Dean campaign drafts Jesus
Candidate planning to reference God in stump speeches throughout South
Posted: December 25, 2003
11:46 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
The Democratic presidential contender lauded for legalizing homosexual civil unions as governor in Vermont, and for his staunch advocacy of the separation of church and state is now casting himself as "a committed believer in Jesus Christ."
 Howard Dean |
''Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind,'' Howard Dean told the Boston Globe. ''He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything. ... He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it.''
In an interview with the paper, Dean described Jesus as an important influence in his life and said he might share with some voters the model Jesus has served for him. He said he expects to increasingly include references to Jesus and God in his speeches as he stumps in the South.
According to the Globe, Dean was raised Episcopal like his father, a warden in the local church near the family's weekend home in East Hampton, N.Y. Dean attended St. George's, a boarding school in Newport, R.I., where he went to church ''literally every day and twice on Sunday.''
But Dean emphasizes religion has been a private matter for him.
''My father used to tell us how much strength he got from religion, but we didn't have Bible readings. There are traditions where people do that. We didn't,'' he said. ''People in the Northeast don't talk about their religion. It's a very personal private matter, and that's the tradition I was brought up in.''
Although he does not often attend church, Dean said he prays daily.
He told the Boston paper he broke with the Episcopal church in the early 1980s when it sided with landowners seeking to preserve private property over the construction of a bike path.
''Churches are institutions that are about doing the work of God on earth, and I didn't think [opposing the bike path] was very Godlike and thought it was hypocritical of me to be a member of such an institution,'' Dean explained.
He subsequently became a Congregationalist. His wife and two children are Jewish.
The Democratic front-runner's plan to draft Jesus in his campaign will strike a chord with southern voters. An ABC/Washington Post poll released this week found 46 percent of Southerners said a president should rely on his religious beliefs in making policy decisions, compared with 40 percent nationwide and 28 percent in the East.
Asked in the Globe interview whether a presidential candidate could win without talking about religious faith, Dean said, ''Dick Nixon and Ronald Reagan never said much about religion. I think it's important, and you have to respect other people's religious beliefs and honor them, but you don't have to pander to them.''
''That's why I don't get offended when George Bush or Joe Lieberman talk about their religion," he added, according to the Globe. "I have a feeling it has something to do with them as a human being, and they are entitled to talk about what makes them human.''
Meanwhile, Dean lambasted Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for his intervention in the Terri Schiavo case in South Florida. Saying he was "appalled" and Florida Republicans should be "embarrassed" by their handling of the nationally watched tug of war over the life of the 40-year-old brain-damaged woman. Dean accused Jeb Bush and the legislature of interfering in a private matter when they ordered the feeding tube reinserted into Schiavo's abdomen after she had endured six days of court-ordered death by starvation.
Dean is also an avowed critic of posting the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, is uncomfortable with a prayer invocation before a congressional session and calls the president's faith-based initiative "overdone."
He told the Globe he is not bothered by the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.