Left behind

“Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.”
–Mohandas Gandhi

Just a bit before 8 a.m. on a recent Sunday at the First United Methodist Church on First Street. A handful of older folks sit in cushioned, antique pews. Light diffuses through a stained-glass depiction of Christ with outstretched hands. High ceilings and a pipe organ convey elegance. Congregants greet one another and call this “passing the peace.”

“Get in touch with why you are here,” the church’s weekly bulletin instructs. “It may mean reaching out to the calm, still and deep places within you. If so, quiet the inner dialogue of your mind. Be still, and know that God is with you.”

A cross, bread and a cup rest atop a table in front of the church. On the floor is a box decorated with bright wrapping, colorful stickers and childlike text that declares the love of God. Inside the box are cloth bags filled with crayons, pencils and notebooks. These are the “Gift of the Heart” school kits being collected, along with “Gift of the Heart” health kits, by the Reno Methodist congregation to send to Iraqi children.

A woman walks up to deposit a kit she has assembled for one child. The service begins. There are prayer requests and liturgies and a short message by a guest speaker with degrees in journalism and political science who works as the chairman of a ministry directed toward prison inmates, Kairos. In a short message titled, “David, the Sometimes Faithful Shepherd,” the relationship between faith and governance comes up. There’s a brief, questioning allusion to the USA Patriot Act.

At this house of worship, political views seem informed by faith.

You’d think that a savvy political party like the Democrats might want to exploit this kind of liberal concern and compassion, brick it up into a reliable voting bloc and start winning some elections.

You don’t hear much about the religious left. It’s a hard category to define. But this is a group of people—individuals whose Buddha, Christ or Muhammad figure is more of a tie-dyed pacifist who cares for the poor, acknowledges the humanity of felons and certainly recycles—who could swing an election.

Especially a national election for president.

Nine candidates are competing for the Democratic Party nomination to run against George W. Bush in 2004. The primary winner will enjoy the support of Democrats, disillusioned Republicans and even many Libertarians and Green Party members who’ve pledged to unite against President Bush for the good of the planet. (Yes, Greens and others used to observe little difference between Democrats and Republicans. Bush, with his ultra-right policies and staff appointments, seems to have gone the extra mile to prove them wrong.)

But as a voting bloc, spiritually minded voters who lean left (to the Democratic Party or even the Greens) don’t have the same kind of clout wielded by their right-wing counterparts.

“I certainly think the right wing of the Republican Party has tried to hijack religion, especially Christianity,” says Haydn Bertelson, a Reno activist who considers herself a Democrat with a “rich spiritual life.”

After giving some thought to why people think of the Republican Party as the “party of religion,” she attributes this meme to the religious right’s narrow focus and high level of organization, not to mention funding from conservative business types. This combination of factors can make the religious right seem larger than life.

“I do not believe that they represent even the majority of Republicans, let alone America at large,” Bertelson says. “[And] there is no corresponding vocal, focused, well-funded and organized brand of Christianity—or any other religion—in the Democratic Party.”

Bertelson plans to vote for Rep. Dennis Kucinich [D-Ohio]—that peace-mongering liberal of liberals—in the primary. But in the end, she’ll vote for anyone who stands a chance of defeating you-know-who.

“I’m also practical,” she says. “And I belong to the ABB party—that’s Anybody But Bush.”

Evangelical Christians missed out on their chance to vote for a born-again Sunday School-teaching Democrat running for re-election as president of the United States in 1980. Instead, they voted for Hollywood, for a slick package of all-American conservatism embodied by a friendly politician named Ronald Reagan.

Prior to the election, the candidates were both invited to speak to a gathering of some 10,000 evangelical ministers for the National Affairs Briefing in Dallas. Jimmy Carter turned the speaking engagement down, on the principle that it wasn’t proper to use his faith to political advantage. The not-so-religious Ronald Reagan accepted the invitation. It was at this conference that he uttered the now-infamous pledge to the religious right: “I know you can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.”

“And 10,000 fundamentalist ministers applauded, then went home and told their congregations how great this guy was,” says Jim Richardson, a UNR sociology professor who teaches the sociology of religion. “There’s some real irony in that the one of the two candidates who was really religious—not to impugn any former presidents—[lost religious support].”

Democrats are often less than comfortable making an issue out of their personal religious beliefs, says Chris Wicker, chairman of the Washoe County Democrats.

“On the left, you have such a mix of religions,” he says. “Generally, I would say that the religions on the left are not as intent on imposing their religious views on others, or saying that they’re right and everybody else is going to hell.”

So, he says, the Democrats don’t have a cohesive strategy for organizing spiritual fervor into a voting behemoth.

“You don’t have the same type of zealotry or goals on the religious left,” Wicker says. “I don’t ever see this being a force in politics that’s the same as the religious right.”

That doesn’t mean that these individuals are any less spiritual, as if that were something you could measure with a yardstick.

“Their views give them room to become active in politics and oppose some of the strategies and goals of the religious right,” he says. “They don’t do so as the ‘religious left,’ but as Democrats or moderate Republicans or any individuals involved in politics. They don’t distribute voter guides in their churches, telling people how to vote. … Democrats aren’t using them the way the Republicans use the religious right.”

That could be good or bad. Already, Democrats aren’t exactly enjoying waves of popularity from younger, politically aware constituencies. In the book Culture Jam, Kalle Lasn tags Democrats as “losers” who lack passion. Lasn, the founder of Adbusters magazine, creates social-marketing campaigns like Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week. In a Salon.com article, “How the Left Lost Teen Spirit,” Andrew O’Hehir decries left-wing elitism and liberals who concern themselves with violence and immorality in the media “coming off like the ludicrous school principal in a’50s teen movie.”

“Wouldn’t it be great if the Democrats weren’t such incredible dorks?” O’Hehir asks.

Dorks? Losers? At this point, courting religious groups could be a risky move that might annoy one of the party’s few remaining loyal factions—those who value religious liberty in that broad sense that includes freedom from religion.

Nevertheless, conservatives don’t have a monopoly on righteousness.

Wicker says that the public has been sold a “bill of goods” that paints Democrats as anti-religious or lacking a moral conscience. In part, these characterizations come from the party’s insistence on separation of church and state, a value that lands the party in opposition to forced school prayers or giving federal funds to religious social services. Democrats engage in these issues on the basis of protecting freedom of religion, Wicker says. But conservatives who see the American identity as closely tied with Christianity view the Democrats’ stance as an insult to their faith.

“A number of these groups think that, in the long term, the United States should be a Christian country—that that’s the roots of our founding fathers and the direction this country should go,” Wicker says.

The Democrats haven’t responded appropriately to these attitudes, he says. The party should confront the accusations head on, demonstrating how school prayer and faith-based initiatives will inevitably lead to the government giving one religion preference over another.

“We’ve neglected to say, ‘By the way, we’re not putting down religion. We just think that religion should be protected in this manner.’ “

Democrats could, in fact, go on the offensive and show how Republicans fail a laboring class on every issue from health care to wages, dealing with poverty, helping the disabled communities and supporting the working poor.

“Personally, I don’t think the Republican Party does anything for the working man or the working mother who needs child care,” Wicker says. “And they never will. The way they try to blunt the effect of that is to capture the votes of people in that position by appealing to their religion. A lot of folks who see themselves as part of the religious right are people who the Republicans do diddly squat for. Yet they’ve convinced them that the Democrats aren’t right for their religious views.”

Sometimes that wedge is driven in by an issue like gun control. “The Republicans and the NRA say, ‘The Democrats want to take your guns away!’ and [gun owners] believe that false propaganda,” Wicker says.

Even so, he says most Democrats do favor some kind of reasonable gun control.

Another wedge is abortion.

“Choice is a moral problem for a lot of Christians,” Wicker says. “That’s a genuine issue.”

But there’s nothing that would exclude a pro-lifer from, in other issues, being a Democrat.

“The leading Democrat in Nevada, Sen. Harry Reid, is not pro-choice,” Wicker notes.

People who attend church are well-rounded, says Larry Struve of the Religious Alliance of Nevada. They are concerned not only about issues of faith, but also about the health of a community, about caring for the weak and the poor.

“To make the love of God real, we have to reach out and feed the poor, care for the oppressed and the disenfranchised, give voice to those who’ve been silenced. Look at Jesus’ ministry—that’s what he was doing.”

Struve represented RAIN, an advocacy group made up of five religious denominations, from Lutherans to Episcopalians, at the Nevada Legislature’s 2003 session. The church groups banded together in the mid-1990s with the goal of making a difference in a community that’s on the wrong end of many social indices in Nevada, where more children live in poverty and fewer young people go to college.

After you get past the issues that the group has pledged to fight for—opposition to the death penalty, prison reform, welfare and foster care concerns, health care and suicide prevention, to name a few—the group considers itself politically non-partisan. It doesn’t endorse politicians running for office. It merely looks at change through issues, encouraging participation in the democratic process.

What might it take to earn the loyalty of such a group? That’s a question that the Democrats need to ask. Religious moderates are one of the “least-appreciated swing constituencies in the country,” writes Amy Sullivan in a Washington Monthly article titled, “Do the Democrats Have a Prayer?” Whether you’re talking John Kerry, Dick Gephardt or Howard Dean, whoever runs against Bush in 2004 “will need to get religion,” Sullivan says.

“Americans have good practical reasons for preferring their president be a person of faith. Presidents must make momentous, life-and-death decisions while in office, and people want that person to have something bucking him up other than his pollster—something he or she can turn to for guidance and strength. It reassures us to know that our leaders feel the pull of a greater interest.”

Unfortunately, Democrats remain fairly clueless, Sullivan says. The party has voter outreach efforts directed toward “the old and the young, ethnic groups, veterans, members of the military, women and the disabled community, but none to religious Americans of any faith.”

It’s 9:30 a.m. on Sunday at a church that’s miles from downtown Reno. A worship band has already kicked into high gear as young families flood through the doors. A man hands out brochures for Left Behind: The Ultimate Conference on Bible Prophecy, coming Sept. 13 to the Reno/Sparks Convention Center. The conference will feature one of the authors of the best-selling fiction series, Left Behind, which has sold more than 50 million copies. This religious pulp fiction series purports to be based on the Bible’s account of a rapture during which the faithful few are taken to heaven before the rest of the world is ravaged during the rule of an antichrist. The concept of an apocalypse that wipes out the present world in favor of better future has some fierce political implications.In the church, there are drums, electric guitars and a group of singers rocking to the beat singing: “Why did he die to save me? To take his glory to the nations.”

This church’s bulletin lists volunteer opportunities at the Crisis Pregnancy Center, offers a car clinic for single parents and widows and invites ladies to a Bunko benefit at the governor’s mansion.

The room is jam-packed with hundreds of hand-clapping adults by the time the pastor begins a fairly apolitical talk regarding personal change. A handout containing a sermon outline contains a verse from Exodus: “But I will drive them out a little at a time, until your population has increased enough to fill the land.”

These are the “freestyle evangelicals,” a group that’s been described by observers as being less tied to such evangelical figures as Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson and more tuned in to “shared cultural touchstones,” such as the Left Behind books and popular Christian music, Sullivan writes. Freestyle evangelicals are considered theologically conservative but politically independent, voting for Clinton in 1996 and then Bush in 2000.

“They are fairly conservative on social issues—most are pro-life, although they are not single-issue abortion voters—and express particular concern about popular culture,” she says. The combined voting power of these evangelicals, in addition to Muslim Americans and what Sullivan calls “convertible Catholics,” could be enough to make a dent in the Bush battle.

Bush did a great job of appealing to the Muslims during the 2000 election, says Nadiah Beekun of Sparks. And Muslims typically vote Democratic, she says. Beekun’s parents were Democrats, but she became a Republican precinct leader in Las Vegas at age 18.

“A lot of Muslims voted for Bush because he was making the right noises in terms of Israel and freedom of religion,” Beekun says. “Just the Muslims in Florida were enough to swing it over for Bush.”

Bush visited a mosque and invited Muslims to the White House—”Though one was arrested, no, more than one, by his security!” Beekun says.

But now that a few years have gone by, given the current administrative trends, some Muslims may feel ripped off.

“Now with all that’s happened they say, ‘What did we get into?’ But would Gore have been much different? I have a hard time figuring out who to vote for. … Sometimes your vote is picking the lesser of two evils. It’s kind of like, hold your nose and vote.”

Beekun’s been rereading both the precepts of Islam and the U.S. Constitution, finding that the two have plenty in common. But the mental exercise is also disturbing.

“The more I read, the more scared I get,” she says. “Our government is eroding our rights away in little niggling ways.”

Beekun considers herself to be a thoughtful voter. She tries to predict how a candidate might act on several different issues.

“There are a couple of good Democrats in this state,” she says, reflectively. “Like Harry Reid. … And then there’s our governor who’s nominally a Republican. He sure acts like a Democrat in a lot of ways. I guess that’s what the problem is, blurring of lines.”

It’s 8 a.m. Monday morning, and two Sparks women are evangelizing a gas station across from Reed High School.

Denise Howard says she used to be a Catholic. But that was before she saw the sense of becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. As such, she sees no point in voting. The end is near, and no humans in power can bring peace to the world, she says. Not liberals. Not conservatives.

“We’re supposed to be [politically] neutral,” Howard says. “We believe that God is the only one who can bring peace to the world.”

Her partner in Watchtower magazine distribution, Barbara Ortiz, adds that the Jehovah’s Witness members do pay taxes, obey laws and send their kids to public schools, of course. But their ultimate responsibility isn’t toward this present doomed political system.

“We tell people about the new world,” Ortiz says. “This system is coming to an end, and a new system will take its place. Like Noah preached that a flood was coming, and people thought he was nuts. People think we’re fanatical, but we’re not.”

“The Bible says there’s hope for all mankind,” Howard says.

The downside to this kind of evangelical nihilism (belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement) is that it could tend to make folks a bit apathetic about the political present. Want to improve government? Nah, corruption is to be expected, and besides the end is near. Work to better our culture? Too late, nothing we can do to change our consumer mentalities now. Concern for the environment? God’s going to make a new heaven and a new earth, so it doesn’t matter if we trash this one.

Overheard during a meeting of anti-nuke activists: “Christians say that nuclear proliferation doesn’t matter because everything’s going to blow up anyway come Armageddon. And how do you argue with that?”

Here’s where the Democratic Party’s nine candidates land on the religious spectrum: Former U.S. Senator and Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, now a law professor, is Roman Catholic, as are both Kucinich and Sen. John Kerry. Sen. Joe Lieberman is Jewish. Sen. John Edwards is a Methodist. Sen. Bob Graham belongs to the United Church of Christ. Howard Dean is a Congregationalist. Rev. Al Sharpton and Rep. Richard Gephardt are Baptists.

With the exception of Lieberman, we don’t hear much about these candidates’ religious beliefs. Perhaps as the debate season kicks in over the coming year, there’ll be more Biblical allusions, gospel choirs at conventions or prayerful lingo.

Or maybe not.

Some people just balk at the idea of mixing politics and religion, says a woman named Renee, who created the Religious Left blog site. But if you got it, she argues, why not use it?

“My thought was that, liberals who don’t already have religion do not need to go out and get some,” she writes at religiousleft.blogspot.com. “But maybe if liberals whose motivation comes from our religious or spiritual convictions found a way to be more vocal and visible, we could play a vital role in creating positive change in the United States government.”