Are Politicians Hiding Behind Terms Like ‘Faith Heritage’ to Avoid Stigma?

According to Atty.-Gen.-in-waiting John Ashcroft, no one need worry that his past actions or present beliefs will interfere with his professional integrity. If, he says, his personal convictions should come into conflict with, say, the Constitution, the Constitution need not fear because of what Ashcroft calls his “faith heritage, which requires me to enforce the law.”

While many of us were relieved to hear something would require the attorney general to uphold the law, I cannot help but wonder, what in the world is a “faith heritage”? Is it a magazine, like American Heritage? Is it a lovely pop singer, like Faith Hill? Is it a secret power you are born with, like a Jedi Knight with whom the Force is very strong?

No, one must assume that “faith heritage” is yet another entry on a growing list of terms people use when they don’t want to say “religion.” Terms like “faith-based organization” or “spirituality-based programs.” Both of these were used with alarming regularity during the presidential campaigns, in discussions about potential providers of services such as child care and education. Some of us found this New Age vagueness fairly irritating. After all, Alcoholics Anonymous is a spirituality-based program, but no one expects it to provide after-school care for the middle grades.

Clearly what the candidates and others mean when they use these terms is “religious organizations,” i.e. churches, synagogues, mosques, temples . . . congregations who join together to worship a god, or gods, of their own understanding.

But lately, many people have been reluctant to use “religion,” a force that has shaped human experience as surely as politics, economics and sex. Government officials have, of course, a special reason for avoiding the R-word, as it so often leads to the C-word--that would be church--from which the state is officially separated, pending divorce. According to social critic Thomas Frank, author of “One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy” (Doubleday, 2000), which argues that the most powerful force in American life is consumerism, American politicians generally prefer an overwrought euphemism when a simple term will do.

“ ‘Faith-based’ is somewhat nebulous, yet noble too,” he says. “I mean we all want to be faithful, don’t we? Whereas if you say ‘religious,’ well, then people get suspicious. Like, is he against dancing or what?” Smaller splinter sects, Frank says, also might prefer dubbing theirs a “faith heritage” in an effort to legitimize their brand of religion. “You really do want to ask, is this one of those fundamentalist outfits or is this some group we’ve actually heard of, like the Methodists or the Lutherans?”

Ashcroft is a Pentecostal Christian, a term that, according to the Webster’s New World dictionary, designates “various Protestant fundamentalist sects often stressing direct inspiration by the Holy Spirit.” Ashcroft neither dances nor drinks alcohol.

Religion has become a paradox for the American electorate, says David Blankenhorn, director of the New York-based Institute for American Values. While we certainly don’t seem to want a candidate who is openly agnostic or atheist, neither do we want one who identifies first and foremost as a religious person. John F. Kennedy went to great lengths to assure the public that his religion would not interfere with his decision making, as did vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman.

“We expect a lot of gratuitous, fairly meaningless piety from our leaders,” Blankenhorn says, “which is why they’re always asking God to bless us and the country.” But to identify as a strongly religious person, he adds, can mean political suicide, especially for Christians. The conservative Christian movement that blossomed during the Reagan and Bush administrations increased the public’s discomfort--Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell and others quickly became symbols of intolerance and hypocrisy for many Americans.

“People know that one way to hurt someone now is to associate them with the religious right,” says Blankenhorn. “It’s almost as bad as calling someone a racist.”

Blankenhorn believes that it is unfair to characterize Ashcroft as a member of the religious right, the vernacular use of which, he says, denotes an evangelical tradition.

“What he is, like I am, is a man of prayer, a believing Christian,” says Blankenhorn, who is Presbyterian.

Then why the euphemisms?

“I think it’s an obfuscation,” says Ruth Rosen, a professor of history at UC Davis and author of “The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America” (Penguin Books, 2000). “When people use ‘faith-based,’ they rarely mean Buddhists or Hindus or even Jews and Catholics. They’re talking about Christian groups, mostly evangelical. Ashcroft, I think, believes that this is Christian nation that should live by very specific Christian precepts.”

In other venues, Ashcroft has been anything but vague about his religious convictions. When speaking at the conservative Christian Bob Jones University in 1999, Ashcroft told students that America was founded on the belief that we “have no king but Jesus.”

Rosen finds Ashcroft’s use of the term “faith heritage” unsettling for yet another reason--the only other use of the word “heritage” she has heard lately, she says, is during talk of supporting the “heritage of the Confederacy.”

Politicians are not the only people using “faith-based” or “spiritually-motivated.” More and more Americans, says Blankenhorn, particularly college-age and younger, identify themselves specifically as “spiritual, not religious.”

“ ‘Spiritual’ is softer and more inclusive,” Blankenhorn says, “whereas ‘religious’ seems formal, something you get taught, more of a doctrine. ‘Spiritual’ is about the quest, ‘religion’ implies there is an answer.”

Rosen points out that during the ‘60s and ‘70s, most religions suffered from the general rejection of authority. The human potential movement of the ‘70s made it acceptable for people to adopt a cafeteria-style religious life, picking and choosing from traditional religious precepts.

“Religions failed a lot of people,” Rosen says. “And a whole generation grew up unattached to organized faiths. Many people, including myself, find certain things about many religions inspiring, though not one single religion.”

In an attempt to mollify the masses, Blankenhorn says, many Christians have adopted buzz words in order to convey tolerance.

“It’s a manner of distancing yourself,” he says. “Twenty years ago, people used to say things like, ‘I happen to be Catholic,’ or ‘I happen to be Jewish.’ Like it was something that occurred outside of themselves rather than something that defined them. A term like ‘faith heritage’ or ‘faith-based’ does the same thing; it sounds honorable but it provides a little distance.”

And, he says, we better get used to it. Blankenhorn has it on good authority that “an office of faith-based something or other” will occupy space in the White House.

“Bush has constantly said he wants to get faith-based--excuse me, religious--organizations involved in solving the problems of the poor,” he says, adding that legislation sponsored by none other than Ashcroft has made it easier for religious groups to get federal funding for things like day care. “And no doubt, there will be a huge outcry about separation of church and state, and that will keep us all busy for quite a while.”