Judaism

Zilda Arns Neumann, sometimes called Brazil's Mother Teresa, was among those who died tragically during Haiti's earthquake. She was in Port-au-Prince to share lessons from the enormous church-based child health program she established in Brazil.

Newsweek has some edgy covers these days. How about, "The Case for Killing Granny"? Sure catches the eye. But "Is your Baby Racist?" on September 14, with an adorable little face staring innocently out, is equally disturbing.

It's hard to find any silver linings in the dark gathering clouds in Darfur. It's the time of year that many parts of Africa call the "hungry season" or the "soudure" (a joint whose parts are welded together and thus is liable to break). The rains are about to begin, and with them comes planting season. Mud roads and tracks become impassable. Food from last harvest is gone and the new harvest is months off.

How can the United States harness the extraordinary organizational capacity of global religions and turn them into a force for peace and welfare? That's a question the Obama administration should confront early on. The faith factor can and should be a critical part of America's public diplomacy--and not a piece apart but integrally linked to the core question of how the "smart" new diplomacy needs to unfold.

Picking up where we left off yesterday, here are the most important Faith and Values stories of 2008:

5. The rise of Progressive Evangelicals in triumph and glory?: All year long observers of American religion (myself included) have been predicting that 2008 would be the coming-out party for centrist and progressive Evangelicals. Unlike their conservative co-religionists, these new kids on the block would focus on issues other than abortion and gays. And by all accounts they were kids; it...

As promised, here are some of the most important Faith and Values stories of the 2008 election (compare them, if you wish, to those of 2007). My rankings in reverse order:

10: The Rise of the Faith-Based Operative: Last week, while giving a lecture at the American Academy of Religion and noticing scores of unshaven, scraggly, hung-over and rather forlorn-looking male and female graduate students strewn about the audience, I had an inspiration: "There will be more jobs in politics for those...

The not-very-tightly-knit community of Faith and Values pundits is unevenly divided between Narrative People and Numbers People. The latter perform vital statistical surveys about religiously based voting patterns and public opinion. Though, at their worst, they tend to speak in sentences composed of a noun, a verb and a polling result.

Narrative People, such as myself, are somewhat harder to find. We tend to look for larger cultural, historical and theological patterns. On the downside we...

Georgetown University had the pleasure yesterday of hosting a variety of scholars, analysts, and activists at a conference devoted to the Jewish vote and the 2008 election. Many of our guests addressed issues that I have been writing about in this column and I'll discuss some of their views below. But remember that I am refracting their opinions through my own lens (and my lens is darkening at this late hour). So the opinions I attribute to them are, if you will, solely my own:

Yesterday, I made a variety of predictions about the way Evangelicals might vote next week. Today, I turn to Jews. But since tomorrow I am going to have a lot of experts, advocates and Beltway Insider Types lecturing about this subject at Georgetown University, I want to see what they have to say before going out on a limb. I will report back to you about the conference on Friday. For now, a few predictions and a few observations:

Next week I am going to post copiously about the 2008 Jewish vote as well as convening a conference and press gathering on the subject at Georgetown University. But before heading out to the office to work on that, I want to quickly draw your attention to a recently released Gallup Poll that challenges some conventional wisdom.

The scene was a muggy hotel conference room in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, last week. The topic was grand: "Building Peace, Cooperation, and Harmony through Interfaith Dialogue." The audience was a somber group of Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian leaders, government officials, students and a smattering of international speakers. The tone was utterly serious - no backslapping or chitchat. The organizer was a small new group called the Asian Faiths Development Dialogue.

I have no formal training in comedy but, as Jews are wont to do, I consider myself something of a comedian (and a tragedian too!). These talents notwithstanding, the only insight I have about Sarah Silverman's recent pro-Obama video entitled "The Great Schelp" is that it is: 1) funny, 2) refreshingly anti-PC, and, 3) based on the rather questionable surmise that Jews might actually be able to tilt the vote in Florida.

As for funny, well, just watch the clip. That young African-American men...

This past week a group of 300 rabbis formally announced their intention "to support Senator Obama for President." The formation of "Rabbis for Obama" strikes me as very good for the Democratic ticket. But not so good for Jews or, more precisely, Judaism.

Beliefnet has drawn attention to an innovative PR cum merchandising initiative from the Obama campaign. Religious supporters of the Senator from Illinois can now purchase tee shirts, buttons and bumper stickers with faith-specific messages such as "BELIEVERS FOR BARACK" or "PRO-FAMILY AND PRO-OBAMA," or "CATHOLICS FOR OBAMA."

According to Paul Monteiro, Deputy Director of Religious Affairs, the new products permit customers "to show your support for Barack...

Making sense of the Jewish vote in 2008 is something of an emerging specialization at the University of Faith and Values Politicking (where I coach the Kickline team in addition to my normal academic responsibilities). Here are a few questions and propositions to be considered:

Does John McCain's selection of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate dramatically impact the way Jews will vote?: My intuition screams "no!" But another voice in my head whispers that her appearance on...

World leaders are heading for Japan for the annual ritual known as the Group of Eight meeting. Last week a different group of leaders met, also in Japan, also to take stock of the leading issues that face the world.

They were religious leaders, and their gathering took place in two Japanese cities with spiritual roots, Osaka and Kyoto. The meeting is part of a tradition, now three years old, of a religious summit on the eve of the grand G8 summit.

Religious leaders don’t make policy,...

Yesterday Senator Obama delivered a bold address in which he spoke of establishing a “Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.” This endeavor, he emphasized, “will be a critical part of my administration.”

I am not a legal scholar, but a mere biblical exegete. This disqualifies me from commenting authoritatively or even insightfully on the legality of this proposal--a proposal made by a politician who, incidentally, knows his constitutional law.

Still,...

Mississippi native Burns Strider was, until just a few weeks ago, Senior Adviser and Director of Faith Based Outreach for Senator Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. As readers of The God Vote might recall, I thought the team he led performed quite skillfully.

Having completed his duties for the Clinton campaign, Mr. Strider has recently announced the formation of The Eleison Group (of which he is a Founding Partner). He describes it as “a full service firm focusing on...

In the 72 hours since I laid out the first 5 of 12 steps that could help rejuvenate John McCain’s flagging Faith and Values outreach, his Faith and Values outreach has somehow flagged a bit more!

Not happily for the Senator from Arizona, stories about his woes with conservative Evangelicals are proliferating. See for example this article from CNN, or listen to this lively discussion on NPR’s To the Point where host Warren Olney interviews journalist Wayne Slater, Evangelical...

With Hillary Clinton’s expected suspension of campaign operations Saturday, the Faith and Values Primary Season will officially come to an end.

Speaking on behalf those who study the intersection between religion and politics I want to give a shout out to all the Republicans and Democrats who ran for the presidency. Especially you, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. You guys were the best.

But now we must move to the general election and here are some of the stories I predict we will be...

"My -- again what I want to do in church is I want to be able to take Michelle and my girls, sit in a pew quietly, hopefully get some nice music, some good reflection, praise God, thank Him for all of the blessings He has given our family, put some money in the collection plate, maybe afterwards go out and grab some brunch, have my girls go to Sunday school. That's what I am looking for." Senator Barack Obama discussing his reasons for leaving his church this past weekend in ...

Why? Why, I ask, did John McCain disarticulate his presidential campaign from Pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley last week? As we shall see below, he cut them off even though it looked like he would overcome the turbulence created by their support. I have a few theories, but first permit me to point out that the Senator's move spells trouble for Spiritual Endorsers far and wide.

In the bestiary of Faith and Values politicking the Spiritual Endorser occupies a place distinct from the Spiritual...

Much has been said over the past few weeks about the fatal, tactical missteps made by Hillary Clintonâs campaign. These include a troubling lack of caucus know-how, an overabundance of underestimating the competition, and shortsightedness in long-term planning for the primary season.

After tonight's Oregon primary, it seems likely that more autopsic observations such as these are in store for tomorrow. But if there is one component of Clinton's operation that does not deserve the label...

The World Economic Forum on the Middle East at Sharm El Sheikh reeks of solemnity. There is a sense that the people who attend this annual business-driven meeting carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. With speeches by three heads of state (Presidents Hosni Mubarak and George W. Bush and King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud) at the opening event Sunday, with 1,500 world leaders from many different sectors, the gravity of the issues at hand seemed overwhelming.

As with most analysts who cover the 2008 election I receive my share of spin-related e-mails (referred to from here on in as âœSpreemailsâ) from the campaigns of those running for high office.

Sloshing through Hezekiah’s tunnel near the City of David in Jerusalem brings home what fear and faith can do. The 530-meter-long tunnel was chiseled out of rock over 2500 years ago, deep underground, by men without flashlights or scientific instruments to guide them. They knew that if they were attacked they could survive only if they were sure of their water source. To this day water flows through the tunnel from a spring to a reservoir.

There were many winners at Sunday night’s Compassion Forum at Messiah College and no discernible losers as far as I could tell.

For starters, the sponsoring and organizing group, Faith in Public Life, handled logistics superbly. FPL is setting an agenda and it is doing so with a “Big Tent” philosophy of letting different religious Americans bring their concerns to the fore. Last night a theologically diverse group of pre-selected clergy asked questions about euthanasia,...

Because of a suggestion from James Wolfensohn while he was in Israel, I was part of an exciting workshop in Neve Ilan at the end of last month. In a nutshell, the meeting was presented as the second designed to reflect on and to revitalize both Jewish and Israeli development work, and to draw together both religious and secular experience and approaches.

Avoid religion and politics at the dinner table -- so goes the conventional wisdom. Tempers will flare and appetites curdle with the passions that both topics so often arouse. But in reality we need to get the kind of dinner-table discussions going that can help overcome some deep and poorly understood prejudices about religion in American life.

It has come to my attention, however, that many of my compatriots do not. Reverend Barry Lynnâs organization recently reported that 65 % of Americans believed that "the Founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation.â A 2006 study by the Pew Forum noted that nearly 7 out of 10 citizens say...

Note to McCain operatives: Any and all attempts to malign Barack Obama as “all hat, no cattle,” "electoral eye candy," “eloquent but empty,” are doomed to fail. Most Americans will find it difficult to reconcile those descriptions with the heady and effortlessly intelligent person they see on the nightly news. Most Americans will reject the argument that the fellow with the J.D. from Harvard who lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago is all fluff.

Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini write on the Immanent Frame: In his Commonweal essay, “Sex & Christianity: How has the Moral Landscape Changed?” Charles Taylor works to create a space for a Catholic sexual ethic that does not make “a certain kind of purity a necessary condition for relating to God through the sacraments.” For Taylor, the “moralistic code” dedicated to sexual purity fails doubly: it “erects a barrier between the church and...

It is my opinion -- and I’ll concede that I am probably not inner-tube floating in the American mainstream here -- that persons of questionable moral scruples can make perfectly good presidents. I will refer to this way of thinking about national leaders as The French Model in honor of François Mitterrand. When the president of France died in 1996 his long-time mistress was in attendance at his funeral. Anne Pingeot’s appearance at his grave (with her child by Mitterrand)...

Pandering to a religious constituency in a presidential election has its ups and downs. The ups: The fundraisers where the hosts invite all of their fabulous, deep-pocketed co-religionists: The clergy singing your praises (without specifically intoning your name) from the pulpit: Church photo-ops where old women in wheelchairs roll up to you (or are launched in your direction by shameless staffers) and clutch your hand at precisely the moment that the guy from AP is snapping pictures. And...

If New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg were to actually run for president one wonders how he would fare among those Americans for whom a candidate’s personal religiosity ranks among their greatest concerns. I am speaking, of course, of the so-called “values voters.” Now, let me immediately confess that I occasionally find myself hurling profanities at this category because it is so vague and imprecise. Here is one ambiguity that always burns my feathers: What do the values...

Awraham Soetendorp is a household name in the Netherlands so an English language symposium to celebrate his life and mark his formal retirement as rabbi of a Reform Jewish congregation in the Hague last month was quickly over-subscribed. Those lucky enough to attend were in for an eclectic treat: wise words, history, politics, provocative suggestions, music, and theology all woven together with good humor. It was a well timed reminder, at a time when Dutch politics are often tense and...