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Democrats’ Dilemma and The Nation’s By James W. Fowler Ethics News & Views December 1, 2004

Recently I was asked, “What would you suggest to strengthen the Democratic Party in its efforts to reclaim influential leadership and electoral success?” The following is my answer:

The Democrats lost this election precisely because they and their candidates had no convincing way to address matters of religious faith. They were unable to model a public stance that, while not denying religious and cultural pluralism, articulates and models the substance, the values, and disciplines of a public faith. Ethics and just leadership depend upon such a values base.

The Democratic Party needs to reclaim an authentic relationship to religion and faith. Not the fundamentalist version of Christians, Jews or Muslims. And not the version of smug Christian or Jewish economic conservatism that serves only the politics of possessive individualism.

Democrats need to recognize that there can be genuine and deep religious and spiritual faith without its being crammed down the throats of non-believers, or trying to impose it onto public policy. The Republican Party honors the nation’s roots in Biblical faith, but it is caught between an aggressive fundamentalism, on the one hand, and a more subtle “gospel of wealth and exclusion,” on the other. Still, its claiming of faith was a central factor in its victory.

At best, the Democrats articulated only a mute form of what we might call “public faith.” If Democrats are to engage in effective two-party politics, they need to bring this voice into a vigorous public witness.

I believe that the direction Democrats should follow points to a theism that acknowledges God as Creator and Sustainer of creation and of the whole rag-tag multicolored, multi-cultured clan called homo sapiens. Until this election, I had not fully grasped the shallow but prohibitive attitudes to matters of the spirit that make many Democratic leaders choke rather than reveal any sense of what, beyond politics and a thin commitment to justice, their values base may be. I speak of a thin sense of justice in the sense that it does not know or draw upon the philosophical, religious and spiritual groundings that undergird the claim that all people have worth, and that justice is imperative because of our created equality and worth.

Though secularism is widespread in this nation, our founding documents and the values they embody derive from Biblical roots. They acknowledge a Creator that intends justice and mutual respect between persons and groups in this society, and in the world. A genuine reclaiming of those roots, and of the values that grow from them, will be necessary for a restoration of energy and effectiveness and authenticity in our national, state and local political processes.

Ethics rests on a fragile basis if there is no acknowledged source of higher order laws and principles. And that is what religious traditions, at their best, provide.

Dr. James W. Fowler III is the C.H. Candler Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University, director of the University’s Center for Research on Faith and Moral Development, and executive director of Emory's Center for Ethics in Public Policy and the Professions.

© 2000-2004 by James Fowler and the Center for Ethics, Emory University. Some rights reserved.

This commentary is reprinted with permission from the Ethics Center newsletter, “Ethics News and Views.” For more information, visit the Center’s website at: http://www.ethics.emory.edu.