In recent years, the candidacies of John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Pat Robertson have demonstrated that religious issues can play a central role in presidential election campaigns. But press coverage of religious conflict or controversy isn't a substitute for stories that trace the contours of a candidate's religious heritage and values -- an exercise that, though rarely attempted, could add an important dimension to the political dialogue.

Why should the press include something as personal as religion in campaign coverage? Because voters have a need to know at least something about the candidates' most basic convictions -- the fundamental values and beliefs that give shape to their philosophies of life, provide the grounding for their daily political judgments, and anticipate the priorities they would have as president.

Despite the apparent hazards of such reporting, it can be done. In the latter stages of the 1988 campaign, for instance, Laura Sessions Stepp, a Washington Post staff writer who specializes in religion and ethics, proposed a pair of stories detailing the religious backgrounds of candidates George Bush and Michael Dukakis.

The proposal, Stepp says, was based on "the not novel but somewhat unusual philosophy that one's religious upbringing does impact a great deal on one's value system, what one believes, and how one later acts."

After convincing the initially reluctant national desk editors that the project had merit, Stepp sought out friends, relatives, teachers, and clergymen acquainted with Bush and Dukakis and inquired about the candidates' religious training, character formation, and theology.

The articles -- slated for publication on November 4, four days prior to the election -- delved into subjects not often included in ordinary campaign coverage: sin, suffering, worship, communion, faith, the hereafter, and the nature of God.

Stepp and her story editors were lobbying for page-one placement. But hours before the paper was to go to press, some of the editors and department heads -- still nervous about the pieces -- were debating whether the package should run on the front page or inside. After the question was discussed in the Post's 6:30 P.M. story conference, the verdict was delivered by executive editor Benjamin Bradlee. "If there's this much controversy over it," Bradlee said, "it probably should go on the front page."

It did, under the headlines FAMILY'S EPISCOPAL TRADITIONS MOLDED BUSH'S PHILOSOPHY and DUKAKIS TAKES SOME STEPS AWAY FROM STRICT ORTHODOX BELIEFS. The Post's David Hoffman, covering the Bush campaign at the time, commented to a colleague that Stepp's work told him more that he didn't know about the candidate than anything else he had read.

More recently, PBS's Bill Moyers engaged Democratic nominee Bill Clinton in a discussion about his Southern Baptist heritage, the split between the denomination's moderate and conservative factions, the meaning of personal character, and a president's responsibility as a spiritual leader. Yet the lead of Stepp and Moyers is seldom followed in the national press.

Of course, not all journalists see much merit in such reporting. Peggy Robinson, senior producer for politics at The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, recalls that although an occasional "ethical issue" would arise and demand coverage in the 1988 campaign -- Gary Hart's infidelity, for example -- the PBS program did not attempt to zero in on "personal issues" like the candidates' religious beliefs. Robinson adds that she's not sure that an appraisal of religious views is necessary "if there's a de-emphasis [on this issue] on the part of the candidate."

And Mary Klette, head of NBC's election unit, comments: "You wouldn't cover a family dinner. Why follow them to church?"

On the other hand, Hal Bruno, ABC News political director and former chief political correspondent at Newsweek, believes that knowledge of the candidates' religious background can give journalists a reading on their character.

Bruno relates that as a Chicago police reporter early in his career, he learned quickly that the religious orientations of people under stress could tell him a lot about how they would react. "Once I knew what a person's religious belief was, and how devout they were, I knew how to approach that person," he says. Because of that lesson, he has made it a point to be aware of politicians' religious backgrounds.

For his part, Reverend Richard P. McBrien, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and author of a book on politics and religion, asserts that the media "have the right and the responsibility to look into the religious values and beliefs of the candidates to the extent that those beliefs could have an impact on public policy."

With so much to recommend it, why is the religion angle neglected or ignored in campaign reporting? Journalists and political insiders propose a number of explanations.

R. Gustav Niebuhr, religion writer for The Wall Street Journal, suggests that it may simply not occur to editors and news directors that their audience might be interested in learning about a candidate's value structure. "I think there's a natural assumption that what voters care about most is, say, the economy or jobs, so there's a real tendency to focus on that."

Then, too, reporters may doubt that candidates' religious values actually influence their political stances. Stepp observes that because reporters have learned that many politicians say one thing and do another, they become fairly cynical and may begin to believe that "very little matters, particularly something as mushy as religion."

David Broder, the veteran Washington Post political reporter, says that although religion has played a role in virtually every campaign he has covered since 1960, journalists look at it with suspicion. "It's not a central aspect in the culture of the newsrooms," Broder says, "so we tend to view it through a screen, I think, of part ignorance and part skepticism."

From his vantage point as Illinois campaign chairman for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980, James M. Wall also detected a secular bias in the news media. Wall, who edits the journal Christian Century, says the media's unwillingness or inability to interpret a candidate's religious sensibility was in evidence even during Carter's campaigns. Although the devout Baptist candidate was widely reported to be "born again," coverage of his religious beliefs actually was very shallow, Wall asserts.

Further contributing to the meager coverage of the religion angle may be the fact that candidates often don't speak out about their values and beliefs -- resulting in a news judgment that the story isn't a story.

NBC's Lisa Myers recalls that in 1988 her network was willing to air the religious views of Bush and Dukakis. "But," she adds, "both of these guys were very private individuals who were not comfortable speaking about their religious beliefs."

The religious views of Dukakis, who said, "My own feelings about religion and my own church are very personal to me," received little attention. Bush was less reticent, at least when speaking to the religious press. In an interview published in Christianity Today a number of weeks before the election, he freely discussed his claims to faith. "There was never any doubt that Jesus Christ was my Savior and Lord," Bush told the magazine. "To this day, I have total conviction on this point." Still, neither candidate seemed interested in making his faith an issue in the campaign.

Another reason reporters may be uncomfortable covering the religion angle, suggests James Wall, is that the media have no language with which to discuss matters of faith. He illustrates the point with a story from the 1976 Carter campaign. He had asked Carter how he felt about losing a certain primary, and Carter had responded that it was for the best.

Obviously, Wall remarks, Carter meant that while he would have preferred to have won, "all things work together for good for those who love the Lord." But translating Carter's comment into "journalese" is virtually impossible, according to Wall. "How do you put that? 'CARTER GLAD HE LOST THE ELECTION?' The language is not there in the public dialogue."

Frank Watkins, longtime press secretary and political director for Jesse Jackson, observes that when reporters "try to dabble [in religion], they don't formulate the questions properly, and they don't [interpret] the answers properly, either. They tend to cloud issues as opposed to clarifying them."

Watkins adds, "You cannot understand our history, you cannot understand contemporary life, and you cannot understand American values if you don't have a very clear understanding of the relationship between religion and politics."

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