From The Des Moines Register, 10/16/05:
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051016/OPINION01/510160320/1035/OPINION
Raised in a mainline Methodist church, she'd flirted with atheism in college

From The Des Moines Register, 10/16/05:
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051016/OPINION01/510160320/1035/OPINION

What's God got to do with it?

By REKHA BASU
REGISTER COLUMNIST

Mary Ellen Dreier's outgoing voice-mail message tells you she'll get
back to you -- "In the meantime, may God bless your day."

Dreier, of Cedar Falls, became an Evangelical Christian in her 50s
after what she calls a "Pentecostal experience."

Raised in a mainline Methodist church, she'd flirted with atheism in
college, then reconnected with religion through her Baptist husband.

That helped replace the "lost feeling" she'd been having.

But what really changed her life was attending a "charismatic renewal"
meeting where a witness spoke in tongues.

"A couple of days later it came to me in a private experience," she
recalls.

"People noticed. I was singing all the time and praising the Lord all
the time."

A couple of months later, her husband made a similar transformation.

Dreier, 85, and her husband Bill, 87, are true believers in the sense
that they've accepted Jesus Christ as their lord and savior and want
to share "the good news" with others, she explains.

It's a process that has, in her words, "filled us with joy and love
and excitement."

But the couple are what Dreier calls rare birds.

They're Democrats.

In theory at least, religion is personal.

But in America, very religious Christians have been tilting the
political scales in the direction of Republicans since at least 1980,
when they were a force in making Ronald Reagan president.

Republicans employed brilliant strategy in President Bush's 2000
election, and again in 2004:

Court the Evangelical Christian vote by persuading religious
Christians that their morals and values were being subverted to a wave
of political correctness.

Link the downfall of civil society to gay rights and abortion on
demand.

Then offer up a candidate who was "born again" and shared their
beliefs.

Karl Rove's plan paid off, giving Bush the edge in both elections.

But these days, Bush's political strategist may be wondering if he
created a monster.

The base is restive.

A firestorm has developed over Bush's appointment of Harriet Miers as
Supreme Court justice because, though an Evangelical Christian, she
hasn't proved herself to be conservative enough.

The furor over same sex-marriage, the ban on stem-cell research and
the push to teach Creationism or intelligent design in schools all are
assertions of this group's burgeoning political clout.

But are those issues -- the ones the Republican Party has capitalized
on -- the only ones that matter to Evangelical Christians, or do
Democrats have a chance with this powerful voting bloc?

If the Dreiers can reconcile their Evangelical beliefs with being
Democrats, why can't others?

As you talk to some Evangelicals, you learn the Republican association
is not airtight -- even if people like Miers have turned Republican
while turning Evangelical.

Moral values are important to Evangelical Christians.

But morality takes many forms.

To Dreier, it means social justice, civil rights and the welfare of
the poor.

She says she's a Democrat because Democrats care more about neglected
people.

Though she considers Bush "a brother in the faith," she dislikes his
economic policies, which favor the wealthy.

She calls it cynical to cut taxes on corporations and the rich while
cutting food stamps, Medicaid and other services to the poor.

Most significantly, Dreier doesn't consider herself very political.

Evangelical Christians generally didn't in the past, before Jerry
Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Billy Graham Jr. injected
themselves into the political fray.

Now, you just have to turn on the TV to hear Graham opine that
Hurricane Katrina was a response to New Orleans' sins or Robertson
assert that the United States should assassinate the president of
Venezuela.

But that's just a vocal handful.

John Palmer is pastor at the First Assembly of God in Des Moines, a
conservative Evangelical church.

His father was also a First Assembly of God pastor.

Though a registered Republican, Palmer has voted Democratic.

He says same-sex marriage and abortion are clear-cut issues for him;
he opposes both.

But on justice issues, the line "gets blurry."

For example, he used to unquestioningly support the death penalty.

Now he's not so sure it lines up with Biblical teachings.

Palmer knows innocent people sometimes get put to death.

The Bible says there must be at least two witnesses to the crime,
which there seldom are, he says.

There are Democrats in his congregation, he says, people with a
history in the union movement, for example.

Chuck Hurley is the face of right-wing Christianity in Des Moines.

A former state legislator, he heads the ultraconservative Iowa Family
Policy Center, which also slammed Bush for nominating Miers and
recently made news for opposing a forum on the bullying of gay
students.

Hurley's father was a Democrat when he was growing up.

Hurley calls himself a "bleeding heart," who thinks the most
compassionate party throughout history was that of the Democrats.

In fact, he became a Republican only when he appeared on the
Republican primary ballot in 1988 to challenge a Democrat for the Iowa
Legislature.

But Hurley says abortion is the defining issue that keeps him on the
Republican side.

He says the Bible sees justice for the poor as critical, but he also
believes the Bible spells out a limited role for government.

When asked, he can't find much in the Republican Party platform he
disagrees with.

Still, he thinks if the GOP ever jettisoned its pro-life plank,
Evangelicals would leave "in droves."

But others, like Dreier, have decided though they don't like abortion,
that issue isn't a make or break one.

Dreier hates to see people get abortions for convenience.

But she concedes she doesn't know what she'd do if she were 13 and
pregnant.

What she does know is she doesn't like abortion being a political
issue.

She believes homosexuality is a sin, but she supports gay people's
civil rights.

Dreier believes God created heaven and earth, but she thinks it's up
to parents and churches, not public schools, to teach the religious
view.

"We go astray when we concentrate on issues like that," she says of
the push to teach Creationism or intelligent design in schools.

The Democratic Party would do well to pay attention to people like
her, but not necessarily in the pandering way some candidates have
done, by trying to prove themselves more pious than the next one.

Not every religious Christian voter sees abortion as the most
important issue.

Some don't like it but have made peace with abortion being the
established law of the land.

Democrats could instead rally Evangelical Christians around core
Democratic principles such as balancing the wealth, protecting the
environment and taking care of the weak and vulnerable through more
equitable tax laws and universal health-care coverage.

What all politicians could learn from Dreier is that not all values
have to be expressed politically.

Some are personal.

This is her bottom line on the abortion issue:

"I don't like having to be for it or against it. I have to leave that
judgment to God."

___________________________________________________

'Nuff said

Harry