OXFORD, Miss. – The election between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney marks the first time in American history that the ballot will not include a white Protestant candidate.
Marie Griffith, a scholar of Christian movements who focuses on evangelical Christianity and John Shook, a specialist who writes on religious debates between believers and non-believers, will examine how this and other issues related to religion factor into the 2012 election on Friday (Oct. 19) at 2 p.m. in 111 Bryant Hall.
“In my opinion, in the past few elections, there has a been a tendency to polarize and associate Republican political identities with Christian values and Democratic identities with secular or non-religious values. Those ideas have gained popular attention in the past, yet that’s inaccurate. We wanted a forum to talk about that,” said Mary Thurlkill, UM associate professor of religion, who organized the panel discussion along with Eric Weber, assistant professor of public policy leadership.
The panel is titled “In God Some Trust: Religious and Secular Forces in the 2012 Presidential Debate” and is hosted by the Department of Philosophy and Religion and the Department of Public Policy Leadership.
Shook is the Director of Education and Senior Research Fellow of the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York. He has edited and authored more than a dozen books, including his most recent book, The God Debates, in 2010, and also acts as a visiting assistant professor of science education at the University of Buffalo (SUNY).
As the Director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics and professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., Griffith is the co-editor of Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States and the author of several other books.
Weber looks forward to not only learning from the panelists, but hopes that members of the public and university community will raise questions and concerns of their own about the relationship between religion and politics in the 2012 Presidential election.
“President Obama has at times called for people to think of themselves as their brother’s keeper,” said Weber. “Governor Romney has referred to religion in relation to issues like abortion, among other matters. Today, the question of how we ought to consider the role of religious issues in the 2012 election seem less clear than in some past elections, which makes the topic all the more important for us to get clear about.”