Democratic liaison to religious leaders resigns after drawing fire from Right_82304

Posted: 8/20/04

Democratic liaison to religious leaders
resigns after drawing fire from Right

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)–The Democratic Party's first-ever liaison to religious leaders resigned only two weeks after she started, under fire from a conservative Catholic group for her opposition to the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Brenda Peterson, an ordained Disciples of Christ minister, resigned abruptly Aug. 4 as the Democratic National Committee's senior adviser for religious outreach.

Peterson resigned the same day stories in the conservative Washington Times and the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Press publicized charges that Peterson was anti-religious.

The charges were first leveled Aug. 2 by William Donohue, president of the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. The group frequently has made headlines for criticizing politicians and groups it considers anti-Catholic.

In a three-day series of press releases attacking Peterson, Donohue noted she signed a friend-of-the-court brief along with other clergy members supporting Michael Newdow's case to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court rejected Newdow's argument that he, as an atheist, had a right to prevent his daughter from being exposed to the words in her California public school. The court turned Newdow away on technical grounds and did not decide on his argument that the Constitution's ban on government establishment of religion prevented the pledge from being recited in public-school classrooms.

In his Aug. 2 release, Donohue, the Catholic leader, said the brief Peterson signed “shows infinitely more concern for the sensibilities of atheists like Newdow than it does for the 90 percent of Americans who believe in God.”

He also wondered if the leaders of the Democratic National Committee were “totally out of their minds” for hiring Peterson to conduct outreach to religious voters.

“Would they hire a gay basher to reach out to homosexuals?” he asked.

Peterson previously was director of the Clergy Leadership Network. The group formed late last year to rally progressive religious leaders to challenge the Religious Right and oppose many of President Bush's policies.

In a public statement released on her resignation, Peterson said she was not forced to resign but was quitting “because it is no longer possible for me to do my job effectively” after the controversy raised by the Catholic League.

The controversy came just days after Peterson organized a highly publicized “People of Faith Luncheon” at the Democratic National Convention in Boston and amidst a campaign by some Democrats to get their party's leaders to talk more openly about faith and its role in forming their positions on public policy.

Peterson's former boss at the Clergy Leadership Network, Al Pennybacker, criticized her attackers.

“This is a very small, splinter, unofficial Catholic group, and they're to the right of right. It fits in the pattern of attack that a number of extreme-right religious groups have pursued,” he said.

Pennybacker noted the friend-of-the-court brief Peterson was criticized for signing had argued that the government's use of rote religious phrases such as “under God” to solemnize public occasions amounts to trifling with religion. “The point in the amicus brief is that you've got to take religion seriously,” he said.

But Catholic League spokesman Louis Giovino discounted that argument, saying: “If you're taking out 'under God,' no matter what all the other stuff means, most people are going to take it to mean that you (want to) censor God.”