Another Election Brings Another Debate Over Religion and Politics : Ideologies: Reaction from clergy is mixed over President Bush’s remark that Democrats left out ‘G-O-D’ from platform.

The mostly conservative religious-political rallies held in Dallas during presidential election years produced repercussions in the past, and the 1992 edition was no exception.

This time, the mine was laid in President Bush’s address when he said the Democratic “platform left out three simple letters--G-O-D. My party’s platform is different.”

The remark stirred loud applause from about 5,000 who assembled there Aug. 22. But since then, other religious leaders have complained that implying party partisanship to God was blasphemy. That objection also drew protests.

It also raised a question, which a key defender of Bush’s remarks, religious-political impresario Ed McAteer, couldn’t answer: Just what specifically did the Republican platform say about God? A check shows the reference turns up in this passage:

“We also advocate recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools as a reminder of the principles that sustain us as one nation under God.”

Clergy critics of Bush’s remark were sharply disputed by McAteer, who heads a public issues group, Religious Roundtable, which sponsored the Dallas meeting.

McAteer also claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton was the one who had played loose with religion by misquoting Scripture at the Democratic Convention.

McAteer, 66, a Southern Baptist and retired businessman who had helped rally the religious right to politics in 1980, said in a telephone interview from his Memphis, Tenn., office:

“My Bible dictionary says blasphemy is to speak lightly or carelessly of God, and I assure you George Bush did not speak lightly or carelessly of God.”

Those critical clergy, McAteer said, “apparently don’t know what blasphemy is or don’t have the facts. Bush merely said the Democratic platform did not contain the word God. It was a plain statement of fact.

“He was speaking in the tradition of Lincoln and Washington, unashamed to use the word God. “

The evangelical crowd loved it, chanting “four more years,” and giving Bush nine standing ovations, McAteer said.

Moreover, he said Clinton, a fellow Southern Baptist, had twisted Scripture in telling the Democratic convention: “As Scripture says, our eyes have not yet seen, nor our ears heard, nor our minds imagined, what we can build.”

McAteer noted that the passage from First Corinthians 2:9, instead of ending with the phrase, “what we can build,” says “what God has prepared for those who love him.” The substitution, McAteer said, was “real blasphemy.”

Although various biblical allusions, prayers and phrases such as “God bless you” marked both conventions, the complaint from some clergy was against suggesting a partisan label for God.

The point was raised by several clergy groups, including National Council of Churches officers and some denominational heads, including the Episcopal Church’s Bishop Edmond Browning, head of Bush’s church.

Although affirming the application of religious values in political affairs, they said “God belongs to no one side” and “it is blasphemy” to use God’s name to claim party superiority.

So went the rumbling sequence from the Dallas event, which produced some controversy in previous years.

In 1980, at the first National Affairs Briefing in Dallas, the Rev. Bailey Smith, then president of the Southern Baptist Convention, touched off outcries from Jewish and many Christian leaders by saying:

“God Almighty does not hear the prayers of a Jew.”

At that first Dallas gathering mainly of religious conservatives, which also was organized and chaired by McAteer, Ronald Reagan in his bid for the presidency, made this much-remembered remark:

“I know you can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.”

Linking himself with the religious right had lasting impact, stirring increasing political involvement of a religious sector that previously had shunned such activity.

That was “the beginning of the love affair” between the religious right and the conservative wing of the Republican Party, says the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who at the time was launching his since-disbanded Moral Majority.

McAteer, a key figure in that movement and described as “the man behind the scenes who put together the religious right,” called a side session this year in Dallas to form an evangelicals for Bush campaign organization.

But he avoided an official role in the new Evangelical Leaders and Laymen for Bush/Quayle ‘92, saying that as head of Religious Roundtable, he officially remains nonpartisan, though personally backing Bush.

“George Bush has got to have the evangelical, pro-family, Southern Baptist vote to win,” McAteer said, but Clinton and running mate Sen. Al Gore may succeed without it, even though both are Southern Baptists.