No Shortage of Earned Media and "The God Gap"

The Democratic candidates debated on Sunday and decent press followed, including plenty of arguing about who won. Last night Clinton, Obama, and Edwards discussed the role that faith plays in their personal lives and their politics in a smaller forum, with positive results.

The consensus so far seems to be that the front-runners discussed their varying faiths comfortably. This is not a result over which you would have a rowdy celebration and do backflips or anything, but it is not nothing.

The phrase "social justice" has been mentioned often enough for me to believe it is becoming a real movement, not necessarily just among the left but among people of faith in general. What ABC calls "the God Gap" between the GOP and the Democratic Party seems to be disappearing except among single-issue voters that draw no-retreat battle lines on things like abortion and the death penalty.

I admit that poverty and class division always get talked about in the context of elections, but I think events like Katrina have thrown the social justice idea into sharp relief against a background of how America's citizens treat each other. The moral implications of the actions of people and government are being brought into focus. That there are moral results and dividends to actions and policies is an important discussion to have, finally, and the Reverend Jim Wallis' Sojourners organization provided an inroad by sponsoring such an event.

So, here we are in 2008, and our main, most viable Democratic candidates are speaking frankly and comfortably about how their relationship with The Lord informs their politics and personal lives, and the media relays that to the electorate. This is good for Democrats. As the Chron piece points out:

That the three Democrats spoke so comfortably about faith shows how far the party has come since 2004, when candidate Howard Dean said his favorite New Testament book was Job (an Old Testament text).