I wanted to flag for everyone this article in the National Catholic Reporter that mentions my new book, Progressive and Religious, and role of religion in the 2008 election.

"I think what the emerging progressive religious movement is poised to do is to help us move from the culture wars, where religion is the tip of the spear that divided Americans," said Robert Jones, a sociologist and author of "Progressive & Religious."

"What we're really seeing is a rebalancing in many ways in this election," said Jones. "In 2004, we had the artificial constriction of religion to a couple of hot-button issues and one party."

The full article is available here.

Labels: catholics, election, progressive and religious

Note: Cross-posted from Beliefnet's Progressive Revival Blog.

Given the divisive role religion played in the 2004 election, many progressives have been waiting for a resumption of the culture wars in this election season. Yet despite the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, (a Pentecostal governor who strongly opposes abortion rights), there is little evidence that the social issues which played such a prominent role four years ago will dominate the 2008 election. Neither the new ruling today by the Connecticut Supreme Court striking down a law prohibiting gay and lesbian couples from getting married, nor the battle in California over a ballot initiative to repeal the current law that guarantees gay and lesbian couples marriage rights seem likely to reignite the culture wars nationwide.

The newly released "Faith and American Politics Survey," sponsored by Faith in Public Life and conducted by my firm, Public Religion Research, offers some key insights into this changing American religious landscape. Like other recent surveys, we found that religious Americans, like all Americans in this election, care much more about the economy, gas prices, and health care than they do about abortion or same-sex marriage. In fact, 83% of Americans say the economy will be a very important factor in their vote in November, compared to just 28% who say that same-sex marriage will be very important. Even among white evangelicals, the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage do not rank in the top five most important issues for the election.

Perhaps more importantly, we found that younger Americans of faith (18-34) are not their parents' culture war generation. On issues from gay and lesbian rights to the role of government at home and the role of America around the world, young Americans are bridging the divides they have inherited from the previous generation and are ushering in an era where the common good trumps ideological orthodoxy....

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Read the rest of the article at Beliefnet's Progressive Revival Blog.

Labels: abortion, catholics, Christians, culture wars, election, evangelicals, exit polls, Homosexuality, public religion research, same-sex marriage

Note: this entry cross-posted at the Common Good Blog at Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.

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While Catholic opposition to physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is often mentioned in the same breath as abortion and grounded in an appeal to the sacredness of human life, there is a strong but often-neglected argument against the legalization of PAS that also relies on other key principles of Catholic Social Teaching, particularly its emphasis on social justice and the common good.

The 10th anniversary of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which made Oregon the only state to legalize physician-assisted suicide (PAS), came and went largely without controversy last fall. But embedded in this issue are important lessons about the interrelationship between protecting life and social justice. In an election year, when complex issues are too often reduced to sound bytes, making these connections is an important moral exercise that helps us re-envision how a commitment to the common good might change our politics.

Many think of debates about PAS as just another round of the “pro-life”/“pro-choice” abortion debates. But choices about PAS, if they are to have moral significance, must be un-coerced, free choices. And meaningful choices must be available not just to the privileged few but to everyone. A common good lens highlights the stark inequalities in our society that too often constrain, threaten, or even prohibit meaningful free choices for many vulnerable citizens on this issue.

It is no secret that the health care system in America needs repair if not complete overhaul. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that in 2006 the proportion of Americans without health insurance rose to 15.8 percent, or 47 million people, and a recent report by Families USA found that almost 90 million Americans under age 65 were uninsured for some or all of the 2006-2007 two-year period. Not surprisingly, minority groups bear a disproportionate brunt of this problem – 21 percent of African Americans and 34% percent of Hispanics are uninsured.

In a context of such health care inequalities, legalizing PAS puts the working poor who lack insurance at risk of reaching for PAS under financial duress. Choosing between spending $40-$150 for a lethal prescription versus tens of thousands of dollars for long-term care is hardly an unfettered choice between equal alternatives. In this situation, the coercive power of scarcity pushes the poor toward draconian calculations that those of us with private health insurance do not have to make. A commitment to the common good calls us to see that any policy that hands the poor tough choices that the rest of us can avoid erodes our sense of solidarity, of belonging to one human family.

The poor, minorities, and the disabled clearly see the problem of coercion. For example, a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that while the general public is evenly divided, 78 percent of minorities with incomes under $50,000 oppose PAS. Ellie Jenny, a person with disabilities and an activist with the group Not Dead Yet, put it this way: “Choice is OK when you have options, but when you live in poverty with rationed care, you don’t have options.” The American Medical Association and other leading national medical associations also oppose PAS because of concerns about vulnerable populations and undiagnosed depression.

Despite these testimonies, many still think of PAS through the “pro-choice” and “pro-life” frames. But if we expand the frame to include the common good, we will find that there is common ground that protects life and meaningful choice for all. At a minimum, both groups can agree that concerns for the poor and vulnerable demand that universal health care (or at least universal palliative care) ought to be in place before PAS could be legalized. This would not ultimately solve the debate, but if we could see this complexity and make progress here, it would bode well for so many other issues where the old binary divides fail us.

You can read more of this social justice perspective on PAS in my recent book, Liberalism's Troubled Search for Equality: Religion and Cultural Bias in the Oregon Physician-Assisted Suicide Debates (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).

Labels: catholics, common good, physician-assisted suicide