This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 18, 2012 - The Rev. Richard Quirk, a political science professor at Saint Louis University, was 15 when the Second Vatican Council opened 50 years ago. The "Catholic world was filled with hope,” remembered Quirk, who then invited college students to reimagine their faith as a way of lifting up their community and to reimagine that community with wisdom, mercy and justice.
“Now we sit around and don’t want to discuss the real differences in this election, which are as wide as (the philosophies) of Ayn Rand and Dorothy Day,” he said.
Quirk was one of three scholars who addressed about 85 people -- students, faculty and others from the Jewish and Catholic communities -- Wednesday evening at a symposium, “On Religion and Civil Engagement," sponsored by the university and the Michael and Barbara Newmark Institute of Human Relations at the Jewish Community Relations Council.
Quirk argued that since the founding of the Democratic Party, Catholics' interest in civic improvement, civil rights, labor rights and other social justice issues made most Catholics consider themselves part of that party.
That changed when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in the 1973 case of Roe vs. Wade case. The abortion issue drove Catholic leaders into alliances with evangelical Christians to fight to outlaw abortion and, more recently, gay marriage, Quirk said. Now, at least on those issues, Catholics seem to be in lock step with Republicans.
With the smile of a magician about to pull of a “mind-reading” trick, David Campbell, a Notre Dame political science professor, asked audience members to raise their hands if they said grace before meals. More than one-third did. Across denominations and faiths, those who said they prayed grace before meals tend to vote Republican, he observed. Those less inclined vote Democrat. That conclusion is part of his 2010 book “American Grace," which he wrote with Robert D. Putnam a public policy professor at Harvard University.
Campbell calls the disparity the “grace gap. Of those who daily say grace before meals, 51 percent are Republican, and 40 percent are Democratic. Of those who never say grace, 22 percent are Republican, and 70 percent are Democrats. Only about 9 percent of independents say daily grace.
Religiosity and support for the Republican Party are bound together, said Campbell. Democrats predominate among those who are not affiliated with any faith. One big exception: Black Protestants are the most religious group Campbell studied, but they are not Republicans.
He finds that many Americans commentators seem to believe that American's religious leaders have been part of politics since the country’s founding. But, it is much louder today.
Campbell also discussed a recent poll by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life that showed that one in five U.S. adults are not affiliated with any religious group. The biggest increase is among those under 25. The poll, he says, does not mean that young people will remain unaffiliated.
He thinks that there might be retrenchment. "There might be an aftershock to the Nones," Campbell said. To draw in younger Americans dissatisfied with organized religion because it is political, new congregations would be "more spiritual" and avoid opposing gay marriage. That's something so-called emerging churches have done effectively, he said.
Those churches aim to attract those in their 20s and 30s. They replace stained glass with video screens and somber sermons with irreverent banter. Rick Warren is a national leader of the movement though he is socially conservative himself.
"Religious leaders should avoid being captured by one political party or the other,” Campbell said.
Julie Hanlon Rubio, a SLU theology professor, said that she had never seen such agitated division among theologians until this year when the differences between the two Catholic vice-presidential candidates have come up for discussion. She fears friendships not just among theologians but among Catholic friends may not heal over the words that have been spoken.
Her theologian friends here and across the country did agree in passionate disapproval of something Vice President Joe Biden said about his faith's influence on his votes. Biden said he opposes abortion but that he does not want to impose his faith on others.
“All (theologians) think a person’s faith should shape their ethical principles," Hanlon Rubio said. "All theologians claim the right to talk about abortion, make a religious argument.”
Hanlon Rubio is working on a book about finding common ground between liberal and conservative Catholics. This campaign has made her wonder if she should abandon the book project. So many Catholics can’t civilly talk about the difference stances of the two Catholics, Biden and Paul Ryan, she said.
Across religions, Campbell said Americans have become more religiously tolerant. Fewer think their faith is the only way to get to heaven. Even those who do on paper are influenced in life by what he calls the "Aunt Susan" effect. She's a good woman who makes casseroles for the needy or sick, but she "worships at a different altar," he said.
"Your theology says she won't get to heaven, but your experience says she will," he said. "Almost every American know an Aunt Susan."
One reason is the growth of interreligious marriage. Roughly half of all married Americans are married to someone who came from a different religious tradition, Campbell said.
He gave his audience a feel-good moment when he discussed "the warmth factor" Americans feel for people of other faiths. Jews and Catholics were at the top of the groups that Americans "feel warmest" about with mainline Protestants just a hair behind.
Fifty years ago Jews and Catholics would not have been at the top. he said. In this year when a Mormon is a candidate for president and another Mormon is a Democratic Party -- Senate Majority leader Harry Reid -- the warmth for Mormons is still chilly, just above Buddhists and Muslims.