Religious rhetoric on the campaign trail: Democrats talk faith

Published: 2004-01-09

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Maybe the Democratic candidates for president are paying attention to those opinion polls that say voters genuinely want to know about politicians' religious beliefs. In the last few weeks, there's been a lot of talk about God and religion coming from the major contenders for the Democratic nomination. Numerous major daily newspapers have recently run prominent stories about the candidates' religious influences. It's even come up in the context of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's explanation of why he supported the state's civil unions law and in a National Public Radio debate among six of the candidates. In that Jan. 6 debate, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman said that too often members of his own party "feel uncomfortable talking about faith or try to exclude faith or expressions of it from the public square." Lieberman, who as Al Gore's running mate in 2000 became the first Jew to be part of a major national party's presidential ticket, warned that because "religion matters to people ... we've got to talk about it. Otherwise the Republicans will convince people they've got some sort of a monopoly on values and faith."

Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .