In this thread there is a link to the text of a speech written for President Nixon in the event that the two Apollo 11 astronauts who landed on the moon were unable to get back to the command module, and consequently ended up dying on the moon.
I didn’t want to hijack the thread, so I started this one to express my amazement at the complete lack of religious sentiments in a speech where it would certainly have been justified, from a Republican president yet.
In a time when politicians of all parties invoke God when they’re dedicating sewage-pumping stations, the speech is a clear example how much public religious declarations have become a part of civic life in the last few decades.
I think this trend has its roots in Jimmy Carter’s election – shortly after the death of Gerald Ford, it came out that he refused the advice of campaign handlers who recommended that he talk about his religious faith more in the 1976 campaign. Ford was apparently a more religious man than most people knew, but he preferred to keep his faith private. The trend Carter started has been escalating ever since – can you imagine a candidate today of either party deciding as Ford did in 1976?
I should clarify: I’m an atheist, but some of the people I most admire are/were sincerely religious. But I do suspect many overt displays of faith as ‘PR’ moves by insincerely religious people, and my suspicions have been proven right sometimes.
I don’t know anything about McCain or Hillary’s beliefs.
I know Obama goes to a “black church” (i.e. some Christian denomination)
I know Giuliani is Catholic, but that’s only because his last name is Giuliani.
I don’t know anything about Bush’s religious beliefs (just that he’s Christian of some sort and believes abortion is wrong and “faith-based charities” are good).
I don’t know anything about Bill Clinton or Bush I’s religious beliefs.
You’re parsing it wrong. He’s saying that during the '76 campaign, Carter gained an edge over Ford by talking about his religious faith, while Ford preferred to keep his faith private.
From an outsider looking in perspective, I was astonished when I started frequenting these boards at how much US Americans talk about religion. It seemed like all of you knew the religion of everyone you know, including doctors, dentists, and politicians. Hearing about how people try to force religion on other people in any situation (work, home, dentist’s office, whatever) was also shocking to me. I don’t know the religion of any people in my life other than my family and close friends; why on earth should I know the religion of my politicians or doctors? Why on earth would people make religious declarations all the time?
Americans see society as being threated by the evil forces of secularism. So we seek reassurances that the people around us aren’t in league with “them”.
The only reason you hear complaints about inappropriate religious witnessing is because it doesn’t happen regularly. You just hear the complaints, not the 9,999,999 times someone doesn’t experience inappropriate religious witnessing.
Trust me, it’s like this for the majority of Americans as well. The feeling that religion is “everywhere” in America is a fantasy of the paranoid, the religious and the anti-religious.
I wouldn’t say it’s “everywhere”, but I stand by my assertion that public declarations of faith from public officials are more common now than a few decades ago.
And I suspect this has something to do with his difficulties getting the approval of social conservatives until recently (although there are other reasons as well, e.g., immigration, McCain-Feingold and his calling religious-right leaders “agents of intolerance”).
I’m a religious person who out of respect for both religion and politics, believes in the separation of church and state.
I too am startled to realize how slowly but surely this has creeped up to our present state of affairs, where every presidential candidate has to make religious professions to get ahead, and where one candidate, Romney, had to defend his religious faith, something that was nobody’s business.
I pity the highly moral and ethical atheist who wants to run for public office.
I don’t know what the rest of the U.S. is like but in South Carolina you cannot occupy a political office unless you profess a belief in God. So maybe this has something to do with it ( the OP that is).
I don’t agree with the OP’s premise. I don’t think that there was any question that President Ford was correctly known as a religious man, and I don’t think President Carter won the election because Carter was overtly religious and Ford was not.
Ford graciously asked for prayers at his own inauguration:
Reading through FDR’s fireside chats shows that he spoke openly about religion, asked for prayers, called on God, etc, on a regular basis. Some of these statements are far more openly religious than most modern politicans would dare. I’m no presidential historian, but I assume that speaking openly about religion is not a contemporary trend, though perhaps there was a brief lull in this behavior at certain times in American history.