Democrats grapple with faith in Denver

Efforts by Democrats gathered in Denver to highlight their outreach to people of faith are getting mixed reviews as the convention nears an end.

The chief executive of the convention is herself a pastor. The convention began with an interfaith gathering in the Colorado Convention Center. Each night of the convention has started with an invocation and ended with a benediction. And the convention included several "faith caucus" meetings consisting of panel discussions on moral issues.

From a distance, the best coverage I've seen of the role of faith at the convention has been in the politics blog over at Christianity Today, the evangelical weekly. There's also an examination of the coverage of the interfaith event at GetReligion.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting overview from Steve Waldman, the president of Beliefnet, who writes:

"Compared to the 2004 Democratic Convention, the 2008 gathering is a veritable religious revival meeting. At the last convention, people of faith were treated as a worthwhile little interest group, roughly on the same level as mohair farmers. What a difference four years make. By my count, there are at least nine different faith-related events..I was quite ready to be cynical about all this. Democratic operatives seemed to get religion less by reading scriptures than by exit polls (though it should be said, polls are sacred texts for some politicians). But what’s actually happened here is more interesting than that."

There is criticism from the left and right. Not surprisingly, Christianity Today finds Tom Minnery, a senior vice president with Focus on the Family, dissatisfied:

"I was entirely disappointed in their supposed outreach to conservative evangelical believers. It was a fraud. There was a panel, a faith forum, how can progressives work with conservative, religious people. Not a single conservative among then nine speakers and it was tired old leftist dogma. There was absolutely no discussion about responsible fatherhood. There was not a single solution proposed that didn’t involve the government."

Less expected is the critique from Rabbi Michael Lerner, of the left-leaning Tikkun magazine, who e-mails:

"There are two possible directions for a faith caucus. A faith caucus can be, and at the moment it fully is, a cheerleading squad for the Democrats, bringing to the churches, synagogues, mosques and ashrams 'the good news' that the Democrats policies miraculously happen to coincide with the message of our holy scriptures, and on top of that, that they intend to expand funding of local religious communities as long as the specific programs funded operate within the bounds of separation of church and state. The other direction is to be a prophetic voice within the political party, bringing to the attention of the leaders the voices of the most downtrodden, demanding that the party live up to its own principles and that it move beyond the rhetoric of peace and justice to really embody that...People of faith really failed him (Obama) and the Democrats when they spent so much time praising and so little time asking Obama and the Democrats to realize that in the 21st century taking spiritual values seriously in politics requires looking at the spec in one's own eyes-- and it is that kind of help that makes the absence of prophetic critique in the Faith Caucus not only ethically disappointing but substantively a betrayal of the best interests of the Democrats and of the Obama candidacy."

I've been interested to note how little specific religious language is used in the main speeches. Last night, Joe Biden did not mention his Catholicism, but he told an interesting, if theologically confusing, anecdote that attempts to connect Christian faith to more general life lessons. This is the anecdote, about lessons from Biden's mother:

"When I got knocked down by guys bigger than me, she sent me back out and demanded that I bloody their nose so I could walk down that street the next day. After the accident, she told me, “Joey, God sends no cross you cannot bear.” And when I triumphed, she was quick to remind me it was because of others. My mother’s creed is the American creed: No one is better than you. You are everyone’s equal, and everyone is equal to you. My parents taught us to live our faith, and treasure our family. We learned the dignity of work, and we were told that anyone can make it if they try."

Tonight, of course, is the big night, and it will be interesting to see how explicitly Barack Obama talks about the complex role of religion in his own journey, and about how directly he addresses voters for whom religion is a central concern.

(Photo, by AFP, shows Democratic National Committee Convention CEO Leah D. Daughtry speaking during the Democratic National Convention Interfaith Gathering last Sunday.)