Saying Grace at Thanksgiving? Pray There's a Republican at the Table

David Gibson
Politics Daily

Talk about grace under pressure. As families and loved ones gather around the table on Thursday for one of the most beloved rituals of the national religion -- that would be Thanksgiving, the Norman Rockwell version -- all eyes will be on the person designated to lead the diners in giving thanks, with God being the traditional object of the praise.

If you are a Republican, chances are good that you will take up the task with a glad heart and a practiced tongue. If you are a Democrat, you may want to pray -- for perhaps the first time in your life -- that there's a Republican at the table.

That's because there are few other behaviors that so neatly cleave the body politic in half than the habit of saying grace before meals -- and there are few other behaviors that so clearly telegraph your partisan preference.

According to David Campbell and Robert Putnam, authors of "American Grace: How Religion Divides And Unites Us," a sweeping new survey of faith in the United States, 44 percent of Americans report saying grace or a similar blessing almost every day before eating while 46 percent almost never say it. There is hardly any middle ground on this issue, and, they write, "few things about a person correspond as tightly to partisanship as saying grace."

(More here.)