c. 2004 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ When it comes to the Democratic Party’s on-again, off-again search for a message that would appeal to religious voters, any metaphor will do: asleep at the wheel, stumbling in a darkened room, a code-blue emergency.

The Rev. Bob Edgar prefers the Israelites wandering the Sinai Desert.

“Look, it took Moses 40 years to get his people out of the wilderness, and we’ve been in the wilderness for 25 years,” said Edgar, a former congressman who now heads the National Council of Churches. “And we’re not there yet, but we can see the Promised Land.”

As Democrats collect themselves following Sen. John Kerry’s defeat on Tuesday (Nov. 2), many say their biggest challenge will be narrowing the “values gap” that sent many voters into President Bush’s column. It could also signal a policy battle for the heart and soul of the party.

Exit polls indicate that one in five voters listed “moral values” as their most important issue, outpacing terrorism, the Iraq war and the economy. Those voters split for Bush, 79-18 percent, over Kerry.

Political observers, including many Democrats, say the values vacuum is symptomatic of a larger problem for the party: its reluctance _ or inability _ to talk about faith with voters in a meaningful way, especially in Bush-friendly red states.

“Any time a party does better with non-church-going people than with church-going people, you’ve got a problem,” retiring Sen. John Breaux, D-La., told The Washington Post.

Surveying the post-election carnage, Kerry senior adviser Mike McCurry said his attempts to spark a faith-based discussion were on the right track, but clearly did not go far enough.

“It ought to be as easy for a Democrat to meet and socialize with people in a church social hall as it is in a union hall,” said McCurry, a former press secretary for President Bill Clinton.

To their credit, Democrats tried to address the issue in the waning months of the campaign. Kerry, a Catholic with a New England reticence to open displays of religiosity, ended the race challenging Bush from pulpits with scriptural warnings that “faith without works is dead.”

Both the campaign and the Democratic National Committee hired full-time directors of religious outreach and recruited progressive faith leaders as surrogates, but many said the efforts were too little, too late.

“We’ve got a great set of programs that speak to issues that are important to people of faith, but we don’t always talk about those issues and translate them into values terms,” said Melody Barnes, a senior fellow at Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

“The dots have to be connected for people.”

Experts say the problem is two-fold: one part policy, and one part perception. On policy, conservatives say the Democrats simply did not have a platform that appealed to church-going voters who were galvanized by gay marriage, abortion and faith in the public square.

“On all three issues, the Democratic Party comes up short,” said the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals. “And its candidates come up short. There’s just no escaping that reality.”

Democrats say there is little wiggle room to change policy on, say, abortion, which McCurry called a “rock-solid pillar” of the party’s platform. Still, others like the Rev. Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelical who convened the anti-poverty group Call to Renewal, say the party could modify its positions to be more centrist, even though the party may never reach voters who consider hot-button social issues as top priorities.

Strategists say the party must not forsake its core principles, even as it attempts to extend its reach. “You certainly can’t convince people you have strong values if you’re willing to compromise on them,” said Ed Kilgore, policy director for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.

But even if the party remains loyal to its roots, many say it could talk about faith in a way that does not surrender the issue to the GOP, or “God’s Official Party,” as one bumper sticker put it.

A poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life last year found that voters, by a 2-1 ratio, view Republicans as more “friendly” to religion. Centrist Democrats say the party needs to recast “moral issues” to include issues like poverty, homelessness and healthcare. The bottom line, experts say, is that it must include more than sexual morality.

“When you start talking about moral issues, it’s got to be a book that has more than three pages in it,” said the Rev. Jim Forbes, pastor of New York’s Riverside Church.

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Overcoming the values gap isn’t just a red-state problem. Even in states like Maryland and New York, where Kerry won easily, voters who listed values as top-level concerns still went to Bush by 2-1 margins. Strategists concede they have an uphill fight.

The party is also playing catch-up to well-organized and well-heeled efforts by the Christian Coalition and others to solidify religious-minded voters in the Republican Party for 25 years.

“Republicans and conservatives have spent a ton of money reinforcing the message that Democrats live in a different moral universe,” Kilgore said. “Democrats ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.”

But, as the Democratic soul-searching begins in earnest, some caution the party not to read too much into the values-voter data. Pollsters never asked what voters meant by “moral values.” Democrats call it code words for gays and abortion. Steve Waldman, editor of Beliefnet, said the 21 percent of voters who listed it as a high priority overshadows the fact that 79 percent of voters chose something else. “Let’s not get carried away,” he said. McCurry, for his part, agreed.

Amy Sullivan, an editor at Washington Monthly magazine who has worked with Democrats to open up to religion, said too many in the party have been “freaking out” over the numbers, however significant. A knee-jerk overhaul would be misplaced, she said.

“It underscores the fact that Democrats don’t have to be worried to change who they are to attract these voters,” she said. “They need to change their priorities, maybe, and certainly need to change how they talk about these issues.”

_ Adelle M. Banks contributed to this report.

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