I looked at a couple of recent blog posts today concerning religion and the 2008 presidential election.
Steve Waldman extends the conversation on Joe Biden’s working class Catholicism by briefly analyzing his speech today on the state of the economy. As was the case in his acceptance speech at the DNC, Biden continues to be fond of the word “dignity” to describe work and workers. For my own similar take on Biden’s commitment to Catholic social teaching in this area click here.
Spiritual Politics has a couple of informative posts on Sarah Palin’s use of Abraham Lincoln and her “good vs. evil” worldview.
Howard Segal has written an op-ed on Palin’s declaration of a “Christian Heritage Week” in Alaska. This may merit another post in the near future.
Thanks for keeping all of us up to speed with religious dimensions of the current race. One is almost convinced that your area of research and writing is not colonial U.S. history, but the intersection of religion and politics in contermpary America!
Phil: Religion and politics is a guilty pleasure. I am still an early Americanist by trade, but careers can sometime take strange turns.
HI John,as i said in my email that on this side of the pond in England God is not in. Esp. in politics here, nobody mentions God or religion as it is frowned upon and you are looked upon suspiciously if you do. Palin is seen as unfit for office over here because she is a creationist by some. I don’t know if she is but she is portrayed as such over here. She has said that she wants to “teach the controversy” in schools, but does that make her a creationist? I think her comment was on the issue something to the effect that “I don’t know the details of how it all happened ” which is a fair comments. Amazingly while England shies away from God, their society is crumbling – anyone see a corollary? Just check out some stats like these: <>That is why Britain tops the international league tables for social problems. In the last 15 years alcohol consumption amongst adolescents has doubled, with 10 per cent of 11- to 12-year-olds regularly binge drinking. Britain, when compared with other advanced economies, has the largest proportion of drug addicts, the highest levels of personal debt, the highest levels of family breakdown and one of the largest gaps in educational attainment between rich and poor. With the cost of crime standing at £60 billion the failure of the Government to tackle the causes of crime is also evident; over two thirds of all offenders are alcohol and drug addicts, two thirds come from a broken home and have the reading and numerate age of children of 11. Furthermore, one third of all young offenders were in care, yet only 0.6 per cent of all children in this country have been in care. It’s not as though spending hasn’t increased. Take education as an example – despite a 50 per cent increase in spending under Gordon Brown, sadly little of the spending has affected the lowest educational achievers. The attainment of our lowest achievers hasn’t improved significantly: 5 per cent of children leave school without any GCSEs and 12 per cent fail to achieve five GCSEs at any grade. In order to break this cycle of deprivation, the Social Justice Policy Group has defined the five key “paths to poverty” – family breakdown, serious personal debt, drug and alcohol addiction, failed education and worklessness. “<>< HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/07/08/do0803.xml" REL="nofollow"> Full article<>Here is a blog or two on Palin’s creationist views with quotes from her:http://www.livescience.com/culture/080901-sb-palin-creationist.htmlhttp://www.thelangreport.com/political-commentary/sarah-palin-creationism-god-and-country-pt2/