Faith is not a dirty word

Two weeks ago, on the eve of the election, I told you that I knew who would win the election and why — without, of course, telling you either thing. A rage of emails — for that is the proper collective noun, as in a gaggle of geese — demands to know whether I was right. The answers are sort of, and yes. I thought President Bush would win by five million votes, and that he would squeak by in Pennsylvania. He won by only three million, and he lost Pennsylvania. As to the "why?" I was right on. It was the values thing, stupid.

Liberal punditry has belatedly discovered "values" in a big way, though of course nationally the definition of "values" remains a little fuzzy. If anybody knows what they are it should be Princeton pundits. We have a very opulent and prominent Center for Values, after all. And that's not just any old animal, vegetable or mineral values, but straight-up Human Values. The founder of the center, our former provost, pretty clearly thought that human values belonged principally to the realm of political philosophy, but a very large number of Americans find their "values" in religious tradition, religious experience and religious practice. This rather obvious fact has at last dawned on the pundits, and it has already precipitated an internecine skirmish in the New York Times between Princeton Titans of the Left. Prof. Krugman the columnist has astonished Prof. Singer, the Human-Valuer-in-chief, by saying that the Democrats better start taking Americans' "faith" seriously. "Faith" is belief unsupported by evidence, says Singer. So "Why should Democrats value that?"

One reason that comes to mind is that they might want to win an election again sometime. I thought part of being a politician was occasionally being politic. It is possible that Terry McAuliffe and his culturally elite helpers might have been able to offend the sensibilities of religious Americans more effectively, but they would have had to put in a lot of overtime hours. Not many Christians make a deep study of the religious commitments of political candidates, but neither do they respond warmly to the vocabulary of scorn and contempt, occasionally moderating to mere condescension, poured out upon "evangelicals" and the "religious right." Perhaps Henri Quatre went too far. Judging that "Paris is worth a mass," he flipped from Geneva to flop in Rome. But if Massachusetts liberals can don camo to be photographed atop tank turrets (Dukakis) or brandishing their fowling pieces (Kerry), surely they can stomach a "prayer breakfast" with the town fathers of Shreveport?

Millions of Christians who, like me, did not vote for Bush know that prayer matters. My first dim awareness of a great political divide in our country began with the "school prayer" controversy. Christians pray all the time. Since we note that we share the habit with the vast majority of humankind through recorded history, we do not regard praying as eccentric. Perhaps it is the people who do not pray who are the eccentrics? Prayer is for us like scratching an itch, like masticating our food, like sex — a very natural response to a felt desire.

There was a time when prominent Democrats were aware of this. I remember during the great war of my infant years being summoned by my grandmother to the radio to join Franklin Roosevelt as he led the nation in reciting the "Our Father"! He would have been astonished to learn that he was violating the constitutional prohibition of an "establishment of religion." English was his mother tongue, and Anglicanism his mode of religious expression. He knew that the constitutional framers meant that there would be in America no church established by law, as his own church was and is established by law in Britain. They didn't mean that nobody was supposed to pray within 50 feet of a public building. He had also read the Declaration of Independence, which began by deriving "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" — each a "value" if ever I saw one — not from John Locke and not from any Ivy League Center for Anything, but from God. Without for a moment impugning Roosevelt's sincerity, he probably knew he was making an effective political move.

In my generation, high school athletes in small towns throughout the Red States habitually prepared for the big game with a 20-second team prayer. Most of us, I think, silently counted to 20. It was a perfectly perfunctory exercise in civil religion. Like so much else that is perfunctory, it had deep cultural significance that Democrats might ponder. This friendly advice is directed to the losers of the recent election. Impartial as always, I shall next week offer advice to the winners. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. His column appears on Mondays. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu.