Religion politics

Gary Rosen has an article in the New York Times about the possibility that Democrats may be narrowing the so-called religion gap between them and the Republicans. He uses the example of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama the two top Democratic contenders for 2008 and Rudy Giuliani and John McCain the two Republicans one to show that the first two are more "religious" or rather looked more at ease with their religious faith than the last two. Sugary excerpt:

Strange, no? It’s not hard to envision Clinton and Obama among the faithful. She is a lifelong Methodist and self-described “praying person,” and he belongs to a church where some years ago he found himself (in his own words) “kneeling beneath that cross” in submission “to His will.” Both slip easily into the earnest, humble-of-the-earth mode of liberal God talk.

But McCain and Giuliani? You somehow imagine them fidgeting during the hymns and checking their watches. The senator is an Episcopalian, the former mayor a Catholic, but neither man, you have to think, would be caught dead in a Bible-study group or could possibly declare, à la George W. Bush, that his favorite philosopher is “Christ, because he changed my heart.” In the piety primary, the Democrats win hands down.

However, the problem is that there is no such thing as the piety primary for neither Hillary nor Obama will ever be able to gain favors from religious voters because the Democratic Party to them is the party of secularism, which is trying to “dechristianize” America. Most “religious voters” will find a way to vote for the Republican candidate for President no matter how different he is from them because they will never believe that a Hillary or an Obama is one of them. Religion politics is not about faith and beliefs; it is about clan and tribalism.