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In a New York Times poll taken last month, 42 percent of those surveyed said they welcomed candidates discussing the role of religion in their lives. Fifty-three percent said religion should "not be part of a presidential campaign."
By comparison, the pollsters noted, in 1984 only 22 percent of Americans agreed that presidential candidates should discuss the role of religion in their lives, while 75 percent said it should not be a part of a presidential campaign.
Mark Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, said the rising acceptance of religion in campaigns is the expression of a clear social trend. "It is the extent to which the evangelical voice has come back to American national politics, and the expectation since the 1980's that somehow it's a normal thing to talk about religion," he said.
Both Democrats as well as Republicans have made it a practice, and one adopted not just by Christians but by Jews as well, most clearly by Senator Joseph Lieberman.
"It's another piece of evidence about the impact of the religious right,'' Mr. Silk said, "and of a kind of return of an older, almost 19th-century style of public discourse in which religion is much more a matter of common discourse." LAURIE GOODSTEIN | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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VER the past 20 years, religion has elbowed its way decisively to the front of presidential campaigns. Jimmy Carter opened the door wide, with his public profession to being "born again." Ronald Reagan successfully courted evangelical Christians in the campaign while advancing little of their agenda as president. Bill Clinton and Al Gore, both Southern Baptists at odds with their denomination's conservatism, frequently flaunted the importance of their faith. And George W. Bush sold himself in part on the strength of his personal journey from sinner to supplicant.
