Religion in American Life and Politics

11:00 A.M. EDT

Real Audio of Briefing

MR. DENIG:Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center. As one of our continuing series of presentations dealing with the American elections this year, we are very pleased to present a discussion of the topic, "Religion in American Life and Politics," and we are particularly pleased to be able to welcome to our podium to discuss this issue with us a very well known expert on the issue, Professor Michael Novak.

Professor Novak will have some opening remarks to make in which he'll lay out the general theme of "Religion in American Life and Politics," and after that we'll be delighted to take your questions.

Professor Novak.

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Thank you very much, Paul, and I'm happy to spend a few moments with you and will be looking forward to your questions.

I thought I'd begin with just a few comments to set the context for you. When you watch the inauguration next January 20th, whichever candidate is elected, I can confidently predict, because it's always happened before, what you will see. You will see a very solemn occasion opened with a prayer, maybe more than one prayer, followed by a reading of a poem by the National Poet Laureate, the swearing-in, and, in effect, an inaugural address but, in effect, a sermon, which will also include a prayer, and then the occasion will close with a prayer.

And what you will have watched, if you step back from it, is a religious service. It happens every four years. It's not exactly Christian, it's not exactly Jewish, but it is a kind of civil religion, if you wish. It is a way of stating the accommodation of the American polity with the religiousness of the American people.

It is owed very largely to the fact that our independence grew out of religion, as Tocqueville remarks in his book in Democracy in America, marking how distinctive it was from Europe -- by the way, that's the point of the book -- that in America religion is the first of the political institutions of democracy. Please note that: the first political institution of democracy.

And he argued that because the beliefs that bind Americans together and that anchor their rights owe their origin to religion, owe their origin to the belief that men and women are created by a beneficent creator who means them well -- more than that, offers them his friendship -- and who made them free; as Jefferson wrote more than once, a God who gave us life and gave us liberty at the same time.

And Tocqueville goes on to elaborate on this, how this belief in the immortal value of the human being in God's eyes and equality in which God looks upon people, I mean, no matter how rich or famous or powerful -- whatever you are -- as a human being, to God that's not very impressive, it doesn't mean much. So, in that sense, all are equal in His eyes. Not a leveling exactly, but it's just meaningless.

And Tocqueville argues that these spiritual inclinations, the aspirations, are very important in saving democracy from the inevitable tendency toward mediocrity and towards the lowering of tastes which democracy brings with it. It's the downside of democracy that majority wins and therefore extraordinary talents have to shape themselves to the majority, and it brings about a mediocratization of life and a lowering of tastes, left to itself, and only this other dimension of spiritual aspiration, of infinite capacity, of eternal value, has a chance of saving democracy from itself.

Now that, at least, has been the American understanding. The witty and wise British writer G.K. Chesterton wrote after his travels in America in the 1920s that America is "a nation with the soul of a church." It begins with a creed, the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident." And so there are a lot of features of American public life in which we conduct ourselves as a people with a creed, with a belief system that's rather parallel to a religious system.

The Supreme Court has gone so far, at least twice, to say something that, in 1892 and in 1932, that isn't exactly true in another sense but it is true in one sense, that this is a Christian nation, the Supreme Court has said, and its institutions don't make sense apart from that.

Now, it's obviously an untrue statement in the sense that no one -- no good citizen has to be a Christian in order to belong; the state itself is not confessional. It is true in two senses, that our beliefs derivatively, our beliefs about the great drama of human history and the role of nations in it are derivatively Jewish and Christian: Creator, Providence, Judge. These were all Jewish ideas made universal by the missionary impulse of Christianity.

And then secondly there's a truth to it, as Samuel Huntington, the distinguished political philosopher at Harvard, recently pointed out in an article in The Wall Street Journal, that such a high percentage of the American people has always been and is now Christian, and Jewish a small percentage.

So in these two senses, both in the beliefs from which the American sense of the drama of history and of nations arises and in the sense of the majority, the beliefs of the majority of people, this is an unusually religious nation.

There are two currents -- you know, I could go on infinitely on this, but I'd just like to make a couple more points and then turn it over to you for questions.

There are two major currents that have blown through the country like great winds over the last 30 years or so that have made religion an uncommonly interesting feature of our elections in the last couple go-arounds. One of them is this, that under Franklin Roosevelt, who you'll remember became President in 1932 and was elected four times, under Franklin Roosevelt the great Democratic coalition which governed the country for 50 years or more and was the dynamic force in our politics since the 1930s, until Ronald Reagan. And in a way, you could say Ronald Reagan even confirmed the FDR impulse.

But that great dynamic force was built on three religious pillars. It was built on the solid Democratic south, the Bible Belt, which voted solidly Democratic. Before you counted up the votes in the Electoral College, you knew the south was Democratic. So all those votes were locked up. And in the last 30 or 40 years, that vote has begun to shift. It's become more and more Republican. That's a huge shift.

The second pillar of the Roosevelt coalition was the large majority, in the 60 percent range, of America's Catholics. Catholics are the single largest religious group in America. There is a fine map put out by Glennmary in New York, a great polling organization, of the counties. I think there are copies for you after this which are useful and there's a guide to it, too, for all the colors. But it's just simply a map of the United States, a religious map of the United States.

And I think even from where you are you can see the pattern of colors. The colors are dictated by in which counties there is a more than 50 percent proportion belonging to one religion or another; or predominantly, more than 25 percent. So dark blue are the counties which are Catholic, 50 percent or more; light blue is 25 percent or more. Bright red is Baptist across the south. Green is Methodist. There is sort of a gray here that's Mormon -- Utah. And so forth.

So the distribution, it's worth noting, makes a difference in the Electoral College, too. You could study that out if you wanted to.

Given the timing in which different immigrant groups came here from different religious backgrounds, and given the part of the country where they settled, one can also see certain reasons why their political development went one way or the other and certain groups became more fixed in one party or the other.

Speaking very, very roughly, in my own native state of Pennsylvania, for instance, if you go into the big cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and even the smaller cities like Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Johnston, Erie and so forth, the industrial cities, the populations tend to be predominantly or more Catholic than anything else -- eastern and southern Europeans, Irish especially. If you go into the rural areas, it tends to be very Protestant -- Mennonite, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and so forth.

And again, as very roughly, only roughly, but it is rough, the Catholic vote will tend to be 60 percent or so for Democrats traditionally and the Protestant vote will be by the same percentages for Republicans in Pennsylvania. So a Catholic candidate for President is likely to -- well, let met put it another way. A Republican candidate for President is likely to carry Pennsylvania only if he can keep the Catholic vote for the Democrats down below 60 percent. He doesn't have to win it, but he has to keep it down below 60 percent or so.

And so different states have a pattern like that. In some states, for instance, where the Irish tended to dominate the politics, the Italians, who tended to immigrate a little bit later, tended to go to the Republican Party as a way to have an edge, a way to break in. By breaking in, I mean they got city jobs and union jobs and so forth if they controlled the politics. So sometimes the Catholic vote insofar as it's Italian is different from insofar as it's Irish, and so on and so forth across the country. It's exceedingly interesting to follow.

The second great -- what I'm trying to -- the main point I'm trying to establish here is this great current in the last 30 or 40 years of the Bible Belt becoming more Republican. The Catholic vote, the Reagan Democrats, the Democrats who started voting for Republicans, tend to be very heavily among Catholic city suburban people. And the Jewish vote similarly. It's smaller but in some areas quite potent in numbers and in skill and talent. And that vote, too, has divided more Republican than in the past.

So the three main pillars of the Franklin Roosevelt coalition have been changing in the last years, and that's changed the mix of religion and politics in American life.

The last current I want to mention, and I'll stop, is what you might call the rise of the secular glitterati, if I may put it that way -- the movie stars, TV, political activists, journalists. These groups, the symbol maker groups, have drifted very heavily to the left and in a more pronounced secular direction. It won't surprise you to learn that members of these elites, the ones I just mentioned, tend to be among the least religious in America, just as among the elites of business and sports and the military tend to be the most religious in belief and in observance in America. And if you take the 50 or so elites and do studies of them, which have been done, they break out differently on the spectrum of religious belief and attendance, but those are the extremes.

And the rise of the secular glitterati have meant that the image of America that is projected to the whole world, and, of course, to Americans themselves on television shows and in movies, is far, far less religious than the people themselves. You would never guess from the television presentations or the movie presentations that 40 percent of Americans report going to church every week, or almost 40 percent. That's a huge number. That's more people than watch all the football games over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in person or on television.

Michael Medved, in his book on Hollywood, talks about the disbelief with which he is greeted when he cites that figure in Hollywood cocktail parties. His friends would guess that not more than 2 percent of Americans go to church -- or three, or four. It's a very high number. It's 40. There is nothing else -- there has never been one television show that has reached as many people, not even the Super Bowl on Sundays, as will have gone to church that morning.

In this, we are not like the rest of the developed world, and we are more like only certain portions of the Third World. The sociologist, Peter Berger, says that Americans have, in sociological terms, reflect religious belief and practice at measures higher than anybody except the people of India, but our elites show, reflect beliefs and practices at levels about those as the people of Sweden, the elites of Sweden. He said, so the problem for America is we're a nation of Indians ruled by an elite of Swedes -- (laughter) -- which creates a discrepant public image.

And it has not been terribly accurate reporting about religious life in the United States, as we saw. You can go through the best graduate schools and the best colleges and universities and learn very little about the religious life of your fellow citizens and the differences and nuances of it, and the whys and wherefores, so it's simply a fact of life here.

Well, these two currents, the turning of the main bases of the Democratic Party, religious bases, into a more and more Republican vote, and the turning of the Democratic vote, more and more, into a secular party whose elites are led by Hollywood, the television, journalism, the professors, the political activists, and so forth, the cultural elite have rapidly changed the aspect of American religious political life.

In the last election, and it looks as though it might be carried forward into this one -- we'll wait and see the numbers -- the percentage of people who went to church more than once a week, which is quite a substantial percentage, it's in the 30 percent range, voted overwhelmingly for Bush last time, 68 percent. The people who never go to church -- it's not a high percentage of Americans but it's significant -- voted 65 percent for Gore, almost the reverse image.

People who go to church once a week, 58 percent voted for Bush; seldom, 61 percent voted for Gore. You see, the Democratic vote used to be a highly religious vote. We're suddenly in a predicament where whether you go to church once a week or more is the single greatest predictor of the voting breakout. It's bigger than the gender gap, it's bigger than any other gap.

And personally, I don't think that's a good thing for the country. I don't think it's good for religion and politics to be divided along the same axis. I think it was much better when both parties competed more equally for religious voters. But anyway, that's where we are at the moment and I think that's added to the great interest of it. I will only say that it for a time puzzled journalists that these things had been developing without quite the attention over the last two or three presidential elections that they might have had.

MR. DENIG: Okay. Let's start with questions. Please wait for the microphone. Identify yourself and your news organization. We'll take the gentleman on the right here.

QUESTION: Good morning. (Laughter.) Good morning. It's Tim Harper from the Toronto Star.

Could I bring you to the current situation and get some analysis from you on John Kerry and religion in his campaign? He's described himself as a New England Catholic who doesn't wear religion on his sleeve.

Could I just get you to comment a little bit on the secular nature, or what I perceive to be the secular nature of his campaign and whether that is smart politics from your point of view?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Well, you will see, I think you're already seeing more and more talk from John Kerry about morality and religion values, is the word he's been using. It has to happen that for a very direct reason. Running for the American presidency is not like running for a prime ministerial position. It's more like running for king, or for like a blend of king and prime minister.

The American President is not only the administrative officer who runs an administration, he also represents, he embodies the country. He's the symbol of the country. He plays the role of the king or queen. He embodies the history of the country. There is no group of Americans with stature or a heroic story to match the sequence of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Kennedy, Reagan. The person who stands in the White House stands for America and its history and embodies it. As when you see the Queen of England, you see the whole series of kings and queens. You see the whole ritual of British history.

So, the one who runs for American president has to recognize that at some point or other that he's not just running for a list of policies. He's running to represent the people, so that a majority of them looking at him say, "we," he's one of us. And if you want to do that with the American people, you must represent their morals and their religion; otherwise, you're one of them.

So, the very nature of American politics will draw whoever the candidate is -- it's not only Mr. Kerry, it's whoever it would be -- to become more and more religious, even if he is not.

MR. DENIG: Let's go on the left here, up front.

QUESTION: Thank you. Andrei Sitov from TASS, from the Russian News Agency.

A kind of a follow-up on that: Is the conservative religious vote by itself enough for President Bush to win this election? I actually read somewhere that he was elected by the evangelicals the first time around.

PROFESSOR NOVAK: No. I think if somebody said he was elected by the evangelicals the first time around, what they mean to say is that many of those voters used to vote for Democrats and now were not, so that shift in voting -- remember that a person, a shifter, a person who shifts his vote from one party to the other, is worth two votes. I mean, you're taking one away from one party, plus giving one to the other party.

So, voters who are regular, steady voters, but who some -- who alternate which party they vote for are the most potent of all, those are the most attractive votes, switchers are the most attractive votes to try to get.

But no, the beauty of American life, as it's distributed across this big country, is that it's so varied, if you have to put together a coalition for the most disparate kinds of people, you must. And that's what drives American politics toward the middle.

We are a little bit lucky, somebody once pointed out, that in the middle of our country, there is a huge plain with the mountains on the two coasts because it represents an image, but it also is a reality, it throws the country together. In Europe, the mountain is right in the middle and Europe is somehow separate from one another to this very day. Europeans are somehow separate. This transalpine business is really significant.

MR. DENIG: All right. Let's go to the front row here, please. Wait for the microphone, please.

QUESTION: Alan Freeman from the Global & Mail from Canada.

I saw Mr. Bush last week speaking in West Virginia and he wasn't preaching to the middle. He was preaching to what a lot of people, I think, in a lot of countries would consider an extreme. I mean, if you didn't support his views on abortion or guns or -- I think a lot of those -- I'm not sure how he was -- he was preaching to this particular crowd. It was a crowd of, I guess, religious right-wing people. He certainly was not preaching to the middle. And are there enough -- I mean, maybe he'll preach to them later on and try to get their votes, but it doesn't -- when you said that America just now, the system seems to be -- aims at -- you know, political actors aiming to get to the middle, he doesn't seem to be doing that at all.

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Well, don't forget, though, in your question you are comparing American -- you said the people he was appealing to would seem to people in other countries as extreme. That may be true, but they don't seem extreme in America.

QUESTION: But they're -- I mean, if the country is quite divided between people who share these values and don't share the values --

PROFESSOR NOVAK: No, my point is -- I'm going to do this from memory and I haven't looked at the numbers, so forgive me if I don't have them exactly right.

QUESTION: Yeah.

PROFESSOR NOVAK: But if you just look at abortion, for example, you have approximately -- and then there was an L.A. Times poll that particularly have in mind for this -- something like 10 or 15 percent of the American people don't want abortions ever, and something like 10 or 15 percent want abortions anytime, anywhere, under any conditions. In the middle, this huge middle, there are people who don't like abortion and who want to see it restricted by some degree or another.

So when you preach anti-abortion, you're preaching to a huge, huge cut of people. And if you do it in a successful way, you'll more than be talking to a majority of people. You know, if you stress one or two issues like, let's say, parental consent of teenagers before they can get an abortion -- they need parental consent to get a tonsillectomy -- that doesn't seem unreasonable and you'll get a very high percent. If you're against partial birth abortions, killing with the baby halfway out of the womb, 85 percent want to see that stopped.

So you can be pro-life, or whatever you want to call it, and still have a large majority of people, depending on how you address it. If you address the most extreme sliver of never abortion under any circumstances, then you're talking to a minority. And most political leaders are skillful enough to know that they have to persuade the American people politically on this issue before you can make any law in that area at all.

And similarly, on gun control, I don't remember the exact numbers, but a very high percentage of Americans are in favor of the Second Amendment.

MR. DENIG: Let's go to the gentleman in the middle there, in the gray shirt, please -- George, in the middle, the gentleman in the gray shirt.

QUESTION: LK Sharma, Deccan Herald. May I digress from here and now?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Sure.

QUESTION: As a religious scholar, have you ever wondered why there is no connection between this overwhelming religiosity and ethics in foreign policy and policies in war and peace and government and things like that?

Speaking not as an Indian but as a journalist, may I just say that India's foreign policies, similar contradiction I am pointing out, that during the years when India was ruled by an atheist, India's foreign policy had a very high content of moral principles, of course, which were ridiculed by America. But how do you explain the present circumstances in view of the fact that there is such an overwhelming piety and religiosity and churchgoing here?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Well, I'm not sure of the -- I'm not sure that piety or religiosity -- by the way, religiosity is a word which has -- which has not good connotations. To speak of someone's religiosity means they're not serious, they don't really -- religiosity is a false thing. Religious seriousness would be good. Forgive me for just talking about a word use here.

But the view that religion should be pacifist, let us say, is, I think, not a very sound one. And what I will tell you, I was just in Italy in a discussion with some professors and journalists and one of them said that if you made a defense of the war in Iraq in terms of the realpolitik of the stability of the region and the need to launch a democratic initiative in that region and to stabilize that region because of oil, and so forth, he said, "I could buy that. We are students of Machiavelli and we would understand that."

I said, "Yes, but the American people would not accept that. You must give a moral reason for the use of American troops or the extension of American foreign policy. You simply must, otherwise it will not be accepted, and you must therefore do it in terms of rights and democracy and you must show how that applies."

That doesn't mean there aren't some very hard decisions on which other countries would criticize us -- they certainly do -- and then make the decisions very differently.

American religion is distinguished by a very hard realism. The writer who had the most influence on the American founders was St. Augustine in his books, both the Confessions and The City of God, with his very strong sense of human perversity and human depravity and human unreliability. And with these in mind, you must always take precautions. It's this that led the Americans to emphasize checks and balances.

We say on our coins and our dollar bill, "In God We Trust." The operational meaning of that is: nobody else. For everybody else there are checks and balances. You don't trust the Congress; you make two of them. You don't allow a law to become law just because it goes through Congress; you have to have the signature of the President. And you elect them all again and again. And you don't trust judges; you have two kinds of judges, for life and elected. And there's always checks and balances and that's influenced by an Augustine's sense of the unreliability of human beings.

And Augustine also says there are always going to be wars. That's not going to exempt Christians for fighting wars in a different way from others and under a different set of rules, but you're not going to avoid wars. So it's from Augustine that came the reflection on then what constitutes a just war and what are the limits on weapons and systems and so forth, but not the idea that you're going to do away with war altogether.

So Americans have a tradition of realism here that is well worth pointing out. Criticize it all you like, but it's there.

MR. DENIG: Let's go to the lady in blue up here, please.

QUESTION: Marian Wilkinson from the Sydney Morning Herald. I'll take a correction on this, but my last reading of the Gallup poll on religion, which you may have seen, suggested slightly differently the numbers of who actually went to church. While I gather, you say, 40 percent went in the -- you know, said they went once a week, when they actually asked people, "Did you go last week," I think it was about 26 percent. And I'm just wondering where you think this sort of perception of people's religion versus the reality of practice.

And as an unrelated second question, where do you think the Hispanic vote may fall in terms of especially the Catholic religion?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: In his piece in the Wall Street Journal that I mentioned, Samuel Huntington notes that when you look at the self-reporting of people and their religious practices, as human nature being what it is, you ought to discount it some.

But even so, 26 percent is so far above anything in Europe, maybe above anything in Australia or almost anywhere on Earth, that it's simply extraordinary. If developed country means secular, that -- if developed country is supposed to mean secular, that thesis is falsified in the case of the United States. You can be a developed country and very religious in practice.

Once a week is also a pretty significant observance, but I take your correction there. You could revise it downwards, but nobody is checking on everybody going to church, so you're always dealing with some projections here. No matter how you do it though, I think it's a good exercise -- let me put it this way. A reporter from Oxford once came to me to do a study on religions and practice in America. This was about 20 years ago, because he heard it was declining.

And I said, "I'm not going to advise you one way or the other, but except this, I would recommend you pick up in cities in the middle of the country -- Columbus, Minneapolis, Kansas City, wherever you want. Just throw a dart and go. And then go to the Catholic church on Saturday night for the anticipatory mass for Sunday and then go at 8 o'clock to a black church, at 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, and 11 o'clock to different churches and just see what you see.

I said, "But do be prepared for a lot of parking problems wherever you go, trying to get in." And it blew him away. He just -- he came back to me some years later and I was doing a book on religions in America -- quite the opposite of where he started out. And, you know, for what it's worth, it's just worth taking a look at.

I know of a reporter from Russia who was very touched by going somewhere near here in Virginia, out about 20 or 30 miles, and there was a Russian Orthodox church and a Ukrainian Right Church in the same town with about 10 or 12 other churches and very well-attended, too.

MR. DENIG: Marian, what was the second part of your question?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Oh, the Hispanic -- I'm sorry. Thank you.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

PROFESSOR NOVAK: The Hispanic vote is not like the other immigrant votes. One can't say it's newer because some of the Hispanic vote is -- 11 generations -- Hispanic-Americans are here for 9 or 10 or 11 generations already, but some of it is very new and they do tend to be more Democratic, if you are thinking of the immigrants from Mexico, particularly, and Puerto Rico. From Cuba, they tend to be more Republican and from some of the other heavily contested countries of the last few years: Salvador, Nicaragua, and so forth.

It will be really worth watching that vote. That should be very highly for the Democrats, but Bush tends to do very well with the Hispanic vote. He may take an extra five percent or seven or eight percent of the Hispanic vote than a Republican normally gets and that helped him quite a bit last time out. Of course, they're trying hard to raise that. I don't know that they will, but they're trying hard.

MR. DENIG: Go to Japan in the front row, please.

QUESTION: I'm Hiro Aida with Japan's Kyodo News.

And my question is -- well, maybe I have to avoid the use of this word "religiosity."

QUESTION: Yeah. Religiousness. How do you -- this is a fundamental question, kind of. How do you evaluate the religiousness of this country at this moment?

I think it's quite different from the religiousness in the early 19th century or mid-19th century when Tocqueville visited this country, and you mentioned St. Augustine, and all those Founding Fathers who were rather -- in my understanding, were rather influenced by (inaudible) in the enlightenment years or age. Now, their religion is more nationalistic in a way and quite different from -- you know -- and maybe if they were influenced by St. Augustine, maybe they might have been influenced by the moderation of the Catholic Church, you know, in a way.

But the current religious situation of the United States is quite different from the religious situation of those days. And I think the reason why Tocqueville could say that religion could be a -- or is a political institution of American democracy was the nature of the religion was quite different from now. And I think in those days, you know, the U.S. didn't have this evangelical, strong tendency of evangelicalism. And how do you evaluate the religious situation or religiousness, you know?

Isn't it a little too dangerous? You know, you cannot apply the early 19th century, you know, concept to now because religiousness has really changed over the last maybe couple of decades. How do you analyze that?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Well, just let me make a couple of comments on that. Let me tell you a story about the young James Madison, thinking about 1771 or so, as I recall the date, coming home from Princeton and discovering that there had been a few miles from his plantation in southern Virginia a gathering of thousands of evangelicals; sometimes the crowds were as many as 30,000.

In this case, it was more like four or 5,000, at which the Baptist preacher was standing on a tree stump preaching to this crowd in a declivity of a meadow, no loud speakers in those days, and an Anglican posse rode up and tore this man from the stump, stripped the shirt off him and had him whipped in front of people and arrested him because he was preaching without a license.

And there were as many as three, 4,000 conversions in a year in various counties of southern Virginia in those days. That episode so shocked Madison that he became a powerful believer in religious liberty, though he belonged to the established church of Virginia, the Anglican Church, and he thought it was wrong to have to have a license to preach. And he believed what the Baptists said that our license to preach comes from God; it doesn't come from the state.

So, contrary to what you were suggesting, I think you will find that the most powerful force for the American independence was evangelical churches which were just growing then. And the reason they were so powerful, there are two reasons. One is they were out in areas which were unchurched, where there were no churches.

Unlike Europeans, Americans who came here didn't find a church for the 10th century or the 13th century or the 15th century there. If they wanted a church, they had to build it and it took some time, and it took some time to get ministers to them, or the evangelical churches brought ministers. And they taught people that -- from the Bible -- that you, in God's eyes, no matter how humble you may be in the eyes of the state and the established plantation owners, and so forth, you are equal to them in God's eyes.

You're equal to the king in God's eyes, and that was a powerful -- one historian says that the prairie of fire of the American Revolution was lit by the evangelical preachers for the protestant preachers and he meant the evangelical of the countryside. So it's right down in Jerry Falwell's part of the world. From that day forward, Madison made a pledge to be for religious liberty.

When it came -- just allow me another minute. When it came time for the fight over the constitution, the Baptists and the Methodists of Virginia did not want to sign the constitution and did not want him to vote for it until it had a bill of rights guaranteeing religious liberty. He said religious liberty is guaranteed in the constitution because the constitution gives to the state only a limited set of powers and it gives the state no powers over religion. So religion is for -- they said, "You understand that. We understand that. We don't think the Anglicans understand it. We want it written down."

So he promised to the Baptists of his district, running for Congress, who were a plurality in the district, he promised him he would fight for the First Amendment. And when he went back to the Congress, he put it in. So it's out of these very evangelical groups that we have the First Amendment that we have now. I think it's important to see that.

One last point, you were right that the founders, the founding generations were distinctive among Protestants of that era in having a very high respect, both for scripture and for reason.

But they thought that was well within the Christian tradition from people like Augustine and others, and they argued regularly. If you read the sermons of that period, they would give an argument from the Bible about the centrality of liberty; and then they would give an argument from Sydney or from Block from philosophy about liberty. And they took great comfort from the fact that both sources of argument agreed on liberty so they thought we can't be wrong.

And the reason that was important to them is they had no army or no navy and they were fighting the biggest army and navy in the world. So they had to believe -- they said they had a firm reliance on providence. Well, you'd better have a firm reliance on providence, if you don't have an army and a navy. And they thought people who were in favor of liberty have a good chance of winning, not guaranteed, but a good chance.

MR. DENIG: Okay. Let's take the lady up front here in green, please.

QUESTION: Yeah. Since Ronald Reagan and --

MR. DENIG: Would you introduce yourself, please?

QUESTION: Ana Baron from Clarin, Argentina.

Since Ronald Reagan, it seems that this alliance he did with the moral majority of Falwell and the televangelists like Pat Robertson, it's like the Republican Party has hijacked the, what is called the moral values in this society, and I see that John Kerry is trying now to come back and to say, "Well, there is other types of values also."

So, my question is, how does he explain the fact that he's a Roman Catholic when the other ones are mainly Baptist or Evangelists or Protestants? And second, if with this kind of speech, you think he can come back and give back to the Democrats some sectors of the, what they call the moral majority?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: What we learned was the moral majority, self-described, was not the moral -- was not a majority.

QUESTION: Yeah, I know.

PROFESSOR NOVAK: So, but --

QUESTION: But it really was organized.

PROFESSOR NOVAK: But you have to remember that they were well -- very well-organized, I think, much less so now. But you have to realize what brought them into being. It was the sudden and increased secularity of the Democratic Party after 1972. I mean, the shock of the convention of 1972 to mainline Democrats, especially among religious people, and the move of Shirley MacLaine and other Hollywood people into prominence in the campaign of 1972, marked a transition of the spiritual center of gravity of the Democratic Party and they abandoned their basic constituencies.

Many of these people were what were called "yellow dog" Democrats that would rather be a yellow dog than anything but a Democratic and they didn't want to go to the Republicans. But they felt driven to it by the assaults on them: the textbooks, the movies, the television, the rest. They felt that they were being treated with contempt, and so they were there for somebody to address.

Now, Bill Clinton was a master at addressing them and E.J. Dionne, a wonderful writer from The Washington Post, began a column six or eight months ago with a long quote and said, "You probably heard the President say this and you read it and you were sure it was Bush," and then he said, "Of course, this was President Clinton," and it gave where he said it and he pointed out that President Clinton probably used religion more openly and more frequently than President Bush by a long shot.

But in Europe, at least, I noticed people weren't bothered because they figured he didn't mean it. (Laughter.) And in Bush's case, even -- well, I don't know. That's my supposition. They were not bothered by it. And in Bush's case, even though he speaks about it less, people hear it all the time and it worries them because I think they think he means it. And he does and he's serious. Anyway, but Clinton --

QUESTION: You think he's serious?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Pardon?

QUESTION: Do you think he's serious? You don't think it's just an electoral -- a way for him to get elected? Do you think Bush was sincere?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Oh, I think Bush is a serious religious man. I do. I do. I don't think anything about his life makes sense unless you see that. You know, I think if he hadn't taken himself or been taken up by religion suddenly, God only knows what would have become of him. I think he knows that too. I think Bush feels that way too. I don't know Bush personally, but that's just my impression from seeing him.

QUESTION: And what about Kerry? Do you think that he can --

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Well, Kerry has -- as the correspondent from Japan mentioned a moment ago, the -- you know, many people don't like Catholics or the Catholic Church, and so forth, but let me leave that aside for a moment.

There is a certain sense of stability and time and -- in the Catholic Church and Kerry will benefit by that, just by being Catholic, that will anchor him in the minds of some people and be a familiar landmark to him. And as you know, Catholics are not too judgmental about one another; that is, they expect a certain amount of falling off, and so forth, and you know, they're not too severe and strict.

But so, I think that may benefit Kerry, and to the extent that he manages to talk in old and familiar ways about -- he'll be reaching back. He doesn't do this -- he has not done this in the last 20 years very much. Usually, when he has spoken morally, he has spoken on behalf of the new morality, the secular morality, whether it's in abortion or in homosexuality.

The great battlefront of the last decade or so has turned away from politics and economics. It's as if we fought the first part of the 20th century showing that dictatorship was an empty idea and a dangerous idea and democracy was better. It was a political battle. The second part of the 20th century was fought over the issue of socialism versus capitalism, which is better for the poor. And I think the answer is pretty clear: capitalism is a lot better for the poor than socialism.

And the issue has shifted to the more -- I believe free society has three parts: political, economic, and moral-cultural and the issues all seem to be clustered in the moral-cultural sector these days. Granted that you have political freedom, granted that you have economic prosperity, how should you live? What should a man be? What should a woman be? What should we teach our children? What is sexuality?

All these are the issues that -- really, the emotional fights of today and those people who think that a Jewish-Christian morality is the best way to live for liberty, which is what George Washington and others thought, find themselves hotly contested by people saying, "No, that's narrow, restrictive. There's a better way. That's just your opinion. There's other opinions. There's -- you know, moral matters, it's just a matter of opinion, there are no fixed principles."

And so, those battles are the hottest these days. And on these, Kerry has, time after time, sounded as though he's on the side of the seculars. Now, he's trying to recall his longer history in which his religious values were present, but he didn't advert to them very much. He didn't make connection with them very much. Now, he's going to try to do it. You see it more and more and he may well be successful in doing that.

People are going to look for something to recognize in him, something recognizable. And if you look at that map, again, of the contested states, you'll see there's an accident of history, in that the states with the big electoral votes -- California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa -- you know, all the battleground states have a very high Catholic concentration. It's just a sheer accident that Catholics tend to be in the high electoral vote states. So that's why some people think the Catholic vote tends much more to be decisive than is usually noticed.

And they represent about 65 percent of the -- is that right, am I saying the right thing, that 65 percent? They recognize about 65 million people, yeah, it's about 25 percent. And they tend to -- you know, Catholics -- now here, I have to be a little bit careful. When you're talking about the older immigrants from Europe, they tend to be regular voters. In Chicago, they've been known to vote at 104 percent when necessary. Even after they're dead, they come back.

I'm teasing, but there's -- not entirely. There's some districts in Boston which I know have been voting for generations, though dead -- (laughter) -- so they believe in voting. But when they switch, when they -- if they switch from the Democrats, which is the yearly vote, to the Republicans -- as I say, it counts as a twofer. You're taking one away and you're putting one on the other column, so that's why it's a pretty hotly contested vote.

It looks as though from the polling I've seen -- maybe you've seen better, but what I've seen is that the Catholics who attend church regularly, once a week or so, are not so keen on Kerry. They tend to be supporting Bush. But those who attend less regularly are quite happy with Kerry, and that's a lot of Catholics.

MR. DENIG: We have time for one last quick question. We'll take the lady in brown there, please.

QUESTION: Ulrike Ultmanns, German Television, ZDF. You almost answered my question already, but I'll throw it to you anyway. I hear so often that religion might be determining the outcome of this election, and I wonder if you agree with that, or where does it stand on the line with the war in Iraq and economics? Where does that fit in? Where does religion fit in?

And also, what I don't quite understand is, if it is so determining a factor, I don't understand how, how can it be so important and what are the battlegrounds? Is it abortion, is it gay marriage? What are the actual battlegrounds if it is such a determining factor?

PROFESSOR NOVAK: Well, you know, American elections are -- when you say determining factor, if something would swing three or four percent of the vote, that would be determining, wouldn't it, it such a closely contested election. In other words, to be determining doesn't have to be huge. And this is an issue that's been put in play, as I've been trying to point out, just in recent years. Not very long ago, when I was younger, this was a settled question. Most of the Catholics, most of the Bible Belt, were going to vote Democratic. They're just in play now, that's what's new, and that's what makes it interesting.

Now, what are the battlegrounds? The easiest way to think about this, I think, is to go back again to the image of, electing an American president is more like electing a king than like electing a new prime minister in Germany or any other place. It's a little bit more like electing the representative of the history of the country. So there comes into play an identification factor. Is this person one of us? Does he represent me? Is he the person I want to wake up with looking in the mirror in the morning and being happy that he is in office, or is every sight of him going to make me grind my teeth?

Americans identify or disidentify with their presidents quite strongly and it's this factor that I'm trying to point to. It's not necessarily any one particular issue; although, when again and again and again, easily, normally, and naturally, a candidate brings up the issues that concern you -- they may only be one of 30 concerns you have -- but if they regularly bring up the sorts of concerns you have, you tend to think, "He understands me. He voices my concerns. He's the sort of man I want to support."

I think it's more elusive, it's more like that than like a particular policy issue that will make a difference. I'm sure I'm right about this and I'm sure that President Clinton, for one, understood this. Clinton understood symbolic politics in an extraordinary way and he really has helped the Democratic Party to take the presidency in a period when it looked as if it couldn't do it anymore.

You have to go back and remember how unlikely his victory seemed 12 years ago and he, in part, did it by understanding this kingly character, this symbolic character of the presidency. And, as you know, he's the most talented political figure we've had in many, many generations. It's sheer versatility of talent and he was able to shape himself to that and quite naturally. It was -- I don't think he was false in it, in a certain sense of false there. He's just able to appeal in a very broad range of personae.

And his religious talks -- he did it especially in black churches, because in black churches, you can be more -- quote the Bible and so forth, highly biblical as in the old days. And in white churches, you can do that in some, but not in the mainline ones. And so, it was easy for it to come out for President Clinton in the black churches, but he did it quite wonderfully, quite credibly.

And he didn't sound so much like a Sunday School teacher as Jimmy Carter did, you know, when he did it. He just -- it sounded more natural to him. It was more like the way people talked in history, if you read the old letters and so forth like that, the letters of the Civil War veterans and so on. Bill Clinton was really very good at that.

I have a book called -- well, it used to be called Choosing Our King. It's now called Choosing Presidents in the paperback edition and there was once when Fortune -- forgive me for saying this -- there was once an ad in Fortune magazine, I forget what -- for what, but it showed the desk of the President of the United States -- and they did more than one, but Bill Clinton's desk, he had on it -- the one book right at the blotter was Choosing Our King.

And it -- by the way, one of the theses I had in that king is that one part of the American Civil religion -- I wrote this in '74 -- which has not been represented, is the Southern Evangelical way of speaking about God and the country -- has never been represented in the White House. And, of course, Jimmy Carter came along soon, but you bet Bill Clinton understood that and knew how to do that.

MR. DENIG: Professor Novak, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much as well.