Just a month ago, voters learned that the Bush campaign, in its infinite wisdom, wanted church goers to collect directories from their houses of worship for Bush’s benefit.
The Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has sent a detailed plan of action to religious volunteers across the country asking them to turn over church directories to the campaign, distribute issue guides in their churches and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives.
The reaction was swift and severe — everyone was disgusted. Even the Southern Baptist Convention, one of Bush’s closest political and ideological allies, recoiled.
“I am appalled,” [Richard Land, president of the SBC’s ethics and religious liberty commission] said in a statement. “I suspect that this will rub a lot of pastors’ fur the wrong way … It’s one thing for a church member motivated by exhortations to exercise his Christian citizenship to go out and decide to work on the Bush campaign or the Kerry campaign. It’s another, and totally inappropriate for a political campaign, to ask workers who may be church members to provide church member information through … directories.”
So, with the Republican campaign having offended nearly everyone, has the GOP learned an important lesson about exploitation of religion? Of course not.
The Republican National Committee has asked Bush-backing Roman Catholics to provide copies of their parish directories to help register Catholics to vote in the November election, a use of personal information not necessarily condoned by dioceses around the country.
In a story posted Thursday on its Web site, the National Catholic Reporter said a GOP official had urged people who attended a Catholic outreach event in January to provide parish directories and membership lists to the political party.
“Access to these directories is critical as it allows us to identify and contact those Catholics who are likely to be supportive of President Bush’s compassionate conservative agenda,” wrote Martin J. Gillespie, director of Catholic Outreach at the RNC. “Please forward any directories you are able to collect to my attention.”
But don’t worry, the Republicans have an explanation — the effort is non-partisan.
The RNC is using the information from parish directories only for its nonpartisan voter registration drive, RNC spokeswoman Christine Iverson told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Of course; why didn’t I think of that? When the Catholic Outreach director at the RNC says he wants directories — four months before the election — to identify voters who will be supportive of Bush’s “agenda,” it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the campaign. This makes perfect sense — if you’re insane.
At least some church officials seem hesitant to cooperate.
Susan Gibbs, the spokeswoman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., which oversees 140 parishes in Washington and Maryland, said parish directories publish information only for use among church members and not for use by outside organizations no matter what their purpose.
“Parish directories are for helping parishioners get to know each other better and are strictly for that purpose. They are not intended to be used for any outside commercial purpose, solicitations or anything else,” Gibbs said. “Parish directories or priest directories are not given to outside groups even if it’s for a good cause.”
Catholic parishioners provided that personal information with an expectation of what it would be used for, said Rebecca Summers of the office of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., which has more than 90 parishes.
“I’m not certain under any scenario that we would encourage someone responding to that appeal — for any purpose, whether it would be an environmental cause or any purpose other than what the people volunteered the information for,” Summers told the AP.
The possibility for a backlash here is real. Just as Bush’s religious right allies reacted negatively to the directory-grab effort last month, Catholics may not appreciate this stunt.
But campaign politics aside, I continue to be literally amazed at the unseemliness of Republican schemes with churches. It’s not enough to simply campaign in the pulpits, which both sides do every year; the GOP wants to create a machine, turning ministries into a national squad of PACs.
Nothing is holy to the GOP. To them, America’s churches are just another easily-manipulated institution that might get them a few more votes on Election Day.