Speaker:<\/strong>\nAllen D. Hertzke, Presidential Professor of Political Science, University of Oklahoma<\/p>\n\n Panelists:<\/strong>\nMaggie Gallagher, Co-founder, National Organization for Marriage\nRabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism\nRajdeep Singh, Director of Law and Policy, Sikh Coalition<\/p>\n\n Moderator:<\/strong>\nAlan Cooperman<\/a>, Associate Director for Research, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life<\/p>\n\n Navigate This Transcript:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n ALAN COOPERMAN, PEW FORUM ON RELIGION & PUBLIC LIFE<\/strong>:\u00a0 Thank you all very, very much for coming. I\u2019m Alan Cooperman. I\u2019m the associate director for research here at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. We know it\u2019s a short week \u2013 a Thanksgiving week \u2013 and everybody\u2019s busy, so we are very grateful that you took the time to come. There are people on the telephone, some reporters from around the country listening in, and we\u2019re grateful that they\u2019ve joined us, too.<\/p>\n\n The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is a project of the Pew Research Center which, as many of you know, is a nonpartisan organization that does not take positions on public policy issues. Today we\u2019re releasing the results of our new\u00a0report<\/a>, \u201cLobbying for the Faithful: Religious Advocacy Groups in Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n\n With us is Professor Allen Hertzke of the University of Oklahoma. Allen was the principal researcher on this study. He was a senior visiting fellow here at the Pew Forum in 2008-2009, when he did much of the spade work for the study. We\u2019re also delighted to have here representatives from three organizations who have firsthand experience lobbying or advocating on behalf of religious constituencies or on religion-related issues here in Washington.<\/p>\n\n You have copies of their biographies in front of you, so I won\u2019t go into detail on that. I want you to know, of course, that they are here to provide context to our report and to provide their own assessments, and they are wholly independent in their views.<\/p>\n\n Maggie Gallagher is the co-founder of the\u00a0National Organization for Marriage<\/a>. She has advocated against same-sex marriage \u2013 for traditional marriage \u2013 in public debates and as a syndicated columnist for more than a decade.<\/p>\n\n Rabbi David Saperstein is the director and counsel at the\u00a0Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism<\/a>. It says here, David, and I hope this isn\u2019t a typo, that you\u2019ve been at the center for three decades. I have to suspect that means you started right after your bar mitzvah. I find three decades very hard to believe. But I\u2019m told you\u2019ve been at the RAC for three decades, advocating before Congress and the executive branch on a wide variety of issues of concern to the Reform Jewish movement in the United States.<\/p>\n\n And Rajdeep Singh is the director of law and policy at the\u00a0Sikh Coalition<\/a>, the largest Sikh civil rights group in the United States.<\/p>\n\n A quick word on our format here. Allen Hertzke is going to discuss some of the main findings of the report. Then I\u2019ll pose a question or two to the panel. And then we\u2019ll invite the rest of you and those participating by telephone to participate as well.<\/p>\n\n Before I turn things over to Allen, I just want to mention very quickly a few other things. On the table in front of you, in the information packet, you\u2019ll find some profiles of the presidential candidates. These are profiles of their religious journeys, if you will. They were put together by the Pew Forum largely from media reports and are full of links to media reports. You\u2019ll find these on our religion and politicswebsite<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n I hope you\u2019ll find them useful and that you\u2019ll go to the website. We will keep that website full of the latest news and analysis regarding religion and politics in the 2012 campaign. For example, in the next 48 hours we will have the results of a new\u00a0poll<\/a>\u00a0on religion and politics and the campaign, particularly how various religious groups are approaching the campaign and the impact of Mitt Romney\u2019s Mormonism. So stay tuned for that.<\/p>\n\n Finally, I should point out that this event is on the record. We will have a transcript of it. And a copy of the transcript will be posted on our\u00a0website<\/a>. Thank you very much. Allen Hertzke, over to you.<\/p>\n\n ALLEN HERTZKE, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA<\/strong>:\u00a0 Let me just say what a great honor it\u2019s been to work for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. There is no organization like it that has such rigor and objectivity. I want to offer a shout-out to the Pew research team, especially to Hilary Ramp and Tracy Miller. I think Amanda Nover and Elizabeth Lawton may be listening in. But these researchers have just done an incredible job in amassing this tremendous database that I think will be tremendously valuable.<\/p>\n\n Before I get into some of the major findings of the report, I want to offer a comment on the significance of this study as a scholar of religion and public life. Personally, I was actually surprised by the number of groups \u2013 212 \u2013 by their size and budgets \u2013 over $390 million \u2013 their huge diversity, and the breadth of the issue agenda \u2013 about 300 issues addressed. So even though I\u2019ve been soaking and poking in this world for two decades now, I was really struck by the findings of this study.<\/p>\n\n I think the growth of religious advocacy here in Washington, D.C., and around the country says something about the sociology of religion in America, about its public character. That religious groups feel the need to have a Washington office, I think, says something about how they view the importance of having that office to signify their place at the civic table of America. I think the public character of religion in America is illustrated.<\/p>\n\n I would encourage you all to go through the profiles of the various groups in our\u00a0database<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 we have profiles of all 212 groups \u2013 and their mission statements. If you read their mission statements, you really get a sense of the tremendous diversity and breadth of the groups, but also how they connect their religious values to their public policy concerns.<\/p>\n\n I think another thing that\u2019s interesting is that the groups see themselves as representing others, by and large. There are some exceptions or some self-interested kinds of concerns, obviously, for all of the groups. But that\u2019s where the language of advocacy comes in. Religious leaders mostly don\u2019t describe themselves as lobbyists; they describe themselves as advocates. And in many cases they see themselves as advocates, both at home and abroad, for what they would describe as the least, the lost, the left out, so forth.<\/p>\n\n Another thing that I think makes this potentially significant is that religious advocacy collectively potentially represents many citizens and institutions both at home and around the world. Religious institutions have extensive on-the-ground networks in charity, development, educational institutions, health care institutions and so forth, which often provide policy information to policymakers in Washington. Religious groups are woven into the policy process. Both Presidents Bush and Obama have created faith-based councils. You see religious groups at congressional hearings, at the White House. You also see them involved, really, in very specific \u2013 what I\u2019d call the policy weeds.<\/p>\n\n As I was looking through the interviews that I did, I noticed that groups were involved in \u2013 here are just a few of the issues: AIDS funding in Africa, second chance for ex-offenders, tobacco regulation, food security, earned income tax refundability, funds for internally displaced people in Columbia, ban on cluster bomb exports, ban on therapeutic cloning, the removal of the ban on mandatory screening of anyone wearing a headscarf, post-Katrina aid to religious schools, the resettlement of the Karen people of Burma. You name it, religious groups have been involved, it seems.<\/p>\n\n While we in the study do not make an effort \u2013 and, in fact, it would be beyond the scope of this study \u2013 to try to assess policy influence or degree of influence of different groups, my past research, particularly in the book \u201cFreeing God\u2019s Children,\u201d showed that religious groups collectively in coalition did have an impact on international religious freedom legislation, trafficking legislation, Sudan peace legislation and international debt relief. So we do see the possibility that this collective work can have an impact.<\/p>\n\n Finally, I would just say that the database itself, which I would really urge you to look at, is a great tool for scholars, students and journalists because it provides information on all of these groups \u2013 the issues that they\u2019re concerned about, their missions, budgets, tax status and so forth. In sum, religious advocacy is now a permanent and sizeable feature of the Washington scene.<\/p>\n\n <\/a>One of our challenges was defining religious advocacy, so I want to spend a little time on this. Groups are included in this study if they maintain a permanent office in the Washington, D.C., area. So we actually, in a sense, underestimate religious advocacy because there are some sizable groups that don\u2019t have an office here that do in fact mobilize citizens, engage in advocacy, come to Washington and so forth.<\/p>\n\n We also include groups if they are religiously affiliated or defined, that\u2019s obvious, but also if they\u2019re engaged in religion-related advocacy. I want to stress that some of the groups included in this study would probably tell you they are not religious lobbies or religious advocacy groups, but they are engaged in religion-related advocacy or they have substantial religious constituencies.<\/p>\n\n Advocacy in this study is defined broadly. We include not only lobbying as defined by the IRS \u2013 which is just legislative lobbying or lobbying for referenda \u2013 but also other efforts to influence public policy at the White House, executive agencies and so forth. We also look at organizations that use litigation as a strategy of national policymaking. And finally, we look at groups that do education or mobilization of constituencies or the general public on particular issues.<\/p>\n\n In other words, we don\u2019t just look at lobbying narrowly defined; we looked broadly at how groups are attempting to influence public policy. As I note, the Pew Forum database includes 212 such groups. We don\u2019t claim to have gotten all of them. When the report is released, I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll hear from some groups that want to be included.<\/p>\n\n The table in the report on tax status actually illustrates our broad definition of religious advocacy because, as you\u2019ll notice, most of the groups are tax-exempt nonprofits \u2013 501(c)(3) groups. Such groups are prevented from devoting a substantial effort to actual lobbying as defined by the IRS. But they are not prevented from education, providing information to their constituents on policy issues, mobilizing their constituents, informing members of Congress about their concerns, testifying and so forth.<\/p>\n\n [that have 501(c)(3) status]<\/p>\n\n\n But Bread for the World describes itself as a lobby.\u00a0NETWORK<\/a>, the progressive nuns group, describes itself as a social justice lobby in the Catholic tradition. The\u00a0Friends Committee on National Legislation<\/a>calls itself a Quaker lobby in the public interest. So there are groups that are registered lobbies that, in fact, can do things that the 501(c)(3)s cannot.<\/p>\n\n <\/a>A chart in the report shows the rather dramatic growth since the 1970s of religious advocacy groups in Washington, D.C. The early decades on this table represent a part of the report that I would urge you to take a look at. It is a historical overview.<\/p>\n\n In the report we provide a kind of historical overview of when national advocacy becomes a permanent part of the Washington scene \u2013 when groups develop a Washington office. The earliest we\u2019ve been able to determine is around the 1870s and then 1890s, with some of the temperance groups that actually developed Washington offices. Then we chart the Progressive era, with the Catholics, the Methodists and Jewish groups setting up permanent offices in Washington. Then during World War II and its aftermath you get a number of the mainline Protestant groups, other Jewish groups and also some secular groups.<\/p>\n\n But then what we note is that religious advocacy really seems to take off from 1970 onward. We have more groups every decade than the previous decade. Scholars have expressed a number of explanations for this \u2013 one possible reason is the growth and size of the reach of the federal government. Jos\u00e9 Casanova at Georgetown has suggested that global pushback against secularizing trends was a global phenomenon from the 1970s onward. Ronald Ingelhardt has suggested value-based concerns are drawing religious groups in. I had suggested in other work that immigration and the growing pluralism of the American religious landscape have brought more groups to the civic table.<\/p>\n\n Finally, globalization and the huge American footprint around the world have drawn groups to Washington who want to influence American foreign policy on behalf of their counterparts around the world. This is sort of self-perpetuating and reinforcing.<\/p>\n\n A chart in the report provides a breakdown by religious affiliation. As you would expect, a large number of groups belong to the broad Christian family. We have there, as you can see, Catholic groups, about 19%; evangelical, 18%; Jewish groups are well-represented; Muslim groups are actually well-represented as well. This was a notable finding, I think, of our study \u2013 the growth of the number of Muslim organizations with offices in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n\n [trend]<\/p>\n\n\n But the largest category is interreligious, in other words, issue or ideologically concerned groups that are cross-religious in nature. In fact, I would suggest that Maggie Gallagher, with National Organization for Marriage, represents one such interreligious group that focuses on a single issue concern with lots of diverse members.<\/p>\n\n <\/a>What we find in the study, first of all, is the growing pluralism and diversity of religious organizations by religion. But we also find a great diversity by organizational structure and type.<\/p>\n\n Notice we have organizations that represent individuals. Rajdeep Singh with the Sikh Coalition would be an example of someone representing individual contributors or members. But we also have a large number of groups that represent religious institutions, in other words, the large international relief and development organizations, schools, hospitals, colleges, charities and so forth. These institutions reach millions of people around the world and at home.<\/p>\n\n A number represent religious bodies or are the official representatives of religious denominations or traditions. Rabbi David Saperstein is an example of someone representing an official religious body \u2013 Reform Judaism \u2013 in America. The\u00a0United States Conference of Catholic Bishops<\/a>\u00a0represents the Catholic Church, and so forth.<\/p>\n\n We also note permanent coalitions. There are lots of coalitions that form and ebb and flow. But there are some permanent coalitions that form and develop their own independent structure. We also find that there are a number of think tanks attempting to influence the policy debate from various religious perspectives. Finally, there are some hybrid groups that don\u2019t conform to any one of those categories and seem to blend them in interesting ways. The\u00a0Becket Fund for Religious Liberty<\/a>\u00a0calls itself \u201ca think tank with teeth\u201d because it also does litigation in addition to research.<\/p>\n\n One of the more notable findings of our research involved the actual annual expenditures by, collectively, the religious groups and by specific religious organizations. We were able to get the budgets through public documents of about 131 of the 212 groups. For some of the groups, we could not get budgets because their Washington office or their advocacy program wasn\u2019t separately funded and we could not determine the funding of the advocacy program. A number of the organizations in this study are hosted by parent organizations, and we just could not get specific budgets.<\/p>\n\n But we did determine that the funding for 131 groups was over $390 million a year. The median is about a million dollars a year. These budget figures reflect our broad category of advocacy. In other words, we don\u2019t exclusively look at just expenditures for lobbying narrowly defined. We look at expenditures that involve the full range of mobilizing public opinion, affecting constituents and so forth around the country.<\/p>\n\n <\/a>One final note, we have some tables that show the impact of the recession in 2008 on religious advocacy spending. Overall, it did go down. For some groups it went up \u2013 the National Organization for Marriage had a large increase in its budget \u2013 but a number of organizations saw a decline in their total advocacy spending. The representative for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a very prominent Quaker lobby that has its own building in Washington, mentioned that spending went down significantly because of the recession, and they\u2019re now building that back up.<\/p>\n\n There are a handful of groups that had above $10 million in annual advocacy expenditures \u2013 and I want to say a few words about this. The methodology section of this report has a detailed description of the decision rules we used to determine advocacy budgets. I can\u2019t go into all the details here, but I will say that for most of the groups \u2013 for example,\u00a0American-Israel Political Affairs Committee<\/a>,\u00a0Family Research Council<\/a>,\u00a0Concerned Women for America<\/a>, Bread for the World,\u00a0National Right to Life Committee<\/a>\u00a0and theHome School Legal Defense Association<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 for the groups that are based in the Washington, D.C., area and that do advocacy as their principal mission, we included their total budget.<\/p>\n\n Now, others could use other decision rules, could use a more restrictive definition. Bread for the World has both a 501(c)(3) and a 501(c)(4), but all of it is focused on hunger issues, on educating the public about the importance of hunger and so forth. So we include the total budgets for those groups that do advocacy.<\/p>\n\n But there are some organizations that are not based in Washington, D.C. \u2013 the\u00a0American Jewish Committee<\/a>\u00a0is an example. There we looked at their annual report or their Form 990 with the IRS. We looked for budget categories that captured advocacy spending, categories that may not exclusively focus on Washington, D.C., but would basically capture what they\u2019re doing in terms of advocacy initiatives. We found about $13 million from the American Jewish Committee was in the categories of government and international relations and domestic policy. Once again, we have a very transparent report in our profiles of these groups. We show how we got the budget for each group and the decision rule we used. So others who want to use a different decision rule can do so.<\/p>\n\n [issues]<\/p>\n\n\n I would really suggest that you look in the report at the top 40 list of advocacy expenditures because I think that actually captures something of the patterns that we see. Let me just mention a few that I would characterize as patterns when you look at the broader list. Among the best-funded groups, we do find that groups focused on what they themselves characterize as traditional values are among the top-funded groups. Jewish organizations are among the well-funded organizations, but religious right or Christian right opponents \u2013 self-expressed Christian right opponents \u2013 are also relatively well-funded. And what we might call a social justice cluster of organizations also has substantial funding, between Bread for the World and\u00a0Sojourners<\/a>\u00a0and what the Catholic bishops do and so forth.<\/p>\n\n So collectively these budgets suggest a wide diversity of expressions and interests and so forth. But we do stress that budgets alone do not necessarily determine impact on any given issue. But this is a notable feature of religious life in America, that religious organizations are spending these kinds of dollars on advocacy.<\/p>\n\n <\/a>Now, one of the things that I found fascinating myself is the breadth of the issue agenda. We combed systematically though webpages of these organizations, and we found, after we did a detailed listing, that they address about 300 different issues, specific issues. You see in the breakdown between domestic and international that it\u2019s almost even. In other words, only slightly more groups focus on domestic issues exclusively versus international. And most, 64%, of the groups focus on both domestic and international issues.<\/p>\n\n If you look at domestic issues, you get a sense of both the number of groups that focus on a particular issue. We\u2019re not saying here whether this is the most important issue. We\u2019re just looking at whether they focused on these issues. Obviously, many groups focus on church-state issues, civil rights, civil liberties, but then you can go down and see the breadth of the issue agenda for religious organizations.<\/p>\n\n What I would point you to next is what I would characterize as the globalization of advocacy. Not only are international issues almost equally important or prominent among the religious advocacy community, but the wide range of issues, from human rights, poverty, peace, national security, religious freedom, energy and the environment, and now family issues are migrating to the U.N. and so forth.<\/p>\n\n One of the things that we found in our report is the growth in the number of efforts on the international stage \u2013 not just focused on American foreign policy but lobbying at the United Nations, the European Court, international tribunals, lobbying other countries, doing advocacy in other countries around the world. This is becoming a growing feature of religious advocacy, and I think it\u2019s an interesting one. In fact, some of the groups do almost exclusive global advocacy initiatives. The\u00a0International Justice Mission<\/a>, which works on justice issues around the world, trafficking and slavery and so forth \u2013 we didn\u2019t include their budget because most of that budget is not even spent focused on American policy, foreign policy or domestic. Some of it is.<\/p>\n\n Finally, we looked at advocacy strategies, and we did a questionnaire of a smaller number of the groups. Most of these groups, once again, are 501(c)(3)s, meaning they\u2019re not registered lobbyists, but they are attempting to inform public opinion, constituents. They sign coalition letters. They meet with policymakers and officials. They issue news releases. They initiate email campaigns. They write policy papers. They give testimony. And they even participate significantly in demonstrations. But only a small number of groups in our sample actually produce congressional scorecards or support candidates for elections. Those activities are restricted to 501(c)(4) organizations; 501(c)(3) organizations can\u2019t do that, and most religious groups eschew that kind of activity.<\/p>\n\n One of the fascinating things to me was the extent to which we captured the use of new media strategies and especially the social networking techniques as a way to mobilize constituents. Everybody does email, but what we found is a number of groups \u2013 and this was confirmed in my interviews \u2013 had recently adopted Twitter or Facebook Causes and those kinds of social networking tools as a way to mobilize their constituencies.<\/p>\n\n For example, the Friends Committee on National Legislation mentioned that they \u2013 using sort of viral techniques with Twitter, Facebook, email and so forth \u2013 were able to mobilize more people on the torture issue than I think they said there are Quakers in the United States \u2013 or there are members, anyway. The lobbyist for NETWORK told me that through the use of Twitter, she\u2019s able to get real-time responses to developments on the Hill. So if a member of Congress seems to be wavering on some issue, they can send a tweet and they can get immediate response to that member\u2019s office from their constituents around the country.<\/p>\n\n The head of\u00a0World Vision<\/a>\u00a0mentioned that they added 100,000 new activists to their database just through Facebook Causes. They were able to mobilize that many more people. So one of the things that I think has happened is that these new technologies are acting as kind of an equalizer. When I did my study in the 1980s of religious lobbying in Washington, only a few of the groups could really do mass direct mail mobilization. Now all can do it, of one sort or another. And because of software technology that most of the groups use, they can actually record which constituent responded to which issue to which member of Congress\u2019 office and when.<\/p>\n\n At any rate, to me as a scholar of faith and politics, religion in public life, I think this study is striking, and the database that is underlying the report \u2013 in other words, the report you have sits on top of a much larger database of profiles of the groups and so forth. I think this should be a great tool for students. I\u2019m going to use it all the time for my students in the classroom. Thanks very much.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>:\u00a0 Allen, that was great. I\u2019m going to use my privilege for one clarification. Now, would you say that the decline in spending that the study found from 2008 to 2009 is entirely and clearly the result of the recession, or could there be other factors?<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>:\u00a0 There are other factors. We note in the report the great churn and turnover that exists in the religious advocacy community. Groups rise and fall. They come and go, and so it isn\u2019t \u2013 I mean, let me give you an example. In the 1990s, the\u00a0Christian Coalition<\/a>\u00a0was one of the top-funded groups. I think they had a budget of $12 million in 1993, according to a study by Weber and Jones.<\/p>\n\n By our study, their budget had shrunk to a little over $600,000. So from a $12 million budget to a $600,000 budget, that was not a result of the recession. It was a result of changes in the environment. And so the recession clearly had an impact for some groups, but it did not for others.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>:\u00a0 Yeah. OK, let\u2019s turn to the panel now. Again, using a little bit of privilege here, I\u2019d like to ask a first question. Allen has covered at least in an overview what\u2019s in the study, but I think it\u2019s probably obvious to you all that there are some things that are not in the study, and the study says so. One of the most important is that the study does not try to assess the degree of influence wielded either individually by any of these organizations or collectively by the organizations as a whole.<\/p>\n\n The reason, I think, is that it\u2019s very difficult \u2013 maybe impossible even \u2013 to try to do that in an objective and quantitative way. Not only did the Pew Forum study not do it, but to the best of my knowledge, no political scientist has come up with a really clear-cut, solid methodology for quantitatively measuring the degree of influence of various lobbies in Washington, D.C., despite decades of research in this area.<\/p>\n\n So let\u2019s turn it over to the panel, and I\u2019d like to start in this area and ask whether these folks who\u2019ve been working here on the ground doing this work have a sense. How would you compare the influence of religious advocacy groups today in the Obama administration to, say, a few years ago under the George Bush administration? Maggie, do you want to start us off?<\/p>\n\n <\/a>MAGGIE GALLAGHER, NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR MARRIAGE<\/strong>:\u00a0 Yes, OK. Well, thank you, Alan and Allen. It\u2019s just a great privilege to be here at Pew, which has some of the most intelligent and innovative discussions of the influence of religion in public life. I feel that the question you just asked would ordinarily be a cue for me to puff up like a big cat and brag about the influence of religion in politics. And maybe I\u2019ll get to that in a second.<\/p>\n\n [group]<\/p>\n\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>:\u00a0 Actually, Maggie, it is.<\/p>\n\n GALLAGHER<\/strong>:\u00a0 Oh, they are? Oh, I\u2019m sorry. I missed them.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>:\u00a0 They\u2019re not in the top 40 in spending, but they\u2019re in the study.<\/p>\n\n GALLAGHER<\/strong>:\u00a0 Their budget is $40 million, but you\u2019re separating out their lobbying?<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0That\u2019s the total budget for the Human Rights Campaign, $40 million, but they do have a religious advocacy component.<\/p>\n\n GALLAGHER<\/strong>: \u00a0OK. That explains it.\u00a0Susan B. Anthony List<\/a>, whose main mission is electing pro-life women to office, was founded in response to Emily\u2019s List, which has the exact opposite mission. It\u2019s not really a criticism. I do understand that it\u2019s a challenge, but I do think it\u2019s worth noting the kind of presumption of what counts as religious and what counts as advocacy because the organizations on this list actually do really rather different kinds of things.<\/p>\n\n On the question of whether religion is a decreasing influence in public life, I think the quickest answer to that question is to look at the presidential race on the Republican side. At this point in 2008, Mitt Romney was arguably the most socially conservative candidate in the race, until Mike Huckabee emerged unexpectedly in Iowa. Now he\u2019s considered a relative social liberal compared to the other Republican candidates, and there sort of seems to be a race to see who\u2019s going to emerge as the champion of social conservatives, religiously motivated voters on the GOP side. I think that\u2019s a testimony to the continuing, ongoing influence of religion in public life. And what\u2019s really unique in the American tradition is that Americans are really not afraid of that involvement.<\/p>\n\n Another trend that you noted, which NOM is a very good example of, is that a great many of these socially conservative organizations are actually ecumenical, right? So openly religious influence in America tends to lead to more religious comity, actually, as different religious groups work together on shared interests, rather than, as is often feared in Europe, leading to the conclusion that you have to exclude religious influence or it will lead to bad things.<\/p>\n\n The board of the National Organization for Marriage contains Catholics, evangelicals and members of the LDS church, and we could broaden that coalition as well. We certainly worked very closely with Orthodox Jews in New York\u2019s 9th<\/sup>\u00a0congressional district, where we played a role in helping to elect Bob Turner. So just from the larger standpoint, I do think that it\u2019s the general experience of the social conservatives that it has led not to a religious war but to transcending sectarian boundaries to the experience of working together on issues of common concern. I suspect that is a uniquely American experience and way of understanding it.<\/p>\n\n In terms of whether the influence is going to continue to grow, to me the most striking \u2013 I\u2019ve never seen it quantified. It is not news to me that only 7% of organizations that believe they want to influence public policy are actually engaged in politics, supporting or opposing candidates. I think that there is actually a vast potential for expansion of the influence of socially conservative groups because they have been relying for many, many years on 501(c)(3) strategies alone to influence public policy.<\/p>\n\n The great exception is the life issue. A number of those groups are (c)(3) groups, but they are more involved in direct political action. I think the impact of that \u2013 in that there is no longer a serious idea that you can run for the Republican nomination without adopting a pro-life position \u2013 is a result of this rather small number of groups that are doing \u2013 they don\u2019t just go on television and talk like they\u2019re in politics. They get involved in the hard work of trying to help elect people who agree with them and trying to un-elect the people who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n So I would say that if the success of the life community in having an impact is beginning, in a kind of slow shift, to draw more groups to political activity. I don\u2019t want to be too self-promoting, but I think the National Organization for Marriage\u2019s success is also rooted in that we have a very clear model of direct political action, either in passing referenda that reflect our views, or in helping to elect or un-elect candidates, both at the state and the national level.<\/p>\n\n So I see a large potential upside for influence, even as many have predicted a decline because the impact that religious groups have had on public policy has been in the face of what I would call very bad models for political influence that involve avoiding actual political action. As we see that shift, I think you\u2019re going to see an increase rather than a decrease in the influence of religion-related advocacy, to use Allen\u2019s term, in public life.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0Thank you. That was very insightful. David Saperstein, you\u2019ve been at this a long time. Care to comment on the original question and maybe also on bad models for advocacy?<\/p>\n\n RABBI DAVID SAPERSTEIN, RELIGIOUS ACTION CENTER OF REFORM JUDAISM<\/strong>: \u00a0First, I too want to thank Pew. This is an extraordinary entity. As somebody writing a book called \u201cRacing with God: The Use and Abuse of Religion in American Elections,\u201d the amount of hours they\u2019ve saved me with this new religion-in-the-election piece of it is a godsend. I have deep appreciation for Allen Hertzke and the groundbreaking work that he\u2019s done about religious advocacy in Washington here.<\/p>\n\n I want to acknowledge the presence of Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the congregational arm of the Reform Jewish Movement, arguably the most influential rabbi in the country, and who\u2019s finishing his long tenure as our president at our upcoming convention here in Washington of 5,000 Jewish leaders from around the country gathering together in mid-December.<\/p>\n\n The question had to do with the Bush administration versus the Obama administration. Advocacy goes kind of two ways. We think of it mostly as the outside towards the government. Clearly, the more conservative groups in the Bush administration had significant access in a way that the mainline Protestant groups and some of the Jewish groups did not. I think this administration is actually one of the most accessible \u2013 if you want to meet with someone \u2013 of all the administrations (I go back to the Ford administration) that I\u2019ve worked with. So I\u2019m appreciative of that.<\/p>\n\n Also, you shouldn\u2019t forget this in terms of the relationship of government and the religious community, it goes the other way as well. They want support for their policies, and where they know they have support for their policies, they want \u2013 if I could use the Jewish term for a legitimizing kashrut \u2013 they want a hechsher, a stamp of approval, a kind of ethical imprimatur that they see religious groups bringing to their work. So very often, we don\u2019t have to wait to have access to someone in the administration or on Capitol Hill, they\u2019re calling us, because they want us to be part of it.<\/p>\n\n I would say, if you look at some of those diverse groups \u2013 like your organization or Human Rights Campaign or\u00a0People For the American Way<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a lot of groups that are single-issue cause groups actually set up religious outreach entities to engage a religious community on their particular issue in a more organized and effective way than the religious groups would\u2019ve done themselves. So all of these are pieces of the question that you put before us.<\/p>\n\n Let me just take one minute more to now step back from the Bush administration, to go back to the 1930s until today, to talk about effectiveness. Religious groups are the quintessential multi-issue organizations; denominations are the quintessential multi-issue organizations. As a general rule, when it comes to advocacy, on any one issue they are lobbying on, multi-issue groups will never be as effective as a single-issue group just on that.<\/p>\n\n The rest of the Jewish community may care deeply about Israel, be advocating on behalf of Israel\u2019s security, America\u2019s values and interest in its relationship with Israel all the time. But AIPAC, working only on this one issue, is always going to have a greater impact than the others. When you also put a (c)(4) in and they have overtones to elections and things in the mix, even more so it becomes an issue, although as a (c)(4) they can\u2019t directly be involved in elections.<\/p>\n\n In the 1930s, the great coalition of decency in America were the labor unions, the civil rights community \u2013 particularly the NAACP \u2013 the mainline Christian community, including the Catholic community, and the Jewish community. And that remained so until the \u201970s. Think about your big spike in the groups coming up. That remained so until the \u201970s.<\/p>\n\n In the \u201970s, the success of the civil rights movement led all kinds of people who cared about issues to realize, if I set up a single-issue organization, it will do better work. So you had the splintering of all these single-issue groups in the religious community \u2013 hunger groups and women\u2019s rights groups and the religious coalition on abortion rights and the environmental groups here \u2013 all of these groups that began to splinter around single-issue things because they believed they would be more effective than the Methodists or the Reform Jewish Movement or the Catholic Church could be on any one issue that they were working on here.<\/p>\n\n [groups]<\/p>\n\n\n So every religious community was involved in the civil rights movement, in the Vietnam War, in the budget debates going on now and the health care debates. And they had some impact; they helped give that stamp of legitimacy. But they weren\u2019t decisive in those issues.<\/p>\n\n But if you go to the other extreme of the kind of issues that Allen talked about earlier \u2013 the Food for Peace program in the mid-1970s, the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), the Sudan Peace Act, the debt relief issue, the Jubilee issue here as a whole in which the impact of the religious community was definitive \u2013 and on the prison rape bill and the North Korea act.<\/p>\n\n When we\u2019re working on issues others aren\u2019t and we all get together, we can really have a decisive impact, and we\u2019re far more effective in those kinds of cases. Single-issue groups do that by definition. They focus in on specific issues \u2013 we have to do it much more arbitrarily. But where we do, then we have the kind of impact that single-issue organizations can have by making it a single-issue effort. I thought I\u2019d lay out some of the criteria of effectiveness over this to see where the conversation goes.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0That was also very insightful, thank you. Thank you, David. Rajdeep Singh, a relative newcomer. Your organization has been in Washington how many years now?<\/p>\n\n RAJDEEP SINGH, SIKH COALITION<\/strong>: \u00a0The Sikh Coalition has been in existence for about 10 years, and we\u2019ve been in Washington full-time now for just about two and a half years.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0So go ahead. Give us your take, please.<\/p>\n\n SINGH<\/strong>: \u00a0Right. First of all, I\u2019d also like to extend my gratitude to the Pew Forum for inviting us. It\u2019s a privilege and a pleasure to be here, and I hope that it can be an entry point for more work with the Sikh Coalition.<\/p>\n\n I really have very little to add. My fellow panelists were very comprehensive in their assessment of the degree to which religious advocacy organizations have influence with respect to the political process. I\u2019d just like to add that seems to us that it\u2019s a multivariable calculus problem. In a sense, it\u2019s a function of the number of votes that religious advocacy groups can generate, the number of voters that they can mobilize. It\u2019s a function of how much money they have in their pot with respect to advocacy efforts.<\/p>\n\n It\u2019s also a function of the number of people belonging to certain religious groups who are on the inside, so to say. There are very few Sikhs who hold elected offices, and I think this dictates the degree to which a young community such as the Sikh community can influence the political process.<\/p>\n\n Often times, in our experience, policies are enacted, promulgated, pronouncements are made about the proper balance between church and state, for example, in ways that presuppose that Sikhs and other religious minorities don\u2019t exist, I\u2019m sorry to say. I think to the extent that any religious community doesn\u2019t have representation in the political process, in the form of political candidates, for example, it is very difficult, particularly for small religious minority communities such as the Sikh community, to muster up votes and money that can translate into influence with respect to the political process.<\/p>\n\n The way that we measure success at the Sikh Coalition is efficacy. We don\u2019t have votes. We don\u2019t have money. We don\u2019t have people on the inside, so to speak. And so we try very hard to build coalitions with other religious organizations and try to exploit social media and some new blood and know-how in order to move our issues forward.<\/p>\n\n Just for context, again, the Sikh Coalition is 10 years old. We were founded on the night of 9\/11. I heard one of my fellow panelists say that \u2013 Rabbi Saperstein said he was with the RAC as of three decades ago. Three decades ago, I was languishing in a crib somewhere \u2013 (laughter) \u2013<\/p>\n\n GALLAGHER<\/strong>: \u00a0Stop bragging.<\/p>\n\n SINGH<\/strong>: \u00a0\u2013 learning how to eat and talk.<\/p>\n\n But hopefully, in the fullness of time, this will change, though; the picture will change. I think that the tipping point, the point at which we reach a critical mass, at least in the Sikh community, will be when we have representation in the political process in the form of political candidates. If you have a Sikh running for mayor or governor or perhaps even president, I think a lot of our fortunes will brighten at that point.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0Great. That was very, very interesting to hear from the panel, and I\u2019m sure we\u2019re going to hear more from all of them. Let\u2019s open it up for questions, both from the reporters here in the room and those on the phone.<\/p>\n\n JEROME SOCOLOVSKY, VOICE OF AMERICA<\/strong>: \u00a0I\u2019m wondering, since my audiences are mainly abroad and we do have international representation here, I\u2019d like to ask whether this dynamic of having all these religious advocacy groups \u2013 I want to ask Allen \u2013 is the result of disestablishment in this country, of the separation of church and state. And is it ironic that you actually have more influence from religious groups in politics as a result? I don\u2019t know if you can compare it to how it works in other countries, whether it\u2019s in Madrid, where the bishops do have a lot of influence, despite the secularization in that country.<\/p>\n\n I\u2019d also like to ask Rabbi Saperstein if, when politicians are asking you for that certification or blessing or hechsher, do you feel used at all? Those are my questions.<\/p>\n\n SAPERSTEIN<\/strong>: \u00a0No, in the following sense. There are times we just have to say no to somebody. Every once in a while we\u2019re asked to get involved in an issue where we know that they just want our stamp of approval and it\u2019s not an issue we normally get involved with, or our take on it is different and we\u2019re not going to bend our position to accommodate that kind of request any more than they would if we went to them to ask for them to oppose a certain policy position or support a particular policy position. It\u2019s the give-and-take end of it.<\/p>\n\n The fact that they think that it is important in America for there to be a religious imprimatur on the kind of issue they\u2019re doing, I think, is a healthy dynamic and interaction of religion and politics in American life. Where I think it becomes dangerous is when it kind of degrades itself into a religious test for office when it comes to candidates. But where it comes to policy, I don\u2019t mind.<\/p>\n\n For those who follow the scholarly literature about separationists and the John Rawls kind of take about what role religion has here, I think it\u2019s fine for people to give religious rationale and justification for their policies so long as they also give a secular rationale as well because American democracy depends on being able to test ideas in the free marketplace of ideas. When you put forward an argument, \u201cGod told me to do it,\u201d how do we test that in a free marketplace of ideas? When it is only, \u201cI\u2019m religiously \u2026\u201d We\u2019re going to have a debate over the theology behind that kind of statement? That doesn\u2019t get us anywhere in American life. But something rooted in using religion as a kind of moral explanation for why, but then putting it in secular terms that are accessible to all people in the free marketplace of ideas \u2013 I think it\u2019s indispensable.<\/p>\n\n That, to me, by the way, was the genius of the Bishops\u2019 Pastoral Letters, that they talked about Catholic doctrine but then they put it out in natural law terms as well that were accessible to all, whether they accepted Catholic doctrine or not. So we can use it as an inspiration, as a moral reasoning, but only as a motto that is either compelling or not in the free marketplace of ideas, and there you\u2019ll have a secular debate of what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n\n So I think that religion\u2019s engagement in public policy is both not only an authentic sense of prophetic witness that we have or, in my tradition, the concept of being a light to the nation, to attempt in human terms to be a moral goad to the conscience of the nations in which we live, but I think it deeply enriches the policy debate in America, and I think that\u2019s good for America and good for the world.<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0To answer your question, I will answer it as a scholar of religion and politics and religious freedom, church-state law and so forth, as opposed to as the author of this study. I think there\u2019s no question that the religious freedom guaranteed in America broadly facilitates the kind of advocacy we\u2019re seeing here. Also, I think the openness of our American political system, the accessibility of Congress, even in an age of heightened security and screening and so forth \u2013 still, it facilitates the ability of groups to have an impact. I think that the fact that there is no establishment of religion and religious groups are guaranteed equality before the law, to the extent you can achieve that, means that all are invited, in a sense, to make their voices known in the public square.<\/p>\n\n I wanted to offer, actually, a little comment on Rajdeep\u2019s presentation, which is that he\u2019s a very modest guy, and actually, I think, could legitimately have mentioned that small, emerging groups that can speak to that resonant issue of religious freedom can build alliances and actually magnify their impact. The Sikh community collectively was actually, in the face of intrusive airport screenings, able to get TSA to air a training video on the Sikh religion to all 45,000 airport screeners, impacting the lives of Sikh-Americans who have to go through airport screening. It seems to me that that\u2019s an example of appealing to the religious tradition in America, building allies and finding a sympathetic cause. It can work.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0Rajdeep, did you want to dispute that?<\/p>\n\n SINGH<\/strong>: \u00a0I dispute the charge of modesty. (Laughter.)<\/p>\n\n SAPERSTEIN<\/strong>: \u00a0Alan, just one sentence more on the separation of church question. Functionally, the wall separating church and state tends to be a one-way wall: It restrains government. It does little to restrain religion. It allows religion not just to flourish with robustness in America because we\u2019re keeping government mainly out of religion here, but to fulfill that prophetic witness I talked about. So I do think that part of the explanation for why religion is such a robust \u2013 in a broad sense \u2013 robust presence in American life on these issues does have to do with the fact that freedom of religion has to fulfill its own self-identity in terms of that prophetic witness in America.<\/p>\n\n <\/a>ELIZABETH TENETY, THE WASHINGTON POST<\/strong>: \u00a0Beyond salaries, what is this money spent on? What are the biggest expenditures beyond paying employees for these sort of advocacy organizations?<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0I\u2019ll comment and then I\u2019ll let the others comment who have more expertise on their specific budgets. I have actually a slide I used in a presentation of my own that just has the buildings that some of these groups have in Washington, D.C. \u2013 Family Research Council, AIPAC, Friends Committee on National Legislation, United Methodist Building. Just maintaining an office is expensive, and also maintaining offices around the country that support national advocacy. But I\u2019ll let members tell us what you spend money on. Salaries are a big part. Go ahead.<\/p>\n\n GALLAGHER<\/strong>: \u00a0I guess that goes to my point that these are really actually quite different kinds of organizations, and for some of them \u2013 I won\u2019t name them \u2013 I wonder myself where the money is being spent. The think tank model is, basically, you influence public policy by doing research and coming up with new legislative ideas and holding conferences and building coalitions. I mean \u2013 this is not a Washington organization \u2013 but something like the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy I think has been, in New York, quite an influential organization. This can be a very effective model.<\/p>\n\n Susan B. Anthony List gets involved primarily in trying to elect candidates. I think here it\u2019s important to clear up what a (c)(4) and a (c)(3) can do. With the Supreme Court decision in\u00a0Citizens United<\/em>, a 501(c)(4) can, in fact, communicate with voters before an election directly, as long as it doesn\u2019t coordinate with the candidate. This is what is referred to as independent expenditures, and this is a model that the National Organization for Marriage uses. We spend the bulk of our money on either getting involved in actual referendum campaigns or getting involved in the election processes that lead to giving voters the chance to vote on the gay marriage issue.<\/p>\n\n In the 2009-2010 election cycle, we were actually very involved in both Minnesota and New Hampshire state legislative races. I think that contributes to the fact that Minnesotans will be voting on whether or not they will have a state constitutional amendment on marriage. We got involved, and we spent a fair amount of money.<\/p>\n\n For example, when a pro-gay marriage Republican emerges, usually the voters are not really aware of it. So we\u2019ve had it as part of our mission statement to demonstrate that it\u2019s a really bad idea to be for gay marriage, at least if you\u2019re a Republican. We would like to extend that to both parties, but that\u2019s where we are at this point.<\/p>\n\n SAPERSTEIN<\/strong>: \u00a0I would add, Elizabeth, that all of the so-called religious lobbies who represent churches and houses of worship across the country are constantly developing social justice programs for them to do, some of which may have a policy component and some of which may not. But when we try to get every synagogue in America to be part of a feeding program to the hungry in the community, we may also put in our communications that the food stamp program is under enormous pressure and we hope people will write to their congressman or congresswoman on it and to their state and local legislators, as well, on behalf of food programs.<\/p>\n\n It may be an ancillary part of what this is all about. We may have a whole manual on how to put together a hunger program that\u2019s effective in that synagogue or in that community \u2013 how to build coalitions to put together hunger programs \u2013 and this may be an ancillary part of it. Some of those overall costs are accounted for in the way Allen did it. If you\u2019re looking through the filter of advocacy, it\u2019s fair to do that.<\/p>\n\n But for the way we look, a lot of that is providing education and programming that in some cases doesn\u2019t have the policy component to it, and in some cases the policy part is kind of an add-on. If you care about this issue, you not only have to deal with treating the symptoms, but you have to deal with the policy that is the cause of it as well, etc. So some of the lines between these are different.<\/p>\n\n But education and program work, conferences, training seminars on the issues, all of that would be a big part of the way that this is constructed in terms of those budgets. PR, media work, a lot of that would be part of this as well.<\/p>\n\n WENDY KAMINER, THEATLANTIC.COM<\/strong>: \u00a0I have a couple of questions for Professor Hertzke, and then if there\u2019s time and if you\u2019ll indulge me, a couple of brief comments on what Maggie Gallagher has said, which I\u2019m just not going to pretend to turn into questions.<\/p>\n\n One, I was interested that you included AIPAC in this list because I don\u2019t think of AIPAC as an organization that\u2019s lobbying on religious issues. I think of it as a Zionist organization. I\u2019m not using that word pejoratively, but I just see that very differently from a religious organization. So I\u2019d be interested in hearing your thinking on that.<\/p>\n\n Secondly, as I was listening to you talk about the way people in these religious organizations think of themselves and describe themselves, I was hearing a lot of the same things that I would say about secular not-for-profit advocacy groups \u2013 they don\u2019t call themselves lobbyists, they call themselves advocates, they are more and more involved in global issues \u2013 I mean, I could run down the list.<\/p>\n\n So I\u2019m wondering if you can separate out things that are distinctive to religious lobbying groups, or if they\u2019re just partaking in general trends \u2013 if the religious lobbying groups are being in some way substantively changed by the general trends or if they\u2019re contributing to general changes. I know these are hard things to tease out, so I\u2019d be interested in your thoughts on them.<\/p>\n\n I just wanted to comment briefly on what Maggie Gallagher said about opposition to abortion rights and to same-sex marriage being considered religious and support for those same things not being considered religious. While it may not be true in your survey, I do think that is generally true, and it\u2019s an interesting point.<\/p>\n\n It may interest you to know that a lot of people in the secular movement really struggle with this. Should they take on support for abortion rights? Should they take on support for same-sex marriage? The answer for a lot of people is no. Because, while there are strong religious components to opposition, there are also irreligious people who oppose abortion rights and oppose same-sex marriage \u2013 maybe a smaller number of them, but it\u2019s not exclusively a religious issue.<\/p>\n\n I also wanted to comment briefly on your remark that Americans are not generally hostile to the mix of religion and public life. I think that\u2019s absolutely true. But I think it\u2019s really important to distinguish the way people feel about religion and public life, and church and state. There, the attitudes depend on whose church is interfering with which state.<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0Well, the first question is easier to take on. In this study we look at religious lobbying and what we call religion-related advocacy. We did, in fact, carefully look at AIPAC and other groups like it. I can guarantee you that the leaders of AIPAC would say they\u2019re not a religious organization, that they have broad membership, secular members and so forth.<\/p>\n\n On the other hand, if you look at their principal objective, persuading American policymakers to support the state of Israel \u2013 and, they say, the Jewish state of Israel \u2013 in other words, supporting the Jewish state of Israel we would characterize as a religion-related advocacy program. In other words, it\u2019s not defending a secular state of Israel in a sense; it\u2019s defending the Jewish homeland. And to the extent that Jewish groups \u2013 most of them \u2013 see that as an important part of their agenda \u2013 supporting the Zionist project \u2013 we would also see that as part of AIPAC. So that\u2019s why we include it.<\/p>\n\n On the issue of whether religious groups are distinctive, I think it is accurate to say they\u2019re part of general trends \u2013 globalization, the nonprofit world and so forth. I think \u2013 and here I\u2019m speaking more as a scholar and less in terms of what we present in the study because that\u2019s a difficult question to answer in a study like this. If you read the mission statements of many of these organizations, they see their activities flowing from their deepest faith commitments.<\/p>\n\n So if you read the mission statements of a variety of groups \u2013 Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Catholic, evangelical, etc., you\u2019ll see statements about their faith and how they feel mandated, based upon that faith, to engage in work for justice, rights and so forth. Is that distinctive? Given the pervasive religiosity of the American public, I think that is distinctive because it potentially mobilizes lots more people.<\/p>\n\n Religious communities are the most common form of joining in America, in terms of the groups people belong to. So in that sense, they may be able to reach farther into the grass-roots. But is their character unique? Religious groups will tell you, we feel we\u2019re different because we bring a unique religious moral perspective, but some secular groups see the same. It\u2019s a hard thing to answer. I\u2019ll try to do that in the book I write after this.<\/p>\n\n MICHELLE BOORSTEIN,\u00a0<\/em>THE WASHINGTON POST<\/strong>: \u00a0I just wanted to ask the panelists \u2013 if I understood Ms. Gallagher right, you said you thought that there\u2019s something like a hesitance to be involved in direct politics, right? So I wanted to see, if I understood that right, if you guys could comment on that \u2013 if you think that\u2019s true, that there is a hesitance to be involved in direct political activities, and if so, why? I don\u2019t know that most people would necessarily assume that religious groups are hesitant. So if that\u2019s true, why?<\/p>\n\n And then secondly, I wanted to see if each of you could briefly give an example, some kind of story that could bring this whole business to life, that could tell us of something where religious groups had an influence and why \u2013 even just a short kind of picture of what that\u2019s like \u2013 or a time when you tried to influence and didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n <\/a>GALLAGHER<\/strong>: \u00a0First of all, I note that in a study of religious advocacy by a wonderful scholar, only 7% of the groups say they are engaged in electoral politics. And only 8% issue congressional scorecards, which a 501(c)(3) can actually do, so it\u2019s not a structural reason why they don\u2019t do that. I think I\u2019m recalling the numbers correctly.<\/p>\n\n I would just say it\u2019s my observation, as a conservative who\u2019s been involved in politics since the \u201980s, that most of the quasi-political organizations formed as the influx of evangelicals in particular into politics \u2013 what used to be called the Moral Majority. That all happened in the late \u201970s and the \u201980s, probably first as the prominence of the abortion issue began the contemporary culture wars.<\/p>\n\n Most of those formed institutions that are 501(c)(3) nonprofits that are limited in what they can do politically. So given that there\u2019s a public face that suggests our goal is to influence politics, it\u2019s curious, at least, that so many of the institutional structures that they formed were 501(c)(3)s, which are not allowed to engage in political action directly. I think it\u2019s a matter of fact that social conservatives have not been involved in creating institutional structures that can and naturally do engage in political activity.<\/p>\n\n As for why, I do think that \u2013 I speak as a Roman Catholic, but many of my best friends are evangelicals \u2013 I think that there is a sense, which is not wholly wrong, that you want to maintain the purity of your religion \u2013 that politics is a dirty business, basically, and it leads to angry and nasty, passionate exchanges, and it\u2019s involved with money influencing politics. There\u2019s just a sort of sense that the sacredness of what happens in religious spaces doesn\u2019t mix easily with the idea of getting into the nitty-gritty of politics. And I think there\u2019s an argument for that.<\/p>\n\n But what that leaves out is, if you\u2019re going to have as a goal \u2013 if you believe you\u2019re called to say that every human life deserves protection from the moment of conception \u2013 if you\u2019re going to get involved publicly in an issue which is, in fact, going to be decided in part through the political process, you are going to be limited in your influence until and unless you decide to find a way to engage politically directly.<\/p>\n\n You can put it in the negative, right? Directly engaging in politics is something that religious conservatives really have, I think, been reluctant to do. The positive means that there is a lot of upside for potential influence. There are also downsides to being involved in politics. It\u2019s only one part of the human endeavor.<\/p>\n\n SAPERSTEIN<\/strong>: \u00a0On the hesitancy issue, I find it really depends whose ox is being gored. Most Abrahamic faiths believe that speaking out on public policy issues is part of a prophetic witness that people have. It\u2019s the minority in any faith group or the people outside the faith group who don\u2019t like their positions, who will come back with: Stick to religion. Don\u2019t get involved in politics.<\/p>\n\n And people say, well, did the prophets not see speaking out on public policy issues being at the core of their religious obligation? Isn\u2019t that what we\u2019re about? When you\u2019re in the minority, very often you use the argument, stay away from politics. When you\u2019re in the majority, you see it as part of your religious mission. I don\u2019t mean to be cynical about this, but I find more often than not, on both sides, that\u2019s what\u2019s happened.<\/p>\n\n In terms of the conservative religious groups and the liberal religious groups, if you remember what I said about the \u201930s to the \u201960s, many people did their work through their churches. And after we fragmented into all these single-issue organizations \u2013 some religious but mostly secular \u2013 most people ended up doing the work through those secular organizations on the issues. They didn\u2019t need us anymore.<\/p>\n\n But if you look at all those public interest groups on this whole range of issues, who are the people who are the staffs? Who are the people who are the donors? Who are the people who are the board members? They\u2019re members of our churches and synagogues on all these \u2013 let\u2019s say, on the liberal end of this. I think that to some extent, the more conservative and fundamentalist groups today are where we were 40 years ago.<\/p>\n\n A tradition had been, particularly among the Baptist groups, not to get involved in politics for a long period of time. In the 1970s when they realized that they couldn\u2019t protect their kids, their communities, from the outside influences of the Supreme Court and the media that brought messages into the lives of their children, they said, we\u2019ve got to go and change the outside world. And so they got engaged in politics, and for these first 30 years, have done it primarily through their churches.<\/p>\n\n But as conservative groups have begun to pick off the energies and resources and money and time and volunteerism of the folks in these churches, you\u2019re going to see the same kind of dynamic over the next 30 years of their beginning to move more and more outside the churches to do their political work, although fundamentalists of one kind or another tend to do more of their lives through their houses of worship in general. So it\u2019s not an exact parallel, but I think you\u2019ll see the same kind of dynamic there.<\/p>\n\n In terms of a story, you could pick any of the things I alluded to. I think the great story of the last generation has been the Jubilee movement. Economists had talked about debt relief for decades. A lot of policy argument was made for it, and when the religious communities, hitting the year 2000, began to bring into the public consciousness this idea of the Jubilee year, the cancellation of debts as being a profound moral obligation that people had, it really helped drive the argument in a very deep and profound way. It gave it a political traction that it didn\u2019t have otherwise, and it transformed the debate. So I think it\u2019s one of the great success stories and shows what happens when you give a powerful religious imagery.<\/p>\n\n Now, you don\u2019t have to believe in the Bible to get the moral power of it. It\u2019s an argument I sometimes have with some fundamentalists when we\u2019re talking about evolution and things. They believe in a more limited God. I believe in a God that can speak in allegory. I think there\u2019s a moral message to that imagery, the biblical concept of Jubilee, that you don\u2019t have to be a believer in the Bible to recognize the moral power of it. And it works as a kind of resonant argument, moral argument, that I think really was transformative on this debate.<\/p>\n\n I could give you others too. The IRFA bill, the sex trafficking bill, the Sudan bill I think are great examples of this, but I really think the Jubilee one is the most powerful.<\/p>\n\n BOORSTEIN<\/strong>: \u00a0Can I follow up for one second, just really briefly?<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0Yeah, then I\u2019ll clarify.<\/p>\n\n BOORSTEIN<\/strong>: \u00a0You seem to be agreeing on this narrative that the social conservatives are in a development phase. I mean \u2013 and maybe this is the limitation of this kind of study \u2013 if you look at the biggest expenditures, I think at least five of them are social Christian conservative groups. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s just because that\u2019s a huge part of the country. It just seems like it sort of contradicts with \u2013 you know, to whatever degree fundraising reflects people\u2019s values, it looks like social conservatives are definitely in the arena and advocating and lobbying. Maybe you\u2019re talking about something slightly different. Am I making any sense?<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0Let me clarify one thing, and then I\u2019ll let maybe Maggie take this. There\u2019s a difference here, and I\u2019ve seen it in my interviews as well, between the kind of prophetic witness that David is talking about \u2013 public policy advocacy \u2013 and campaigns and elections strategies. That is the huge distinction. If you talk with religious leaders here in Washington and elsewhere, they draw a sharp, bright line between advocating for public policy concerns, being a prophetic witness, testifying on the Hill, writing position papers versus getting involved in campaigns and elections, which churches cannot do legally \u2013 denominations cannot do \u2013 and also, many religious groups eschew because they see it as divisive, as just not something they\u2019re comfortable with theologically.<\/p>\n\n SAPERSTEIN<\/strong>: \u00a0And there are some on the right that would argue that point. They\u2019ve taken a position of principle that those rules that you\u2019re talking about, that make it illegal, quash freedom of the pulpit. There\u2019s a good debate to be had about it, but I think as a normative description, what Allen said is dead on. We\u2019ve all kind of drawn the line at that point.<\/p>\n\n GALLAGHER<\/strong>: \u00a0Again, the influx of evangelicals into American politics that began in the \u201970s \u2013 it\u2019s obviously been a big movement and it\u2019s had a big impact. Even with a very broad definition of advocacy, we\u2019re pulling in a very tiny proportion of groups. I don\u2019t know how many of those 7%, or 8%, if you count congressional scorecards, do things that are commonly understood as political, which I define narrowly as attempting to elect guy A or un-elect guy\/girl B. Some of those may not be part of the religious right. I don\u2019t know who they are, but I know that only a very tiny, tiny handful of groups that you here in Washington would think of as the establishment figures for social conservatives. Then you go back and you look at the institutions that they have created, and they are mostly 501(c)(3)s, which are limited.<\/p>\n\n I noticed this. I don\u2019t know if this is a story, but one of the reasons I founded the National Organization for Marriage is that I had a kind of front-row seat on debates over the federal marriage amendment back when that was an issue. I was basically a writer all my life; it was very late to help found an activist organization. President Bush came out in 2006, the second time around, and had a press conference announcing he was supporting the federal marriage amendment. There was a vote in the Senate. You needed 60 votes; we knew we wouldn\u2019t get that.<\/p>\n\n So there was a discussion among groups afterwards about how to respond if the vote was X, if the vote was Y. I raised my little hand and I said, well, it\u2019s June. There\u2019s an election in November. How about we find a senator who voted wrongly from our point of view and see if we can un-elect him?<\/p>\n\n I was struck because everyone seemed to think that that was a very interesting idea, but they seemed to think it was a very strikingly new idea. So now you\u2019re talking about having a vote for the second time on an issue you\u2019re not going to pass, right? Why in the world would you ask the Senate to vote on legislation that you can\u2019t pass? There is only one good answer: because you intend to use that, and in a deliberate fashion, to elect more of your friends or to show people who oppose you that opposing your position is a bad idea.<\/p>\n\n I realized, on reflection, that it\u2019s not that the people in the room were not intelligent and competent. It\u2019s that they had ministries primarily, and this is just not what they do. And if there\u2019s only one team on the field in the rougher game of politics, eventually, that team is going to win.<\/p>\n\n So anyway, that\u2019s my short story on my perspective that not everybody has to be involved in politics, but if you are going to claim to want to be involved in politics and advancing policy, you need to build political institutions to accomplish your goals, in my view. That doesn\u2019t mean that everyone should, and I think it would be inappropriate for many religious denominations to do what an organization like NOM does in a direct fashion.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0Rajdeep, let\u2019s hear from you.<\/p>\n\n <\/a>SINGH<\/strong>: \u00a0All right. On the hesitancy issue, no. Sikhs, as a matter of a religious mandate, are very eager to participate civically. Obviously, there are constraints on nonprofits in terms of what we can and cannot do in this realm. But as a community, Sikhs are go-getters. This is in our character. This is in our DNA. And as I suggested earlier, our hope is that over time you will see more Sikhs participating more visibly in the political process in this country, precisely because it is rooted in our tradition to be civically engaged.<\/p>\n\n I\u2019d like to tell you about a project that we undertook in the last couple of years, which actually had a happy ending. You asked about stories, right? Let me give you a feel-good story. In the state of Oregon, it was illegal for public schoolteachers for the last 90 years to wear any kind of religious dress in the classroom. This law was enacted in 1923 or around then by supporters of the Ku Klux Klan. Its effect was to exclude at that time Catholics from public schools. But over time Sikhs, Muslims, observant Jews were impacted as well.<\/p>\n\n So the Sikh community spearheaded an effort in 2009 to get that law repealed, and we were successful. But it would not have happened without the support of a wide range of religious communities \u2013 Christians, Jews, Muslims and so forth. So that\u2019s a feel-good story. But for every feel-good story, there are five sad stories that I could tell you about.<\/p>\n\n Very quickly, I\u2019d like to tell you that we\u2019re undertaking efforts right now in coalition with a number of civil rights organizations \u2013 about 30, including a couple dozen religious organizations \u2013 to get the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to clarify that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 actually prohibits segregation of visibly religious employees in the workplace. Perversely, some courts in this country in the last 10 years have held that it is perfectly legal and consistent with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to segregate visibly religious employees from customers in the general public in the name of corporate image. This story is unfolding; we\u2019re not sure yet whether we\u2019re going to meet with success.<\/p>\n\n We\u2019re also trying to get the Department of Defense to change its policies so that Sikhs can serve presumptively in the U.S. armed forces with their articles of faith intact. Again, perversely in our views, Sikhs are not presumptively allowed to serve in the U.S. armed forces. This is a right that other people in this country enjoy presumptively, but Sikhs and other visibly religious minorities do not. That story, again, is unfolding.<\/p>\n\n I can go on and on and would love, actually, to speak with you at length about some of the other projects that we\u2019re undertaking, but in the interest of time, I\u2019ll stop there.<\/p>\n\n BEATRIZ JUEZ, PUBLICO<\/strong>: \u00a0I am from the Spanish newspaper Publico. I would like to ask a more general question. Taking into account all this religious lobbying in Washington and the importance of religion in American life, do you think that it\u2019s very difficult or impossible for a presidential candidate to become president if he\u2019s agnostic or atheist? Is this impossible, or \u2013 what do you think?<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0As a good Pew researcher, I\u2019ll say that\u2019s beyond the scope of this study. But as a scholar of faith and politics, I think it\u2019s unlikely in the near future.<\/p>\n\n SAPERSTEIN<\/strong>: \u00a0The polls are pretty clear that if you ask people, will they vote for someone of particular religious persuasion, atheists rank at the bottom. Only a minority of Americans will support such a presidential candidate. If you had an elected official who actually publicly said he or she was an atheist, after a period of time it would change. I think exposure \u2013 we know this from studies about gay and lesbian rights; we know it about Mormons \u2013 leads to more acceptance. The more familiar people are with people \u2013 if an atheist presidential candidate came up, and it came out that 10% or 12% of people are atheists but have been keeping quiet about it, their neighbors would start talking about it, and you\u2019d realize there would be a new comfort level. It would change. But right now, it\u2019s very unlikely that someone who is a professed atheist would be able to make it politically.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0Beatriz, our Pew brothers and sisters at the\u00a0Pew Research Center for the People & the Press<\/a>\u00a0have done some\u00a0polling<\/a>, and I can show it to you afterwards. Essentially, the question that\u2019s been asked is, if a candidate were X, would you be less likely to vote for that candidate, more likely, or wouldn\u2019t it make a difference? And the X is filled in by a variety of different characteristics, some of which most voters treat as positives, and some of which most voters treat as negatives.<\/p>\n\n So something that most voters seem to treat as a positive \u2013 for example, would you be more likely to vote for someone who has served in the military? More people say they would be more likely to vote for that person than say they\u2019d be less likely. If you ask, would you be more likely or less likely to vote for someone who\u2019s had an extramarital affair, most voters will tell you, less likely. Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for someone who\u2019s ever smoked marijuana? Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for someone who is a Mormon? And so on. I can tell you that some of the highest negatives were on the question: would you be more or less likely to vote for someone who is an atheist \u2013 someone who does not believe in God, I believe, was actually the way the question was phrased.<\/p>\n\n There is some other related polling that we have on that question. I\u2019ll also point out to you that the Pew Forum has done an\u00a0analysis of the religious composition of the U.S. Congress<\/a>, and there is today in the U.S. Congress one acknowledged atheist, Rep. Pete Stark from California. And he is the first elected member of Congress, in modern times at least, to be an acknowledged atheist. So as a factual point, it\u2019s not impossible for someone to be elected.<\/p>\n\n One more quick point: the Constitution of the United States says that there is no religious test. So there is certainly no legal barrier to the election of an atheist. What we\u2019re talking about are the political barriers.<\/p>\n\n GALLAGHER<\/strong>: \u00a0I just would add I actually think it\u2019s more possible, maybe, than others think, provided that was a person who would respect the ceremonial role of religion in public life in the United States. I think most people would say they wouldn\u2019t vote for a man who had an extramarital affair, but given the choice between two different candidates, that might prove less important to actual voters.<\/p>\n\n We have \u201cin God we trust\u201d on our coins; in moments of crisis like 9\/11, we sing \u201cGod Bless America.\u201d I think there is a fairly deep popular attachment to that sense that \u2013 and that people find it extremely comforting. And so I would suppose somebody who wanted to make a point of his atheism would find it really difficult.<\/p>\n\n I don\u2019t know how religious Richard Nixon was or Gerald Ford or \u2013 it was actually with Jimmy Carter, or even Ronald \u2013 no, although he was certainly a big advocate of the ceremonial civic religion and having faith, yet he was not a church-goer. I think there\u2019s more room for people who are not particularly religious to be elected to office than most people might think.<\/p>\n\n KEVIN ECKSTROM, RELIGION NEWS SERVICE<\/strong>: \u00a0Basically, two small technical questions. Maggie raised the question earlier about HRC and whether or not you included them. How did you decide which secular groups to include? I mean, like the ACLU \u2013 did you include them? I don\u2019t see a list of all 212 groups, but where was that line drawn?<\/p>\n\n And then, a sort of related question: Did you cover or does anyone have any thoughts about religious groups who are perhaps on the same side of a religious issue but on different sides of a public policy? I\u2019m thinking of Catholic bishops versus Catholic nuns on health care, or Orthodox Jews versus Reform Jews in gay marriage, or something like that. Did you get into that at all? Or is there anybody here who has any thoughts on the religious divide within communities?<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0On the latter question, certainly you can see by the list of groups and their mission statements that there are Catholic groups that oppose each other on the issue of abortion, for example, that evangelical groups disagree on the environment in some cases. There\u2019s the\u00a0Cornwall Alliance<\/a>versus the\u00a0Evangelical Environmental Network<\/a>. In fact, one of the reasons, perhaps, for growth of some of these groups is the desire to reflect a different position than others. I would say that would be the kind of thing that you could find by digging into the names of the groups, their mission statements. You can pretty clearly see who\u2019s opposing whom on certain kinds of issues.<\/p>\n\n [The ACLU\u2019s Freedom of Religion and Belief Program was one of five groups added to the study when the report was updated in May 2012.]<\/p>\n\n\n ECKSTROM<\/strong>: \u00a0Is the\u00a0list<\/a>\u00a0of all 200-some groups on the website?<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0Just as a further point of clarification, the Human Rights Campaign has a particular group. Do you remember what it\u2019s called?<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0It\u2019s the Religion and Faith Program of the Human Rights Campaign. They actually have a specific program, so we include that as one of our groups.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0Then Kevin also asked about secular groups, and I think you sometimes have made the distinction about groups that happen to be nonreligious versus groups that take an expressly secular point of view on public policy.<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0Right. The Secular Coalition for America or the American Humanist Association see themselves as engaged in opposing what they believe is an untoward religious agenda or religious issues and so forth. They self-consciously or expressly define themselves, you might say, in opposition to a religious agenda. So we include the Secular Coalition and the American Humanists, but not the Environmental Defense Fund, which you could say \u2013 David\u2019s probably right; there are a lot of religious people involved in that, secular people involved. But that\u2019s not what we did in our study.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0Since I\u2019m involved in this as well, I\u2019ll just acknowledge that these are gray areas. There\u2019s no perfect definition, and in some cases, I think we or anybody who does such a study is in a difficult position. Wendy asked earlier about AIPAC. Clearly, her eyebrows were raised by the inclusion of AIPAC. I suspect that had AIPAC not been included in a study on religion-related advocacy in Washington, D.C., some eyebrows also would have been raised.<\/p>\n\n KEVIN CLARKE, AMERICAN MAGAZINE<\/strong>: \u00a0This might be outside the parameters of your study but you kind of glom together a wide breadth of religious organizations. Do you see any significant differences between how, say, progressive religious bodies and social conservative bodies operate in the nature of their advocacy or the lobbying, or is it just the distinction that some are more comfortable being direct lobbyists, at hard-knuckle politics, and some are, I don\u2019t know, soft power advocates, engage more in educational activities?<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0I will let maybe our panelists offer their insights on this. I don\u2019t think we could make any judgments from the Pew study about patterns because there certainly are social conservative groups that are much like progressive groups in the way they operate. And as Maggie Gallagher has noted, a number of the social conservatives are equally uncomfortable engaging in campaigns and elections as some of the denominations \u2013 progressive or conservative.<\/p>\n\n SAPERSTEIN<\/strong>: \u00a0I\u2019m going back to my single-issue\/multi-issue discussion. Where someone feels a survival issue or an issue of the absolute core principle is involved, they\u2019re going to be more assertive in their advocacy, where it goes beyond just moral suasion to really suggest: you\u2019re going to alienate a large segment of the community that I represent come the next election.<\/p>\n\n Right now in the American political configuration, a lot of the energy is on the social issues when it comes to conservative churches. They see them as issues of such core principle that they\u2019re often working with single-issue secular groups or even more overtly electoral political groups on the spectrum to make sure their voice is heard. The differences between the churches and the groups working on social issues can get a little blurred to the people receiving their messages, even though neither the churches nor the groups violate any of the rules against electioneering. The difference gets obscured as to where the lines are drawn between them when they make it clear that there\u2019s going to be a consequence \u2013 that you cannot keep the support of my segment of the community in your next campaign if you alienate us on this core issue.<\/p>\n\n For Jews, Israel clearly is such an issue. And anti-Semitism, if somebody has been saying anti-Semitic remarks. For the black churches in America, civil rights and anti-black racism would fit the issue. For the mainline churches \u2013 right now, everyone\u2019s focused on the budget issue and care for the poor. Whether or not they will succeed in giving that the kind of traction as the\u00a0Jubilee Campaign<\/a>, as we go through the painful budget debates we\u2019re going through in this country, remains to be seen. That\u2019s what they\u2019re mobilizing around.<\/p>\n\n But other than that, there\u2019s nothing right now of the same kind of traction, where the Presbyterians can say, if you vote wrong on this, you\u2019re going to alienate most of the people of my church group. I think that\u2019s a descriptive comment, not a prescriptive comment. At different times in history \u2013 the civil rights fights \u2013 they could say that, make those kinds of assertions, at least for the non-Southern components of their community.<\/p>\n\n But in the ebb and flow of American political and cultural life right now, much of that single-issue core passion \u2013 you will alienate us in a way that you cannot hold us \u2013 politically is coming from the right in American politics. So I think descriptively there is a difference right now, Kevin. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s inherent in liberal versus conservative.<\/p>\n\n HERTZKE<\/strong>: \u00a0We do offer an analysis of religious tradition and organizational structure. It\u2019s not quite the same as your liberal\/conservative divide, but we do see patterns. In other words, Catholics tend to create and are represented a lot by institutions; evangelical organizations and Muslim groups and Jewish groups by membership-based organizations; the mainline Protestants by denominations. So there are certain patterns that do emerge that are distinctive across these religious traditions.<\/p>\n\n GALLAGHER<\/strong>: \u00a0This is just an uninformed observation, but it feels to me like one of the differences is that religious progressives tend to feel like they\u2019re sort of an afterthought tagged on to a mainly secular enterprise \u2013 I don\u2019t know why \u2013 whereas NOM is functionally a secular organization, but it\u2019s being driven \u2013 the people who care about this issue a lot are fundamentally religious.<\/p>\n\n That may reflect my ignorance of the religious left compared to the religious right. I certainly don\u2019t know it as well. But that also may suggest that there\u2019s some upside potential for religious progressives because right now it seems like more of a PR afterthought to an essentially secular left movement. So perhaps if religious progressives come to find their main voice that distinguishes them, you might see that changing. I offer that just as a bystander. That could be wrong. But maybe that\u2019s part of what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n\n COOPERMAN<\/strong>: \u00a0Terrific. That\u2019s been a great presentation by Allen Hertzke, terrific panel \u2013 David Saperstein, Maggie Gallagher and Rajdeep Singh. Thank you all very much. Thank you, everybody, for staying with us. And for those of you who are on the line, thank you so much for listening as well. Remember, you can find us all online at\u00a0pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion<\/a>, including the\u00a0list<\/a>\u00a0of 212 groups, their mission statements and brief profiles. Thank you very much.<\/p>\n\n This transcript was edited by Amy Stern for clarity, accuracy and grammar.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A November 2011 Pew Forum report gave a brief history of organized religious advocacy in Washington, D.C., and examined the major characteristics of religion-related advocacy. 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The Pew Forum hosted an event to discuss the report\u2019s key findings with journalists, policymakers and representatives from organizations that advocate on religion-related issues in Washington. ","og_title":"Event Transcript: Lobbying for the Faithful","og_description":"A November 2011 Pew Forum report gave a brief history of organized religious advocacy in Washington, D.C., and examined the major characteristics of religion-related advocacy. The Pew Forum hosted an event to discuss the report\u2019s key findings with journalists, policymakers and representatives from organizations that advocate on religion-related issues in Washington. 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![\"lobby-hertzke2\"](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2011\/11\/Allen-Hertzke1.jpg\" "\\"lobby-hertzke2\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n![\"lobby-gallagher\"](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2011\/11\/Maggie-Gallagher.jpg\" "\\"lobby-gallagher\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n![\"lobby-saperstein\"](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2011\/11\/Rabbi-David-Saperstein.jpg\" "\\"lobby-saperstein\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n![\"lobby-singh\"](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2011\/11\/Rajdeep-Singh.jpg\" "\\"lobby-singh\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n![\"lobby-socolovsky\"](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2011\/11\/Jerome-Socolovsky-VOA.jpg\" "\\"lobby-socolovsky\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n![\"lobby-tenety\"](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2011\/11\/Elizabeth-Tenety-Washington-Post.jpg\" "\\"lobby-tenety\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n![\"lobby-boorstein\"](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2011\/11\/Michelle-Boorstein-Washington-Post.jpg\" "\\"lobby-boorstein\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n![\"lobby-juez\"](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2011\/11\/Beatriz-Juez-Publico.jpg\" "\\"lobby-juez\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n![\"lobby-eckstrom\"](\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2011\/11\/Kevin-Eckstrom-RNS.jpg\" "\\"lobby-eckstrom\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n![\"lobby-panel\"](\"\/files\/2011\/11\/Panelists.jpg\" "\\"lobby-panel\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n