Before I move on to new comments, I want to return to the issue raised by Richard about religious practice and voting. I went back to the book so I could report the actual numbers referred to in my earlier post:

In 2004 . . . the media exit poll found that Americans who attend services more than once a week voted for George W. Bush over John Kerry by a margin of 64 percent to 35 percent. By contrast, those who said they never went to religious services backed Kerry, 62 to 36 percent. Case on religiosity closed?

Not quite. Taken together, these two groups account for only about three voters in ten -- 16 percent of American voters go to religious services more than once a week and 15 percent never go. What of the rest? Again, there is a definite relationship between Republican leanings and church attendance, but it is not as strong as once would assume looking only at the most and least religious. Weekly attenders backed Bush, 58 to 41 percent. Those who attended once a month split evenly, 50 percent for Bush, 49 percent for Kerry. Those who attended religious services a few times a year backed Kerry 54 to 45 percent.

Consolidating the categories among those who participate at least some of the time in organized religion, the four voters in ten who attended religious services once a week or more gave Bush 61 percent of their ballots; the four voters in ten who participated only occasionally gave Bush 47 percent, a difference of 14 percent.

These differences among the more and less religiously observant did not disappear in 2006. In some ways, they became stronger because less observant voters who had stuck with the Republicans in 2004 fled in mass. There was a decline in Republican voting among more religious voters, too, but it was not nearly as dramatic. In the book, I report on religious voting in key races in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. I’ll just pull out a few paragraphs on Ohio where Rep. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, opposed Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who closely and proudly aligned with the religious conservative movement. In the Senate race, Democrat Sherrod Brown, opposed Republican incumbent Mike DeWine. As I note in the book:

Both Democrats swept the state, Strickland with 60 percent of the vote, Brown with 56 percent. Much was made of Strickland’s strength among religiously active voters He won 38 percent among Ohio voters who attended religious services more than once a week, a 7-point gain over Kerry’s showing, and 55 percent among those who attended religious services weekly, a 19-point gain. But he did best of all among voters who said they never attended religious services, winning 81 percent of their ballots, an 18-point gain over Kerry. Strickland also did well among occasional church-attenders, winning 68 percent in this group, an 11-point gain on Kerry.

In other words, even though Strickland gained substantial ground on Kerry among religious voters, the “religion gap” was actually higher in 2006 because of profound Republican weakness among nonreligious voters. The patterns were similar in Brown’s victory, although the gains were generally smaller. Brown did gain as much ground as Strickland did among those who attended religious services more than once a week, somewhat less in the other groups. Interestingly, Brown, the more liberal candidate, ran 7 points behind Strickland among voters who never attended religious services -- partly, perhaps, because nonreligious voters were more inclined to cast ballots against the conservative and openly devout Blackwell than against the more moderate DeWine.

There were similar patterns in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Indeed, I note in the book that in the Virginia Senate race between George Allen and Jim Webb, Allen’s support among white evangelical Christians was as solid as George W. Bush’s had been two years earlier. White evangelicals voted 80-20 for Allen, and his performance was a statistically insignificant one point better that Bush’s two years earlier. Allen ran slightly better than Bush among those who attended religious services more than once a week, slightly worse among weekly attenders. Webb, like Democrats in the other states, gained the most ground on Kerry vote among the least religiously observant -- those who attended religious services a few times a year, or never.

None of this disproves Richard’s argument that there are millions of religious people who are moderate or progressive. On the contrary, the data make clear that he’s right about this. But the gap between the more and less religiously active voters in a fact, not something invented by the media.

But something else happened in 2006 that I think signals that we might be at the end of a particular era. Religion has always played a central role in American politics, but religious and cultural issues have waxed and waned as central in our history. To offer one example: Prohibition was a critical issue in the 1928 election; it had disappeared as a national issue by 1936. What intervened, of course, was the Great Depression. There are moments when certain urgent national problems displace cultural and religious questions In 1932, we entered a long period in which religious questions took backseat in politics. I’d date this “less religious” period as ending in 1980. The exception, of course, was the 1960 election when John Kennedy’s Catholicism was a major cause of controversy. But Kennedy won (Al Smith did not in 1928) in part because the issues of the Cold War loomed larger than the cultural questions, or the matter of his own faith. The religious period we are in now began in 1980, and I have a hunch historians will mark its end in 2004. My colleague and friend John Green and I are working on a paper that is partly about this. If my theory is correct, we will see large economic and foreign policy questions displacing the cultural arguments we have been having for the last quarter century or so. Religion will remain important – it always is in American politics – but it will be called upon to speak to a broader set of issues.

Let me comment briefly on Peter Scoblic’s thoughtful first post, Alexia Kelley’s poetic second post.

I love Peter’s headline, “Doubts on Doubt.” (And I thank him for his generous words.) I appreciate his defense of empiricism and agree that one “must be willing to accept that one’s beliefs may be wrong, and one must believe that data and experience have a lot to teach us.” Empiricism is not antithetical to faith (in part because God’s existence can neither be proved nor disproved through the classic scientific method). It’s unfortunate that President Bush’s Administration has given some good things a bad name. For example, the United States should be committed to promoting democracy in the world; but the war in Iraq is not exactly the right model for doing it. Similarly, the Bush Administration is often accused of having a “faith-based foreign policy.” If “faith-based” is defined as an immunity to facts and a resistance to rethinking, that’s fair enough. But of course that’s not a proper definition of faith. Peter, I think, might enjoy a section at the end of the book in which I argue (inspired by an essay by Bill Galston in Democracy) that faith, properly understood, leads to doubt, properly understood, the kind of doubt, as Galston writes, “questions our motivations and pretensions to special virtue.”

To pick up a paragraph from the book:

Galston, quite naturally, turns to Reinhold Niebuhr as the great exponent of this faithful form of doubt. Niebuhr reminded us that “no virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint.” He argued that “[s]ome of the greatest perils to democracy arise from the fanaticism of moral idealists who are not conscious of the corruption of self-interest.” In an assertion that might usefully have guided us before our country went to war in Iraq, Niebuhr warned: “A nation with an inordinate degree of political power is doubly tempted to exceed the bounds of historical possibilities, if it is informed by an idealism which does not understand the limits of man’s wisdom and volition.” As Galston concludes: “The absence of moral doubt makes it far too difficult to recognize and rectify our mistakes. The cure, Niebuhr teaches, is the humility that comes from the acceptance of limits to human striving.”

In the book, I conclude that the forms of religious engagement in public life that are rooted in doubt and humility are far more likely to be effective -- and far more apt to be just -- than approaches rooted in utter assurance and arrogance, in the total identification of a human political agenda with the cause of God. Abraham Lincoln demonstrated as clearly as any statesman that it is possible to undertake great tasks in politics with firmness, commitment, principle, and courage and still not pretend to absolute certainty about one’s course, one’s intentions, or the purity of one’s motives.

In short, I’m grateful to Peter for talking about doubt, which is one of my favorite concepts to think about. I sometimes think that St. Thomas the Apostle, “Doubting Thomas,” is my patron saint.

And only wish the Catholic Church allowed women priests -- as I think it will some day -- because I would want to go to Msgr. Alexia Kelley’s parish to hear her preach and watch her think. She makes a very important point about both the possibilities and temptations of politics when she writes: “For those of us walking the crossroads of religion and politics, we must not sell our faith short by reducing religion’s role in public life simply to a laundry list of policy positions or talking points with a Biblical quote thrown in for good measure. Faith calls us to something far deeper and more profound . . .” And I would also second her concluding thought: “Religion calls us to personal renewal at the same time it insists that our collective responsibility to care for our neighbors here and abroad is the true measure of a faith that does justice.” Amen.