FP: You and I have had some fairly vigorous disagreements, particularly about Sen. Obama's speech about religion and politics. Let me first off apologize if this dialogue has ever gotten too-heated. I think the crux of the disagreement is that you felt Obama was buying into the right frame that "Democrats are hostile to religion" without a sufficient explanation of what the Democrats are doing wrong. I felt that some liberals really missed the point of Obama's speech--which I thought was mostly a positive statement of how religious values could be a source of compassion, as well as tolerance and respect for the Other. Is that a fair statement of the disagreement? What did I get wrong about your perspective?

FC: That's partly right. I agree that Obama expressed thoughtfully and well, core aspects of appropriate approaches to the role of religion in public life and the values of liberal compassion etc -- and said so. But what I zeroed in on, to the consternation of you and others, was that there were also things he said that yes, absolutely expressed an historic religious right framing that I see as in conflict with, and undermining the rest of what he said; and that this is not an inconsequential matter. Like Jim Wallis, to this day, he has not made a factual case about the alleged antireligious activities of "secularists" in the Party. In fact, no one to my knowledge, has ever done so. When a liberal Democratic polititian gives voice to the ideas of the religious right --that is something I naturally am not going to overlook.

FP: I often hear people say--Show Me the Democrat who is openly hostile to religion-- there aren't any. This straw man is a creation of the right! Yet, isn't this the same type of argument as saying: Republicans must be sensitive to the needs of African Americans because no one in their Party openly bashes African Americans? I know the metaphor is not perfect. But if you want to understand why some religious people perceive hostility not so much from Democrats but from liberals, don't we have to dig a little deeper than asking who is openly hostile to them? What am I missing in your perspective?

FC: Well, I think too many people are drinking the religious right-framed Cool Aid of the CW. The challenge is fair and unanswered by those who are still passing the mug. If people are going to make a significant assertion then it is their responsibility to support it, not those who are wondering what the heck they are talking about. But to go a little deeper on the matter of why people in the polls (to the extent the polls are accurate) perceive Democrats as unfriendly to religion, this is because that's what the religious right and the GOP and Fox News have been saying for years-- drawing on exactly the framing that Wallis and Obama repeat. It is, of course, a lie. What is true that the Dems and the liberal interest groups have not usually responded effectively, and more recently have even played into it. This continues to amaze me. And now allow me to offer a heretical notion - a serious deviation from the True Orthodox Conventional Wisdom. The additional and related reason the Dems poll poorly on the question of being religion friendly is because the Democrats and liberal groups -- including religious groups -- listened to Inside the Beltway consultants who advised them to use phrases like "religious political extremists" in media soundbites to describe just about everyone they didn't like. So if the public perceived hostility, it is because that is exactly what they were projecting with this kind of broad brush "strategy." That it backfired is no surprise. That no one wants to own up to it, is even less surprising. So sure, let's all blame it all on the unnamed "secularists" -- not the consultants and those who listened to them.

I am sure that there are Democrats who are not only non-religious, but think that religion is a bad thing, (there are differences that get lost amidst the secular bashing, aren't there?) and more to the point, wish people would shut up about it. But this is also true of many Republicans and especially Libertarians. It is my experience over many years in public life, that I have never once witnessed or heard of anything like what Wallis and Obama charge. And they have yet to produce any evidence that hostility to religion has ever prevented anyone from participating in the Democratic Party or expressing themselves as they see fit as Democrats in "The Public Square." When the Obama flap was going on, a colleague who is a minister wrote to me to say one time he was in a planning meeting for a peace rally, and there was some question as to whether he should be allowed to speak because he was a Christian. As annoying as that must have been, ultimately, he did speak. But that was, of course, not the Democratic Party, it was peace group politics of some sort. But the simple reality is that there is nothing new here. Such tensions have existed throughout the history of the republic, and navigating these things is not always easy. But if people wish to make a big public case about hostility to religion among Democrats and liberals, they are going to have to get specific so that we actually have something to talk about. Otherwise, they will continue to get called on the absence of facts, the intellectual dishonesty, and the adoption of religious right framing and talking points.