Religious Controversies on Rise in Presidential Campaign

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's involvement with a fiery preacher is only the latest in an unusual number of religious controversies so far in the 2008 race for the White House.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, religion has been the focus as seldom before, with Democrats attempting to close the "God gap," Republican John McCain trying to make amends with the GOP's evangelical base, Mitt Romney trying to become the country's first Mormon president and Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, surviving much longer than expected in the Republican contest on the strength of support from evangelical Christians.

The 2008 brand of faith-based presidential politics has prompted some political elders to suggest it may be time to reel in political debate steeped in religion.

"I think we should be moving away from so much discussion of public policy in terms of religious beliefs," said Roy Romer, the former governor of Colorado, who served as the general chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 1997 to 2000. "We have to be careful of religious zealotry."

But few in the Democratic Party have heeded Romer's advice as the party has tried to close what is widely described as the "God gap" between Democrats and Republicans, especially in the wake of George W. Bush's election to the White House, in part on the strength of so-called "values voters."

In fact, in the campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Obama and Clinton have spoken often about the deep influence their personal faith has had in shaping their progressive politics, much more often than the candidates in previous Democratic contests.

It was Obama's religious ties that led to the current controversy over some of the inflammatory anti-American comments in sermons delivered by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the longtime minister of the Afro-centric Trinity United Church of Christ, which Obama has attended for more than two decades.

Even before the Wright controversy erupted, though, Obama often professed his Christian faith, occasionally going a step further to declare that "secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square."

Similarly, at a forum last summer sponsored by the liberal Sojourners/Call to Renewalk evangelical organization, Clinton called for "interject(ing) faith into policy."

Long before Obama's relationship with Wright created a political firestorm, Clinton raised eyebrows at the very beginning of her campaign with the hiring of Burns Strider, a strategist on winning values-driven voters, as director of faith-based operations and the six-page talking points memo he produced for members of Clinton's Faith Steering Committee.

The memo highlighted Clinton's "strong Methodist family" and childhood, how the principles of the Methodist church were "the guiding light" of her life, how she "learned the value and power of prayer" at an early age, how her faith is "deeply personal and real" and how she often finds "inspiration from scripture."

Attention to Clinton's religious faith reached a high point at the Sojourners forum when she was asked about how she coped with her marital problems and the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal that nearly toppled the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton. "I had a grounding in faith that gave me the courage and the strength to do what I thought was right, regardless of what the world thought," she answered, crediting an "extended faith family" that had come to her spiritual aid.

Subsequently, in its September 2007 issue, the liberal Mother Jones magazine described Clinton's this "faith family" as a confederation of "conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as 'The Fellowship,'" a connection reprised this week under the headline "Hillary's Nasty Pastorate" in The Nation, a liberal magazine that has endorsed Obama. The group reportedly included such notable right-wing politicos as former Attorney General Ed Meese, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas and James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

McCain ran afoul of the Republican Party's evangelical base when he ran for the GOP nomination in 2000 against Bush and called the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson "agents of intolerance." Consequently, in his successful bid for the party's nomination this year, he has sought to make amends with the religious right - and not without controversies of his own.

The McCain camp is making efforts to distance the candidate from the heated anti-Islamic rhetoric of the Rev. Rod Parsley, an Ohio mega-church and television pastor who endorsed the Arizona senator and appeared with him at a Cincinnati campaign rally last month.

At that event, a week before the Ohio primary, McCain praised Parsley as a "spiritual guide." The campaign, concerned about Parsley's inflammatory rhetoric, now explains that Parsley is not and never has been the spiritual guide for McCain, who attends the North Phoenix Baptist Church.

Parsley has used the pulpit, books, television and a worldwide internet presence to rail about Islam, brand Europe as a "godless pit" and criticize a welfare system under which "out-of-wedlock births are generously rewarded, while morally pure women are penalized."

Parsley did not speak at the McCain rally in Cincinnati but later told reporters that McCain is not the perfect candidate for evangelicals, but is the best one available. "When you put John McCain up against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, the ideological and philosophical differences are overwhelming," he said, commending McCain as a "strong, true, consistent conservative."

Despite the endorsement, there is no mention of Parsley on McCain's Web site, where the only hit produced by a search for "parsley" is included in Cindy McCain's recipe for crab scampi and whole wheat spaghetti.

His campaign's effort to put some distance between the candidate and Parsley comes after a similar move after he received an endorsement from Texas Pastor John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church "the great whore" and a "false cult system."

McCain told reporters, "When (Hagee) endorses me, it does not mean that I embrace everything that he stands for or believes in. ... I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee's, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics."

McCain's campaign refused to comment on specific statements from Parsley, including a passage in his 2005 book "Silent No More" that discussed a "war between Islam and Christian civilization," a war that he said must end with the destruction of Islam, which he branded as an "anti-Christ religion."

"The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore," Parsley wrote.

The McCain campaign downplays the McCain-Parsley link, claiming the two men met for the first time in the weeks leading to the Ohio primary and had no more than four meetings. The campaign rejects efforts to make it look like Parsley is McCain's spiritual guide. The "spiritual guide" comment was meant in a broad sense, not in a personal sense, the campaign maintains.

Gene Pierce, a spokesman for Parsley, said, "The relationship has been a relatively recent development, taking place over the last few weeks of the Ohio primary campaign."

Pierce's version of whether Parsley is a spiritual guide for McCain differed somewhat from the campaign's.

"Senator McCain's statement of introduction at an Ohio campaign event is very instructive, showing that the senator included Pastor Parsley as a guide but not his only guide," Pierce said. "Senator McCain said: 'I am very honored today to have one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide.'"

Pierce said McCain never has attended services at Parsley's World Harvest Church.

Despite the campaign's effort to make the important distinction between being "a" spiritual guide and McCain's spiritual guide, the connection is being made by McCain detractors.

YouTube clips of some of Parsley's more controversial comments have been posted with comments incorrectly identifying him as "McCain's anti-gay 'spiritual guide'" and "John McCain's 'spiritual guide.'"

Another YouTube posting says, "Why won't the media report on McCain's spiritual adviser?"

Two GOP candidates now out of the race, Romney and Huckabee, had to deal with religious issues involving themselves, not their spiritual advisers. As a Mormon, Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, acknowledged he had to overcome biases against his religion.

"Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions," he said in a December speech.

For Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher who also served as governor of Arkansas, his religion worked for him among many evangelicals - fueling victories in several primaries - and against him among others concerned about having an ex-clergyman in the White House. He often used humor in an effort to fend off concerns about his religious background, recalling that an Arkansas voter once asked if he is "one of those narrow-minded Baptist preachers who believe only Baptists are going to heaven."

"I'm even more narrow-minded than that," Huckabee said he responded. "I don't even think all the Baptists are going."