DALLAS - When Americans vote for a new president on Nov. 4, many will also be asked to have their say on local issues and proposed state constitutional amendments.

Much of the attention has been focused on the attempts to ban gay marriage in California and Florida, which we have written about elsewhere.

Similar initiatives in 2004 were seen as crucial to President George W. Bush's re-election victory as they energized the Republican Party's conservative evangelical base.  Propositions are initiated locally people who collect enough signatures to have them put on the ballot. If passed by voters they carry the force of law.

Ballotwatch, which is part of the Initiative & Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, released a preview Thursday of the initiatives that will coincide with this year's presidential battle between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

It said that as of early August, voters in 30 states are set to decide on 112 ballot propositions and the number is likely to grow as several states are still verifying signatures and some legislatures are considering additional measures. (In 2004 there were 162 propositions and 204 in the 2006 mid-term elections).

"The big story for ballot propositions this year is the surge of social issues. The tax and spending issues that normally dominate initiatives and referendums are taking a back seat to a diverse collection of social issues," it says in its report.

These also include an anti-abortion rights measure in South Dakota and attempts to roll back affirmative action in Colorado, which will keep the issue of race on the boil.

Animal rights and welfare issues have also emerged in a big way this year.

In Oklahoma, State Question 742 will seek to establish a state constitutional right to hunt and fish -- a "pre-emptive" strike against the animal rights crowd.

Given Obama's famous comments about rural voters clinging to their guns, the measure is likely to benefit McCain, though Oklahoma is already pretty solidly Republican.

In Alaska, ballot measure 2 will ask voters to ban the aerial hunting of bears, wolves and wolverines -- a measure sure to excite both sides of the issue. (And shock a lot of people who don't realize that you can shoot wolves from planes?)

And in Massachusetts, voters will be asked to decriminalize marijuana.

The ballot measures offer a good look at the intersect of politics and culture in America -- and just how polarized society is.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Top Reuters/Erin Siegel (Couple after marriage in June); Middle Reuters/Keith Bedford (Hunters in December); and Bottom Reuters/Ho New (Wolves in February)

DALLAS - Are Hispanic evangelicals a key swing vote in this U.S. presidential election?

Their possible role in the outcome of the Nov. 4 contest between Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican John McCain will be the focus of a conference in Vanguard, California, Thursday and Friday organized by the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC).

Religion plays a big role in American politics, and the evangelical community, which accounts for about one in four U.S. adults, is regarded as a key "battleground faith."
U.S. President George W. Bush made significant in-roads into the Latino vote in 2004, garnering about 40 percent of it by some estimates, thanks in part to the support of Hispanic evangelicals.

 But a poll last month by the Pew Hispanic Center found that Obama had the support of 66 percent of registered Hispanic voters versus 23 percent for McCain.

Latino numbers in the United States are put at about 45 million, or 15 percent of the population. But many are not citizens and they not tend to vote in energetic numbers.
One estimate last year by the Pew Hispanic Center found that, based on past trends, they would probably only comprise about 6.5 percent of the overall turnout this year.
And of the 45 million U.S. Latinos, only about a third are believed to be evangelical (an estimate that includes some charismatic Catholics).

But NHCLC President Samuel Rodriguez told me that their numbers are concentrated in key swing states that could go either way in November like Colorado, New Mexico and Florida.

So in a close election they could be a key vote in both battleground states and battleground faiths.

"Hispanic evangelicals are the quintessential moderates and centrists. They are committed to a prolife agenda and preserving traditional marriage. But they are also committed to tackling global warming and other social justice issues such as poverty and immigration reform," Rodriguez said.

That puts them in line with the emerging evangelical centrist movement, which is seeking a broader agenda that includes but moves beyond abortion and gay rights issues. It also mirrors Catholic social teaching (a tradition which many Hispanic evangelicals would have grown up in).

This outlook provides windows of opportunity for both candidates.

McCain can appeal to this crowd with his opposition to abortion rights and talk of action on climate change, though the hardening of his views on immigration reform are probably not a winner here.

Obama, on the other hand, talks easily about issues of faith and poverty and his own personal spirituality.

It all makes for an interesting group to watch over the next three months.

The conference is called "Hispanic Evangelicals and the 2008 Elections."

(Photo Credit: Reuters, Shannon Stapleton, April 16, USA)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), as the Mormon faith is officially called, is holding its tenth annual Mormon Apologetics Conference on Thursday and Friday in Sandy, Utah.

Organizers say it is a chance to dispel misunderstandings about their fast-growing faith, which has certainly been subjected to increased public scrutiny in recent years.

Such scrutiny in part stemmed from the unsuccessful bid by Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon, to win this year’s presidential nomination for the U.S. Republican Party.

The few thousand renegade Mormons who still practice polygamy, which the mainstream church renounced over a century ago, have also given the LDS a PR problem.

I have blogged on this before regarding the on-going investigation of polygamist activities at a compound in west Texas.

The Mormon faith, which claims about 13 million members worldwide, also has plenty of inter-faith suspicions to contend with. Many U.S. evangelicals and Southern Baptists in particular regard it as an almost sinister cult — and a successful one that is “poaching” souls from the evangelical flock.

It was founded in 1830 in New York state by Joseph Smith, who is revered by Mormons as a prophet, but dismissed as a charlatan by some of the religion’s critics.

He claimed (among other things) to have uncovered The Book of Mormon which detailed the colonization of the Americas by an ancient Hebrew tribe.

Scott Gordon, the president of the Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR) which is organizing the conference, said the geography of The Book of Mormon would be among the topics discussed.

The dearth of archaeological evidence to support the events described in The Book of Mormon is often cited by sceptics as grounds for doubting its veracity.

“The Book of Mormon is a religious book and it doesn’t really say where it comes from. So people have made a number of assumptions and guesses,” G0rdon told me.

He said most Mormon scholars are now placing the events described in The Book of Mormon in central America.

The list of speakers and presenters can be found here .

DALLAS - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has had to fend off all sorts of spurious Internet rumours suggesting he is a closet Muslim and even linking him to the Ku Klux Klan.

Our columnist Bernd Debusmann has written about this elsewhere. But a new line of character attack has emerged: Obama, while not the Antichrist, has provided a dress reherasal for the End of Times as foretold in the Bible with his recent overseas tour.

At least that is what Hal Lindsey, a leading figure in U.S. apocalyptic Christian circles, claims.

On Friday, Lindsey wrote in a commentary on the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily that Obama’s recent overseas tour blazed a trail that the Antichrist was sure to follow.

In apocalyptic U.S. Christian circles, the Antichrist is often portrayed as the leader of a world government who will probably emerge from the United Nations or some other multilateral institution loathed by some on the U.S. right.

The Antichrist’s rise and dark reign is believed to be foretold in the Bible, notably the Book of Revelation that is also known as the Apocalypse of St. John.

“… the Bible says that such a leader (the Antichrist) will soon make his appearance on the scene. It won’t be Barack Obama, but Obama’s world tour provided a foretaste of the reception he can expect to receive,” wrote Lindsey, author of the 1970 Biblical prophecy blockbuster “The Late Great Planet Earth.”

“He will probably also stand in some European capital, addressing the people of the world and telling them that he is the one that they have been waiting for. And he can expect as wildly enthusiastic a greeting as Obama got in Berlin.”

Other prominent figures in U.S. apocalyptic circles include Texas mega-preacher John Hagee, whose endorsement of Republican presidential candidate John McCain was rejected after it emerged Hagee had once claimed God had allowed the Holocaust to happen because it led to the creation of Israel.

Hagee sees current events in the Middle East and elsewhere as unfolding biblical prophecy and his organization Christians United for Israel is an influential lobbying group.

Conservative U.S. Christians who strongly believe in a brewing End of Times battle are regarded as a sub-culture of the broader evangelical movement but the success of the best-selling “Left Behind Series” by Tim LaHaye — which chonicles the  looming final conflict — suggest such views have some resonance in the American heartland.

Conservative evangelicals are a key Republican Party base and while they are lukewarm on McCain, Obama obviously has some seeing red.

The Huffington Post, a liberal blog and news site, did a blog on Sunday detailing liberal Christian concerns about a McCain ad campaign “The One” which they see as a code to some conservative Christians to view Obama as a kind of Antichrist figure.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Barack Obama in Berlin on July 24)

American atheists are holding a “Coming Out Party” in Westerville, Ohio, this Saturday in a bid to encourage non-believers to publicly declare their conviction that God does not exist.Frank Zindler, president of American Atheists, told me many U.S. atheists felt marginalized in a country where levels of religious belief are high and that the social and family pressures to profess a spiritual faith were huge.”I get an enormous amount of e-mails on our Web site from young people asking me ‘how do I tell my parents?’ It causes a great deal of anguish,” he said.Saturday’s events will include a “De-Baptism” ceremony, which organizers say “will be a fun way for people who feel under pressure to conform to religious orthodoxy to make a statement about their newfound intellectual independence.”According to a comprehensive nationwide survey conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, only 1.6 percent of U.S. adults identified themselves as atheists, while 2.4 percent said they were agnostic, or do not know if God exists.Just over 12 percent of adults surveyed said they “were nothing in particular” and atheist activists believe many fellow non-believers are in this group. They also maintain that many Americans who claim a religious affiliation are in fact secret atheists.”I think there are a lot of people who may say that they are religious, who in fact are not,” said Ashley Paramore, a board member with the Secular Student Alliance, who is organizing Saturday’s event.  What do you think? Do you think there are lots of “closet atheists” in America? And are Americans under pressure to profess a belief in God? Or are these pressures minimal and complaints on this score overblown?

DALLAS - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's promise on Tuesday of a more robust approach to faith-based social programs has been blasted from the left and the right -- and raised some pointed questions from academia.

But it has also won support from the religious left and centrists, the groups it is aimed at as the Obama campaign seeks to woo wavering evangelicals.

Obama unveiled the plan in Ohio, pledging to beef up the faith-based community programs pioneered by President George W. Bush.

On the left, Americans United for Separation of Church and State decried Obama's promise to expand it, saying : "Rather than try to correct the defects of the Bush 'faith-based' initiative, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama would do better to shut it down."

Obama did lay down one rule in his speech that has drawn some comment. He said: "If you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them -- or against the people you hire -- on the basis of their religion."

This will be welcomed by many Americans who are uncomfortable with this mix of church and state but it has also raised some eyebrows.

"Certain religious groups in the United States are unabashedly focussed on converting others -- it's part of their faith. When the federal government stipulates that it will withhold funding from a group that proselytizes -- as indicated by Obama's ground rules above -- is it not, ironically, discriminating against that group on the basis of its religion?," asked Jacques Berlinerblau of Georgetown University in a blog on Wednesday.

The "Religious Right" saw Obama's announcement as a "faith-based feint." Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, asked if Obama's reported opposition to efforts to ban gay marriage in California meant "that faith-based organizations that support (traditional) marriage will be disqualified from federal funding under an Obama presidency?"

From the "Religious Left," evangelical leader and Sojourners founder Jim Wallis told Reuters he welcomed Obama's initiative.

"It shows that Obama is both comfortable and articulate about his faith and we haven't always seen this from a Democrat," he said.

If Obama has scored with the Religious Left then his faith strategy may be paying dividends.

Photo credit: Reuters/Matt Sullivan. Obama speaks at Eastside Community Ministry in Zanesville, Ohio, July 1, 2008.
 

A new book on the U.S. Republican Party sets out an agenda that its authors argue will help weld working class voters — who have bounced between political allegiances over the decades — to the party as the foundation for the next conservative majority.

Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, by Ross Douthat, a senior editor at The Atlantic, and Reihan Salam, an associate editor at the same magazine, is already making some waves.

What readers of this blog may find most interesting is some of its comments on religious conservatives, a key Republican Party base, and its contribution to the growing debate about America’s “culture wars.”

The authors take square aim at Thomas Frank’s 2004 book What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, an influential work that has become widely regarded as the leading liberal critique of the Republican Party’s blue-collar strategy.

In a nutshell, a big part of the Frank thesis is that social issues such as abortion are useful distractions from stagnating wages and job lay-offs which lead blue collar workers to vote against their economic interests, ie, for the Republican Party.

“… the ’social issues’, from abortion and marriage law to the death penalty and immigration, are not just red herrings distracting the working class from their economic struggles, as liberals have insisted for the better part of forty years,” Douthat and Salam write.

“Rather, they’re at the root of working class insecurity. Safe streets, successful marriages, cultural solidarity, and vibrant religious and civic institutions make working-class Americans more likely to be wealthy, healthy, and upwardly mobile,” they write.

On the 2006 congressional elections, in which the Democratic Party wrested control from the Republicans, they argue that a two-pronged strategy was employed.

On the one hand, the authors say Democratic candidates reached out to religious voters in the Midwest and the South. On the other, there was a stream of books, essays and blogs “warning of the looming theocratic” menace posed by the Republicans and their conservative Christian backers.

This they argue helped to galvanise part of the Democratic base “and delivered the party its largest majority ever among the faithless.”

Against this backdrop, one wonders how the 2008 presidential election will play out? There is no doubt that Barack Obama is aiming for the votes of the faithful, a topic that we and others have written about.

But can the secular left and mildly religious liberals warn of a right-wing theocracy when the presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, is regarded with suspicion by the “Religious Right,” whose leaders he once branded as “agents of intolerance?”

What do you think?

One of the themes at the annual “Christian Scholars Conference” at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, is “faith and politics in the current political climate” — subjects that readers of this blog will know we often touch on.

The conference, which kicked off on Thursday and ends on Saturday, features an impressive academic line-up. A link to the abstracts can be found here.

Keri Thompson of the University of Texas has what looks like an intriguing presentation on “Progressive Christianity in Election 2008: The Rhetorical Strategies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.”

The abstract says “The Democratic Party’s strategic insertion of religious rhetoric ought to shed light on new trends in progressive Christianity and its future role in American politics.”

Saturday morning’s line-up will feature the faith advisor for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, Shaun Casey, in a one-on-one discussion with Stephen V. Monsma, author of “Healing for a Broken World: Christian Perspectives on Public Policy.” They will discuss how their faith has led them to opposite ends of the political spectrum.

It is all great grist for the big U.S. religious mill.

Americans are sharply divided on the influence of Hollywood — for good or bad — and unsurprisingly this “culture war” division tends to follow religious faultlines.That is one of the many findings of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s massive “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.” The second part of this detailed survey, based on interviews with over 35,000 U.S. adults last year, was released on Monday.

For our story on its “culture war” findings look here.

The survey asked Americans if Hollywood “threatened” their values: 42 percent said it did, 56 percent said it did not.

Hollywood has long been a target of U.S. conservatives, many of whom regard its main movers and shakers as hardcore liberals (or worse) and its movie industry as corrupting.

So it comes as no surprise that most U.S. evangelicals agreed that Tinsletown goes against their grain though not by the overwhelming margin one might have assumed: 53 percent saw it as a threat but 45 percent did not.

The stoutly conservative Mormons regard Hollywood and its ways with the most suspicion among U.S. religious groupings with 67 percent agreeing that it threatens the things they hold dear.

America’s small atheist contingent is the least alarmed by the entertainment industry with only 19 percent seeing it as a threat; fully 79 percent did not.

One thing is sure: America’s culture wars remain as divisive as ever with both sides dug in their trenches for the long haul.

(Photo Credit: REUTERS/Hector Mata, Feb 20, 2008)

Is the Democratic Party really “Godless” and are Republicans really righteous?

Far from it, though there are findings from the monumental U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life which could be used perhaps to make such arguments. You can see our main story on the survey here and the survey itself, which was released on Monday, here.

On partisan affiliation for example, the survey found that Mormons were the most staunchly Republican religious group in America with 65 percent of those polled indentifying with or leaning towards that party.

Members of historically black Protestant churches remain the most reliably Democratic at 77 percent while the Godless crowd was also firmly in that camp. It found that atheists and agnostics leaned heavily Democratic (65 percent and 62 percent respectively).

But among evangelical Protestants, a group normally associated with the Republican Party and social conservative causes, things are less clear cut. The survey found 50 percent of this group tilted Republican but 34 percent of such folk favoured the Democratic Party.

This raises interesting issues. Can presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama woo the faith vote without alienating the party’s “atheist base?” Can his Republican rival John McCain woo independent evangelicals?

The survey was taken in 2007, so it is not up-to-the-minute, and the first batch of its findings were released in February. But it involved polls of over 35,000 U.S. adults nationwide and so it is an excellent indicator of broad trends.