BILL TAMMEUS Crises reveal the mettle of America's would-be leaders

In one way of looking at it, the 2004 presidential race is a landslide for the United Methodist Church. After all, three of the four major presidential and vice-presidential candidates belong to that mainline Protestant denomination.
But the fact that they share a religious home does not mean they agree on politics. In many ways, Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ground what they would describe as their political conservatism in their faith -- and both are Methodists. Democrat John Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, also is a Methodist, but Edwards has wound up on the political left of fellow churchmen Bush and Cheney. Kerry, of course, is a Roman Catholic.
However divided -- even fragmented -- we Americans are on faith issues, the reality is that we are an insistently religious people. Even most of the "nones" -- that growing group of people who tell pollsters they belong to no particular religion -- are believers in God, surveys say. They just don't think God is a Methodist or a Catholic, a Hindu or a Wiccan.
Because religion is important to us, we want to know about the faith of our leaders -- and potential leaders. It really matters. And when candidates fail to talk about that aspect of their lives in ways that make sense to voters, it costs them. And it should.
American experience
Because Edwards only recently was chosen to be on the ticket with Kerry, his religious profile and thoughts may be less well known than those of Bush, Cheney and Kerry. What strikes me about Edwards' public comments about his faith is that they reflect a fairly common American experience -- one in which crisis moves us to re-examine our religion.
"I have had an interesting faith journey over the course of my life," Edwards has explained. "I was born and raised in the Southern Baptist church. I was baptized in the Southern Baptist Church and then later in life joined the Methodist church and, like a lot of people, when I was in my college years and I went to law school and became a lawyer and was raising my young family, I moved away somewhat from my faith.
"And then I lost a son in 1996, and my faith came roaring back, and it played an enormous role in my ability to get through that period. It stayed with me and has been enormously important."
A crisis can shatter faith or reaffirm it. In some ways, I suppose, it depends on how well one had grasped the faith before the crisis came. Was it an immature, simplistic faith that never entertained or resolved doubts? Or was it a mature faith that already had asked -- and begun to answer -- some of the hard questions about life?
I don't know whether authentic, reliable faith is even possible if one never experiences some kind of faith-testing crisis. But life seems to be designed in such a way that no one avoids such crises. In Edwards' case, it was the loss of his 16-year-old son in a traffic accident.
Dark side
As theologian Shirley C. Guthrie writes in his book, "Christian Doctrine," "There is a dark side to God's good creation, and it would be dishonest, superficial and unfaithful if we Christians denied it or promised any escape from it."
Useful religions will do their best to prepare people to handle crises. If, for instance, people immediately blame God for the death of a child, it's likely that their understanding of God before the death happened was far too facile.
Theologians and others have struggled for centuries with what they call the question of theodicy -- why there's evil in God's good world. And so far there is no exhaustive answer that satisfies everyone. But if questions about evil are never raised in an honest way, the picture of God in our heads inevitably will be the theological equivalent of a 6-year-old child's stick-figure drawing.
Do some people in crisis cling to faith like a life preserver in choppy seas? Yes, and sometimes they come away from the experience without much more depth of faith than they had before.
I don't know yet whether that's the case with John Edwards. My inclination is to suspect he has a relatively sophisticated and well-nuanced understanding of his religion, but that's one of the questions I hope this campaign will answer.
It is not, probably, the most important question of the campaign. There are many other issues of policy for voters to consider in making their choice. But it will help all of us gain a better feel for each candidate's wholeness and ability to handle crises if we can understand more fully how his faith helps him react when disaster strikes. It's a fair political question in a country that G.K. Chesterton once said had the soul of a church.
Here's an excerpt from a helpful book of essays on religion and politics:
"We Americans -- almost all of us -- can be quite inconsistent in our views of how and when religion should influence politics. Many who welcome the prophetic role of the churches in movements to abolish slavery, promote civil rights and secure social justice are skeptical of applying religion's prophetic voice to matters such as abortion, sexuality or family life. Many who welcome the second set of commitments can be just as wary of crusades rooted in a social gospel."
--"What's God Got to Do With the American Experiment?" edited by E.J. Dionne Jr. and John J. DiIulio Jr.
X Bill Tammeus is a columnist for The Kansas City Star. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.