Political religions

Continuing through this year's political R's, let's mention a couple of things about religion: All the candidates have spoken of their religious beliefs, yet as Alexis de Tocqueville described Americans in the 1830s, "It is often hard to know from listening to them whether the main intention of religion is to obtain everlasting joy in the next world or prosperity in this." Or votes.

Journalists wrote and spoke the most about Mike Huckabee's beliefs: A Lexis-Nexis search shows "Huckabee" and "religious right" appearing 893 times during the three months before the Texas and Ohio primaries. Religious liberal Obama, though, typically avoided such characterization: His name and "religious left" appeared together only 28 times during that period. Huckabee received press criticism for an Iowa ad that called him a "Christian leader," but few fussed about a South Carolina brochure that praised Obama as a "committed Christian" who is "called to Christ."

Obama has benefited from messianic hopes, and indulged them by (among other things) saying that he and his supporters can become "a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest." But he should not be ridiculed as lightweight because some of his fans swoon: He is delivering the "social gospel" that became prominent a century ago more skillfully than anyone else has done in recent decades.

Obama's profession of faith invigorates many and scares few because it is horizontal rather than vertical, with an emphasis on finding community rather than communing with God. Community organizers Obama worked with two decades ago saw "a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst. And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well -- that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone."

Obama says his joining a church "came about as a choice, and not an epiphany." Choices do not bother secular Americans, epiphanies do. Joining a church to fight loneliness makes it as unobjectionable as joining a social club, but his affiliation serves as an antidote to evidence-less charges that Obama is secretly a Muslim. He says, "I've been to the same church, the same Christian church, for almost 20 years."

Obama's Christian affiliation also gives him the opportunity to dip into language that has resonated with many Americans in prior religious left campaigns such as those of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Bryan, of course, lost all three times, because of the American tendency to - sooner or later - make reality-based decisions. More on this next time.