Kirbyjon Caldwell, friend of Bush, backer of Obama, contextualizer of Wright: a most exquisitely politic man. Check out Dan Gilgoff's interview with him on Beliefnet. Caldwell runs the biggest church in all United Methodism. Wright did the same in the United Church of Christ. There's been a lot of recent chatter about the mysteriousness of "the black church" to white folks. But what does it mean that many of the biggest names in the historically white realm that is Mainline Protestantism belong to African Americans?

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Jews back Obama over McCain by 61 percent to 32 percent, according to a new Gallup poll. No surprise that they back Clinton over McCain by a higher margin, but it's not that much higher: 66 percent to 27 percent. I predict that come November, McCain will draw no more than 30 percent of the Jewish vote against Obama. That would be just under what Reagan drew against Walter Mondale in 1984, almost twice what Bob Dole drew against Bill Clinton in 1996, and six points higher than what George W. Bush drew against John Kerry in 2004.

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With adjustments made for the final results, yesterday's exit polls show Clinton winning white Catholics and Protestants by nearly identical margins of 62-38 and 61-39 respectively in Indiana. In North Carolina, she did considerably better among white Protestants (67-30) than white Catholics (58-41). So what gives?

White Protestants in Indiana are a fairly even mix of evangelicals and mainliners, with the former more plentiful in the southern part of the state and the latter in the northern part. Catholics, too, are thicker on the ground in northern Indiana, but can be found in significant numbers throughout the state. Both Catholics and Protestants are longtime residents, and in class terms, there's not much to choose between them. In contrast to Pennsylvania, then, which saw a sharp divide between blue-collar Catholics and white-collar mainline Protestants in the primary, Indiana's white Christians are much of a muchness, and voted that way.

White Protestants in North Carolina are a good deal more evangelical than they are in Indiana, but the important point to bear in mind is that Catholics Tar Heels are more likely to be recent arrivals in the state: younger, better educated, better off, and hence with a greater propensity to vote for Obama than Catholics in Pennsylvania.

Among the several religious categories, Obama polled most strongly with non-Judeo-Christians and those with no religion. That's a pattern that has held pretty much across the board throughout this mercifully ending primary season.

Update: Not surprisingly, the Obama campaign sees its improved performance in a more self-congratulatory light.

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Andre Carson wins handily in Indiana 7, in all likelihood ensuring that there will continue to be a 2-person Congressional Muslim Caucus after November.

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Forgive me, but I think it's time to put aside the meme of Obama's Catholic problem. As I predicted, Obama did about the same among white Catholics as among white Protestants in Indiana. (Actually he did a little bit better.) And he did significantly better with white Catholics than with white Protestants in North Carolina. What matters is the kind of white Catholics and white Protestants in a given state. More on this in due course.

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While you're waiting for Indiana and North Carolina to weigh in, you might make a note of the forthcoming issue of the Review of Faith and International Affairs, which will evaluate the record of U.S. international religious freedom policy since passage of the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998. The issue features key foreign policy leaders and noted experts on religious freedom worldwide. Most of the essays were first presented as part of a conference series hosted by Georgetown University. (Dis)Claimer: The Greenberg Center is a co-sponsor of the series. The full lineup of contributors is as follows:

Asma Afsaruddin, University of Notre Dame
Judd Birdsall, U.S. State Department
Jose Casanova, Georgetown University
Brian Grim, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
Laura Bryant Hanford, a principal author of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998
Jeff Haynes, London Metropolitan University
Allen Hertzke, University of Oklahoma
William Inboden, Legatum Institute
Keith Pavlischek, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Liu Peng, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Daniel Philpott, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
Robert A. Seiple, Council for America’s First Freedom
Nina Shea, Center for Religious Freedom, Hudson Institute
Tad Stahnke, Human Rights First
Victor Yelensky, Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences

To receive the issue subscribe at www.cfia.org/subscribe. The Review of Faith & International Affairs is published quarterly by the Council on Faith & International Affairs, a research and education arm of the Institute for Global Engagement. For more information contact CFIA at review@cfia.org.

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firedoglake tu-quoques Anglican Church of Nigeria's Michael Gerson. Are we all our pastors' keepers?

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Here's a curious item from Zogby's final Indiana tracking poll.

Among Indiana Catholics, Obama holds a three-point lead, while Clinton holds a similarly small edge among Protestants.

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Huffington Post's Sam Stein picks over John McCain's National Catholic Steering Committee and finds a few dubious characters--or at least ones with checkered pasts (e.g. Deal Hudson). The important point is made by Chris Korzen of Catholics United, to the effect that these are the "usual suspects" you find on the GOP side. Of course, there are usual Catholic suspects on the Democratic side as well. When either side says, as Korzen does, that the folks on the other side "have a history of putting partisan politics ahead of the teachings of their faith," we're into a pretty familiar civil war. Korzen thinks McCain's Catholics should be challenging their guy on war and torture. McCain's Catholics think Obama's and Clinton's Catholics should be challenging their guy on abortion and gay marriage. The great thing about Catholicism in America is that the teachings of the faith always put it at some cross purposes with partisan politics.

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Ana Marie Cox is live blogging the latest Pew Forum religion briefing in Key West. There's a lot from Bill Galston on Obama's Catholic problem, relying on PA exit polls. I remain something of a skeptic. Yes, in PA white Catholics voted significantly more for Clinton than white Protestants did, but in a lot of states they didn't; and in some states it was the other way around (as has been noted a number of times in this blog). Let's see what happens tomorrow. My guess is that we're going to be seeing not much of a difference between white Catholics and white Protestants in Indiana, and a bigger vote for Obama among white Catholics than white Protestants in North Carolina. (For the record, close to 14 percent of Hoosiers and 4 percent of Tarheels are Catholic.)

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Three quarters of Americans don't know what Hillary Clinton's religion is, according to the latest New York Times/CBS poll. Sixty percent don't know what Barack Obama's religion is. For John McCain, the number is 82 percent. To paraphrase Dwight Eisenhower, candidates for president of the United States must have a religion but most Americans don't care what it is. Or don't care enough to find out.

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Bill Clinton asked two congregations in NC today to pray for Hillary, and to vote for her. "I just want you to pray for her and to make your voices heard," Clinton said. "Do whatever you think is right. But don't sit this out, because we are being called upon to return to our true purpose."

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Frank Rich joins the Wright-Hagee double-standard chorus. Clarence Page reflects on Wright-Obama.

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New poll numbers are emerging that are show some indication that Rev. Wright's comments have hurt Obama. Michael Barone tells a story with the numbers "Gallup showed him [Obama] tied with John McCain 45 to 45 percent before the Wright appearance and trailing 47 to 43 percent afterward; at the same time, it shows Hillary Clinton tied with McCain 46 to 46 percent. Similarly, Rasmussen has McCain now ahead of Obama 46 to 43 percent and McCain tied with Clinton 44 to 44 percent" Worse for the upcomming IN and NC contests is a Fox News Poll that says 36% of Dems wont vote for Obama because of Wright.

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The AP has got hold of a draft of something called "An Evangelical Manifesto" (not to be confused with the National Association of Evangelicals' "An Evangelical Manifesto"), calling on evangelical activists of the left as well as the right to love more, politick less, hew to the actual gospel message, and see the mote in their own eye--or words to that effect. Eighty signatories have apparently been lined up, but the only ones mentioned are Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, and Os Guiness, the semi-well known evangelical author, speaker, and oddsbody. No big dogs on the right appear to have been asked. Is the inclusion of a critique of the "left" meant to take a swipe at Jim Wallis? The spokesman for the effort is A. Larry Ross, a faith-based P.R. guy from Dallas. This would seem to be one of those well meaning, carefully calibrated expressions of concern destined to be forgotten almost as soon as it is rolled out--which apparently will be next Wednesday.

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The Catholic League, doing Republican wet work, takes after Obama's Catholic advisory board according to the criterion that only Catholics who oppose abortion and stem cell research and oppose school vouchers are true Catholics. In other words, Bob Casey, Jr. (pro-life, anti-stem cell research, anti-school voucher) doesn't count.

Meanwhile, on insidecatholic Deal Hudson has got hold of a letter from Mara Vanderslice, who's heading the pro-Obama Matthew 25 project. It seems that she's whomping up an ad for Indiana newspapers (as many as they can pay for) that will feature religious leaders telling Obama that America needs his leadership. (That's, like, an endorsement, get it?) Helping Vanderslice organize the ad is Kirbyjon Caldwell, the black United Methodist megachurch pastor from Houston who introduced George W. Bush at his 2000 inaugural but in January of this year announced his support for Obama.

It will be interesting to see what kind of enthusiasm this elicits from black pastors, who (as outlined in Campbell Brown's excellent piece in today's New York Times, tend to be much more supportive of Jeremiah Wright than their parishioners.

Update: Whoops! insidecatholic seems to have taken Hudson's post down.
Later Update: God-o-Meter's got the Obama camp's response to Donohue.
Still Later Update: Here's the cached version of Hudson's post.

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So you're aware that on O'Reilly Hillary Clinton pronounced these magical five words: “Rich people—God bless us.” A new devotee of the prosperity gospel? A clinger to the famed Calvinist preferential option for the rich? Well, fairness obliges a link to Trailhead's Christopher Beam, who pooh-poohs anything of the sort (while castigating Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson for fibbing about the words).

So "God Bless Us," in Clinton's Protestant lexicon, should just be taken as a kind of verbal hiccup, meaning something like, "Aren't we the fortunate ones!" The Jewish equivalent, which comes from an entirely different semantic place, is (as my grandmother pronounced it) kinna hurra. The actual Hebrew for that, transliterated, is "Kain Eyin Harrah," or "no evil eye." The point is, any verbal acknowledgment of something good must be followed by an imprecation that the evil eye stay away. As in, "My grandson just got into medical school, kinna hurra." Or, as Wolfson's grandmother might have put it, "Rich people like us--kinna hurra."

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From time to time during this election campaign, Barack Obama has been compared to John F. Kennedy as the dashing new face of a revived Democratic Party. But it’s time to think more deeply about the comparison, and the way Obama mirrors Kennedy’s place in the larger American political narrative.

Kennedy’s great challenge was to lay the ghost of anti-Catholic bigotry in America, and make no mistake, anti-Catholicism was a significant presence in American society in 1960. Protestants—especially but not only conservative evangelical ones—continued to harbor profound uneasiness about the prospect of turning the country’s reins over to a member of the “Roman Church.”

At the time, there was no ethno-religious group more consequential to the success of the Democratic Party than Catholics, and for the party to refuse to nominate one of them whose time had come held promise of electoral disaster. But Kennedy needed to make clear—as he did in his famous speech to the Houston ministers (and they were not a friendly crowd)—that he would be his own and not his church’s man. And he had to declare his opposition to the two main issues on the Catholic agenda: public aid to parochial schools and a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

Continue reading "BHO and JFK" »

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Jesse has Barack's back on Jeremiah. Kind of. He said he supports Obama for breaking with his pastor, but (so far as the reporting indicates), offered no criticism of Wright himself. Al Sharpton merely said it took "a lot of courage" for Obama to do what he did. Anyone keeping a tally of black church leaders?

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See here for the latest outrageous comments of Pastor Hagee. Such as that your daughter can get an abortion in public school. Sure, Hagee--and the late Jerry Falwell and the not late Pat Robertson et al.--are not the long-term pastors of John McCain or of any other notable Republican presidential hopeful of the past generation. And yes, they receive a round of condemnation when a particularly outrageous statement is made by one or another them--such as the notorious post-9/11 comments of Robertson and Falwell on the 700 Club:

Falwell: What we saw on Tuesday, terrible as it is, could be minuscule if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.
Robertson: That's my feeling.

Hagee is a new figure on the scene, and so has received a certain amount of negative attention. But John McCain has been permitted to dissociate himself from certain Hagee views--about Catholicism, about Hurricane Katrina--without being belabored for failing to dissociate himself from the pastor himself. Is it crazier or nastier to consider the Catholic Church the Whore of Babylon or to charge America with acts of terrorism? To say that New Orleans got its just deserts or to charge a federal government that let a group of poor black men die of syphilis as an experiment with infecting African Americans with AIDS? To say that America got what it deserved or that the chickens were coming home to roost? Far be it from me at this point to mount a full-throated defense of Jeremiah Wright. But is it utterly out of bounds to suggest that there might be a bit of a double standard lurking hereabouts?

Update: E.J. has the same thought.

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