Religious Matters

Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for the Bush administration, says that Mitt Romney's Mormonism shouldn't disqualify him from running for president.

Without intending or desiring it, the Romney campaign has poked the sleeping bear of debate about the role of religion in American politics. Liberals tend to argue that all theological beliefs, including Mormonism, are fundamentally private and dangerously coercive as the basis of public policy. Some religious conservatives are concerned that this particular theology is too eccentric to be welcomed at the White House.

Facing even deeper suspicions about his Catholicism while running for president in 1960, John Kennedy gave a response at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association that was politically masterful, historically influential -- and should not be Romney's model. Kennedy said that a candidate's "views on religion are his own private affair," which should not be "imposed by him upon the nation." Kennedy did more than reassure Americans that his public decisions would not be dictated by the pope. He claimed that his public decisions would not be influenced by his religious convictions at all.

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Romney, however, should not make Kennedy's mistake and assert that all religious beliefs are unrelated to politics. What Mormonism shares with other religious traditions is a strong commitment to the value and dignity of human beings, including the unborn, the disabled and the poor. This conviction is unavoidably political, because it leads men and women to act in the cause of justice, not in order to impose their religion, but to protect the weak.

The problem with that, however, is that all too often politicians have used their faith and religious beliefs as an excuse for their political actions. Religion is the great cop-out for societies to blame our human failings on, using it both as the scapegoat and the cudgel to control others. It's a very handy way to amass power in a small and select oligarchy, answerable to no one since they derive their power from God. That makes them invincible: to doubt them is to doubt God, and that's heresy. Slavery was acceptable because it's in the Old Testament. Racism is acceptable because some passage somewhere in the bible says so. Demonizing gays and lesbians is done at the behest of Leviticus, and reproductive choice is denied to women because, again according to the bible, they are subservient to man and life begins at conception. (The bible is not known for its scientific accuracy; according to Genesis, the earth is 6,000 years old and flat.)

I frankly don't care if Mr. Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I don't care if he's a Druid. And I don't care if it's his religion that informs his beliefs -- no matter which way he flip-flops -- about gay marriage, reproductive choice, or NAFTA. What I do care about is his or any other candidates' use of religion to say that he or she holds a particular belief because of their religion and therefore can't be questioned on those views because to question them is to challenge or mock their faith.

It's disingenuous to use religion first as a weapon then as a shield, and if you're going to bring it into the give-and-take (not to mention the kick-and-gouge) of a political campaign, it becomes fair game. The electorate and the citizens of this country deserve more than "the bible tells me so" as an answer to their questions as to why a candidate would deny some citizens the right to get married or why they should have control over their own bodies, or veto stem-cell research. (And they certainly deserve to know if a candidate is going to coldly manipulate the religious voters into voting for their party only to get into office and then take them for granted -- or worse, mock them once they're in power.) Defend your stand based on science, logic, the law, and the Golden Rule, which pre-dates the bible and Christianity by eons (and is the foundation of our Constitution), not on fable and superstition. Give credit to human nature to establish a free and fair civilization, and accept the fact that religion and its rites are the inventions of mankind. Like all inventions wrought by us flawed humans, it can be used and abused by the corrupt and cynical among us to manipulate the foolish and the weak. Fortunately, our innate sense of fairness and our human capacity for empathy and caring can outweigh even the most evil use of something that was invented to try to explain the mysteries of life. And if you want to call it God or Allah or Jehovah or the Flying Spaghetti Monster that guides your hand, that's fine. Just don't expect everyone to accept it without question, and don't accuse them of blasphemy if they ask you for more than a ten-word answer.

Mr. Gerson says that Mr. Romney's religion shouldn't disqualify him. But it also shouldn't give him a mantle of respectability, wholesomeness, and gravitas that he otherwise wouldn't earn without the scrutiny that our secular political system bestows on a person regardless -- or in spite of -- their faith.

Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.