Lately Democrats have been going through all kinds of gyrations to try to make themselves seem more religion friendly. But Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst at Political Research Associates, reports at Talk to Action, that it isn’t working.
And thinks he knows why too.
Less than a third of Americans think the Democratic Party is friendly toward religion. According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in July of 2005, only 29% of those surveyed thought Democrats were “religion-friendly;” down from 40% in 2004. More than half of those surveyed–55%–thought the Republicans were friendly toward religion.
At the same time, 45% of those polled thought that “religious conservatives” had too much control over the Republican Party, while 44% thought that “non-religious liberals” had too much control over the Democratic Party.
These results can be interpreted in many ways, but I think they show that the Democratic Party and its allies need to spend more time thinking about how the average American perceives their attitude toward religion.
Indeed. Chip and I have been beating this drum for a long time.
There is an odd psychology in play here. Some Democrats, particularly some inside the Beltway, publicly pander to “people of faith” to the point of aping evangelical styles of religious expression that are, well, unconvincing. But on other occasions, Democratic leaders and aligned interest groups will trot out focus-group tested slogans with which to label everyone remotely associated with the Christian Right. On one day we love them because they are people of faith. But on another day we hate them because they are out to destroy America as we know it. Or something like that.
No wonder the polls are weird on this.
I wrote about this in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy in a subsection titled “Its the Substance, Not the Slogan.” I called for use of accurate descriptors instead of the language of demonization.
There are pols who think that cheap slogans can substitute for the inherent persuasiveness of people who know what they are talking about, and who care enough to speak in ways that communicate values that connect with people’s interests. They have been around forever. But in our time, cheap sloganeering has substituted for aquiring relevant knowelege and putting it to use in evolvling political strategy in response to the growing strength of the Christian Right.
Berlet continues about the particulars of the slogan industry:
“Every week I get postal mail and e-mail solicitations for donations that use demonizing buzz phrases such as “Radical Religious Right,” or “Religious Political Extremist.” That type of rhetoric may scare some people into writing checks in the short run, but it makes it harder in the long run for grassroots organizers to build a broad-based movement for social change that includes people in progressive, liberal, and centrist religious groups…. Most Christian evangelicals, however, are not part of the Christian Right. I know from talking with evangelicals and fundamentalists across the country that they are offended by the rhetoric from some liberal and Democratic Party leaders who do not seem to be able to talk about religion without chewing on their foot.”
Read the rest of his essay here.
“Demonization is a two way street,” I wrote in Eternal Hostility, “and is engaged in by demagogues for purposes of their own. Sometimes, it simply adds a B-movie excitement to the normalcy of politics. [But] Whatever the outcome of the political struggles of the day, people still need to live in the same communities when it is over. This does not mean that debate and political mobilizations need to be meek and mild — only that those who would speak for democratic values need to effectively and forcefully speak for those values, in ways that demonstrate those values in action.”
I am not going to put forward a whole manifesto on language in this short diary. Maybe another day. Or maybe Chip will get around to it first.
But as Dems gear up for 2006, I just want to suggest that different approaches to talking about religion and politics are definitely in order.
