By Rich Barlow, 6/19/2004

Gay marriage. Denying Communion to Catholic politicians who support legalized abortion. The predilection of regular church-goers to vote Republican. Whether politics is local or national, this campaign year it is thick with talk of religion and its influence on voting. Much of this troubles Diana L. Eck, director of Harvard's Pluralism Project, which involves students and professors in researching religious diversity.

At a Washington, D.C., panel discussion in March, Eck, a Methodist, cautioned John F. Kerry and George W. Bush to be careful about using religious pitches in their rhetoric.

Eck, who teaches comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard, is especially interested in the religious diversity added to America from Muslim and Sikh immigrants. Her role model is John F. Kennedy, who became the first Catholic president after pledging that he would not be blindly subservient to the Vatican.

Have President Bush and Senator Kerry heeded your admonition to be careful with religion?

I think both of them have been insufficiently acknowledging of the importance of religious diversity for America. There has not been a reaching out to the Muslims and Sikhs and others -- who are very actively engaged, by the way, in voter registration -- and [there's] a sense that when they're talking about religion, they're really talking about Christians and maybe Jews. In the heat of a campaign, one is thinking in terms of large groups of voters, and 75 percent of Americans identify as Christians. 9/11 spurred [Bush] to make clear that this is a country where Muslims and Sikhs need to live in freedom. But what has happened post-9/11 has been the tremendous impact of the Patriot Act on Muslim Americans, and a sense of having been profiled in ways they've found insulting and unconstitutional. The other thing is the sense that President Bush has really cultivated Christian language and surrounded himself with evangelical Christian voices.

That's crossing a line?

Not only crossing a line from what might be civically appropriate, but from the standpoint of Americans who do not share that particular religious disposition. It's important for candidates and leaders to share their values, and at the same time to recognize that this is a country in which majority rule by religion has explicitly been excluded from our Constitution.

Some Catholic bishops have said Kerry should not receive Communion. And the Massachusetts bishops are asking Catholics to ''share their profound disappointment" with legislators who supported gay marriage.

I think they have crossed a line. That doesn't mean the issues shouldn't be debated. But when the institutional church reaches into the parishes with a strong suggestion that parishioners should get [lawmakers who supported gay marriage] out of office -- that is the message, even though it's couched in diplomatic ways -- I think a line has been crossed. It has to do with the role of any religious institution in relation to our public institutions. [If churches that support gay marriage did the same], that would have been crossing a line as well.

Martin Luther King led the movement for civil rights and was clear he was doing this out of religious conviction. Could a bishop or evangelical say they are doing exactly what King did?

The difference is that King was basing his views not only on his Christian faith, but also on the Constitution and the promise of equality. That was something on which people could get on board, whether or not they were involved with his particular church.

What we have been seeing is the deliberate use of the institutional church for party politics. Communion [for] Kerry would be a perfect example. This drags up the issues that stimulated anti-Catholicism in the 19th century, the sense that a good Catholic couldn't be a good American because they didn't have freedom of conscience. A public leader is elected to represent not just the people of a single church, but the people of many churches and the people who voted for that person who don't consider themselves religious. The idea that a church should say a public figure doesn't represent all of our doctrines is not what America is about.

Conservative commentators say African-American ministers have been endorsing Democratic candidates from the pulpit in some churches. That would violate your principle?

Absolutely, and the American Civil Liberties Union has taken some of those people to task.

Are you pessimistic that we are headed for an era of divisiveness and intolerance?

I am more worried than ever before. DeToqueville said it's the most amazing thing: Here is this country that has uncoupled religion from the support of the state, and religion seems to be more lively and even influential. The big gamble of America, and it's one that worked, is that the free exercise and non-establishment of religion has been the key to effective religious life.

We have been tinkering with that recipe in a major way, a way I fear could begin to undo the very promise of America as the place we might model what an energetic, multi-religious society is like.

Rich Barlow can be reached by e-mail at rbarlow.81@alum.dartmouth.org.

This story ran on page B2 of the Boston Globe on 6/19/2004.
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