Chapter 182
Political Pilgrimages: American Presidents and Religious Communities, 1933–2012 Kevin Coe, David Domke, and Anthony Schmidt
182.1
Introduction
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt began what would turn out to be a lengthy stay in the White House. Elected four times, Roosevelt served more than 12 full years before dying in 1945. During this period, on only four occasions did Roosevelt leave the White House to give a speech to a distinctly religious audience or at a site imbued with religious meaning. More than 60 years later, in 2009, George W. Bush finished his second term in the White House. Over the course of his 8 years in office, Bush had made such religious-cum-political trips 79 times. The striking increase in these moments of presidential bread-breaking—what we call political pilgrimages— underscores the perceived value of such events to those who engage in them, as well as the rapidly changing relationship between religion and politics in America. With an eye toward better understanding this relationship, this chapter examines in detail the political pilgrimages that have taken place in the modern U.S. presidency. Building on a concept we introduced in our book, The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America (Domke and Coe 2010), we develop a conceptual framework for understanding political pilgrimages and their importance in American politics. We then track the contours of these pilgrimages across 13 presidencies over 8 decades. Three specific questions guide our analysis: (1) To what extent K. Coe (*) Department of Communication, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA e-mail:
[email protected] D. Domke Department of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA e-mail:
[email protected] A. Schmidt Department of Communication Studies, Edmonds Community College, Edmonds, WA 98036, USA e-mail:
[email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 S.D. Brunn (ed.), The Changing World Religion Map, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_182
3485
3486
K. Coe et al.
do presidents engage in pilgrimages? (2) Where do presidents go when undertaking pilgrimages? (3) How do presidents talk about God and faith when undertaking pilgrimages? Answering these questions is an important step in forwarding scholarship on the role that politicians play in American civil religion (for example, Bellah 1967; Marty 1974; Pierard and Linder 1988; Roof 2009), on presidents’ religious rhetoric (for example, Chapp 2012; Domke 2004; Hart 2005; Shogan 2006), and on the geography of presidential travel and discourse (see Brunn et al. 2011; Coe and Neumann 2011; Doherty 2007; Ellis 2008; O’Loughlin and Grant 1990).
182.2
Political Pilgrimages: A Conceptual Framework
The idea of a pilgrimage is deeply rooted in the American experience. Families take vacations to national parks, seashores, and military battlefields. Sports fans visit mythic stadiums, while others might visit famous birthplaces or homes. In all instances, the symbolism of the site transcends the location itself. As Campo (1998) explains in his study of “American pilgrimage landscapes,” by traveling to these iconic places Americans insert themselves into broader “national narratives” that function as connective cultural tissue (see also Chidester and Linenthal 1995). The importance of such pilgrimages is not lost on politicians. For officeholders or candidates interested in signaling support for a key constituency, a powerful means of doing so is to visit people or places that have elevated significance to the group. By taking the time and trouble to visit a specific group at a specific site, politicians make it clear with whom they wish to be identified—and the targeted groups appreciate this show of solidarity.1 Such pilgrimages have particular importance when they are religious in nature; that is, when a politician travels to deliver a speech at a religious institution or before a distinctly religious audience. In these journeys, political leaders insert themselves into religious narratives in subtle yet understood ways. Indeed, the very idea of a “pilgrimage” conjures up an image of the faithful trekking across the globe to a sacred location (see Eade and Sallnow 1991; Turner and Turner 1978). This section of the chapter develops a framework for understanding political pilgrimages and their meaning for America’s religious politics, focusing on the context of the U.S. presidency. Our thinking is based on three precepts that we consider in turn: (1) Presidential travel is a powerful symbolic activity; (2) Presidents are crucial to the construction and maintenance of American civil religion; and (3) Presidents are strategic actors and are, therefore, deeply concerned about public perceptions.
1
For example, when George W. Bush was campaigning for the presidency in 2000, he visited Bob Jones University, one of the nation’s most conservative religious institutions which, at the time, prohibited interracial dating. As Bush took some criticism for the visit, Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition, highlighted the visit’s religious importance: “I don’t think it was an endorsement of racial exclusion, it was an endorsement of the inclusion of people of devout faith” (see Ainsworth 2000).
182 Political Pilgrimages: American Presidents and Religious…
3487
Travel by high-level politicians is nearly always electorally significant (Doherty 2007; Shaw and Gimpel 2012); when the politician in question is the president, travel also takes on a very important symbolic dimension (Hart 1987; Ragsdale 1996). Ellis (2008), in his extensive historical analysis of presidential travel, concludes that the necessary pomp and circumstance accompanying modern presidential travel symbolically reinforces the notion of a “regal presidency.” In other words, when a president shows up somewhere, people notice. But much of the symbolic power of presidential travel is derived from exactly who notices. When a president gives a major speech to the entire nation, he is “broadcasting” his views to the mass public. More is needed, though, for a constituency to feel a deep connection with a politician or a political party. All groups want to feel special, to sense that they are more than a cog in an electoral machine. Presidential travel delivers this feeling because it is a kind of “narrowcasting.” When political leaders narrowcast, they put forth constituency-targeted actions and words that are public but fly below the radar of most Americans (see Jacobs 2005; Jacobs and Shapiro 2000; Overby and Barth 2006; Wattenberg 2004). Narrowcasting, in contrast to broadcasting, is an effective political strategy because it creates a sense of relationship between sender and receiver—an especially meaningful feeling for many in America’s large Christian communities, who often speak of a “personal relationship” with God, and who make “fellowship” activities with other people of faith a central part of their lives.2 Thus a political pilgrimage to a religious site is a very concrete way for presidents and other politicians to demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of religious voters’ key concerns and values, thereby practicing what scholars have called “the social embodiment of religious beliefs” (Kellstedt et al. 1996). This manner of presidential religious engagement plays a substantial role in sustaining and shaping what Bellah (1967) identified as America’s “civil religion.” Bellah, borrowing a phrase from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and building from a theoretical foundation developed by Alexis de Tocqueville, Emile Durkheim, and others, conceived of civil religion as “a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals” through which a society “interprets its historical experience in light of transcendent reality” (Bellah 1967: 4, 1975: 3; see also Marty 1974; Pierard and Linder 1988). American presidents are expected to be the primary overseers of this civil religion. They fulfill this role every time they make a political pilgrimage because their presence at a religious site signals a bond between God and country. What presidents say while they are engaged in such pilgrimages also contributes to this bond. Presidents regularly invoke broad religious themes 2
Consider a few examples. The Southern Baptist Convention’s web site at www.sbc.net has a section that addresses the issue of “How to become a Christian.” The answer begins: “You’re not here by accident. Jesus loves you, and He wants you to have a personal relationship with Him.” The National Association of Evangelicals, meanwhile, “promotes fellowship, cooperation, networking, and dialogue as means of evangelical witness.” This according to their web site at www.nae.net. In the words of Black (2004), a professor at Wheaton College, “[O]ne of the things that makes an evangelical faith look different, perhaps, than others, [is] there’s an emphasis on….a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”
3488
K. Coe et al.
to build and reinforce a sense of national community, thereby functioning as “the high priest of the national faith” (Hart 2005: 34). These presidential expressions of religiosity have important consequences for public perceptions. In an extensive empirical study drawing on both experimental and survey data, Chapp (2012: 16) found that invocations of civil religion by presidential candidates reliably influenced public attitudes, concluding that “religious rhetoric is a central force responsible [for] shaping the contours of American political culture. Religious rhetoric is also electorally consequential and culturally significant, with important implications for how we interpret American political representation” (see also Calfano and Djupe 2009). Clearly, where presidents go, and what they say while there, matters for America’s religious politics. Given the stakes involved, it is no surprise that political pilgrimages are highly strategic. Presidents and their advisors devote considerable attention to determining the appropriate site and message for each presidential pilgrimage. This is not to say that presidential displays of faith are inauthentic. They may be perfectly authentic—and we have no reason to doubt the sincerity of any president’s faith— but must nonetheless be expressed in the context of a broader political calculus. Consider one example: political pilgrimages to the state of Indiana have been popular among presidents. There have been 11 over the past 8 decades, placing Indiana among the 5 most-visited states. This may seem surprising, given that Indiana is neither close to Washington, DC nor especially populous. It becomes less surprising, however, when one notes that Indiana houses the University of Notre Dame—the specific site of every one of the 11 presidential pilgrimages to Indiana. For religious symbolism in America, especially for Catholics, it is hard to top this location. A speech delivered there is simply different than the same speech delivered anywhere else in the United States and, of course, presidents understand this. Going to Notre Dame is, therefore, a specific and valuable political strategy. Thus both where presidents go and what they say are carefully planned and deeply consequential. With this in mind, we turn our attention to mapping the contours of the political pilgrimages that presidents have undertaken over the past eight decades.
182.3
Method
Our analysis focuses on the modern presidency, which most scholars define as beginning with the administration of Franklin Roosevelt (for example, Greenstein 2004; Leuchtenburg 1988). During Roosevelt’s lengthy term the United States and especially the presidency changed significantly. Beginning with Roosevelt will, therefore, allow multiple presidents to be included in the analysis while still providing a fair amount of consistency in the cultural position of these presidents. We examined all public remarks about religion made by presidents over the past eight
182 Political Pilgrimages: American Presidents and Religious…
3489
decades, from Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933 to the end of Barack Obama’s third full year in office, January 19, 2012. Via extensive manual and computer searches of the National Archives’ Public Papers of the Presidents (the definitive record of presidents’ public communications; available online at www.americanpresidency.org), we identified every instance in which a president left the White House to deliver a speech at a religious location or to a distinctly religious audience. Four types of pilgrimage became apparent in this analysis. First, presidents during foreign trips occasionally met with religious leaders or spoke at religious sites. Second, on U.S. soil presidents delivered public addresses at religiously symbolic schools, often at commencement or convocation ceremonies. Third, presidents spoke in churches in a range of contexts, including stump speeches, sermons, and funeral services. Fourth, presidents met in formalized settings with religious leaders and groups to discuss policy ideas, social developments, and broader goals. In all, this collection procedure yielded 373 speeches.3 We recorded several characteristics about these speeches, most notably the location (abroad or, for domestic speeches, the state in which the speech was delivered). In 11 cases, the location where the speech was given could not be determined. For analyses that required location, these cases were excluded. We then used the computer content-analysis program TextQuest (www.textquest.de) to track two themes in these speeches: invocations of God and invocations of faith. The first of these themes tracked specific mentions of a higher power, such as God, Jesus, Lord, Divine Providence, and the like. The second tracked mentions of broader terms that signal a commitment to religious principles, such as faith, angel, heaven, pray, and worship. Our measurement of these concepts follows Domke and Coe (2010), except that our measure of God is more conservative. This is because we rely here on computer-assisted content analysis rather than manual coding. This makes it difficult to capture personal references to God, such as “He” and “His.” Our measure of God invocations is therefore based on just the following terms and phrases (with all relevant variants also included): Almighty, Christ, Creator, Dios, Divine Providence, the Divine, Eternal Father, Father and Preserver, God, Good Shepherd, Jesus, Lord, Messiah, Prince of Peace, Redeemer, Savior, Son of God, Supreme Being. A list of the several dozen terms included in our analysis of faith invocations is available in Appendix B at www.thegodstrategy.com. Table 182.1 provides a selection of presidents’ invocations of God and faith.
3
Three additional notes should be made about the sample. First, when presidents made comments to the press after attending their home churches, we did not consider this to be a pilgrimage. This was an uncommon occurrence among presidential remarks. Second, we focused on Christianthemed pilgrimages because these constituted the vast majority of pilgrimages and because of the political importance of Christian conservatives in recent decades (see Domke and Coe 2010). Finally, we included as pilgrimages the few cases where a president made live telephone or satellite remarks at a religious event.
3490
K. Coe et al.
Table 182.1 Selected presidential invocations of God and faith (Source: Kevin Coe, David Domke and Anthony Schmidt) President Roosevelt
Truman
Eisenhower
Kennedy
Johnson
Nixon
Ford
Carter
Reagan
G.H.W. Bush
Clinton
G.W. Bush
Obama
Invocation I am very sure that the spirit in which we are approaching those difficult tasks…are going to be exemplified in the lives of all the people calling themselves Christians who believe in God and uphold the works of the Church. (Hyde Park Methodist Episcopal Church, Hyde Park, NY, 9/29/1933) Men can build a good society, if they follow the will of the Lord. Our great Nation was founded on this faith. (Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA, 5/11/1950) We must remember the spiritual base that underlies man’s existence, and the spiritual base that underlies all free government; else we shall surely fail. (World Christian Endeavor Convention, Washington, DC, 7/25/1954) I think this country will continue its commitments to support the world of freedom, for as we discharge that commitment we are heeding the command which Brigham Young heard from the Lord more than a century ago. (Mormon Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, UT, 9/26/1963) I find for myself … a sustaining strength from the moments of prayer, whether we assemble together or whether we pray silently alone. (Presidential Prayer Breakfast, Washington, DC, 2/4/1965) I can also tell you America would not be what it is today … if this were not a nation which has made progress under God. (Billy Graham’s East Tennessee Crusade, Knoxville, TN, 5/28/1970) Although our religious denominations are different, I have long admired the missionary spirit of Baptists and the fact that you strive to keep the Bible at the center of your lives. (Southern Baptist Convention, Norfolk, VA, 6/15/1976) There’s no incompatibility between the constraints and the shackles on our lives by standards prescribed by God on the one hand, and the ultimate freedom that can come when the spirit of the Lord is present. (National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, DC, 1/18/1979) Think of it: the most awesome military machine in history, but it is no match for that one, single man, hero, strong yet tender, Prince of Peace. His name alone, Jesus, can lift our hearts, soothe our sorrows, heal our wounds, and drive away our fears. (National Religious Broadcasters, Washington, DC, 1/31/1983) We are one Nation under God. We must remember that. We must advocate that. We must continue to state that we are one Nation under God. (Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Los Angeles, CA, 5/7/1992) We have a wonderful array of people of faith here. We have Christians who are Catholic and Protestant; we have American Jews here; we have American Muslims here. (United Michigan Clergy, Detroit, MI, 10/21/1996) I’m grateful for your prayers…Thanks for having me today. May God bless your organization, and may God continue to bless our great country. (Knights of Columbus, Dallas, TX, 8/3/2004) As I look out at this audience, I’m reminded of the power of faith in America; faith in God, and a faith in the promise of this great country. (National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, Washington, DC, 6/19/2009)
182 Political Pilgrimages: American Presidents and Religious…
182.4
3491
Results
Our first question dealt with the extent to which modern presidents have undertaken political pilgrimages.4 Since 1933, presidents have made 373 pilgrimages, averaging nearly five per year. Every president since Franklin Roosevelt has undertaken at least a few political pilgrimages, but presidents have varied considerably in the extent to which they have done so. Figure 182.1 reveals this variation by showing how many pilgrimages each president made during his average year in office. It is clear that there has been a steady and marked increase in the number of pilgrimages taking place. Roosevelt averaged not even half a pilgrimage per year, whereas George W. Bush averaged nearly 10. The rise throughout time has been quite steady, excepting a dramatic spike during Gerald Ford’s brief presidency.5 Importantly, although some of this rise is to be expected given a general increase in the amount of presidential travel over time, it is nonetheless clear that some presidents have particularly focused their energy on presidential pilgrimages. Consider, for example, that Ronald Reagan traveled to give general public remarks about 25 % less than did his immediate predecessor, Jimmy Carter (see Doherty 2007). Yet Reagan’s number of political pilgrimages was about 20 % higher than Carter’s (see Fig. 182.1). In other words, relative to Carter, Reagan focused a
Mean per year
10 8 6 4 2 0
Fig. 182.1 Presidential pilgrimages per year, 1933–2011 (Source: Kevin Coe, David Domke and Anthony Schmidt)
4
Throughout the results section we report no statistical tests. We are working with the census of political pilgrimages that have taken place in the modern presidency, so inferential tests are unnecessary. 5 It is not entirely clear why Ford engaged in so many pilgrimages, but it may have to do with the fact that his reelection campaign pitted him against Jimmy Carter, whose religious faith was on full display during the campaign. This possibility is supported by the fact that more than half of Ford’s pilgrimages occurred in the 10 months leading up to the 1976 election.
3492
K. Coe et al.
large proportion of his presidential travel on visiting religious audiences and sites. Nowhere is this kind of variation in average pilgrimages per year more striking than in the case of Barack Obama. Obama is the only president since Gerald Ford to make fewer than 5 pilgrimages in the average year, and one of only two (along with Nixon and Carter) to decrease his pilgrimages from the standard set by his immediate predecessor. What is remarkable is not just that Obama broke from the standard set by George W. Bush, but how dramatically he did so. Obama engaged in pilgrimages not even half as often as Bush.6 It is hard to imagine a more striking departure from presidential norms. Clearly, presidents vary in their eagerness to embrace the religious faithful via political pilgrimages. Our second question focused on where presidents went on their religious pilgrimages. Far and away the most common type of pilgrimage was to speak to a religious group or organization (53.6 % were of this kind), with visits to churches (20.1 %) and schools (19.8 %) somewhat less common. Pilgrimages abroad were rare (6.4 %), with just 24 total since 1933—nearly all of which took place in the past three decades (and more than a third of which were visits to the Vatican to meet with the Pope). That the majority of pilgrimages have been to religious meetings as opposed to churches or schools reflects two things. First, presidents since John Kennedy in 1961 have spoken annually at an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Washington, DC, making this religious meeting the most consistent and familiar political pilgrimage that exists in America today. Second, the increased political mobilization of religious organizations in recent years has given presidents—especially Republican ones—a wide range of potential hosts for pilgrimages. For example, the National Religious Broadcasters Association and the National Association of Evangelicals are umbrella organizations that represent millions of Americans who lean conservative. Since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, presidents have traveled to address these organizations 14 times (and in every case, it was a Republican president making the trip). Democrats have found sites for pilgrimages (Bill Clinton was a regular in churches, for example), but have had fewer options than their Republican counterparts during the past few decades. Domestic pilgrimages—those to meetings, schools, and churches—were quite limited geographically. Table 182.2 reveals this by reporting the frequency of presidents’ domestic pilgrimages since 1933. Consistent with what is typical in other forms of presidential travel (see Doherty 2007), presidents prefer that their pilgrimages take place close to home. Indeed, roughly half of all domestic pilgrimages over the past eight decades took place in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland, with DC in particular dominating the geography of presidential pilgrimages. DC is so dominant largely because many of the most consistent pilgrimage events—including the national prayer breakfast and other prayer breakfasts that are more recent additions (e.g., the national Hispanic prayer breakfast, the national Catholic prayer 6
Notably, Obama does not have a full election year in this dataset, which could depress his overall number of pilgrimages (given that some presidents increase their pilgrimages during election years). However, even if Obama in his election year doubled his average, he would still not reach Bush’s yearly average.
182 Political Pilgrimages: American Presidents and Religious… Table 182.2 Locations of presidents’ domestic pilgrimages
Location District of Columbia New York Texas Illinois Indiana Virginia Pennsylvania Maryland Ohio California Utah Georgia Massachusetts New Jersey Louisiana Missouri Florida Tennessee Michigan Colorado Arkansas Washington North Carolina Kansas Wisconsin Hawaii Oregon Mississippi Oklahoma South Carolina Minnesota Connecticut Total Source: Kevin Coe, David Schmidt
3493 Count % 152 45.0 26 7.7 20 5.9 11 3.3 11 3.3 9 2.7 9 2.7 8 2.4 8 2.4 7 2.1 7 2.1 7 2.1 7 2.1 7 2.1 6 1.8 6 1.8 5 1.5 5 1.5 5 1.5 4 1.2 3 .9 2 .6 2 .6 2 .6 2 .6 1 .3 1 .3 1 .3 1 .3 1 .3 1 .3 1 .3 338 100 Domke and Anthony
breakfast)—take place there. Additionally, several major religious organizations and schools that presidents like to address, including the National Association of Evangelicals and Georgetown University, are located in DC. Once presidents get beyond DC, only a few states are regularly targeted: Maryland and Virginia for the sake of proximity, New York, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio because of their large cities. And, as discussed, Indiana is a draw because of Notre Dame. Outside of a few regular locations, however, presidents are quite selective: In eight decades, more than half of the states in the union have been visited just once or not
3494
K. Coe et al.
28.5
Mean per pilgrimage
30 God
25
Faith
20.5
20 15
12.8
11
10 5
7 2.3
2.5
Foreign
School
4
0 Church
Meeting
Fig. 182.2 Invocations of God and faith by context (Source: Kevin Coe, David Domke and Anthony Schmidt)
at all. This reality underscores why political pilgrimages matter so much to the local populations who host them. Our final question focused on the degree to which presidents invoke God and religious faith when making their political pilgrimages. We considered three possible types of variation in such rhetoric: variation across speaking context, regional variation in pilgrimages to different U.S. locales, and variation among individual presidents. Figure 182.2 provides insight into how context matters, showing presidential invocations of God and faith in pilgrimages abroad, to schools, to churches, and at meetings with religious audiences or organizations. It is evident that presidents elevate their religious rhetoric when speaking in churches, and then elevate it even more so when speaking at religious meetings. Total religious language is more than 60 % higher in churches than it is when presidents speak abroad or in schools, and it increases another 45 % over that already-elevated level when they speak at religious meetings.7 Variation by region is much more subdued. Figure 182.3 shows presidents’ religious rhetoric in each of the census bureau’s traditional regional divisions (with Washington, DC listed separately).8 DC and the South lead the way in religious rhetoric, but the differences are mostly small. Further, the marginal difference between the South and some other regions does not 7
Importantly, these trends could be sensitive to the average word count in speeches across different contexts. We chose not to control for word count in these analyses, however, because the decision a president makes about how much to say during a pilgrimage is also a strategic and important one. It turns out in these data that average word count is higher in school settings (3,081), where religious rhetoric is less used, than it is in churches (2,082) and at meetings (2,010). Foreign addresses were typically shorter (629). 8 These divisions are as follows: Northeast (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey); Midwest (Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa); South (Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana); West (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii)
3495
182 Political Pilgrimages: American Presidents and Religious…
God
30
27
Mean per pilgrimage
Faith
24.6
23.5
25 19.5
20
17.5
15 10 5
2.7
4
5
7 4.2
0 Northeast
Midwest
South
West
DC
Mean per pilgrimage
Fig. 182.3 Invocations of God and faith by region (Source: Kevin Coe, David Domke and Anthony Schmidt)
35
Faith
30
God
25 20 15 10 5 0
Fig. 182.4 Invocations of God and faith by president (Source: Kevin Coe, David Domke and Anthony Schmidt)
appear to be caused by presidents targeting states with a higher percentage of church-going Christians, because limiting the analysis to just “Bible-belt” states does not strengthen the trend (nor are most of these states consistently higher than others when considered individually). It appears, then, that presidents do elevate their religious rhetoric to fit the likely comfort level of their audience, but that they find context (as opposed to region) a better guide in making this determination. Examining presidents individually shows further variation in the degree to which they invoke God and faith during their pilgrimages. Figure 182.4 shows each president’s average number of invocations of God and faith per pilgrimage. Three trends are noteworthy. First, there is a somewhat low period—from Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford—when presidents were using relatively less religious rhetoric than
3496
K. Coe et al.
they were before or since. The combined God and faith average during that period (17.05) is only slightly more than half the presidential average before (32.88) and since (32.22). The recent high period, which begins with Carter, corresponds to the increased mobilization of Christian conservatives in American politics. Second, party does not appear to be a strong determinant of this rhetoric. During the recent high period, the three Democrats have averaged 30.66 mentions per pilgrimage; the three Republicans have averaged a very similar 33.78. Finally, Barack Obama is once again an interesting case. We saw above that he had broken with recent presidential history by sharply decreasing his presidential pilgrimages. But in terms of what he says when he is there, Barack Obama is the most religiously out-spoken president in modern history. Consider a few examples of Obama’s invocations of God and faith. Speaking at his first National Prayer Breakfast, Obama said: “We come to break bread and to give thanks, but most of all to seek guidance and to rededicate ourselves to the mission of love and service that lies at the heart of all humanity. St. Augustine once said: ‘Pray as though everything depend on God, then work as though everything depended on you’” (Washington, DC, 2/5/09). A year later, during a church service honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Obama greeted the audience with “Good morning. Praise be to God,” and later during the same speech said: “So let us hold fast to that faith, as Joshua held fast to the faith of his fathers, and together, we shall overcome the challenges of a new age. Together, we shall seize the promise of this moment. Together, we shall make a way through the winter, and we’re going to welcome the spring. Through God all things are possible” (Washington, DC, 1/17/10). And in 2011, speaking at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, Obama asked that “God bless the eternal friendship between our two great nations” (5/23/2011). Clearly, both undertaking a pilgrimage and invoking religious language while there are signals of support for the religious faithful. Obama has been much more likely to send the latter signal than the former.
182.5
Discussion
This chapter focused on an aspect of America’s religious politics that had received only scant attention in the past, but one that is clearly an important and growing part of American political culture. Several points warrant discussion. First, the increasing presence of political pilgrimages has made them—for the last few decades, at least—a remarkably common feature of presidential politics. Since Gerald Ford took office in 1974, it has been more likely in the average month to see a president making a pilgrimage than to not. There is little doubt that presidents see value in undertaking these pilgrimages—and that the audiences are usually grateful for the attention. For example, in 2003 George W. Bush visited the National Religious Broadcasters Association to speak at its annual convention. The association was so pleased with this attention that they issued a resolution praising
182 Political Pilgrimages: American Presidents and Religious…
3497
the president. As a tax-exempt organization, the NRB had to stop short of explicitly endorsing Bush’s reelection—but only barely. The resolution concluded this way: “We recognize in all of the above that God has appointed President George W. Bush to leadership at this critical period in our nation’s history, and give Him thanks” (see Blake 2003). But there are also political risks associated with too brazenly mixing religion and politics. As the 2012 election cycle got into full swing, a plurality of Americans (38 %) reported feeling that there was “too much expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders” in America—a number that had grown from only 12 % a decade prior (Pew Research Center 2012). In many ways, the political value of a pilgrimage is that it can reap electoral rewards without usually risking such backlash. As a narrowcast message, pilgrimages go unnoticed by many in the population, but still speak powerfully to those being targeted. Second, these pilgrimages are narrowly focused, geographically speaking, and often target recurring events and major religious organizations or institutions. This is consistent with the reality that presidential travel is dependent primarily on two things: practical considerations and political calculations (see Doherty 2007; Ellis 2008). Attending events in Washington, DC is relatively easy for the president, and those scheduling major religious gatherings understand this. In the much rarer cases when the president leaves Washington to make a speech, he wants to maximize the strategic value of that visit. Consequently, major population centers and well-known religious institutions receive considerable attention—as do organizations with clear political leanings and substantial political clout. For example, recent Republican presidents spoke on multiple occasions to the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Religious Broadcasters Association, the Southern Baptist Convention, the Knights of Columbus, and other similar organizations. The political calculus that underlies these patterns is also at work in determining what presidents will say when they undertake a pilgrimage. It is far from happenstance, for instance, that presidents in their pilgrimages increased their rhetorical emphasis on God and faith just as Christian conservatives in America were beginning to mobilize politically (see Domke and Coe 2010; Kellstedt et al. 2007). With this mobilization, religion entered American politics with greater force than in past decades; presidents of both parties clearly responded by increasing their pilgrimages and upping the religious rhetoric present in those pilgrimages. Finally, these data cast America’s most recent president in a very interesting light. Barack Obama did something that presidents very rarely do: he broke with tradition. Coming into office at a time when political pilgrimages (and America’s religious politics more generally) had reached a modern-era apex, he cut pilgrimages in half. His strategy was simple: he continued the familiar events, such as national prayer breakfasts, but rarely made time for additional ones. It was not simply the case that Obama differed from his Republican predecessor in lacking a host of conservative religious organizations to visit. Obama certainly could have done as Bill Clinton did: make up for this deficit by speaking frequently in churches. But he did not. It may be the case that Obama’s shift was meant to send a signal of support
3498
K. Coe et al.
to America’s growing secular population. At the same time, Obama made moves that suggest he grasped the electoral importance of engaging with the faithful. Specifically, he led all presidents in total religious language used during pilgrimages. Put simply, Obama’s technique was to do more with less: More religiosity in fewer pilgrimages. Time will tell if this strategy was an effective one. What is clear so far is that Obama’s faith has not been well understood by a sizable segment of the public. Indeed, three and a half years into his presidency, roughly 1 in 6 Americans incorrectly believed that Obama was a Muslim (Markoe 2012). It may be the case that these persistent questions about Obama’s faith led him to emphasize religious language so strongly when making his pilgrimages. It may also be the case that undertaking additional pilgrimages could have altered these misconceptions. At a minimum, they probably could not have hurt.
182.6
Future Research
The present study suggests a few avenues for additional research. For one, it will be useful for future studies to employ manual content analysis to the texts of presidential pilgrimages to achieve a finer level of detail than was possible using computer-assisted analysis. It is plausible that presidents’ rhetoric in such contexts has substantial variation beyond just what was revealed here with measures of God and faith. It would be useful, for instance, to examine the degree to which presidents talk about political policy during their pilgrimages. Given the obviously religious settings, this would be an effective way to measure the willingness of presidents to explicitly mix religion and politics. Additionally, future research could examine via case studies how individual presidents used pilgrimages strategically. Consider that even though in the aggregate there was little regional variation in presidents’ religious rhetoric during pilgrimages, there were some cases where individual presidents exhibited potentially meaningful variation. For example, two presidents with especially strong ties to religious conservatives, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both noticeably elevated their religious rhetoric when making pilgrimages to the South. Detailed analysis of these presidents’ rhetorical choices in different contexts could be revealing. In a similar vein, it would be interesting to track whether or not the past two presidents’ pilgrimages correlate at all to the allocation of funds for the faith-based initiatives program started under George W. Bush and continued under Obama. Finally, future research might incorporate measures of presidents’ total domestic travel as a means of understanding the proportion of travel that presidents devote to pilgrimages. It would be interesting to know, for example, if religious pilgrimages are more or less common than pilgrimages to speak to other social groups. All of these avenues would provide additional insight into the many ways that geography, rhetoric, and strategy interact in the U.S. presidency.
182 Political Pilgrimages: American Presidents and Religious…
3499
References Ainsworth, B. (2000, February 4). Bradley rips Bush for stop at Bob Jones U.; South Carolina school prohibits interracial dating. San-Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved October 11, 2006, from Nexis database. Bellah, R. (1967). Civil religion in America. Daedalus, 96, 1–21. Bellah, R. (1975). The broken covenant: American civil religion in time of trial. New York: The Seabury Press. Black, A. (2004, April 29). Interview for The Jesus factor [Television broadcast]. Boston: Public Broadcasting Services. Blake, M. (2003, May/June). Stations of the Cross: How evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved July 4, 2007, from http://cjrarchives.org/issues/2005/3/blake-evangelist.asp Brunn, S. D., Webster, G. R., Morrill, R. L., Shelley, F. M., Lavin, S., & Archer, J. C. (Eds.). (2011). Atlas of the 2008 elections. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Calfano, B. R., & Djupe, P. A. (2009). God talk: Religious cues and political support. Political Research Quarterly, 62, 329–339. Campo, J. E. (1998). American pilgrimage landscapes. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 558, 40–56. Chapp, C. B. (2012). Religious rhetoric and American politics: The endurance of civil religion in electoral campaigns. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Chidester, D., & Linenthal, E. T. (Eds.). (1995). American sacred places. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Coe, K., & Neumann, R. (2011). International identity in theory and practice: The case of the modern American presidency. Communication Monographs, 78, 139–161. Doherty, B. J. (2007). The politics of the permanent campaign: Presidential travel and the Electoral College, 1977–2004. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 37, 749–773. Domke, D. (2004). God willing? Political fundamentalism in the White House, the “war on terror”, and the echoing press. London: Pluto. Domke, D., & Coe, K. (2010). The God strategy: How religion became a political weapon in America (Updated ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Eade, J., & Sallnow, M. J. (Eds.). (1991). Contesting the sacred: The anthropology of Christian pilgrimage. London: Routledge. Ellis, R. J. (2008). Presidential travel: The journey from George Washington to George W. Bush. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Greenstein, F. I. (2004). The presidential difference: Leadership style from FDR to George W. Bush (2nd ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hart, R. P. (1987). The sound of leadership: Presidential communication in the modern age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hart, R. P. (2005). The original argument. In R. P. Hart & J. L. Pauley II (Eds.), The political pulpit revisited (pp. 13–95). West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Jacobs, L. R. (2005). Communicating from the White House: Presidential narrowcasting and the national interest. In J. D. Aberbach & M. A. Peterson (Eds.), Institutions of American democracy: The executive branch (pp. 174–217). New York: Oxford University Press. Jacobs, L. R., & Shapiro, R. Y. (2000). Politicians don’t pander: Political manipulation and the loss of democratic responsiveness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kellstedt, L. A., Green, J. C., Guth, J. L., & Smidt, C. E. (1996). Grasping the essentials: The social embodiment of religion and political behavior. In J. C. Green, J. L. Guth, C. E. Smidt, & L. A. Kellstedt (Eds.), Religion and the culture wars: Dispatches from the front (pp. 175–192). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Kellstedt, L., Green, J., Smidt, C., & Guth, J. (2007). Faith transformed: Religion and American politics from FDR to George W. Bush. In M. A. Noll & L. E. Harlow (Eds.), Religion and American politics: From the colonial period to the present (pp. 269–295). New York: Oxford.
3500
K. Coe et al.
Leuchtenburg, W. E. (1988). Franklin D. Roosevelt: The first modern president. In F. I. Greenstein (Ed.), Leadership in the modern presidency (pp. 7–40). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Markoe, L. (2012, May 10). One in six voters still thinks Obama’s a Muslim: Why? Washington Post. Retrieved May 17, 2012, from http://www.washingtonpost.com Marty, M. E. (1974). Two kinds of civil religion. In R. E. Richey & D. G. Jones (Eds.), American civil religion (pp. 139–157). New York: Harper & Row. O’Loughlin, J., & Grant, R. (1990). The political geography of presidential speeches, 1946–87. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 80, 504–530. Overby, L. M., & Barth, J. (2006). Radio advertising in American political campaigns: The persistence, importance, and effects of narrowcasting. American Politics Research, 34, 451–478. Pew Research Center. (2012, March 22). More see “too much” religious talk by politicians. Retrieved October 15, 2012, from http://pewresearch.org Pierard, R., & Linder, R. (1988). Civil religion and the presidency. Grand Rapids: Academie [sic] Books. Ragsdale, L. (1996). Vital statistics on the presidency: Washington to Clinton. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly. Roof, W. (2009). American presidential rhetoric from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush: Another look at civil religion. Social Compass, 56, 286–301. Shaw, D. R., & Gimpel, J. G. (2012). What if we randomize the governor’s schedule? Evidence on campaign appearance effects from a Texas field experiment. Political Communication, 29, 137–159. Shogan, C. J. (2006). The moral rhetoric of American presidents. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. Turner, V. A., & Turner, E. (1978). Image and pilgrimage in Christian culture: Anthropological perspectives. New York: Columbia University Press. Wattenberg, M. P. (2004). The changing presidential media environment. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34, 557–572.
