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Republicans say liberals plan to ban Bible
The Associated Press reports that West Virginia voters have received a mailing, apparently from the Republican National Committee, warning that liberals will ban the Bible if they're elected in November. "The literature shows a Bible with the word 'BANNED' across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word 'ALLOWED,'" AP reporter Will Lester writes. "The mailing tells West Virginians to 'vote Republican to protect our families' and defeat the 'liberal agenda.'"

"It wouldn't surprise me if we were mailing voters on the issue of same-sex marriage," Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie told the Associated Press. He apparently made no comment about the banning the Bible issue.

John Edwards, on the other hand, is taking direct aim at the suggestion that he and his running mate are anti-Scripture. "Republicans always say they want to have a values debate but lying and spreading hate were not the values I learned growing up in a small town in North Carolina where the Bible was the most important book [in] my home," Edwards said in a press release. "George Bush and Dick Cheney should be appalled by these despicable mailings. They should condemn this practice immediately and tell everyone associated with their campaign to never use tactics like this again. The American people deserve better."

Alan Wolfe on the Democrats' "God gap"
The RNC mailing is evidence that the Republicans are playing up what's been called the "God gap." But in yesterday's Boston Globe Ideas section, Alan Wolfe had a 2,000-word essay saying that the real religion-and-politics battle isn't between Republicans and Democrats, but within the Democratic party.

"The question Democrats will have to face, whether or not they win the election, is whether [their] effort to reach out to believers constitutes a temporary truce in the interest of defeating George W. Bush or a longer-term effort to rein in the more determined secularists among them," Wolfe wrote. "Secularism has its greatest appeal among upper-middle-class liberals and professionals, while poorer Americans tend to be more religious. Democrats simply cannot win elections based on the votes of the former."

If you've read anything Amy Sullivan has written over the last year or so, Wolfe's essay will sound awfully familiar. But it's good to see the message coming from someone other than Sullivan, especially from someone as well respected as Wolfe.

More bad news from Britain
If the RNC had been targeting young adults in Britain instead of West Virginians, they would have been wiser to warn that the "liberals" were planning to ban horoscopes. A new poll says that residents of Britain between the ages of 18 to 24 were almost twice as likely to believe in horoscopes than in the Bible (62 percent vs. 38 percent).

"Horoscopes are fine for a bit of fun and entertainment, but if you take them seriously, they are very dangerous," an unnamed Church of England spokesman told The Telegraph. "The Church is aware of its difficulties in reaching young people, and is looking at new ways of attracting them away from misleading concepts like astrology and towards the message of God and the Bible."

Such faith in horoscopes, reincarnation, and other "non-traditional or non-institutional religious beliefs," Robin Gill wrote in a 2000 essay for the Evangelical Alliance U.K, contradicts the widespread assertion that Britain is becoming secularized. "New Age beliefs, however lacking in social function, may well be symptomatic of problems of personal identity -- as well as a general dissatisfaction with Christianity and secularism alike."

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September (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48