Arianna Huffington argues
that President Bush is unfairly using religion against John Kerry: “To hear
them tell it, a vote for Kerry is a vote against God and Country. Talk
about hitting way, way below the belt.”
Arianna, meet Rev.
David Keyes, “an interim minister for Unitarian Universalist and United
Church of Christ.”
This is not a parody:
Keyes is the Kerry-Edwards election campaign’s new (and first) religious
outreach coordinator for Missouri, and on Monday afternoon he sat at a
table at the campaign’s St. Louis storefront headquarters in a Shrewsbury
strip mall with six religious leaders, lay and ordained.
Keyes walked them through the sequence of speakers for an interfaith
“prayer potluck” rally that night in Brentwood.
But in his zeal to include speakers of varying calibrations of faiths,
denominations, genders, races and ages, Keyes had overlooked one of the
most visible: Protestant women. …
At the rallies across the [Missouri] on Monday night, about 400 people
turned out, according to organizers. Former U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan spoke
at the event in Liberty. She called it “one of the warmest gatherings I’ve
ever attended,” adding, “the audience was very receptive to the message,
which was that it’s all right to be a Democrat and a Christian.”
At the rally at the Brentwood Community Center on Monday night, about 100
Kerry supporters gathered to pray, testify and sing. The final verse of
“Kumbaya” became “someone’s voting, Lord, Kumbaya.”
Blogger Harry Forbes suspicion
that “You don’t suppose the [Democratic National Committee] would refuse to
dirty its hands with a database of Unitarian or UCC activists do you?,” has
now been confirmed. (Tip of the hat to Andrew
Sullivan for the Forbes link.)