Poll on role of religion in Americans’ lives bad news for Obama

posted at 11:12 am on February 11, 2012 by Howard Portnoy

A recent Gallup survey reveals that the role of religion in Americans’ lives has changed little in the last 20 years. When asked how important religion is, 55% of those queried in 2011 answered “very important” as compared with 58% who gave the same answer in 1992.

This can’t be very good news for the president, who views religion as at best a bully pulpit for social change (as evidenced by his 20-year association with the incendiary Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and at worst as a force with the potential to poison the minds of leaden-eyed, gun-toting “clingers.”

Yeah, I know, on Friday he made an impassioned mini-speech about religious liberty and said that “as a citizen and as a Christian, I cherish this right.” He says lots of things that are politically expedient.

But the firestorm over Contraceptiongate, which raged out of control for a week before the administration attempted half-heartedly to dampen the flames, reveals how tin an ear our president has when it comes to the role of religion in the lives of Americans.

And what of yesterday’s gestures toward conciliation? Ed Morrissey records the reaction of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, pointing out that

the Obama administration never even bothered to contact [the bishops] to discover what their true objections are, and what would satisfy them. The White House simply presumed to know church business better than the bishops and offered an ‘accommodation’ that is anything but.

The Hill quotes Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, as saying that Obama has a blind spot of sorts for these types of situations—that “he doesn’t have a natural feel for the depth of emotion of how some people hold their religious views.”

Writing in the National Post, Canadian radio host Rex Murphy observes:

All in all, the controversy has been an instructive one—as a glimpse into the smooth, untroubled complacencies of the caring and superior secular mind, it is without many parallels.

The question now is whether any of the GOP candidates will capitalize on this issue.

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