A new poll by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests that concern about federal funding for abortion is very low on the list of factors driving opposition to President Barack Obama's effort to overhaul America's healthcare system.

The results of the poll, released on Thursday, show that just 3 percent of healthcare opponents cited abortion funding as their main reason for opposing congressional healthcare proposals.

The biggest reasons, cited by 27 percent of respondents to an open-ended question about their opposition, were that the overhaul would be too expensive and lead to higher deficits and taxes. Another 27 percent said they did not want government involvement in healthcare.

The nationwide poll of more than 1,000 Americans was conducted from Nov. 12 to 15.

The poll's publication comes as the U.S. Senate prepares to begin debate on its version of a healthcare bill that does not include language approved earlier this month by the House that would strengthen the existing prohibition on using federal funds for abortion.

Many analysts say the abortion issue -- which has been fanned by conservative evangelicals associated with the Republican Party and Catholic clergy whose flock lean to the Democratic Party -- threatens to unravel Obama's top domestic priority.

But the Pew poll highlights its apparently minor role in stirring opposition to the healthcare push which aims, among other things, to expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack health insurance.

Has this hornet's nest been opened by a vocal but very small minority of the U.S. public, which would appear to have more pressing concerns when it comes to healthcare?

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (Anti-abortion activist wears mirrored sunglasses and a piece of tape over his mouth in Washington, June 1, 2009)

Father Damien de Veuster, one of Hawaii's most revered figures, was remembered on Friday by the state's most famous -- U.S. President Barack Obama.

The 19th century Roman Catholic priest from Belgium cared for people with leprosy, also known as Hansen's Disease, who had been placed in government-sanctioned quarantine on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.

Father Damien, who eventually contracted the disease and died of it at age 49, is honored around the world as the "leper priest." He is also considered a patron saint of those who suffer from HIV/AIDS and other diseases.

Pope Benedict will canonize Father Damien as a saint on Sunday, making him the first saint with such close ties to Hawaii.

"I recall many stories from my youth about his tireless work there to care for those suffering from leprosy who had been cast out," said Obama, a Hawaii native, in a statement on Father Damien's upcoming canonization.

"In our own time as millions around the world suffer from disease, especially the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, we should draw on the example of Fr. Damien's resolve in answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick," he said.

Click here for more Reuters political coverage.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Chris Helgren (Pope Benedict XVI walks with U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama during their meeting at the Vatican July 10, 2009)

The statement announcing the Nobel Peace Prize for U.S. President Barack Obama says that “his diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population”.

(Photo: Obama at the United Nations, 23Sept 2009/Kevin Lamarque)

Is there actually a set of values and attitudes shared by most people around the world? It would be interesting to know exactly what the Norwegian Nobel Committee meant by this. Are they talking about some vague form of world political consensus or even global ethics? The citation text mentions Obama’s “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons” and his preference multilateral diplomacy, dialogue and negotiations. But none of these efforts has yet borne much fruit.

The citation also mentioned the “hope for the future” it said Obama has given the world. Hope is a powerful force, both in personal and political life. In the Christian tradition, it’s a theological virtue as important as faith and love. And it is a key element of the Obama “yes we can” message.

Do you think this is what they gave him the Peace Prize for?

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

The U.S. “Religious Left” — which has been active at the grassroots level to support President Barack Obama’s drive for health care reform – has now launched a campaign in support his other major domestic initiative: climate change legislation.

Faithful America, a coalition of progressive evangelical, Catholic, mainline Protestant and Jewish groups, unveiled a video on Thursday urging viewers to “TELL CONGRESS: STOP CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS EFFECTS.” The campaign is called Day Six.

You can see the video below:

A climate bill aimed at reducing America’s emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming is being crafted in the U.S. Senate. The House of Representatives earlier this year passed its own version.

The Day Six campaign also asks people to sign an online petition that urges senators to : “… support a climate bill that addresses the root causes of climate change and makes needed investments in vulnerable communities already experiencing its devastating effects.”

The organizers say that: “‘Day Six’ is a reference to the creation story in Genesis, when God made human beings stewards of creation.”

Many left-leaning and liberal groups of faith see a biblical imperative to curb the effects of climate change because poor and developing regions like Africa are seen bearing the brunt of its consequences. 

One the other side, the religious right — a loose network of conservative Christians that is a key Republican Party base — has been at the forefront of conservative efforts to rally public opposition to climate change legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

 Conservative Christian radio stations have spent the summer saying its “cap and trade” provisions are the biggest tax increase in U.S. history.

Which side do you think will have its prayers answered?

(PHOTO: A buffalo skull is pictured in Lake Naivasha, Kenya, the only fresh water ecosystem in the eastern Rift Valley, June 4, 2009, which is drying up due to drought and other factors/ REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya ).  

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has released a useful backgrounder on the role of faith groups in the increasingly bitter and partisan U.S. healthcare debate. You can read it here.

The report focuses on the two large faith-based coalitions that have emerged on opposite sides of the political struggle to overhaul America’s system of healthcare, which is President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

Faith for Health, is a broad coalition of self-described progressive groups that strongly supports Obama’s reform drive. It  includes mainline and evangelical Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews.

The Freedom Federation is a group of mostly conservative Christian organizations — a key Republican Party base — which strongly opposes what many of its activists decry as “Obamacare.” Both groups have taken to the airwaves and undertaken grassroots campaigns.

Healthcare reform is the biggest political show right now in Washington, where faith and politics often mix in ways they don’t elsewhere in the developed world. What do you think? Do you think faith-based groups will make a difference one way or the other on this issue? And which side will have its prayers answered?

(PHOTO: Thousands of demonstrators gather on the plaza near the U.S. Capitol to participate in a “Taxpayer March on DC”, protest against President Barack Obama’s policies including healthcare reform. Faith groups have stirred much of the conservative opposition to the president’s agenda.  September 12, 2009. REUTERS/Mike Theiler)

If you start seeing pictures of the man at the right or hearing his name now and then, here’s why.

On the international Godbeat, it’s never too early to start speculating about who will become the next pope. The current head of the world’s largest church, Pope Benedict, is admirably fit at 82, but facts like that never discourage avid Vatican watchers. “Vaticanistas” look beyond the present pope to find who else stands out in the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Who’s on his way up? Who’s taking on important jobs? Who’s out there publishing books or giving lectures or visiting other cardinals or doing anything else that looks like — perish the thought! – a subtle campaign in an unofficial race whose candidates never throw their birettas into the ring.

(Photo: Cardinal Turkson, 13 April 2005/Max Rossi)

It looks like Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson of Ghana is now firmly in this group known as the papabili, or possible popes, thanks to an important job he’s doing this month. He’s the relator, or secretary general, of the Synod for Africa, a major meeting of African bishops in Rome to discuss the Church’s future on that continent.  Previous cardinals who served in such posts include the future popes John Paul II and Benedict. Like another African cardinal once tipped for the job, Nigeria’s Francis Arinze (now 77 and retired), he counts among his plus points an on-the-job familiarity with Islam. John Allen, the veteran vaticanista for the U.S.-based National Catholic Reporter, headlined his story on Turkson “Say hello to Africa’s next great hope to be pope.”

Coming after the first non-Italian pope in centuries, it was unlikely that the 2005 conclave would take another daring leap and choose a non-European. The next papal election, whenever it comes, could be different. The received wisdom after the last one was that the Latin Americans had the best chance.

But you never know what the coming years will bring. Catholicism is growing in Africa, in contrast to Latin America.  One of Latin America’s best candidates, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, is a player in the current political crisis in his native Honduras and his prospects could depend on how that develops. And you have to wonder if the example of a precedent concerning a world figure outside the Church — the first African-American president, Barack Obama — could exert an indirect influence.  Some Catholics may read that and fire off a comment saying politics has absolutely nothing to do with papal elections. Not directly as in the past, but cardinals don’t all live in Sistine Chapel-like isolation from the rest of the world either. Turkson has strong credentials, as do other papabili, and the advantage of personifying some additional quality — hope? equality? change in continuity? –  could well work in his favour.

(Photo: Cardinals file into Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope, 18 April 2005/Osservatore Romano)

P.S. — For what it’s worth, the Dublin-based bookmaker Paddy Power still has Arinze topping its betting list with odds on who will be the next pope. Turkson is nowhere among the 44 names mentioned (including Bono in last place). Paddy Power took the 2005 conclave so seriously that it sent a man out to Rome to keep up with  the buzz. Will Turkson’s name appear on this list after the Synod for Africa is finished?

UPDATE: At a meeting with journalists in Rome on Monday, Cardinal Turkson was asked about this speculation, Catholic News Service reports. “An African pope? Why not?” he asked. “If by divine providence — because the church belongs to God — God would wish to see a black man as pope, then thanks be to God,” he said.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Public support for abortion rights is ebbing in America while the issue’s importance has fallen on the public agenda, especially for liberal Democrats, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.

In 2007 and 2008, Pew found that supporters of abortion rights outnumbered those saying it should be illegal in most or all cases by a 54 percent to 40 percent margin.

“By contrast, in two major surveys conducted in 2009 among a total sample of more than 5,500 adults, views of abortion are about evenly divided, with 47 percent expressing support for legal abortion and 44 percent expressing opposition,” Pew said.

You can see our full story here and the Pew report here.

What I want to ask readers in this blog is what they think all of this means, especially in light of President Barack Obama’s agenda and other polls which show similar trends.

(PHOTO: Anti-abortion protestor holds sign in front of US Capitol during March for Life in Washington, January 22, 2009/Jonathan Ernst)

In May, we blogged on a Gallup poll that showed “pro-life” Americans (who oppose abortion rights) outnumbering “pro-choice” Americans (who support them) for the first time since the organization began asking that question in 1995. It found 51 percent of Americans referring to themselves as “pro-life” on the issue of abortion versus 42 percent who described themselves as “pro-choice.”

One of the most striking things about the Pew poll is the sharp drop in the percentage of liberal Democrats who regard abortion as a “critical issue” facing the country — to eight percent in August from 34 percent in March 2006. This could suggest that liberal Democrats, focused on the economy and other issues, are far less concerned about the status of abortion rights than they were when George W. Bush was president and the anti-abortion rights Republican Party controlled Congress.

Overall, the percentage of American adults who see it as a critical issue has declined over the same period to 15 percent from 28 percent — in part, no doubt, because of the sour economy and financial crisis.  Even among conservative Republicans, this number has fallen to 26 percent from 35 percent.

But conservative Republicans are less compromising on the issue – 44 percent now say the country needs to find a middle ground on abortion, compared with 56 percent in 2006.  This may be explained in part by conservative Christian activists and talk radio, who have assailed Obama’s support for abortion rights since his first day in office.

(PHOTO: U.S. President Barack Obama address at the commencement ceremonies at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, May 17, 2009, angered some conservative Catholics opposed to abortion rights/John Gress)

Among other things, they accuse Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress of harboring a secret agenda to expand abortion by concealing provisions that would free federal funds for the procedure in the healthcare bills working their way through congress — an allegation denied by the president and his supporters.

Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants — a key Republican base — remain the staunchest opponents of abortion rights, with 64 percent saying they favor making abortion more difficult. Among U.S. Catholics only 44 percent held this view with 47 percent opposed to it. Many conservative Catholics are staunch — and almost single-minded in some cases — in their opposition to abortion rights but the flock is hardly united on the issue.

Where there does seem to be room for middle ground on this highly-charged issue is on the need to reduce the number of abortions in America, which is a goal Obama has endorsed.   Sixty-five percent of Americans think it would be good to reduce the number of abortions compared to 59 percent in 2005.

It all raises a number of interesting questions. A few months ago I interviewed Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. He said at the time (this was a few weeks after the Gallup poll mentioned above) that the “pro-life movement was winning the hearts and minds of America.”

Do you think this is true? Or is much of the swelling opposition to abortion rights at the moment related to wider conservative views about Obama and so perhaps near its peak? And could it begin to rebound as a priority issue with the wider public if recession ends?

It is also worth asking if liberal Democrats will become more engaged on the issue if, say, they are worried about losing the White House in 2012, and with it a president who would fill vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court with justices supportive of abortion rights. For many on both sides, the Supreme Court is the big prize that is won through the White House. Would the prospect of “President Sarah Palin” galvanise both party’s bases on the issue?

U.S. conservative Christians, a key base for the out-of-power Republican Party, gathered in Washington on Friday to rally the faithful against President Barack Obama’s agenda, including his top domestic priority of healthcare reform.

Obama’s falling poll numbers and what they depict as his ultra-liberal views on abortion rights, healthcare and climate change are galvanizing a group that could prove vital to Republican prospects of taking back control of Congress in the 2010 congressional elections or the White House in 2012.

Conservative activists see exploitable opportunities in Obama’s policies and performance that also can stir more centrist voters, such as suspicions of “big government” and the almost uniquely American skepticism of global warming that prevails in much of the heartland.

You can read the whole story here.

(PHOTO: President Barack Obama holds a rally on health insurance reform at the Comcast Center at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, September 17, 2009. REUTERS/Larry Downing)

The heated debate over United States health care reform revolves around practical issues like its expected costs or the government-run “public option.” But when President Barack Obama addressed Congress on the issue, he quoted a letter from the late Senator Ted Kennedy saying: “What we face is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”

(Photo: President Obama addressing Congress, 9 Sept 2009/Jason Reed)

Religious leaders and politicians supporting health care reform sometimes frame the issue in moral terms. But the term “moral” rarely pops up in the Washington debate and — apart from the Kennedy quote — it didn’t figure in Obama’s speech either. The president did discuss the issue of character, which is a moral term, and used the word often enough for it to appear in the Wordle web cloud below. But he avoided repeating what might be considered a religiously loaded word in a crucial political speech.

What do you think?

The percentage of Americans who believe Islam encourages violence has declined and very basic knowledge about the faith has shown modest increases, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Thirty-eight percent of those polled believed Islam was more likely than other faiths to encourage violence, down from the 45 percent who held this view two years earlier.

Most Americans — 58 percent – also believe Muslims are discriminated against. In fact, they see them as a group second only to gays and lesbians in terms of the discrimination they face. These findings suggest unexpected empathy for a community whose leaders often claim they are regarded with suspicion and hostility.

The survey also reports that Americans are generally learning more about Islam and that increasing familiarity with the religion correlates with a decline in belief that Islam promotes violence.

The poll’s findings, released ahead of the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, come against the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s attempts to reach out to the Islamic world and eroding public support for the war in Muslim Afghanistan as U.S. combat deaths there rise to record levels.

You can see a link to the survey here and you can see our report here.