Speakers consider role of religion in elections

Speakers
consider role of religion in elections
…………………………………………………………………

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News Staff

Two weeks before
the 2000 presidential election, the American Muslim Political
Coordinating Council endorsed George W. Bush. More than
90 percent of Muslim voters in Florida chose Bush.

This and other
examples of how politics and religion mix nowadays were
presented during a Feb. 1 forum titled “Reflections
on the Elections: The Role of Religion in the 2000 Elections.”

“Religion
played a very major role in deciding the entire outcome
of the elections,” James Reichley told Rice students,
faculty, staff and other guests at the event hosted by Rice’s
James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. A senior
fellow at Georgetown University’s Graduate Public Policy
Institute, Reichley was one of five panelists at the forum.

“The great
puzzle of the 2000 elections was why Al Gore didn’t
win easily,” Reichley said, noting that models based
on the economy and job approval of the incumbent party predicted
Gore would win by a landslide. But these models did not
take into consideration the lack of approval of President
Clinton as a human being.

“The rejection
of Gore was based on the belief of many voters that the
White House had violated ethical and moral norms that had
been based on Judeo-Christian moral tradition,” Reichley
said. “This was by far the most important religious
factor in the 2000 elections.”

One voice that
seemed absent during the 2000 presidential elections was
that of the Religious Right, according to John Green, director
of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the
University of Akron.

“We hardly
heard from them at all,” he said, adding that some
journalists concluded the movement was “dead and buried.”

Surveys conducted
by the University of Akron indicated that 84 percent of
white, evangelical Protestants who claimed to attend church
at least once a week voted for George W. Bush. This group
is the core constituency of the Religious Right.

“It may
be that Gov. Bush was able to appeal to the activists associated
with the Christian Right and to the voters on his own terms,
because of his own personal faith and the policy stances
that he took,” Green said. “The unusual level
of religious discourse in the campaign may have had the
effect of mobilizing and polarizing these religious groups
between the two candidates.”

How the Religious
Right accomplished this was analyzed by Clyde Wilcox, professor
of government at Georgetown.

“The Christian
Right decided that the more visible they are in a general
election, the worse they are for their candidates,”
Wilcox said. “It creates a backlash. The opposition
mobilizes.”

The Christian
Right resorted to a quieter approach, using more subtle
means like distributing voter guides to churches.

“In every
state, Bush won the Christian Right vote overwhelmingly,”
Wilcox said, attributing the victory to the purists becoming
pragmatic.

“Bill Clinton’s
moral bankruptcy created the essential need to replace him
with someone that would be closer to them,” Wilcox
said. Bush’s born-again testimony appealed to the Religious
Right, and they united behind him in hope of electing someone
whose religious beliefs might lead to policy changes that
favor their beliefs.

Robert Stein,
the Fox Professor of Political Science and dean of social
sciences at Rice, studied the extent to which religion affects
political behavior by surveying 1,200 voters in five battleground
states where the presidential candidates spent a disproportionate
amount of time, money and resources: New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Illinois, Michigan and Florida.

Although Bush
won a majority of votes from white evangelical voters in
these states, Stein was surprised that over the course of
the campaign, there was significant movement among those
voters’ preferences, sometimes in Gore’s favor.
Because the Christian Right is stereotyped as being resistant
to political campaign messages, Stein wondered about when
religion matters in a voter’s preference.

His conclusion:
in really close elections.

“My sense
is that religion in American politics in terms of influencing
voter behavior is very marginal,” Stein said. The voting
behavior of people who quickly cite the type of religious
community in which they live as being important to their
lives is most likely to be influenced by their religious
beliefs.

William Martin,
the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Professor of Religion and Public
Policy in Rice’s Department of Sociology, focused on
the impact the Muslims had on the elections. The Muslim
population in America is estimated to be 6.7 million, and
more than 62 percent of Muslims over the age of 18 were
registered voters in the 2000 elections.

“The dream
of American Muslims is to organize themselves into an effective
counterweight to Jewish voters, in numbers if not in expertise
and influence,” Martin said.

After the four
largest Muslim groups formed the American Muslim Political
Coordination Council to provide consistent advice to Muslims
on political issues and candidates, the council requested
meetings with Bush and Gore. Bush met with the council,
but Gore had to cancel his meeting to tend to matters at
the White House. Bush won the council’s endorsement.

Surveys indicate
that two-thirds of the 60,000 eligible Muslim voters in
Florida went to the polls. “If Gore had gotten 58 percent
of those 40,000 votes, as Clinton did in ’96, he would
be our president today,” Martin said.

The Muslims
united behind a candidate, proving they can deliver votes,
he said. “I think it’s safe to say Muslims are
now a public political force that should and will be taken
seriously.”

This program
was the first of three in the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Lecture
Series on Religion and American Public Policy. Harry Chavanne
is a former Rice trustee who was instrumental in building
the Department of Religious Studies at Rice.

Next in the
series will be a presentation on “Religion in the Political
Realm: What is the Appropriate Role?” at 7 p.m. March
1 in James A. Baker III Hall.

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