Religion is a hot topic on the campaign trail right now, with some candidates put in the uncomfortable position of having to either justify their sectarian beliefs, or demonstrate righteousness without appearing “holier than thou.”
Other than evoking the skin-crawling squeamishness of injecting religious prejudices into public debate, the inevitable drawback is having to endure hours of witless media commentary on the matter by unqualified gabmeisters without a philosophical bone in their bodies.
People uneasy with Mitt Romney’s Mormon background triggered this, I suppose, and Romney thought he could head them off at the pass with his “Faith in America” address earlier this month.
Unfortunately, Romney’s speech was a pastiche of platitudes and noble thoughts that answered no one’s questions about his Mormonism and this somehow should disqualify him from the presidency.
He made sweeping, empty rhetorical claims that were patently untrue, such as “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” There is no freedom in Islam, for example, and this is enough to falsify Romney’s claim.
In Romney’s view, there is no contradiction between holding religious beliefs and serving the U.S. Constitution, as long as one did not act upon his faith while in office. Indeed, he declared that he would “put no doctrine of any church above the plain duties of the office and the sovereign authority of the law.”
This is reminiscent of Mario Cuomo’s conundrum, when he said that he would turn a blind eye to his personal Catholic anti-abortion beliefs if he had to decide whether to support pro-choice legislation. This seemed hypocritical to many, not only fellow Catholics, and he was roundly criticized.
Romney acknowledged that there are theological differences among churches in America, but they “share a common creed of moral convictions.” This is true among Christian denominations, but not necessarily with non-Christian religions. He seems to think that a strong religious faith is a positive qualification for an American president. While this might be the case, it also suggests that any religious belief will do as long as it is sincerely held.
Romney’s predicament is really the same as Mike Huckabee’s, whose fundamentalist Baptist background is also in the spotlight: Any minority or strongly held sectarian beliefs are going to be viewed suspiciously by the outside majority, including non-believers, either because they don’t fully understand them, or they reject them outright.
Whether God exists and Christianity is true, or if Joseph Smith’s tale of the Golden Plates is fiction, are not questions that seem to arise in the political realm. People just want to be assured that a candidate’s fervently held beliefs are not going to skew his judgment to the point where it is detrimental to the nation as a whole.
Pundits used to say that Episcopalianism was a perfect denomination for political candidates: it was mainstream enough not to be threatening, and nobody really knew what Episcopalians believed anyhow.
Even though America is pluralistic in its religious tapestry, over 85 percent of the country is Christian, and people would not elect a declared atheist or a Muslim, for the simple fact that these represent a set of beliefs foreign to the majority and there would be a visceral reaction against them.
There is a great danger in electing political leaders if their beliefs are not scrutinized closely. If Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, a declared Muslim, should gather support someday for a presidential run, one would think that the nature of Islamic beliefs should automatically disqualify him from political office, if American traditions matter at all.
In this case, a candidate’s beliefs would be critical, since they would represent the introduction of a seventh-century Arabic supremacist religion and political ideology — both inimical to the American way of life — into our politics. When Ellison took the symbolic oath of office for his congressional seat, he refused to take this on the Judeo-Christian Bible, but rather on the Quran.
Followers of political correctness would dismiss this simply as bigotry, but they are deluding themselves by denying reality. Would they have us share the steady breaking apart of Western Europe that we a currently witnessing, a continent that is being increasingly Islamicized?
A candidate’s fundamental beliefs are well to be examined. They will tell us if they are compatible with our people and our traditions, in addition to what extent they inform the candidate’s character. It is high time that we take this aspect of our politics much more seriously, if only for the troubling times that lie ahead.
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Barrett Kalellis is a Michigan-based columnist and writer whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print and online publications. He may be reached at kalellis@newsmax.com.
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