Howard Dean, bike paths, and religion

There appears to be a gathering storm on Howard Dean’s religion, and how he’ll talk about it in the upcoming Presidential election. Events seem to have happened as follows:

1. Howard Dean hasn’t particularly talked much about religion, other than saying that voters in the South are being divided by the Republicans, ever since Nixon, on guns, God and gays, and that they should consider what they’ve got out of voting Republican for the last 20 years.
2. The New Republic says Howard Dean has a religion problem: he’s way too secular, he doesn’t talk about religion, ever, and voters - both in the South and in the MidWest - don’t like that. (There’s more to it than that, and it’s worth reading the whole thing, just to understand what Karl Rove is up to.)
3. A few days later, in an interview with the Boston Globe, Howard Dean says he’s a committed believer in Jesus Christ, and will talk about religion more openly in the South, where it’s part of the expected discourse of a presidential candidate, than in the North-East, where people expect religion to be a private matter.
4. Bloggers and pundits alike start jumping on him (via Instapundit), saying he’s pandering to the South, and anyway, how can we trust someone to speak on religion when he switched church because of a bike path?

I believe the accusations of pandering to the South are misplaced; I think, in fact, that Howard Dean is explicitly saying he’s going to talk about religion in the South, ahead of time, to make it very clear that he’s not doing it just to pander to people’s beliefs. Here’s why.

Howard Dean switches church because of a bike path

First of all, let’s clear up that “bike path” meme, which looks likely, if not stopped, to gain the same sort of mendacious currency as “Al Gore invented the Internet” four years ago.

Back in 1980, Howard Dean spearheaded a grassroots campaign to develop the waterfront area of Lake Champlain, then an abandoned railway track, as a bike path, rather than a complex of condominiums and office blocks - to give that disused area of Burlington back to the community. This was his first experience of hands-on - grassroots - politics, and by all accounts he took it seriously. It’s regularly quoted in biographical retrospectives of Howard Dean as the time he stopped just being a doctor and got into community politics, which lead him to the Vermont Assembly, then to successive elections to Lieutenant Governor and Governor. It’s a turning point, and it deserves to be addressed in detail.

The local Episcopal Church joined a law-suit led by neighbouring property owners objecting to the development, citing concerns about privacy and crime. (See the last paragraph of this interview with Rick Sharp and Tom Hudspeth for more on the crime issue.)

In the Boston Globe, Howard Dean explained himself (2/3rds down) as follows:

Churches are institutions that are about doing the work of God on earth, and I didn’t think [opposing the bike path] was very Godlike and thought it was hypocritical of me to be a member of such an institution.

Remember, the Church, when deciding whether to favour a community-spirited bike path, or to object to it on privacy grounds along with a number of other wealthy property owners who were eyeing up the railway track for commercial development, sided with the rich guys. Howard Dean didn’t want to be a member of a church like that, and I can’t say I can blame him.

Incidentally, if you Google for “howard dean bike path”, you get a number of factual commentaries as well as bloggers slagging him off because the bike path wasn’t gay. Hope is perhaps not entirely lost. Although Googling for “Al Gore invented the Internet” produces a slew of debunking stories, so perhaps we shouldn’t rely on Google for our political rumours.

How religious is Howard Dean, anyway?

The New Republic observes, I think rightly, that Howard Dean has gone through a number of religions - baptised Catholic, raised Episcopalian, married a Jew and converted to Congregationalism - and throughout become less and less obviously devout, from going to church every day and twice on Sundays to only rarely attending either Church or Temple. However, these excerpts from the Boston Globe paint a far more complicated story:

“Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind,” Dean said. “He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything . . . He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it.”

[after marrying Judith Steinberg:] “We considered becoming Unitarian as sort of a compromise that wasn’t going to respect either person’s tradition,” Dean said. “But you know, our religions mattered enough that we didn’t really want to change.”

Dean does not attend church regularly, but he said he prays daily.

So, is he going to talk about religion in the South?

Yes; he’s already started, and expect this to be increasingly emphasised if he gets the nomination and isn’t just trying to appeal to committed Democrats. Again from the Boston Globe:

[Dean] pointed to an appearance at an African-American church in Columbia, S.C., as an example of what voters might hear in the future.

There, before nearly 100 parishioners, Dean said in a rhythmic tone notably different from his usual stampede through policy points, “In this house of the Lord, we know that the power rests in God’s hands and in Jesus’s hands for helping us. But the power also is on this, God’s earth – Remember Jesus said, `Render unto God those things that are God’s but unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s,’ " a reference to Jesus’s admonition that the secular and religious remain separate.

Dean continued: “In this political season there is also other power. Not as important or as strong as the power of Jesus but it’s important power in the world of politics and the world of Caesar.”

So, isn’t this just pandering?

No. In fact, the point of the Boston Globe interview is for Dean to say very clearly that he’s not pandering. Again, a few excerpts:

He acknowledged that he was raised in the “Northeast” tradition of not discussing religious beliefs in public, and said he held back in New Hampshire, where that is the practice. But in other areas, such as the South, he said, he would discuss his beliefs more openly.

[…]

Religion was a private matter for Dean growing up. “My father used to tell us how much strength he got from religion, but we didn’t have Bible readings. There are traditions where people do that. We didn’t,” he said. “People in the Northeast don’t talk about their religion. It’s a very personal private matter, and that’s the tradition I was brought up in.”

[…]

Asked whether a presidential candidate could win without talking about religious faith, Dean said, “Dick Nixon and Ronald Reagan never said much about religion. I think it’s important, and you have to respect other people’s religious beliefs and honor them, but you don’t have to pander to them.”

He added, “That’s why I don’t get offended when George Bush or Joe Lieberman talk about their religion . . . I have a feeling it has something to do with them as a human being, and they are entitled to talk about what makes them human.”

I think the overall impression should be very clear: Howard Dean, responding to criticism that he can’t win in the Midwest and the South because he’s too secular, replies that he comes from a social and political tradition where you don’t speak about religion, but that doesn’t mean he’s not religious, and that doesn’t mean he can’t speak about Jesus when he’s with people who want to know what he thinks about religion.

Some might say that he was intending to pull a fast one, but accidentally let slip his strategy. That doesn’t wash - in a campaign meeting, maybe, Howard Dean has been known to speak more loosely than perhaps he would have liked. But in a pre-planned interview with a major newspaper, I find it hard to believe Howard Dean would not have said something he didn’t want to.

As it is, I think we should applaud Howard Dean for explaining why he’s going to speak in a different way to different people in different parts of the country, and why it makes sense to do so. Howard Dean has surprised a lot of people so far in this race, and I think he’s going to do it again. This looks like being a very interesting race.