politics

This was an interesting find today. Kevin Drum, over at his blog on Mother Jones, offers us this graph, adapted from a post on a website called Secular Right, showing the frequency of prayer plotted against strength of partisanship:

Drum comments:

The data is from the General Social Survey. Apparently, strong political partisans also tend to pray a lot. Weak partisans and independents, not so much. The effect is roughly the same if you confine the analysis to whites only.

Why? Is it just a reflection that some people are strong believers and others aren’t, and this temperamental cast applies to everything they believe in? Or is it something else? Speculate away!

Its not directly related to this point, but its been frequently reported that there is a strong correlation between “weekly church goers” and republican affiliation, but I’ve long suspected (and have seen some evidence for the notion that) if one looked at “not-quite-weekly church goers” the numbers even out much more. The data that form the basis of this graph seem to bear out the notion that its not right to correlate faith with a particular partisan affiliation. But what does it mean that those with comparitively weaker partisan affiliation seem to report praying less?

I’m not sure…

Certainly, one aspect of my longing for a new administration has been my sense that we need to account for our use of torture (or “enhanced interrogation techniques”) in the Global War On Terror (GWOT). I blogged about my concerns about torture extensively, including its incompatability with Christian Ethics, its lack of utility as a tool for either protecting the homeland or prosecuting the GWOT, and the effects it has had on our relationship with other countries. More vital than our military might is the force of our ideas, and the hypocracy and moral injustice that our use of torture requires evicerates any standing we once had to be a “beacon of light for the world.” If that is something we think our nation ought to aspire toward, then the use of torture is simply incompatable (whatever else you want to say about the fact that Christian thought cannot theologically allow it, or the utter foolishness on relying on torture-derived information in a practical sense).

And so I am well pleased to read Josh Orton this morning, summarizing a portion of Obama’s interview on 60 Mintues last night pertaining to torture. Orton draws from this Think Progress report, which cites this relevant portion of the interview:

CBS: There are a number of different things you can do early on pertaining to executive orders.

OBAMA: Right.

CBS: One of them is to shut down Guantanamo Bay. Another is to change interrogation methods that are used by U.S. troops. Are those things that you plan to take early action on?

OBAMA: Yes. I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.

(emphasis in original at Think Progress)

And the video is also available on you tube:

Whatever your thoughts are on the election of Barack Obama to be our next president, I hope you can see this as a major advance, should Obama follow through with this, in America’s standing around the world. And even if it didn’t lead to that, it would be the right thing to do. Reconciliation can come, but it must follow a formal end to a policy that led us down that dark tunnel in the first place.

On prayer and partisan identity…

Hope for a Renewed Moral Vision…