Finding Religion
Democrats try to talk like God-fearing folk.
by Joseph Lindsley
04/17/2006 12:00:00 AM

IMAGINE a Republican congressman defending traditional marriage by saying, "I am inspired in my public service by St. Paul's admonition against sodomy in his first letter to the Corinthians." Surely, many liberals would raise the alarm of impending theocracy. But House minority leader Nancy Pelosi--a self-described "conservative Catholic" despite her status as a pro-gay marriage, pro-choice San Francisco lefty who as a young girl thought she would rather be a priest than a nun--has lately been encouraging members of her party to couch their political arguments in Biblical terms so as to appeal to the God-fearing.

In a St. Patrick's Day speech on the genocide in Darfur, a topic that unites religious conservatives and liberals, Pelosi said, "The gospel of Matthew is something that drives many of us in our public service." In September of last year, she gave a speech in favor of strengthening the Endangered Species Act, in which she said, "In Isaiah in the Old Testament, we are told that to minister to the needs of God's creation--and that includes our beautiful environment--is an act of worship." And Pelosi, who could be speaker of the House next January, was one of 55 Catholic Democrats in the chamber who signed a "Statement of Principles" in which they expressed union with the "living Catholic tradition." In the statement, released in February through the office of Connecticut's Rosa DeLauro, the signers admit the "undesirability of abortion," without actually committing to changing their party's pro-choice agenda. the rest