COLUMN RIGHT / JOHN J. PITNEY JR. : Is <i> God</i> a Four-Letter Word? : The GOP’s appeal to our better selves hardly spells extremism.

According to an article in a major news magazine, the 1992 Republican convention was “a feast of hate and fear.” That comment typifies the attacks on the GOP and its positions. To hear the critics, one might think that the Houston gathering consisted mainly of religious fanatics, and that the GOP platform represents a road map of Jonestown. But the platform that the critics describe bears little likeness to what the Republicans actually say.

The following line has drawn a great deal of fire: “We believe our laws should reflect what makes our Nation prosperous and wholesome: faith in God, hard work, service to others, and limited government.” This mention of God, the argument goes, suggests that the GOP really wants to return America to Puritan days.

If the “faith in God” line is so alarming, imagine the reaction to these passages:

“No greater thing could come to our land today than a revival of the spirit of religion--a revival that would sweep through the homes of the Nation and stir the hearts of men and women of all faiths to a reassertion of their belief in God and their dedication to His will. . . . “

“We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God.”

“Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

These quotations come not from the 1992 Republican platform but from speeches by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. None of these Democratic presidents sought an officially established church. And neither do today’s Republicans. What they do believe is that religion is an essential part of national life.

Critics cannot dismiss this as a passing bow to the “religious right.” In the 19th Century, Alexis de Tocqueville made a similar point in answering contemporaries who sought to expel faith from the public square: “Despotism may be able to do without faith, but freedom cannot. Religion is much more needed in the republic they advocate than in the monarchy they attack, and in democratic republics most of all.” According to Tocqueville, religion does not threaten liberty. On the contrary, it strengthens freedom by fostering a public spirit. Every faith “imposes on each man some obligation to mankind, to be performed in common with the rest of mankind, and so draws him away, from time to time, from thinking about himself.”

Reflecting Tocqueville, the 1992 Republican platform looks forward to an “America of families, friends and communities that care about one another.”

Critics also portray the GOP as the foe of free expression, claiming that the party wants to censor art on religious grounds. In fact, the platform says something utterly different: “We believe a free market in art--with neither suppression nor favoritism by government--is the best way to foster the cultural revival our country needs.” In other words, government should get out of the art business altogether.

But as long as the government does support art, it must have standards for spending the taxpayers’ dollars. The platform drafters had in mind a federally funded exhibit featuring “Piss Christ,” a photograph of a crucifix immersed in urine, which was an act of prejudice against Christian believers. The issue turns not on whether government should curtail free expression, but on whether it should subsidize works of religious hatred. The critics thus are in an odd position: damning the GOP as “extremist” because it seeks to halt government support of bigotry.

Another line of attack contends that the GOP wants to punish, not help, people with AIDS. The platform links prevention “to personal responsibility and moral behavior.” It also says: “We are committed to ensure that our Nation’s response to AIDS is shaped by compassion, not fear or ignorance, and will oppose, as a matter of decency and honor, any discrimination against Americans who are its victims.”

Reasonable people may argue about the platform’s stands on these and other issues. What is not reasonable is the attempt to paint the platform as the sinister design of snake-handling fanatics. One recent article on this page accused the GOP’s “religious zealots” of seeking to unify church and state, as in “countries like Iran where thousands of people were killed in the process of government doing just this.” This same article also accused the Republicans of “name-calling.” Ironic, eh?

In discussing the religious right’s role in the GOP, columnist Mary McGrory and other political liberals speak of “infiltration”--a word that Joseph McCarthy employed in describing the actions of communists. It’s strange that liberals who like to remind us of “the red scare” are now bringing us “the God scare.”