VOLCANIC ASH

By David Shapiro

One way to look at aggressive moves by evangelical Christian groups to reform government through prayer is that it's just another sign of lost faith in public institutions that have failed to serve community interests.

While conservative Christians turn to religious conviction to make sense of a fractured civic landscape, many citizens of a less spiritual mind express their discontent through cynical disengagement from community affairs.

Both expose the same loss of trust in a government they believe is controlled by self-serving politicians and powerful lobbying groups who attend to their own needs ahead of the public interest.

Honolulu Councilman Gary Okino reflects this disenchantment in explaining why he supports the Transformation Hawaii prayer movement and holds his own regular prayer meetings in City Hall.

"All of us who have been in government for too long know all too well how ineffective laws and the enforcement of those laws can be," Okino said.

"If we want to see real improvement in the tremendous problems facing our community today, it has to be through the spiritual. That is why we're appealing to the Good Lord through prayer."

We can worry about the blurring of lines between church and state, and about the conceit of some religious devotees who believe that only they understand the true word of God.

We can be skeptical that prayer will be any more successful in attaining societal reform than was the effort 20 years ago by Transcendental Meditation adherents to achieve brotherhood through mass chanting.

We can argue that effective change will more likely take informed citizens and honest politicians applying a lot of creativity and elbow grease.

But it would be a mistake to discount the immense frustration with government that drives both the religious activism and the expanding pessimism in secular circles.

It is of special concern that an insider like Okino, one of our more earnest and honest politicians, has become so discouraged that he believes our broken civic process can be healed only by throwing up a "Hail Mary."

Nationally, the battle has become ugly with widespread declarations of a religious civil war in our country.

Matters have not yet become nearly as bitter in Hawai'i, where voters have shown little comfort with mixing religion and politics — recognizing that doing so in a community as religiously diverse as ours can only bring conflict, not harmony.

When Mike Gabbard aggressively courted the religious vote in his 2004 campaign against the socially liberal U.S. Rep. Ed Case, Gabbard barely managed a third of the vote.

When religious conservatives briefly took over the local GOP more than a decade ago, prominent mainstream Republicans fled to the Democrats, and the party suffered losses in the Legislature that it has never recovered from.

Many are watching how Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona's highly visible call to Jesus on behalf of Transformation Hawai'i will play out when he and Gov. Linda Lingle seek re-election next year.

Lingle encouraged Aiona to run in 2002 to avoid being paired with another religious conservative like Stan Koki, her running mate from four years earlier whose unpopular views on social issues were seen as a factor in her narrow loss to Ben Cayetano.

If Aiona now becomes perceived as a Stan Koki on steroids, it could scare off moderate Democrats and independents who pulled Lingle and Aiona over the top in the last election.

For Hawai'i to avert the religious warfare that has overtaken national elections, the best politics is to convincingly address the concerns behind the profound disenchantment common to voters of all stripes.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.