According to a June 4, 2004 ABC News poll, nearly two-thirds of American

citizens say religious leaders in general should not try to influence politicians’

positions on issues. Contrast that with recent news stories about both the

Republican and Democratic parties’ new campaigns to rally religious voters

around the country, and it is clear that the dynamic of religion and politics in the

United States continues to be a constant in the U.S. political climate.

The role of religion in politics and specifically in presidential elections is a long

one. One instance involved the question of democratic presidential nominee Senator

John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism. In 1960, Kennedy gave a speech to Protestant 

ministers in Houston that assured the clergymen — and voters — that his Catholic

faith, would have no affect on his political decision making. “I believe in an America

where the separation between church and state is absolute,” he said. 

At that time, the divide between Catholic voters and Protestant voters was

clear: 75 percent of Catholics voted for Kennedy and 75 percent of Protestants

voted for Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee.

Today, however, “Voters don’t seem to care too much about which of the

Inside This Issue:

• Bush, Kerry Court Religious 

Voters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page1

• Religion and the 2004

Presidential Elections: An

Interview with Professor 

Clyde Wilcox. . . . . . . . . . page 1

• Campaign Highlight: 

Backgrounder: Separation 

of Church and State 

in the U.S. . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5

FAST FACTS:

✔ 64 percent of registered voters

say that their personal religious

beliefs and faith will be 

important in deciding their votes for

president this election year. 

-- Gallup Poll, March 2, 2004

Election

FOCUS

June 16, 2004 U.S. Department of State ISSUE 1 • NO 13 

Clyde Wilcox, Professor of

Government at Georgetown University

in Washington D.C., and author of 

several books on the relationship

between religion and politics including

“Public Attitudes toward Church and

State” and “Religion and Politics in

Comparative Perspective,” spoke to

Washington File Staff Writer Alexandra

Abboud on June 4 about religion and

the 2004 presidential election.

Q: The United State is a

country that fosters the separation of church and state.

What is the relationship

between religion and politics

in the U.S. today?

Religion and the 2004 Presidential

Elections: An Interview with Professor

Clyde Wilcox

(continued on page 3)

(continued on page 2)

To receive this newsletter 

via email go to:

http://www.usembassy.de/mail

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.

Bush, Kerry Court Religious Voters

• Local Candidates:

Backgrounder: Separation 

of Church and State 

in the U.S. . . . . . . . . . . . . 

First Saudi-American

Candidate for Elected Office 

in the U.S. . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5
Christian groups their leaders might

belong to,” said Dr. Clyde Wilcox,

professor of government at

Georgetown University. “What they

really want to see is a president who

has some sincere religious faith.”

The contemporary role of religion

in politics has evolved from being an

issue of the candidate’s 

religious affiliation to a matter of 

voters’ religious preferences and what

that indicates about their views on

specific political issues.

A March 2004 Gallup poll found

that 64 percent of registered voters say

that their personal religious beliefs and

faith will be important in deciding

their votes for president this year. With

this in mind, both the Republican and

Democratic parties have made 

religious outreach a key component of

their campaigns. The Republican

National Committee website, for

example, features outreach 

coordinators from groups including

Catholics, Protestants (Evangelical and

others), Jews and Muslims. 

According to a USA Today poll,

the demographic of those who attend

religious services — a group that the

Bush campaign is actively courting —

are likely to vote republican on 

election day. In a phenomenon the

poll refers to as the “religion gap, ”

“the divide isn’t between Catholics

and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles”

but instead on the one side are those

religious voters that attend religious

services regularly – and are likely to

vote Republican – and other side,

“those who attend religious services

only occasionally or never.”

In April, Senator John Kerry, the

presumed Democratic nominee, named

Mara Vanderslice, an Evangelical

Christian, as the religious outreach

coordinator to his campaign.

Concerning her new task, Vanderslice

is quoted in USA Today as saying “the

most important thing to start with are

opportunities for John Kerry to share

more openly with the American electorate about his faith experience, how

it’s inspired his commitment in public

service and how it’s influenced his life.”

Although both parties are reaching

out to religious voters in general, two

specific groups – Catholics and

Evangelical Protestants – have gotten

the most attention from the parties and

candidates alike. Catholics and

Evangelical Protestants, however, 

represent two very different voting

groups with varying concerns and 

voting patterns. It is likely that both

parties will use different campaign

strategies to reach out to these voters.

Kerry will be the first Catholic

candidate to secure the Democratic

nomination since the late President

John F. Kennedy. Although Catholic

voters in the past were viewed as a

voting bloc, today, many analysts

agree that there are simply too many

Catholic voters – a little over 20 percent of voters are Catholic – to be

considered a unified voting entity.

According to a poll conducted by the

Pew Forum on Religion and Public

Life, only 32 percent of Catholics say

that their religious beliefs occasionally

or frequently guide their voting 

decision. “When all is said and done,

Catholics go to the polls as something

else: veterans, union members, 

residents of the Northeast, young, old,”

said pollster John Zogby. “Being

Catholic is not the major identifier.” 

In contrast, the Pew study’s results

on Evangelical Protestants found that

more than two-thirds of those who

define themselves as Evangelical

Protestants say that their religious

beliefs affect their voting decision.

Evangelicals strongly support several Republican positions - for

example, against gay marriage, stem

cell research and abortion - and,

according to the Pew study, 70 percent

are in favor of Bush’s re-election.

The Bush campaign is also reaching out to the up to four million

conservative, religious voters who

failed to vote in the 2000 presidential

election. It has mounted an aggressive

voter registration drive aimed at this

demographic.

The Kerry campaign may not be

able to successfully court Evangelicals

because of ideological differences on

many key issues. However,

Democrats are reaching out to more

politically liberal religious voters. On

June 9, more than 350 liberals of 

varying religious faiths gathered at a

conference in Washington, D.C., 

sponsored by the Center for American

Progress, a Democratic think tank.

Attendees discussed increasing the

ELECTION FOCUS 2004

2 ELECTION FOCUS 2004

The U.S. Department of State is pleased to present its election coverage newsletter, Election Focus 2004. The 

newsletter will provide non-partisan coverage of the U.S. election process, featuring articles, interviews, public opinion

polls, and other information on the presidential primaries, debates, conventions and campaign activities of the major 

presidential candidates.

Election Focus 2004 is produced by the Democracy and Human Rights team in the Bureau of International Information

Programs.

If you are interested in receiving this newsletter via email, please go to:

http://www.usembassy.de/mail

— BUREAU OF —

INTERNATIONAL 

INFORMATION

PROGRAMS

THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE
role of mainstream religious voters

and organizations — known as the

religious left — in U.S. politics and

elections. ■

ELECTION FOCUS 2004

WWW.USEMBASSY.DE/USA 3

(continued from page 1)

Religion and the 2004

Presidential Elections: An

Interview with Professor

Clyde Wilcox

“What the surveys show

is that Americans want their

president — and their leaders in general — to be

somewhat religious.”

— Professor Clyde Wilox,

Georgetown University

Professor Clyde Wilcox: Politicians

and the courts continue to debate the

meaning of the separation of church

and state in the 1st Amendment to the

US constitution. The phrase itself is

“Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of a religion,

nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” So, what does it mean to establish

a religion? It doesn’t actually say.

The phrase “separation of church

and state” is Thomas Jefferson’s 

language later on. It means that the

government shall not establish a 

religion in the way that there are

established churches in Germany and

Norway, for example.

But what it has never meant is

that religious people can’t use their

religion to help them make political

decisions, including policy decisions,

including who to vote for. It has never

meant that churches cannot comment

on policy issues of the day. In my

view, it simply means that the 

government can’t establish a religion

or take sides between religions.

Q: In this election year, are

presidential candidates looking at religious voters and

religious organizations as

an important voting bloc? If

so, what are they doing to

reach out to these voters?

Wlicox: One of the remarkable things

about the United States is that it is a

very religious nation, compared to

Europe for example. Probably close to

half of Americans tell survey

researchers that they attend church

every week. And although some of

them are probably exaggerating, this

is a very high number and therefore

no presidential candidate could ever

win the presidency without appealing

to highly-religious voters.

The difficulty is that we are also a

nation of many religions. Christians

constitute about 80 percent of the

public, but there are many Muslims,

and Sikhs, and Hindus, and so forth.

And moreover, within that 80 percent

who are Christians, there are hundreds

and hundreds of denominations. So

there is no single group that comes

anywhere close to being a majority in

the U.S. So candidates cannot make a

narrow sectarian appeal but rather a

broader appeal.

What the surveys show is that

Americans want their president — and

their leaders in general — to be 

somewhat religious. Voters don’t

seem to care too much about which of

the Christian groups their leaders

might belong to. 

But what voters do want to see is

a president who has some sincere 

religious faith — some kind of

grounding in a religion. At the same

time, there’s a little bit of a 

nervousness on the part of voters

about voting for someone who might

think that he’s having a very close

conversation with God, and God is

calling him to make a particular 

policy. 

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.
ELECTION FOCUS 2004

Q: What is the role of 

religious organizations such

as churches in an election?

Wlicox: Churches are actually active

in campaigns, but there’s a limit on

what they can do and still remain a

tax-exempt charity. They can’t endorse

a candidate, for example. But they can

have voter registration drives, they can

encourage their voters to think about

the issues, and which issues are 

important to them. Quite a few

churches are very active in politics.

But they’re not — at least in theory —

partisan in their approach.

Q: What safeguards are

there to make sure that

these tax-exempt 

organizations – such as

churches — aren’t involved

in political activities that taxexempt organizations are

prohibited from engaging

in? 

Wlicox: The Internal Revenue Service

has developed a set of guidelines to

help churches understand what they're

allowed to do, and what they're not

allowed to do, and those guidelines are

widely distributed. If the IRS finds

that the church had been engaged substantially in partisan politics, it might

withdraw its tax-exempt status. 

In general, we lean over backwards to give freedom of religion, and

to give churches the right to criticize

policies and to talk about what issues

are important in the campaign. But

there is a policy that if they become

heavily partisan, then they're no longer

considered a charity. That’s very

important in the U.S. because anyone

can form a church here. I could form

my own church and call it the Church

of Clyde, and if I'm a tax-exempt

operation, then, by law, I can’t really

be doing electoral politics from it. ■

“Congress shall make no law

respecting an establishment of 

religion,” reads the First Amendment

to the U.S. Constitution. This clause

has been interpreted to mean that the

government of the United States –

unlike Great Britain and other

European countries – may not declare

one religion as the national religion of

the United States nor support one 

religion over another. However, this

clause is still much debated today, and

the Supreme Court of the United

States is often asked to clarify the

meaning of what is known as the

Establishment Clause and the issue of

separation of church and state.

It was not until 1802 that the

phrase “separation of Church and

State” became synonymous with the

Establishment Clause. Thomas

Jefferson coined the phrase in a letter

written to the Danbury Baptist

Association in which Jefferson

defended his decision to not proclaim

national days of fasting and 

thanksgiving, as the two presidents

before him — Washington and Adams

– had done. 

The Constitution states that

Congress “should ‘make no law

respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise

thereof’; thus building a wall of eternal separation between Church &

State,” he wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court and other

U.S. courts have been continually

asked to interpret the clause. The

benchmark case for all later decisions

regarding religious liberty is Lemon v.

Kurtzman (1971). The Supreme Court,

in a unanimous decision, ruled that

direct government assistance to 

religious schools was unconstitutional.

The majority opinion outlined a test –

known as the “Lemon Test” — for

deciding when a law violates the

Establishment Clause. According to

the decision, a law involving religion

is constitutional if it has secular (nonreligious) purpose, is neutral towards

religion (neither for or against it) and

does not result in “excessive entanglements” between government and

religion.

“A government cannot be

premised on the belief that all persons

are created equal when it asserts that

God prefers some,” said former Justice

Harry A. Blackmun in his decision in

4 ELECTION FOCUS 2004

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.

Backgrounder: Separation of Church

and State in the U.S.

Campaign★★Highlight
�������������������

������������������������������������

���������������������������������������

�������������������������������������

�������������������������������������

�����������������������������������

������������������

����������������������������

��������������������������������������

�����������������������������������

�������������������������������������

������������������������������������

��������������������������������������

������������������������������������

�����������������������������������

������������������������������������

����������������������������������������

���������������������������������������

����������������������������������

������������������������������ �����

�������������������������������������

�������������������������

�������������������������������

���������������������������������������

�������������������������������

��������������������������������������

������������������������������������

�����������������������������������

���������������������������������������

�����������������������������������������

��������������������������������������

��������������������������������������

���������������������������

�������������������� � 

������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������

A middle-aged schoolteacher 

living in southern California, Ferial 

Al Masry, is waging an uphill election 

campaign to become the first Saudiborn American to hold elective office 

in the United States.

Al Masry is running as a write-in 

candidate of the Democratic Party 

targeting the seat of the 37th district 

in the California state legislature, 

representing the city of Newbury, near 

Los Angeles.

Electoral victory would also make 

her the first Arab-American woman to 

serve in the California state assembly 

and one of the few Arab-American 

elective office holders in the United 

States.

Asked why she decided to enter 

the race, the 55-year-old teacher said, 

“I feel we are disenfranchised here. 

Those currently representing the 

district don’t represent the Democratic 

constituency in the area.”

One of her main goals is to protect 

public education system, which she 

said would be neglected in the event 

of a victory by her opponent, who 

favors school vouchers.

“Vouchers are a crime against 

public schools. I want to start 

protecting the public school system 

and I want to change the curriculum 

because what we have now in the 

public schools is one size fits all. 

Education is becoming a political tool 

in the hands of politicians, and I don’t 

agree with that,” she said.

Al Masry asserted that the middle 

class in America “is getting weaker 

and poorer, because the houses and 

the house insurance are getting too 

expensive.” As a middle class person, 

she said her socio-economic group 

is paying “for the poor because they 

can’t pay, and for the rich because 

they managed not to pay taxes.” She 

also expressed concern about the 

population growth in the area and its 

negative impact on the environment 

and the lack of health insurance for 

many Americans.

“Health insurance is going crazy, 

people can’t afford it now. We have 

about 45 million without insurance in 

this country.” She said. “I want to help 

my district.”

In a teleconference with Saudi 

journalists in Jeddah and Riyadh, 

Saudi Arabia, the public school 

teacher expressed her enthusiasm 

for her campaign despite the tough 

opposition she faces as a Democrat 

in a heavily Republican district. 

The registered voters in California’s 

37th district are about 46 percent 

Republican and 34 percent Democrat, 

according to the Los Angles Times. 

During the teleconference, she 

criticized the Arab League, describing 

it as a “social club” that has failed to 

identify the bitter realities of Arab 

countries and to settle disputes among 

Arab leaders. She also criticized the 

Arab-American community in the 

United States, citing a need for more 

unity and cohesion.

With regards to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, Al Masry said, 

“the Jewish state is a reality on the 

ground,” but it must work with its 

Arab neighbors so that all can live 

in peace with each other. The world 

community cannot let the conflict 

continue forever, she said. 

“The Palestinian people should 

have their own state, a real state, not 

a group of scattered settlements,” she 

said.

California Teacher: First Saudi-American 

Candidate for U.S. Office
���������������

�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������

Asked about her ability to raise 

the money needed for her campaign, 

Al Masry said that her campaign 

depends mainly on volunteers from 

different ethnic backgrounds. She 

said Latinos, Jews, Muslims, and 

others have contributed to her fundraising efforts and are helping her 

campaign in other ways. Former 

Massachusetts governor and the 

1988 Democratic presidential 

candidate Michael Dukakis, 

who is in southern California 

as a visiting professor at the 

University of California, Los 

Angles, appeared in a fund-raiser 

earlier this year and spoke on 

Al Masry’s behalf. Dukakis, a 

son of Greek immigrants, said 

that Al Masry’s Arab roots could 

only help her and the party. 

Many local party members are 

optimistic about Al Masry’s 

campaign, according to Ventura 

County Star. 

Born Ferial Amin Bayt Al 

Mal, she was raised in Mecca, 

Saudi Arabia and was educated 

in Egypt, France and England 

before coming to the United 

States in 1979 with her husband, 

Waleed Al Masry, a civilian 

electrical engineer at a naval 

base in California. She earned 

a journalism degree from Cairo 

University and a master’s in 

school administration from 

California Lutheran University, 

then her teaching credentials 

from California State University, 

Northridge. 

Al Masry represents a 

constituency that includes a 

blend of cultures and traditions 

that might seem contradictory 

on the surface but, on closer 

examination, she said she finds 

that they complement each other. 

She said her ultimate goal is to 

be a bridge of peace, serving a 

dialogue between the cultures 

she represents. She said that her 

personal strength is gained from 

her mother and other female 

relatives who helped raise her in 

the absence of her father, who 

was a frequent business traveler. 

As soon as she settled in 

Ventura County, California, in 

1983, she ran an Islamic school 

that taught culture and the Arabic 

language. She is currently a 

teacher of government and 

history at Cleveland High School 

in Los Angles. 

Ferial and Waleed Al Masry 

have three children. Ferial speaks 

with pride about her oldest child, 

Mohammed Omar Masry, 24, 

who traveled to Iraq as a Civil 

Affairs Reserve officer to help 

build schools and hospitals. 

Although Al Masry believes the 

war in Iraq was a mistake, she 

fully supports her son and the 

U.S. Army. She believes that 

what Mohammed is doing in Iraq 

“represents the other side of our 

power and our ability” and “is 

supporting the beautiful side of 

the United States.”

Asked about her reaction 

after being criticized by some 

members of the American 

Muslim community for not 

wearing a “hijab,” the head 

cover worn by Muslim women, 

Al Masry replied that a Muslim 

woman should not be judged 

on the basis of whether or not 

she wears a hijab. She also 

expressed her sorrow that the 

Muslim community’s activities 

in America focus on religious 

activities. “This shows that 

they don’t do any other cultural 

activities which can help them to 

integrate in American society.”

Despite being busy with her 

campaign, Al Masry has not 

given up numerous other civic 

activities. Her latest is forming 

a new club for the youth called 

the First Amendment Club. The 

goal is to teach the youngster the 

rights granted to every American 

by U.S. Constitution, especially 

freedom of speech.

Al Masry qualified as a 

Democratic candidate after 

securing a rare write-in victory, 

receiving 3,700 votes, well in 

excess of the 1,200 needed to get 

on the general election ballot in 

November. “It was a miracle,” 

Al Masry said to the New York 

Times. 

Al Masry said she is confident 

that she will win, but what if she 

does not? No matter the outcome, 

she says, “I’m not going to this 

race to just win a seat in the 

Assembly. In everything I do, I 

feel I’m a winner already.”