Religious Right, Left Meet in Middle

The Rev. Don Argue, a past president of the NAE, is an informal adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who has introduced legislation aimed at reducing the demand for abortions without restricting their availability. Jim Wallis, a left-leaning evangelical whose bestselling book "God's Politics" is a plea for liberals and conservatives to identify common causes, has worked with the staff of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), as well as with Democrats on antipoverty proposals.

Some observers view all this aisle-crossing mainly as political positioning.

"There's a kind of pulling back from religious war," said Mark R. Silk, director of the Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. "But I don't think one should overlook the self-interest of both sides, at this moment, in positioning themselves as willing to compromise and work with the other side."

In last year's presidential election, voters who said they attend church more than once a week favored President Bush over Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) by a ratio of nearly 2 to 1. White evangelicals backed Bush by almost 4 to 1. Occasional (less than weekly) churchgoers tilted narrowly toward Kerry, and secular voters overwhelmingly favored the Democrat, according to exit polls.

Religion was not just a defining issue in the campaign but a divisive one. Some Catholics questioned Kerry's worthiness to receive Holy Communion because of his stand on abortion rights. Church-based activists pushed referendums on same-sex marriage onto 13 state ballots.

Since the election, Democrats on Capitol Hill have tried to demonstrate that their positions are infused by faith; Republicans have sought to show that their moral concerns go beyond abortion and same-sex marriage.

"On the left, they need to show they have a religious bone in their body. On the right, they have to prove their vaunted values are not limited to one or two hot-button issues," Silk said. "So count me a little skeptical about how far this 'crossover' and 'convergence' really goes."

Saperstein, who heads the Religious Action Center, the Washington advocacy arm of the Reform movement in Judaism, said he believes the search for common ground is "both strategic and substantive."

"I think it's genuine and real, this engagement of liberals in trying to cut the number of abortions in this country," he said. "And I think conservatives are sincere when they say, 'I may be against gay marriage, but the demonization of gays and lesbians is deeply troubling to me,' or when they say, 'You can't look at the Bible without seeing the call to care for the poor.' "

Saperstein noted that the phenomenon of strange bedfellows began a decade ago on foreign policy. During the Clinton administration, the rock star Bono, former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and religious leaders across the political spectrum teamed up to champion debt relief for Africa. Since Bush took office, broad religious coalitions have backed U.S. peacemaking efforts in Sudan, funding to combat AIDS and pressure on countries that restrict religious freedom.

What is new, the rabbi said, is the effort to forge such coalitions on domestic issues.

"For 25 years, evangelicals involved in conservative politics and mainline denominations involved in liberal politics really have been adversaries, both in politics and in the free market of ideas, and that continues because we have very different visions of religion in American public life, and very different views of the Constitution, and very different views on some core issues," he said.

"But right now on abortion, poverty, gay issues, the environment, there's a lot of talk about crossing the lines and finding common ground. There are elements of a common vision, but not yet common policy or legislative proposals."

Schenck, who is president of Faith and Action, an evangelical organization on Capitol Hill, said that a willingness to reach across partisan lines is attractive, particularly to young people. "I think evangelicals are awakening to the vulnerability to being used in a political way. I hear a lot of people talking about that, about not being owned by a political party," he said.

Schenck outlined his limits: "There is no room for compromise on the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of marriage and the public acknowledgement of God." But he said that when he preaches at the Creation Festival, a four-day Christian music event in Mount Union, Pa., he will say that the Bible forbids homosexual acts but that evangelicals are wrong to insist that sexual orientation is a matter of choice.

"As far as affirming that there may be people in our midst who have this as their nature, that will be radical within evangelical circles, because we want to see this purely as an act of will, like breaking and entering," he said. "And it just isn't that. It is so much more complex. If young people hear Christian leaders like me say that, I think they'll be interested in hearing what more we have to say."