Dems grapple with faith issues in Denver

DENVER — Democrats are seeking to show the country that they are a party of faith, reclaiming the religious ground often ceded in the past to the Republican Party.

But as Democrats do so, they also highlight the issue that remains one of the biggest divides within both parties — abortion.

{mosads}Outside the Democrats’ “Interfaith Gathering” at the Colorado Convention Center Sunday, anti-abortion rights protesters waved large signs with graphic photos of aborted fetuses. Inside the convention center, “pro-life Democrats” took to the stage and took different approaches to highlighting their views.

The Rev. Charles E. Blake, presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ, loudly proclaimed himself a “pro-life Democrat.” A hush fell over the crowd of several thousand as he decried the “millions of surgically terminated pregnancies.”

But he also implied that conservative anti-abortion rights activists who have thrown their lot in with Republicans are missing wide swaths of the Christian message.

“Others loudly proclaim their advocacy of the unborn,” Blake said. “But they refuse to acknowledge their responsibility, and the responsibility of our nation, for those who have been born.”

He got a standing ovation for saying that conservatives were “silent and indifferent to the suffering of our cities” and stand by while society refuses to help many “with the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.”

By contrast, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) didn’t mention the abortion issue when he spoke to the crowd about the “tremendous intersection of faith and politics.”

Ritter interrupted his career in the 1980s to serve as a Catholic missionary. When he ran for governor in 2006, he stoked fear in Colorado’s Democratic abortion-rights community with his Catholic-rooted anti-abortion rights stance.

He walked a tightrope, saying he did not want to criminalize the procedure, and won handily in a Democratic year.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sat in the audience, though she did not deliver a speech. When she addressed her home state delegation, she got a boisterous round of applause when she pointed out that all of California’s Democratic congresswomen are pro-choice.

Democrats have moved left on abortion this year. The language on abortion in prior Democratic platforms, crafted by former President Clinton, has been scrapped. Language that used to say that abortions should be “safe, legal and rare” has been changed to favor a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), a supporter of abortion rights, touted the change during an interview in Denver on Monday.

Abortion has been a divisive issue since before the Supreme Court made it a constitutional right in 1973. That’s especially true in Colorado, which in 1967 was the first state to legalize the procedure to preserve the health of the mother. Until Ritter, support for abortion rights was nearly a litmus test among the state’s leading Democrats, like Rep. Diana DeGette of Denver.

It’s a major fault line among the state’s Republicans. Some Republicans who are otherwise very conservative are considered “liberal” or “moderate” because they are not staunchly anti-abortion. An example is the libertarian-leaning Gale Norton, the former interior secretary who lost a 1996 Senate primary to the anti-abortion rights Wayne Allard, who went on to serve two terms.

Blake’s stance reflects a common Democratic complaint that Republicans get painted as “more Christian” because of the party’s identification with opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, even though Democrats are identified with universal Christian themes like compassion and concern for the poor.

Democrats, who did some public soul-searching after losing the “values voters” in the 2004 election, are using the convention to highlight the moral aspect of the party’s message and the faith-based message of party standard-bearer Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

The floor proceedings will begin and end each night with a prayer from a national or local faith leader. And the party will have its first-ever convention Faith Caucus meetings during the week to talk about how faith fits in with Democratic priorities.

And the first official event of the convention was the interfaith gathering. Leah Daughtry, the CEO of the convention and chief of staff of the Democratic National Committee, who is also pastor of The House of the Lord Church in Washington, told the assembled crowd of more than 3,500: “Many people have had much to say about efforts to bring faith to the Democratic Party. We didn’t need to bring faith to the Democratic Party. Faith is already here.”

But Daughtry and her fellow speakers were largely preaching, as it were, to the choir. Nellie and Mark Smith, regular churchgoers from Huntsville, Ala., took time out of their Estes Park, Colo., vacation to attend the event.

“I felt some relief that there is room there for people who are pro-life,” Nellie Smith said. “We both were on the fence. Now, I’m going to listen some more.”

Bob Cusack contributed to this article.