National

Secular-baiting has become something of an art form in high GOP circles ever since Newt Gingrich began his pioneering explorations of the genre back in the 1990s.

A milestone in the evolution of this rhetoric occurred in 2007 when Mitt Romney likened secularism to radical Jihadism in a memorable speech.

Those were impressive accomplishments, for sure. But let me say that no one, but no one, can demonize, Talibanize, or Stalinize secularism like Rick Santorum. On occasion he has done so, I would admit, with a fair degree of intellectual seriousness, as in this 2010 speech. Though for the most part his pronouncements on the subject amount to rank and preposterous name-calling.

Remember that young phenom who “rocked” the 2004 Democratic National Convention with the refrain “we worship an awesome God in the blue states!”? Well, in style, at least, he was nowhere to be found at yesterday’s National Prayer Breakfast. Indeed, listening to President Obama deliver his remarks I was struck by the dirge-like joylessness of his oration.

In substance, however, his speech quietly drove home many of te core-beliefs of the ever-mobilizing, ever-regrouping, ever-coming-in-second-place American Religious Left. Listening carefully to Obama’s sedate address, one could detect a rather tenacious, albeit sometimes disheveled, defense of the principles that Progressives of Faith live by:

We are not separationist secularists: The president has been distancing himself from separationist secularism since as far back as The Audacity of Hope. And he did so again at the breakfast when he observed: “I am reminded that faith and values play an enormous role in motivating us to solve some of our most urgent problems . . . we can’t leave our values at the door . . . if we leave our values at the door, we abandon the moral glue that has held our country together for centuries.”

And we aren’t the Christian Right either: Obama has made efforts to reach out to religious conservatives and these have been welcomed as warmly as his endeavor to build bridges with house Republicans. In light of the recent dust-up with the Catholic Church about mandatory coverage for birth control in health plans, I can’t help but wonder if the following aside wasn’t a critique of the right’s will to religious power: “Part of living in a pluralistic society means that our personal religious beliefs alone can’t dictate our response to every challenge we face.”

What ‘war on religion’?: For decades religious conservatives have, somehow, managed to tar religious liberals as anti-religious, a smear that liberals have had the damndest time neutralizing.  The idea that the Obama administration is hostile to religion would certainly come as a surprise to the aforementioned separationist secularists. Too, it would seem to contradict the relentlessly faith-friendly tone of his speech on Thursday (not to mention the existence of his Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships). The key for Obama and Progressives of Faith is to shift public perceptions. They must no longer come across as the party of separationism, but as the party of . . . .

Pluralism: For all of his ostentatious references to his “Christian walk” and “finding Christ when I wasn’t even looking for him,” this address was intriguingly ecumenical. Obama’s repeated allusions to his Christian faith did cloud the argument, but the president ultimately managed to draw literal moral equivalences between Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and even, yes, nonbelief (“These values are old and they can be found in many denominations, in many faiths among many believers and among many nonbelievers”).  Just as White Conservative Evangelicals understood that political power could be gained by engaging in “co-belligerency” with traditionalist Catholics, Mormons, and Jews, religious progressives will need to forge their own ecumenical coalitions.

Poverty:Using the Bible in politics is about strategic and selective emphasis. It entails focusing on one set of Scriptures (to the exclusion of contradictory others) and arguing that those verses comprise God’s overarching policy priority. The Christian Right has championed those texts that it believes oppose gay marriage and abortion. The Left, for its part, focuses on scriptures that decry poverty.

Yesterday, the president cracked out the exegesis and made a scriptural case for his economic policies. Invoking 1 John 3:17 (“if anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?”) Obama called for the types of actions that his critics would surely dub as “income redistribution.” When he paraphrased Luke 12:48 to the effect that “to whom much is given . . . . much is required” one couldn’t help but see this as a plea to raise taxes on the wealthy. Riffing on Genesis 4:9 and Matthew 25:40 he made the argument that government is the brotherly keeper of those who have the least.

Obama’s speech was hampered by a lack of energy and focus (why exactly was the president telling us that he recently prayed for the Rev. Billy Graham?). Yet it did successfully outline the rudiments of the Left’s religious/political vision. In recent times, this vision has not swayed voters as much as its counterpart on the Right. And that's a problem which his somber sermon was meant to confront.

ABC News hosted a halting debate Saturday night at St. Anselm College. It was followed by a far better “Meet The Press” event Sunday morning. Neither gathering, however, provided much to roil the normally tranquil weekend news cycle.

Still there were a few noteworthy developments and one likely scenario is coming into focus for those who follow religious politicking:

Romney, Hard to Floor: In this campaign the former governor of Massachusetts has shown himself to be a superb defensive debater, a virtuoso of the rope-a-dope technique.

Consider the counterattack he executed this morning. In the late rounds, he found himself isolated, one-on-one, with the former Speaker of the House. This encounter with Newt Gingrich was frightening and this is because Newt Gingrich is frightening. And he is furious.

The former speaker had just been asked to reflect on Romney’s negative campaign ads in Iowa. This was a plum opportunity for a brutal, some might say justified, smackdown. Yet Gingrich couldn’t achieve any leverage. It was as if he channeled his inner Tim Pawlenty--looking clueless as to how to injure the frontrunner in face-to-face combat.

When the moderator asked Mitt for a riposte one could practically see Newt slipping into a red wrestling singlet about to be mounted and pinned by his opponent.

Republican presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum speaks to the congregation at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Coralville, Iowa December 11, 2011. (JEFF HAYNES - REUTERS) Four years ago, in 2007, we faith and values pundits were pondering Mitt Romney’s coupling of secularism and radical Jihadism in a memorable December speech. We were trying to figure out why John McCain, of all people, was invoking “Christian nation” rhetoric.

We were assessing frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s many references to youthful Bible study and Sunday School taught by her mom. As for that junior senator, Barack Obama, we marveled at the newcomer’s God talk skills. He was too green, obviously; maybe 2016 would be his time.

Nor were we really focused on those who would soon become faith and values persons of interest in 2008. Mike Huckabee only flitted across the radar late in 2007. Outside of the initiated, no one knew who the Reverend Jeremiah Wright was. And few, if any, on the religion beat had ever heard of Sarah Palin.

If I were in charge of American atheism--which I am not, but then again who is?--I would ask myself the following questions: Why does poll after poll indicate that we are one of the most disliked groups in the United States? Why are there so few self-professed atheists among 535 congresspersons and senators? Why have all three branches of the federal government turned their backs on the vaunted mid-century policy of church/state separation? Why has atheism—a once formidable intellectual tradition—become such a “little idea” as R. Joseph Hoffmann memorably put it in an important recent essay?

As head atheist in charge I would first get my priorities straight: The intellectual crisis of atheism is actually far less severe than the political crisis. Pop atheists have certainly made atheism a small idea. Hoffmann himself emerges from the erudite and thoughtful Secular Humanist circle. Alongside that school there exists some truly excellent scholarly research about nonbelief.