Gustav Niebuhr: June 2008 Archives

When James Dobson ripped into Barack Obama on his radio program yesterday, his denunciation came through loud and clear in the headlines. But it's worth noting that the head of Focus on the Family saved a bit of his ire for Obama's Republican rival, John McCain, as well. In remarks near the end of the half-hour program, Dobson expressed "disappointment" with what he said was the McCain campaign's relative silence on a bill in the Arizona state senate to place a state constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage before Arizonans in the fall.

"This is in his state," Dobson said, adding that Arizona's Republican state senators were not being sufficiently forceful in pushing forward the legislation. Speaking to Tom Minnery, Focus's vice president specializing in public policy, Dobson added, "And as you said, the Senator has not said a word about it. That is very disappointing. So this is a year when we have a lot of frustration with both political parties."

Dobson has made his particular frustrations with McCain clear before, so these remarks may not come as a total surprise to McCain.

Well that was fast! Within hours of broadcaster James Dobson's attack on Senator Obama, one of the most prominent ministers in Texas (along with others) has lept to Obama's defense, establishing a website bluntly titled, "James Dobson Doesn't Speak for Me." The site, the creation of the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, pastor of a vast United Methodist congregation in Houston and a minister who has long been on friendly terms with President George W. Bush, plays a three-part role.

One, it takes the form of a petition, which site visitors can sign. Two, it's a statement, listing items* on which Dobson "doesn't speak for" the signers. And three, it lists five instances in which it suggests that Dobson's radio broadcast distorted Obama's speech. (As a reminder, Dobson made his remarks as a reply to an Obama speech on religion and public policy, delivered June 28, 2006; Dobson said he had not learned of the speech until very recently.)

Among the items:

James Dobson doesn't speak for me when he uses the beliefs of others as a line of attack;

He doesn't speak for me when he denigrates his neighbor's views when they don't line up with his...

Although the text is relatively brief, the site grounds itself in biblical references, citing no fewer than seven from the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament, not least this:

The apostle John speaks for me in reminding us of Jesus' command to love one another. The world will know His disciples by that love.

If nothing else, the site indicates that, influential Dobson may be, but he and other leading religious conservatives can expect to be directly responded to--in religious language--in this election cycle. And that is a very different situation from what has prevailed in recent presidential elections past.

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The very month that he held an unusual meeting with prominent black and white Christians--the Rev. Franklin Graham and the Rev. T.D. Jakes, among them--Senator Obama has come under resounding verbal attack from Dr. James Dobson, head of the highly influential multi-media ministry Focus on the Family. On his radio program Wednesday, Dobson sharply criticized Obama for remarks the senator made in a speech dealing with religious pluralism and public policy that Obama delivered almost exactly two years ago.

In it, Obama rhetorically asked whose "interpretation of the Bible" should apply as the basis for public policy and, in the process, contrasts Dobson and the New York City African-American activist, the Rev. Al Sharpton, as likely to have very different interpretations on a number of questions. Dobson took particular issue with the comparison with Sharpton, whom his ministry characterizes as "far left." But more to the point, Dobson strongly rejected Obama's argument that within a pluralistic democracy, religious objections to moral questions (he cites abortion) must be grounded in moral arguments that will hold appeal beyond sectarian bounds. Dobson said he found Obama's idea to be a violation of individuals' Constitutional rights to freedom of religion.

Dobson's critique is heated, detailed and lengthy, as he plays clips from the Obama speech and responds with negative commentary. His remarks run a full 18 minutes, following a shorter, generous tribute he makes to the memory of the late NBC journalist Tim Russert, who died last week.

Dobson's broadcast concludes with the strong suggestion there may be more coming, as he and another Focus official seek listener response. Indeed, in a fine, short report on Dobson's criticisms broadcast by National Public Radio reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Michael Cromartie, vice president at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, said Dobson's remarks are "the beginning of what we might call the religion wars in the 2008 campaign." Whew!

In his remarks to NPR, Cromartie added that Obama had best beware that, politically, the influential Dobson "has been awakened from his slumber."

Almost since it began, Barack Obama's campaign has had to fight a hostile rumor that the candidate is actually a Muslim--with the inference being that he might somehow be sympathetic to anti-American militants in the Middle East and South Asia. E-mails containing various versions of the charge have bounced all over cyberspace, to the point that the Obama campaign has launched a website dedicated to debunking what it calls "smears" against the candidate. Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined the fray last week, calling on Jewish residents in South Florida to denounce the Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mails.

But today, The New York Times describes what may be an added headache for the campaign: At least some American Muslims are beginning to feel that Obama, or at least his aides, are keeping them at a distance. As the Times reports:

In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.

In particular, the Times quotes Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who in 2006 became the first Muslim elected to Congress, as saying Muslims are frustrated that "they have not been fully engaged" in the campaign. Although there is no certain measure of the Muslim population of the United States, scholars suggest 4 million to 6 million is a reasonable estimate--a potentially important voting segment.

The Times story closely follows an incident last week in which volunteers at an Obama rally in Michigan prevented two Muslim women in headscarves from taking seats on stage behind the candidate. Later, the senator telephoned the women, apologized for the incident and promised to fight discrimination "against people of any religious group or background."

Among John McCain's former competitors for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney has been most outspokenly supportive. As the God-o-Meter noted, the two men recently traded compliments during a McCain fundraiser in Massachusetts, where Romney served a single-term as governor until 2006. And such shows of goodwill have raised the question of whether McCain might pick Romney, a Mormon who also has deep ties to Michigan, as his running mate.

But an impressively extensive and in-depth poll about Americans' religious identities, beliefs and political preferences, released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, strongly suggests McCain would gain little bounce among Romney's co-religionists were he to select him as his veep. The simple reason is that the overwhelming majority of Mormons already identify as Republicans.

According to the poll, fully 65 percent of Mormons either say they are Republicans or "lean" that way. (Only 22 percent said they are or lean Democratic.) No other religious group comes close. Members of evangelical churches told Pew they identified with the GOP by a 50 percent to 34 percent split.

The most Democratic of America's religious groups? Members of historically black churches, 77 percent to 10 percent, followed by Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews, within each of whom about a two-thirds proportion claimed to be Democrats or to lean that way.

Pew reported getting the results from interviews with 35,000 people.