Really, I'm terribly impressed. The Southern Baptist Convention was some considerable peeved at the Republican National Committee for trying to use their church directories in what the SBC considered a highly inappropriate way. Having not learned a single thing from that dustup earlier this month, the RNC went and did it again.
GOP seeks Catholic parish directories (Salon.com/AP Wire)
Douglass Daniel
July 23, 2004 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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.''
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. Those efforts target members of other faiths as well as people who belong to nonreligious organizations, she said....
Translating values into votes, Republicans seek parish directories (National Catholic Reporter, ncronline.org)
By Joe Feuerherd
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is urging Bush-supporting Catholics to provide parish directories and membership lists to the GOP. Martin J. Gillespie, Director of Catholic Outreach at the RNC, made the request earlier this year. "We … want to work with you to identify active Catholic voters throughout the country. In this respect, we need your help in requesting parish directory and membership lists of Catholic groups and associations [bold in original]," wrote Gillespie. [...] No one should be shocked at the lengths each campaign will go to this election to identify and energize their voters. But if asking congregants to help spread a political message is "direct," what does that make asking Catholics to fork over their parish directories to the Republican National Committee?
Back on July 3, the following AP article appeared:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative denomination closely aligned with President Bush, said it was offended by the Bush-Cheney campaign's effort to use church rosters for campaign purposes. "I'm appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "The bottom line is, when a church does it, it's nonpartisan and appropriate. When a campaign does it, it's partisan and inappropriate," he said. "I suspect that this will rub a lot of pastors' fur the wrong way."
The Bush campaign defended a memo in which it sought to mobilize church members by providing church directories to the campaign, arranging for pastors to hold voter-registration drives, and talking to various religious groups about the campaign.
Other religious organizations also criticized the document as inappropriate, suggesting that it could jeopardize churches' tax-exempt status by involving them in partisan politics.
Campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said the document, distributed to campaign staff, was well within the law. "People of faith have a right to take part in the political process, and we're reaching out to every supporter of President Bush to become involved in the campaign," Stanzel said....
So, they've pissed off the leadership of the Baptists, and now the Catholic hierarchy is none too thrilled with them. At this rate, by the end of August, they'll have worked their way through every conservative-leaning denomination in the country. One assumes that, despite the anger of the denominations' leadership, they're getting enough information back from the parishes and churches to justify the ongoing ill-will they're creating.
That the GOP would attempt to use the church in service to its partisan political goals in this way is ... somewhat distressing, if not at all surprising.
Posted by iain at July 24, 2004 03:44 AM
