has to protect the innocent life, and certainly we think our government ought to be able to do that.

Rabbi Shira Stutman, Sixth & I Historic SynagogueSTUTMAN: I also really hope and pray that in the second administration he takes on the issue of climate change. I think that unfortunately it’s become a politicized, highly contentious issue and that it’s not, and it’s becoming more clear to us as the days go on that it’s something that we need to take on.

RABBI DAVID SAPERSTEIN, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism: Whatever can be done to make our children safer, including stopping availability of assault weapons and these magazines that can kill people, and having people able to get weapons without adequate background checks. It’s really time to put an end to that, and I hope every parent in America calls for it, and when political leaders move, the religious community will be there to give it both moral sanction and political support.

SOTO: As a religious leader, we always have religious hope, and we expect the best of our political leaders, and that’s important for us to do now. I think it’s important for us to pray for our political leaders and to ask that they do the right thing.

ABERNETHY: As those wishes indicated, there are a lot of tough issues that many people want Washington to deal with right away, all at once. But Kim, where to begin?

KIM LAWTON: Indeed, where to begin? That is a very full plate, and in recent days Congress hasn’t been that great about dealing with multitasking, shall we say. I do think because of the tragedy at the elementary school in Connecticut there is a lot of momentum about gun control and taking up that issue right away. A lot of people in the religious community are really advocating on that, and there’s a groundswell. Now, some of that’s the emotion of what happened, which was horrible, and, you know, a lot of people are hoping that doesn’t fade in Congress and the administration can do something right away. But then you’ve got the fiscal issues which are there and really important.

Look Ahead 2013 PanelABERNETHY: E.J.?

E.J. DIONNE: I think Kim is absolutely right about guns. I think that we have—this is an occasion when we really can take steps that we haven’t been able to take for a long time, because a lot of people were so riveted and so deeply concerned by the death of all these children. So I think they’re—I hope we do something in that area. I think there’s a real opportunity on immigration reform this year, partly because President Obama won such an overwhelming share of the Latino vote, he knows he owes something to that constituency, but partly because Republicans do not ever again want to get such a low share of the Latino vote, and I think there’s an opening there, and then I think President Obama made a very central promise, which is we can get this economy to work again, not only for the best off among us, but also for the middle class and for the poor, and finding ways to promote shared growth. That involves education, it involves tax policy, it involves job training. I think that is the core promise of Obama’s second term, and that’s where he’s going to have to put a lot of attention.

ABERNETHY: In your book, Our Divided Political Heart, you talk about our historic attention to individual matters and, on the other hand, the community, the group. Do you see signs now in this climate that the gap between those two ideas can be narrowed?

DIONNE: Well, I think historically we always have as a country. We’ve always upheld both individualism and community as part of us, and I think what you’ve seen on the conservative politics, historically conservatives cared a lot about community as well as individualism, and I think over the last two to four years, partly because of the Tea Party, you’ve had much more emphasis on the conservative side on individualism, and I think since the election you’ve had sort of the compassionate conservatives that start to make a comeback, conservatives who say, “We do need this balance,” and so I’m looking—I think as a country we essentially voted for balance, and I think a lot of conservatives want to move their movement closer to it.

ABERNETHY: And in the gun debate you have people talking about “my right to bear arms” and, on the other hand, the need to protect the community, so what you’re talking about comes right down to the heart of this issue.

DIONNE: Right, and with rights come responsibilities, and I think that in the gun debate people are moving from purely a focus on “don’t ever touch anything having to do with my weapon” to “wait a minute, we have obligations to others, including those kids.”

ABERNETHY: Kevin, what do you see?

KEVIN ECKSTROM: Well, along this notion of, you know, who has to make the tough calls, in the budget debate, in the fiscal cliff and all of this, we’re facing a profoundly moral debate about whose responsibility is it? Do we balance the budget, make cuts on, you know, by cutting social programs for the poor? Do it we do it by keeping tax rates low for the rich? And ultimately we have to decide as a community who has to foot the bill to get us back on solid financial ground. And so there’s a lot of religious groups have said, “Yes, we need to do something about our fiscal mess, but we cannot do it in an immoral way, and we cannot do it in a way that punishes the people who can least afford it and rewards the people who can.”

ABERNETHY: One of the things that’s going to be coming up is the realization more and more of what’s in the Obama healthcare plan as things begin to kick in. Who wants to pick up on that, on the requirement that, for instance, that groups offer contraceptive coverage?

LAWTON: Well, that’s going to be very controversial, and that’s going to come up again very early in this year, because the mandate that came down from the Obama administration that employers cover contraceptive services free of charge, and that includes many faith-based employers, and so you had this coalition of Catholic Church and also a lot of evangelical groups saying, “This violates our religious freedom.” Many of them have filed lawsuits. The Obama administration has tried to find a compromise. So far they hadn’t found one that made people happy, but there are a couple of deadlines this year, and so they’re going to have to revisit this issue, and so that’s something that is going to be argued out.

ECKSTROM: Right.

DIONNE: Go ahead, Kevin.

ECKSTROM: I was going to say the courts are really the place to watch this, because I think, as Kim said, there’s more than 30 lawsuits that have been filed about this, and the very early ones that have come back, the courts seem to be fairly skeptical about the administration’s ability to force a Catholic institution, for example, to provide contraception.

ABERNETHY: The bishops fought hard on this one. How does that leave their relationship with the White House?

DIONNE: Well, that’s exactly where I was going to go, because I think that in the wake of the election there were, I mean, first of all, the Catholic Church has been divided in its attitude toward President Obama. The Catholic vote split almost down the middle, very slight lead for Obama largely because of his overwhelming strength among Latino Catholics. I think what you have among the bishops now is a sentiment that says, “Can we possibly work this out? We don’t want to be in a state of war with the Obama administration for four years.” And I think within the Obama administration you have quite a number of people who want to make sure they provide contraception coverage but don’t want to be in a state of war with the church, and so I think there are going to be some real efforts to try to reach a compromise that both sides can live with, and I think that’s also imperative because you’re actually going to see the Catholic Church, along with a lot of evangelicals, working with the administration on immigration reform. I think that one of the most powerful parts of the coalition in favor of immigration reform are the Christian churches, because Latinos are such a growing part of both the Protestant and Catholic constituencies in America.

ABERNETHY: Let me take you to things going on overseas, especially in the Middle East. Not a lot was heard about this during the campaign, but here we are. Syria is in terrible trouble. It’s all around. Here at home even, interfaith efforts have been cancelled because people couldn’t agree about what to do about Israel and Palestine. What do you see in the Middle East? Do we have a moral obligation to intervene, for instance, in Syria?

LAWTON: Well, that’s something that really surprised me. I think we were all so focused on the election last year and, of course, a lot of the candidates didn’t want to bring it up because really tricky, difficult, difficult issues but I’ve been surprised by the lack of moral debate about this issue, not that I’m advocating that we intervene, but I’m surprised that we, I haven’t heard a debate about it. We saw in Libya people saying, but it’s just humanitarian intervention. There are people being slaughtered and children and dying, and we have to do something to prevent genocide or to prevent all of these civilian deaths. It’s happening in Syria. We haven’t had that same kind of a public conversation. That surprised me. And certainly, you know, Egypt is messy, and Israel and the Palestinian situation, very tricky things that the religious community, as you suggested, very much involved in a lot of those issues.

ECKSTROM: I think we’re a war weary country.

LAWTON: Exactly.

ECKSTROM: And I think that explains a lot of what happened, including what happened in the election. In the end, Mitt Romney didn’t want to pick big fights with Barack Obama on foreign policy, and I think there are lots of people who look at Syria and say, “We really should do something about this,” and then they say, “But what can we do that will actually improve the situation and not get us inveigled in place and in circumstances that we don’t want to be inveigled in?” I do think it’s very troubling looking forward that we may be losing the opportunity to have a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. I think time really is running out on that, and I think there is a lot of frustration in the administration over what can they actually do? And whether or not we can argue about what they did in the past, you know, I think a lot of people would like to do something but don’t see what the promising path is right now.

ABERNETHY: And there are lot of troops in Afghanistan who perhaps would like to come home and a lot of people here who would like them to come up, but that seems to be something for the year beyond, 2014. I‘m wondering whether you think that’s going to be advanced.

ECKSTROM: I think a lot of people just want this over, and I think a lot of people, when it comes to Afghanistan, have kind of not thrown up their hands, but I think there’s an increasing acknowledgment that there’s only so much that we can do there. There’s only so much that we can “win.” So it’s going to be, you know, a question, and what you’re going to see a lot of debates on is to what degree does religion play into the future of Afghanistan? What’s the place of Islam? What’s the place of women’s rights and human rights? And at some point America has to basically step aside and let them figure it out for themselves, but it’s come at a very high, high cost.

ABERNETHY: There was a situation in Britain where the Anglican church, the Church of England, decided that women should not be able to be bishops.

ECKSTROM: Yes.

LAWTON: Continue their policy that they’ve been having, yeah.

ABERNETHY: And a big backlash on that. Where is that going to go?

ECKSTROM: It’s a fascinating debate to me, and what you have is a new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who’s going to be coming in, in 2013, and he is a big supporter of women bishops, as is the government, the prime minster and, you know, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury. Here’s I think why this debate matters. The church when it refused to allow women bishops was seen as stodgy, old-fashioned, out of step with the times, and the government has even said, “You know what? Fix this. Get it right. Get on with it already.” And if the church is unable to do that, if the church is unable to sort of meet the calls to be a modern, egalitarian institution, it’s going to make it look even more and more irrelevant and, you know, Britain already is an increasingly secular place. Now, what does that mean for us here at home? Obviously, England and the United States are different places, but Europe is kind of on the vanguard of the secularism movement, and to the degree that their leading religious institution looks irrelevant or out of step with the times, I think that there’s important lessons for us here about how religious groups and religious institutions accommodate themselves to the wider culture, and one of the things that you’re going to see that on here at home, I think, in 2013 is the gay marriage question, which is going to be headed to the Supreme Court. So to what degree religious institutions can adapt to the larger culture is, I think, going to be—there’s going to be a lot there.

LAWTON: But for a lot of these religious institutions they don’t adapt to the wider culture. You know, they take pride in saying, “Well, we’re countercultural because we stand for what we believe is right, whether or not the culture agrees.” And I think you’re right. That’s where it really, you know…

ECKSTROM: That’s where the tension is.

LAWTON: … the clash comes when you talk about gay marriage, because for a lot of religious institutions this is a faith issue, an issue of morality. They see God ordaining marriages between a man and a woman, and they look at the Bible and say they believe homosexuality’s a sin, and so to have the culture sanctioning marriage in that way is a problem for them. Not everybody in the religious community obviously thinks that way. There are many people who say it’s equality and justice for gay couples, so there should be gay marriage, but that’s what’s really interesting for some, the Roman Catholic Church, evangelicals—how do they operate in a culture that’s changing when their beliefs aren’t changing, at least in the core?

DIONNE: And there is this fascinating issue within, if you will, global Christianity, where what seems to be the case is, and Anglicanism is a case in point, that social conservatives in the wealthy countries find themselves allied with socially conservative sentiments in the Third World, and so it gets very complicated, because people on the progressive side of the church, who advocate a much more generous policy on the part of the rich countries toward the Third World, are allied with the Third World on those issues, but on some of these other questions the social conservatives find themselves allied with large chunks of the church in the less well-off countries, and it’s created a really interesting debate inside global Christianity.

LAWTON: Yes.

ABERNETHY: Do you all find people saying, perhaps not with the right words, but a feeling that underneath all these particular issues there’s just something wrong? There’s something wrong in this country?

ECKSTROM: I think there’s a wide sense that we’ve somehow gotten off track. You know, after the shootings in Connecticut Mike Huckabee said it was because we removed God from schools. Other people thought that was ridiculous. But there’s a, you know, you can look at Congress, and why can’t we get anything done? But the bottom line is we can‘t get anything done. We can’t make big decisions anymore, at least it seems that way, and so the debate is not necessarily if we’re on track, but how do we get back? How do we fix it? And that’s I think where the debate is.

DIONNE: You know, whenever we get into pessimistic moods I always think of my favorite Churchill line that Americans always do the right thing after first exhausting all of the other possibilities. And we’ve been through a rough time. We had 9/11, we had two wars that we got bogged down in and it became very unpopular, then we had the greatest economic crash since the Great Depression, so yeah, we haven’t been in a great mood as a country, and I think we do think we need to fix things, and we do confront a global economy that’s quite different from where we were 20 or 30 years ago, but I’m actually not a pessimist about this. I feel like we’ve begun to come out from under some of these things, and that we still have a lot of problems to grapple with, but I think we’re this close to beginning to grapple with them in a way that we’re going to find promising, and I think within religious community you’re seeing a lot of storing. You’ve seen, you know, certainly a lot of work on social justice questions. We talked last week about the rise of the unchurched, the “nones,” and I think within our religious communities there’s a realization that they need a new kind of vibrancy if they’re going to speak to these folks who often call themselves spiritual but not religious. So I just want to speak up for hope, if not optimism.

ABERNETHY: Good, good. So our time is almost up, and I want to ask you what you’re going to be watching for particularly, of something that the rest of us might not have thought about? Kevin?

ECKSTROM: You know, one of the stories that came out of 2012 that’s going to bleed into 2013 was the Vatican crackdown on American nuns. At this point, the two sides are still talking. There’s not been a formal offer on the table as to what the Vatican wants to do with American nuns, but that, I think, is going to happen at some point, perhaps in 2013, and it’ll interesting to watch either side kind of jockey for a position there.

ABERNETHY: E.J.?

DIONNE: I’m going to be looking for a new conversation about the family, and I’m not talking about gay marriage. I’m talking about a sense on both the left and the right that the stability of the family is important to social justice, and that I think that we might have an opportunity to have a constructive conversation on issues that up to now have been mostly divisive.

ABERNETHY: Kim.

LAWTON: E.J. and Kevin both took what I was thinking about saying already. That’s the bad thing about going last. I do—I will be watching congregations. As E.J. referred to some of the news that came out last year about the rise of people who don’t have those affiliations with organized religion anymore and it’s now about 20 percent of the American population and how are religious communities responding to that, not just Christian communities but, you know, across the board? And are they coming up with new ways of talking to people, of new ways of looking at themselves, new ways of encouraging people in their relationships with God? And also what about those “nones,” as we call them, n-o-n-e-s? Where are they in society? Are they a movement that’s going to have a political impact, or are they just sort of random people that aren’t affiliated with anything? Do they have political clout? Are they going to be able to organize, mobilize, and become a social movement, just as we’ve seen some of the religious groups become social movements?

ABERNETHY: Thank you. Our time is up now, I’m sorry to say. Thanks for a great conversation To Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, Georgetown University and The Washington Post. Happy New Year to all of you.

Look Back 2012

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome. I’m Bob Abernethy and this is our annual look back at the top religion and ethics news of the year. Religion & Ethics managing editor Kim Lawton is here, and so are Kevin Eckstrom, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service, and E.J. Dionne, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, professor at Georgetown University, and columnist for The Washington Post. Welcome to you all. Kim has put together a short video reminder of what happened in 2012.

KIM LAWTON: A wave of mass shootings renewed age-old theological discussions about evil, suffering and tragedy. Especially after the massacre at the Connecticut elementary school, many religious leaders repeated calls for stricter gun control measures. Some called it a pro-life issue. One of the mass shootings took place in a house of worship. In August, six people were killed when a gunman opened fire at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

Once again, religion played an important role in the presidential election. For the first time ever, there were no white Protestants on either ticket. Although there wasn’t a lot of God-talk from President Obama or Mitt Romney, grassroots religious groups were active on both sides. Evangelical voters were divided during the primary season, but in the end they rallied around Romney, despite some concerns about voting for a Mormon candidate. Still, their support didn’t put him over the top. Obama narrowly won the Catholic vote, thanks to a strong showing among Latino Catholics.

The US Catholic bishops waged an active campaign against the Obama administration’s decision to require employers, including many faith-based employers, to provide free coverage of contraceptive services. The bishops said that would be a violation of religious freedom. The administration tried to offer a compromise, but the bishops—joined by many evangelical groups—said the compromise didn’t go far enough. Several religious institutions filed legal challenges to the policy. This summer, the bishops organized what they called a “Fortnight for Freedom” to highlight their concerns.

Faith-based groups continued to be divided over economic issues. Conservative activists supported massive cuts to the federal budget, arguing that it’s immoral to leave debt to future generations. But a broad-based interfaith coalition argued that it was immoral to make cuts that would hurt the poor. To underscore that point, a group of Catholic sisters organized a project called Nuns on the Bus, where they crisscrossed the country speaking out against the federal budget proposed by Congressman, and vice-presidential candidate, Paul Ryan.

Catholic sisters generated headlines on another front as well. The Vatican issued a harsh rebuke of the umbrella group that represents the majority of American nuns. It accused the Leadership Conference of Women Religious of what it called “serious doctrinal problems,” a charge the nuns denied. They began a time of dialogue with bishops appointed by the Vatican to oversee them. Meanwhile, lay Catholics held a series of rallies in support of the sisters.

Yet another kind of nones also made news—the “n-o-n-e-s.” According to the Pew Research Center, a record high number of Americans—one in five—now describe themselves as having no religious affiliation. Many of these so-called nones held a rally in Washington to show their clout. But the nones are not completely secular. A new survey by Pew and this program found that two-thirds of the unaffiliated say they do believe in God or a universal spirit. More than half describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.”

Advocates of gay marriage saw new momentum. In the November elections, three more states legalized same-sex marriage—the first time it had been approved in ballot initiatives. And voters in Minnesota rejected a proposed ban on gay marriage. Both sides of the debate were galvanized by the Supreme Court’s announcement that it will be taking up two cases with national implications in the spring.

Ten years after the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse crisis exploded, a high-ranking priest in Philadelphia became the first church official to be convicted for failing to report abuse. Monsignor William Lynn was found guilty of child endangerment and sentenced to up to six years in prison. And in Kansas City, Bishop Robert Finn was convicted of a misdemeanor for not reporting the discovery of child pornography on a priest’s computer. Finn’s sentence of two-year’s probation was suspended. He was the first bishop to be criminally sanctioned.

There were leadership transitions for several major religious groups. New Orleans pastor Fred Luter became the first African-American president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination which was founded in support of slavery. In England, Justin Welby, a former oil executive who had been a bishop for just one year, was selected to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. And in Egypt, Bishop Tawadros was selected as the new Coptic pope, succeeding Pope Shenouda the Third, who died in March. By tradition, he was selected by a blindfolded boy who picked his name out of a crystal bowl.

ABERNETHY: Kim, thank you for that survey.

LAWTON: Thank you.

ABERNETHY: We’re all mourning, as everyone else is, the slaughter in Connecticut. What do you hear from religious leaders? What are they saying about what happened and how to respond to it?

Managing editor Kim LawtonLAWTON: Well, it’s interesting how situations like this always seem to bring a lot of people back to the spiritual, and you hear people looking to scriptures for consolation, even the president doing that; a lot of theological talk about if there is a God why would God let this happen? And is this evil or was it mental illness, and sin or sickness—lots of those kinds of interesting questions. What’s going on in our society that things like this happen? And then, of course, you got to the political and you heard the calls for gun control, more gun control, and a lot of that was coming from the religious community and a lot of religious activists really wanting to engage on that issue.

KEVIN ECKSTROM: What I’ve noticed, it’s different this time, it seems to be, is that for a long time your religious supporters of gun control, it was sort of, “Well, it would be really nice if we could do this, that, or the other thing.” Now there’s a real sense of defiance. You know, the dean of the National Cathedral here in D.C. said that the gun lobby is going to be no match for the cross lobby and that there’s a real sense that they’re tired of this, they’re not going to take this sitting down, and they’re really going to fight for some kind of change.

ABERNETHY: E.J., in many of your writings and in your new book, Our Divided Political Heart, you have referred to the great split in this country between those who put primary importance on individual things and those who put primarily importance on the community. Do you see any of that in the reaction to what happened in Connecticut?

E. J. Dionne, Brookings InstitutionE.J. DIONNE: Well, to some degree I do, and, you know, the argument in my book is that if you look at most of us Americans throughout our history we have never been all one thing or all the other. Of course, we all believe in individual liberty and, you know, we are individualists in a particular way, but the America way of individualism is not a radical individualism. It is tempered by our other commitment, which is a commitment to community. The very first word of the Constitution of the United States is the word “we,” and I don’t think we focus on that enough. The preamble to the Constitution describes common goals, and so I think in the wake of this awful event in Connecticut there really was a discussion where even Americans who believe passionately in the Second Amendment, who believe in an individual right to bear arms nonetheless said this right comes with obligations to the community, and the community has a right to impose rules in order to protect little children and other innocent people in the country, and I think Kevin’s right. I think at the end of this there did seem to be a very different quality to the discussion. We have been so passive as a nation in the face of one catastrophe after another like this, and I think the fact that it was 20 beautiful, innocent children who were killed here that I think it took a lot of people back and said maybe we should forget about the old politics of gun control and try to do something this time.

ABERNETHY: And would you care to venture any guess as to whether something meaningful can come from this?

DIONNE: I have some hope, and I think the religious community will play a central role in this, and I think you are going to hear their voices on an issue where, you know, in some ways surprisingly I don’t think their voice has been as strong as it might be now. I think a lot will depend on whether people who have in the past opposed gun regulation, like banning the big magazines and assault weapons and requiring universal background checks, when they say, “Wait a minute. That was then. That position doesn’t hold anymore.” And so a lot will not depend on traditional supporters of gun control except to the extent that they’re going to have to mobilize. A lot will depend on the consciences of people who have traditionally opposed these laws and have a change of heart.

ABERNETHY: And Kevin, six weeks ago, approximately, we had an election.

LAWTON: It feels like a lot longer than that.

ABERNETHY: What did you see? What patterns did you see? What lessons can you take from what the voting was?

Kevin Eckstrom, Religion News Service Editor-in-Chief ECKSTROM: Well, I think there are several things. One is that there was a big cautionary tale, I think, in this election for Republicans and for conservative religious groups who want to put an emphasis on kind of the hot-button social issues–gay marriage, abortion and this year rape, surprisingly. That’s not going to be enough to win anymore, and they can’t just rely on the traditional white evangelical base to win anymore, and they need to broaden the tent, and if they push too hard on some of these conservative, really conservative social issues it’s going to end up alienating, and I think we saw that in a lot of the Senate races. So I think the key take-away from this year’s election is that it’s going to be broader and what that means for religious people is that it’s going to need to be a broader set of issues that they get involved in.

LAWTON: One of my favorite quotes from after the election was Ralph Reed, who is one of the true champions of the religious right, and he said, “We have to do a better job of not looking like your dad’s religious right,” and he admitted that it was a wakeup call for them, not so much in changing their positions. They’re not going to be, you know, changing their positions on some of these hot-button issues, but I think he was recognizing how they come across and the people that they appeal to hasn’t been as successful as it was in the past because of the changes in our country.

DIONNE: Given the way some of these candidates talk, particularly about rape, I don’t even think that’s fair to your daddy to put him that way. I mean, there really was some extreme rhetoric that I think very much hurt this movement, but I also think there was a kind of sea-change here. My friends of the Public Religion Research Institute that has studied noting that only 35 percent of Barack Obama’s vote came from white Christians of various kinds he put together. Now that’s important. He still needed that 35 percent to win the election. His share of the Catholic vote in places like Ohio was very important to carrying states like Ohio. On the other hand, this was the first campaign, presidential campaign, where you really saw a candidate aggressively using a pro-choice position to win votes. Usually Democrats have been careful and a bit defensive about that. It’s the first campaign in which support for gay marriage clearly did not hurt a candidate, may have even helped Obama in some states. So I think we really did see a sea-change on cultural questions.

ABERNETHY: And there was a time when all of us were saying, “Wow, what are the evangelicals and others going to do with a Mormon candidate?” And it wasn’t an issue.

DIONNE: I think that’s actually heartening for us as a country.

ABERNETHY: What?

DIONNE: I think it’s heartening for us as a country. No matter where you stood on the election between Romney and Obama, there really wasn’t a lot of expression of anti-Mormon feeling on any side, and I don’t even think there were, as far as I could tell, not even covert campaigns on this, and, you know, as we said before, white evangelicals—it was said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon. Well, guess what? They did vote for a Mormon. So I think it’s good news for the country that we did not have, you know, real displays of bigotry that we often do have when you have a breakthrough candidate representing a new religious minority.

LAWTON: Of course, in some of that…

ABERNETHY: Is that tolerance or indifference?

LAWTON: Well, you know, I also think there was some anti-Obama stuff in there.

ECKSTROM: Oh, there’s no question about that.

LAWTON: And so when you start weighing it, well, yeah, I’m kind of uncomfortable theologically. I mean, I’m saying evangelicals were saying, “I’m uncomfortable theologically with a Mormon, but very politically uncomfortable with Barack Obama.” And when they did the calculus in the end, so in a sense that sort of made the Mormon issue a non-issue.

ECKSTROM: No, I agree with that entirely, but I do think that the fact that we didn’t see, say, the kind of bigotry that you saw visibly when John F. Kennedy ran…

LAWTON: Right, right.

ECKSTROM: … and whether it’s indifference or tolerance, it’s better than hostility.

LAWTON: There you go.

ABERNETHY: The Supreme Court is going to hear these two cases involving gay marriage, and gay marriage was a big issue in several states. What do you see going on there?

ECKSTROM: It seems to me that there’s a broad-based cultural shift underway. Now, I’m not at all saying that people are suddenly all in support gay marriage or that the issue is going to go away, but you saw this year, for example, a Gallup poll that said a majority of Americans saw homosexual relations as morally acceptable. First time ever. You saw a president, a sitting president for the first time come out and endorse same-sex marriage. You saw voters in three states not only allow same-sex marriage, but in a fourth state reject an attempt to ban it, which is equally as important, I think. So this issue is not done. It’s got a long ways to go, and in my experience covering this, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There’s often a backlash if people think it’s going too fast. So the Supreme Court may well put the brakes on all of this, but I think this year showed, in very stark relief, that this issue is moving much faster and much clearer, in a much clearer direction than I think it has in previous years.

LAWTON: Is this really…

ABERNETHY: Kim…

LAWTON: Excuse me, I was just going to say it’s a really tough issue for the religious community in particular, because you have very different opinions within the religious community. I mean, some of the strongest opposition to this is coming from evangelicals, Roman Catholics, although, you know, obviously at the grassroots people are divided. Younger evangelicals tend to be more tolerant of it, but you still have strong opposition from people who see this as an issue of faith, a moral issue, biblical, biblically mandated, and so that makes it tough. There are religious groups who call it an equality issue and support gay marriage as a matter of justice and equality, but a lot of arguments happening within congregations as well.

DIONNE: I think the most important political event on the gay rights issue seem to have nothing to do with politics. It was a decision 30 or 40 years ago for gays and lesbians to just come out and declare themselves. That changed the country’s attitudes over time, because no one, even someone with quite traditional views, no one who has a dear friend, a dear relative who is homosexual can feel the same way about it again, and I think that’s what you’re seeing on gay marriage, and there is no issue that is more closely linked to age than gay marriage. Attitudes towards gay marriage, younger people are overwhelmingly for gay marriage, and even younger socially conservative people are much less hostile to gay marriage than older Americans who are more uncomfortable with it, and so what it feels like is an issue that really is a matter of time, that in just, you know, eight years, from 2004 to 2012, the change is breathtaking in attitudes towards this.

ABERNETHY: I was impressed this past year with our own survey and other data about the people, the growing number of people, almost 20 percent now, who say they have no religious affiliation whatsoever. We call them “the nones.” Is that something that the churches and religious people in general ought to be pretty worried about? That’s going up fast.

LAWTON: Well, there’s been a lot of discussion about it within the religious community and, you know, scholars are sort of debating, is this really an actual change or are people just more willing to describe what has always been their position? But nonetheless it is, it’s growing at, you know, an incredibly fast rate, much more so than many other groups, and yes, I’ve heard a lot of discussion within religious communities. After the survey came out there were all sorts of churches that were preaching, doing sermons about it, and doing studies, but, you know, the interesting thing, our survey found that the majority of people, not the atheists and the agnostics who are part of the unaffiliated group, but the people who say, “I’m just nothing in particular,” 80 percent, more than 80 percent of those people say, ”I’m not looking either. I’m not looking for a religion that’s right for me.” So I think the challenge for some of these religious communities is how do you interact with, reach out to, whatever your language is, with people who really don’t want to be reached out to, or, you know, are happy with where they are?

post13-lookback-2012DIONNE: And I think this should alarm the traditional religious communities because the number of nones, the n-o-n-e-s, is especially high among Americans under 30.

LAWTON: Yeah.

DIONNE: And it’s not just, we always say, well, young people are less religious than older people, which is often the case, but this generation is less religiously affiliated than earlier generations of young people. This is a real, a real change, and I think that many of these young people say they are spiritual, but they are not necessarily looking for churches or synagogues or mosques, and I think it is a real challenge that requires a response by all of the religious traditions, and whether, for example, and Bob Putnam’s work suggests this, a certain sort of right-wing tone to some of the religious congregations turns off younger people who are not as conservative politically as the older generations, and I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion of that.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, you and many others have noted what’s going on, what has been going on in Europe for a long time, dwindling religious interest. Is that finally coming to the United States after 50 years of prediction?

ECKSTROM: Well, I think what’s so interesting to me this year is how much more visible, kind of, secularism is, or non-religion or unbelief, and it’s not, you know—traditionally when we think of religion we think of churches and synagogues and mosques, and we never quite think of this group of people who, you know, as Kim said, really have no interest in it, and that always seemed as least mentally that it was a fairly small group, you know, kind of on the edges. There’s a study that came out this week that said unbelievers and the religiously unaffiliated are the third largest group in the world. There’s as many unaffiliated people in this world as there are Catholics. And I think what it does, it’s a giant mental shift to realize that the religious landscape that we had sort of thought we knew is actually much different, I think.

DIONNE: And I think your point, Bob, is really interesting, because we Americans have resisted those trends that we saw in Europe over several generations and, you know, I don’t think we have a clear answer yet. Are Americans becoming more European, secular in their approach to religion? But it’s a first time you’re seeing data that suggests that’s even possible. And I think that is something we’re going to be grappling with for another couple of decades.

ABERNETHY: We are close to running out of time here. But before…

LAWTON: And so much more to talk about.

ABERNETHY: Before we do, let me ask you as you look back now, from this vantage point, whether you see something that happened in this past year that did not get the attention you think it deserved. Who wants to go?

DIONNE: I just wanted to mention the civic vitality of the African-American churches. You know, when we’re talking about the decline of religion, a lot of emphasis on the campaign in terms of the voter turnout among minorities is on the Obama political operation, and believe me, everybody on both sides says it was an amazing operation, but I think the response of the African-American church to some of these voter suppression laws as they saw them was really impressive, and I think we need to revisit the role of the black churches, a vital civic institution in our country.

ABERNETHY: Yeah?

ECKSTROM: In all of the back and forth over the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Libya, you know, it was all blamed on this movie that came out, and then afterwards President Obama came out and gave a very profound speech about religion and religion’s role in the world and how religions in the East and the West have to learn to get along together better. I thought it was probably the most profound religion speech that President Obama’s ever given, and I think a lot of it got lost amid all the talk about why this attack happened.

ABERNETHY: Kim?

LAWTON: And maybe broadening out E.J.’s point a little bit, you know, I always get frustrated in a political year because we spend so much time talking about politics and issues and as religion reporters we cover how are the faith-based groups doing and how are they interacting? And we ignore the just real religious life that goes on inside congregations and houses of worship, individuals and how they relate to God directly, or you know, whatever their spiritual practice, but also how they relate in their families and in their communities, and I think that’s an issue that we get so caught up in the politics and the issues that we forget covering religion is sometimes about bigger things than just politics.

ABERNETHY: And an individual’s relationship with God, not just with the politics.

LAWTON: Exactly, exactly, and there’s a lot going on there. I mean, we touched on it a little bit with this survey with the rising numbers of people who aren’t affiliated with a particular religion, but in fact 80 percent of Americans still are affiliated, and while rising numbers aren’t, 87 are, and they are very involved.

ECKSTROM: There’s more to life than politics is a good way to end an election year. That’s a good thought.

LAWTON: Hard to believe, but yes.

ABERNETHY: Imagine you saying that. I’m sorry to say our time is up now. Thank you for a great conversation. To E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton of this program. Next week, our look ahead to the most important religion news we expect to be covering in 2013.