A segment from the transcript of MEET THE PRESS (Sunday, Sept. 24, 2006)

Welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

MR. JOHN DANFORTH: Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT: You are a former United States senator, a former ambassador to the United Nations, an ordained Episcopal priest, and you’ve written a book on “Faith and Politics.” And we take particular note of it this morning because of things that you have said. Let’s share that with our viewers. “By a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube. Standing alone, each of these initiatives has its advocates, within the Republican Party and beyond. But the distinct elements do not stand alone. Rather they are parts of a larger package, an agenda of positions common to conservative Christians and the dominant wing of the Republican Party.” You’re suggesting the Christian right has taken over the Republican Party?

MR. DANFORTH: Yeah, I think it has. This is the base of the Republican Party, and the nature of politics in America now is to appeal to the political base, to the exclusion of everybody else. I think that’s what’s—it’s happened in both parties, the Democrats have their base, our base is the Christian conservatives.

MR. RUSSERT: Why has this happened, and shouldn’t the Christian conservatives be saluted for standing up and exercising their democratic franchise?

MR. DANFORTH: Well, they certainly have the right to speak out. And I, I would hope that everybody who speaks out from the standpoint of religion would do so with, with some degree of humility, recognizing that they don’t have a monopoly on truth. But the problem is, when a political party becomes a sectarian party, when it becomes the party of one branch of one religion, and I think that that’s what’s happened to the Republican Party. And I, I would hope that the Republican Party would get back to its moorings.

MR. RUSSERT: You write with real conviction, senator, this is what you say, “When Christians claim special knowledge of God’s truth, when they advance wedge issues, when they divide America between ‘people of faith’ and their ‘enemies,’ Christians become not the means of peace but the cause of conflict. In that case, Christians are far from being powerless. They are powerful contributors to what has gone wrong in American politics.”

MR. DANFORTH: Well, I think that that’s true. And I mean, to me, one of the messages of religion, in fact, the, the meaning of the world religion has to do with holding people together. It’s the same root as, as the word that “ligament” comes front. But I think, in fact, religion in various part of the world—Iraq, for example—has become the means of division and, and bloodshed. And in our own country, when it’s used politically—and we’ve always seen this, our founding fathers saw it when they wrote the Constitution—religion has the capacity to divide us. So if it—if religion is presented as sort of, “My way is God’s way and your way is not, you’re, you’re against God,” there can be no more divisive factor in politics than that.

MR. RUSSERT: Christian conservatives who step forward and say, “However, senator, I believe that abortion is the taking of a life. I believe that there is a life in that petri dish and that’s why I’m against stem cell research. I believe that the Bible teaches me that homosexuality is immoral. How can you ask me to compromise on those kinds of life and death and moral issues?”

MR. DANFORTH: Well, I—I’d say, “Take your position and take it strongly. I’m sure you’re going to do that. But recognize, also, that you’re not God and that there is a difference between anybody’s political position or moral position and God. And that we have to try to recognize that other people also are trying to be faithful, even though they don’t agree with us.” And if you have that kind of humility, it makes the art of politics possible. Whereas, if it becomes, you know, “I know God’s will and you don’t,” then, it seems to me, that we’ve got a very divided country.

MR. RUSSERT: Is is the certitude that bothers you?

MR. DANFORTH: It is the certitude. It—it’s the total lack of—of humility. It’s the belief that “I do know God’s will and I can—I can put that in the political agenda. I can cram God into my own political point of view.” And that is what I think has happened in our Republican Party.

MR. RUSSERT: As you might expect, some of the conservative Christians have spoken out. “Richard Land ... of the Southern Baptist Convention ... describes [Danforth] as ‘what was wrong with the Republican Party and why they were a minority party.’

“Votes reflect moral values. The struggle for hearts and minds gets reflected in the ballot box. ... It just sounds to me like Danforth’s sore that he lost the argument with a majority of the American people.”

MR. DANFORTH: I, I don’t think I’ve lost the argument. I think—the point of writing a book is to evoke a response. And that’s what I’m trying to do. I would—I want people to think about and talk about the role of religion in politics. Clearly, there is a role of religion in politics. What is it? And I think when most people in America think about it, they do not want our country divided on religious lines. They do not want a political party that takes one religious point of view. Most Americans believe that we’re all in this together. Whether we’re Catholics or Protestants or Jews or Muslims or whatever we are, we’re in this together as a country, and we have to try to build some common ground. And when religion is used as a political wedge to drive us apart, it’s doing us a disservice.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe you could be nominated for president by the Republican Party without the strong support of the Christian right?

MR. DANFORTH: I doubt it right now, but I think that it’s a point worth making because I think this identification with the Republican Party and, and the Christian right isn’t sustainable for very long. It might work for a time. And I think that that’s the view of it. “Hey, it works. This is a—this is a consortium of people and it works pretty well.” But I don’t think it will work very well for long because I think the more people think about it, the, the more they’ll recognize this is not what America is.

MR. RUSSERT: You also talk in your book about collegiality and bipartisanship and civility. You wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times and this is how you structured it, “In the decade since I left the Senate, American politics has been characterized by two phenomena: the increased activism of the Christian right, especially in the Republican Party, and the collapse of bipartisan collegiality. I do not think it is a stretch to suggest a relationship between the two. To assert that I am on God’s side and you are not, that I know God’s will and you do not, and that I will use the power of government to advance my understanding of God’s kingdom is certain to produce hostility.” Do you think that’s the primary reason for the breakdown in collegiality?

MR. DANFORTH: Yeah, I think it’s a lot of it. I, I think, in general, politics in America is too polarized now. I mean, it’s always been a contact sport, but I think it’s too polarized. I think that the center has collapsed in American politics and that we’ve lost something because of that. And I think religion has been used as a wedge to drive us apart rather than something to bind us together.

MR. RUSSERT: How do you get that bipartisans—that center? How do you get it back?

MR. DANFORTH: Well, I, that, that’s the reason for writing the book, because I, I think that that’s where the American people are. And when they see political campaigns, they are not seeing their point of view represented. They’re seeing two extremes: the extreme left and the extreme right. When they watch the talking heads on the all-news channels, they’re seeing two extreme points of view. And I think most people would say “That’s not where we are. We, we are sort of none of the above.”

So I think that the center has to reassert itself. And how do you reassert yourself? You speak out. You speak out in every forum you can find, and you say this, this kind of divisiveness in America is unable to deal seriously with serious problems like terrorism, like dependence on foreign sources of energy, like the pending collapse of Social Security and Medicare. And those are hard political problems in any event, but at least we have to try to establish some common ground. And the common ground exists in the middle of the political spectrum, and that middle has been eroded.

MR. RUSSERT: You end your book—and the way I’d like to end our conversation this morning—talking about the role of peace for a Christian. You write:

“In our seminaries, in our churches, in our thoughts and prayers we should give rigorous attention to whether Christianity is a religion of peace. And if it is, we should think about how we can be more effective peacemakers than we have been to date.” Do you write about that in the context of the war on terror, or much more generally?

MR. DANFORTH: Well, it’s got a long history. Ever since the Book of Joshua, you know, where the people who were on the other side were slaughtered, the Crusades—it’s got a very long history. But certainly we see it now in Iraq where it’s sectarian violence, Sunnis and Shiites are killing each other. So what do we do about this?

And I think if religion is a good part of the problem in the world now, people killing each other in the name of God, then religious people are going to have to do just a little more than sing hymns and write letters to members of Congress. They’ve got to figure out strategies for trying to pull the world together, creating dialogue between the religions, and solving some of these religious disputes that we’re having.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator John Danforth, Reverend John Danforth, this is one table where we can discuss faith and politics. And we thank you for joining us this morning.

MR. DANFORTH: Thank you.