Are We Getting Tired of Religion's "Buzz" in Politics?

The trend indicates that the answer to this question is "yes".

Another Pew Research study reveals why we might be sick of the not simply the mixture of religion and politics in this year's election, but the manner in which religion is mixing with it.  The episode of Inside the Actor's Studio that took place at the Saddleback Church is the signifier of why it is a weird mixture.  Neither candidate had shared a public stage before this.

Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters. For a decade, majorities of Americans had voiced support for religious institutions speaking out on such issues.

Pew Research Center: More Americans Question Religion's Role in Politics

The result of this piece of the study is represented in the plot-line graph below.

The majority of the public wants someone religious and who is not afraid to share those views, but also wants that person to keep a lid on it.  But we knew this already.  As C. Welton Gaddy wrote:

Has this year’s presidential campaign become too religious you ask? Absolutely. Anyone watching the coverage of this election is likely to assume the candidates are running for pastor-in-chief instead of commander-in-chief. Though the presidential election is still more than 250 days away, the candidates are engaged in a knock-down drag-out fight, and religion is often used as a weapon in that fight.

The Race for Pastor-in-Chief

The interesting twist on this interesting turn of phrase Gaddy uses, "pastor-in-chief" is that one of the more polarizing religious figures in the campaigning at the beginning of the year used the same expression a little bit later.

Well, I'm not a spokesman for my church. I'm not running for pastor in chief. I'm running for commander in chief.

So the best place to go for my church's doctrines would be my church.

Mitt Romney: The Complete Interview

Reading that interview without the non-verbal demeanor is instructive.  It shows how Stephanopoulos steers the conversation to paint a picture that Romney's faith may be a source of conflict even if he does not bring it up that much.  In Romney's defense, his purpose was not to raise his faith as a flag for voters to notice as a brand on his candidacy – initially.  In truth religion became something raised by the media and worked to the favor of the media since we continued to go to the media for more information on the apparent controversy.

Religion is what has been responsible for creating a lot of buzz around the candidates.  Buzz marketing is a different approach to getting your brand out that is far more subtle, yet much more effective that traditional push media.  It is:

capturing attention of consumers and the media to the point where talking about your brand becomes entertaining, fascinating, and newsworthy.

starting conversations

http://www.buzzmarketing.com/philosophy.html

It has helped media outlets to force people back to them in order to get the latest news on not the candidates, but the buzz about the candidates' religious values.  Consequently it has helped the candidates get out their respective branding and marketing as well.  The question is if this buzz has run its course and might now have a negative effect on where we are with the candidates.  It helped to rocket popularity of candidates both to a positive outcome (especially for Obama) and a negative outcome (Huckabee recognized the buzz early and over saturated his campaign with it and Romney was kind of a victim of it based on his LDS beliefs).

With Saddleback, it seems that it is time for the booster rockets of this particular buzz to fall off if the trend indicates how Americans feel about the place of religion in the Oval office.  We already get that both candidates are religious people with religious values.  It may be, however, that the continued waving of that same flag will play the same effect as when we get sick of an overplayed song like "With or Without You" which became worn out, even if it was and still is a really good song.  So we will now see if the marketing will now shift, or if we will just change the station to listen to something else.

Related posts:

1. us religion: post-secular, more secular, post-christian?