Voters’ Values, Common Ground, and Opportunity for Dialogue

November 13, 2004

Source: Kansas City Star

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/living/religion/10166855.htm

On November 13, 2004 Kansas City Star reported, "national and local religious leaders are examining the divisions so plainly evident among them in the presidential election and trying to decide where to go from here. So far, representatives of the theological and political left, center and right haven't found a lot of common ground as victors look for spoils and losers look for ways just to be heard. There's talk of new ways to keep the conservative momentum going and efforts to broaden the definition of moral values. 'Now that values voters have delivered for George Bush, he must deliver for voters,' the Rev. D. James Kennedy, a Florida broadcast evangelist, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Not so fast, others say.' Mandate talk is a little disconcerting when an election and an electorate is so divided,' said the Rev. Jim Wallis, editor in chief of the progressive evangelical magazine Sojourners. 'The truth is that no matter who won this election, half the population would have felt crushed. ... The issue is where can we find some common ground.'"