Mitt Romney tried to explain his Mormon faith today but he didn’t get into any theological detail. That’s okay by me. I don’t expect Jews, Catholics, Muslims, or Buddhists to explain their theological beliefs when they run for office. There’s a simple reason why. Article VI of the Constitution specifies:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Of course, I’m a voter. I’m free to vote for or not for any politician because they agree or don’t agree with my religious beliefs. But there can be no law against someone taking an office because they are an adherent, or are not an adherent, of any religious faith. That’s America.
And, therefore, no politician should be obliged to explain the tenets of their faith. If they choose to do so, that is their own political calculation. They probably think it will help them win an election.
I happen to be one of those freaks that has actually studied the theologies of all the major world religions. I don’t need Mitt Romney to explain his faith to me. I already know the basics of his faith. It’s a strange faith, but it is only strange compared to more established faiths by virtue of it’s relative historical newness. In the world of the Romans, Christianity was just as novel and just as bizarre. If you don’t think so, read Contra Celsus. It will set you straight.
There are a lot of myths about religion among the founding fathers. Anyone from Philadelphia is likely to know that George Washington was asked not to show up for church on Sundays because he had the nasty habit of standing up and walking out of the church during Communion. The Reverend thought it sent the wrong message. Take a look at Thomas Jefferson’s comments on Christianity. They are more hostile than anything George Carlin ever said. The first president to actually take communion was probably Andrew Jackson.
This country was built in reaction to the following observation.
“Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.” -Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
People came to this country to get away from religious strife and persecution. And I think we should honor that history. I do care whether a presidential aspirant doesn’t believe in natural selection. But I don’t care where they go to worship or the details of the theology of their religion.
Mitt Romney’s faith isn’t the problem. No, it’s his policies that suck.
Sorry Boo,
I see no policy, other than say what the focus group tells you to say.
Oh, and I guess self-financing of a large chunk of your own campaign could be considered a policy.
C
nice post booman
i agree with you.
Last week, Christopher Hitchens wrote in Slate that Romney should ‘come clean’ about his Mormonism and what that would mean to his presidency. I wrote a blog piece on my website about it : http://www.call4democracy.org/article.asp?AID=803
This topic is of particular concern to me as an atheist. Romney is absolutely correct that his faith should have no bearing on his ‘electibility’. And I would say the same about someone as batshit crazy as Mike Huckabee, in general. It’s when Huckabee’s belief’s, which in my judgment are no stranger than anyone of another faith, interfere with policy-making on a constitutional level that faith becomes a problem. That Huckabee doesn’t believe in evolution is of concern because it translates into an inability to analyze evidence and form sound conclusions, but then again, this could be said about any number of articles of faith.
Sincerely, and in Peace
Jason Call
http://www.Call4Democracy.org
Candidate, US Congress, New Mexico CD 1
It’s refreshing to have someone running for congress who isn’t afraid to call someone batshit crazy.
I don’t find Mormonism to be any more delusional than other faiths. Because of its relatively recent invention (or divine intervention) there’s probably more skepticism about the magic plates dug up in Buffalo than, say, a burning bush.
But how about Rudy Giuliani explain about actually eating real flesh and blood of someone supposedly dead for 2000 years? Or if someone rises to Heaven where exactly Heaven is located?
It actually will aid the voter in showing what delusions a potential office-holder will admit to.
I was offended by Romney’s speech.
Juan Cole agrees with me:
Every time some breathless tv anchor compares Romney’s political drivel to JFK’s speech I gag. I’m not sure why it was taken for more than it was: simple pandering to the right. Maybe it’s the hair that throws them. I do, however, still love Thomas Jefferson.
The speech was an attempt to unify Christians against others. That’s why he conflated religious symbolism in the “pubic space” with Christian faith in the political leaders.
Even the NY Times editorial page got the slight of hand. Kennedy said religion has no place in government. Romney said Christians have a place in government. That’s a big difference. His gamble is that the mildly religious will be drawn to his side and that this will be a greater gain that the loss of those who don’t want to see Christianity as a de facto state religion.
I’m guessing his calculation will not be in his favor.
Hey Boo- go read Juan Cole this AM! I listened to pomney. He is one slimy divisivepiece of shit and tragically, I am absolutely sure that he knew exactly what he was doing and it points out just how serious this religious bullshit is becoming in this country. I find that I am beginning to think that this country is being torn apart and I gotta tell you that I can’t find anything that might change the direction that the country is heading! Trouble is coming Boo, really big trouble!
I disagree with the politeness of the discussion of Mormonism. While people can believe what they want and I would literally fight for that right, I do believe what and HOW they believe has bearing on one of the most important tasks the Presidents do: interpretation of evidence and decision-making.
Do we need another President detached from reality:
Here is one very subjective dissection of their actual text from a skeptical point of view.
I’m sorry, but if that isn’t crazy stuff that places him to the outside of even President Bush on his relationship with reality. (not saying other religions aren’t filled with similarly ‘idiosyncratic’ beliefs). So those of us in the ‘reality-based community’ should sacrifice our objections to this silliness, and other candidates equivalent silliness, on the alter of tolerance? To tolerate is different that to ignore. Just as I don’t want a fundi christian or jew running the show, I wouldn’t want a hardcore Mormon either.
Dude, if I subjected every candidate’s religion to the “he doesn’t believe in something crazy” test I would never vote. Especially here in Ohio.
Tell me in exactly what ways the beliefs that you lay out are crazier than “believes his God incarnated as a human being and walked the earth teaching”, “believes his God was killed and came back to life three days later”, “believes his God incarnated as a talking burning bush”, or “beliefs the Earth is 6000 years old and was created whole cloth – dinosaur bones and all – by his God”.
And that last bit – the RCC (among other churches) STILL doesn’t allow women to become priests in their church. They also have this thing where they believe that the bread and wine on the altar are literally transformed by the power of God into actual flesh and blood that they eat every Sunday. Should I have used this as a reason not to vote for John Kerry four years ago? Ritualized canniabalism is a bit weirder than believing that your God lives on another planet.[]
Just because a substantial number of people believe it doesn’t make it weird.
[
] Disclaimer – I’m born and raised Roman Catholic.
That should be:
Just because a substantial number of people believe it doesn’t make it NOT weird.
Preview, as always, is my friend that I should visit more often.
“Dude, if I subjected every candidate’s religion to the “he doesn’t believe in something crazy” test I would never vote. Especially here in Ohio.”
How about we DO start asking our leaders to be logical, especially on subjects of great importance?
I am not going to deny people their view of the universe that gets them by, but perhaps someone who can cope with harsh reality and come out the otherside just fine is more qualified to lead the nation than one who wears magic underwear so he can feel better than the rest of us.
If wished were ponies.
As far as I know, Pete Stark is the only member of Congress to admit his atheism. And Pete Stark is not anyone’s idea of a totally grounded and sane politician. I love the guy but…seriously.
The fact is that a significant percentage of politicians are feigning their religious beliefs, and it is a political necessity. It has a pernicious effect, but it isn’t quite as nasty as the issue of abortion, where geography and the office being sought tend to have near 100% correlation with where a politician stands (see Poppy Bush, Al Gore, Mitt Romney, and Dennis Kucinich).
What can we draw from these facts?
One thing we can draw is that we should never take a politician’s professed religiosity at face value. The bible thumpers are probably humping pages and the atheists are going to church. Mitt Romney might believe in magic underwear, and Al Franken might believe in God. We really don’t and can’t know. What matters is not what they believe so much as what the want to do in office.
It’s simply unrealistic and unfair to have one standard for Mormons and another for all other faiths. Until people can openly admit that they don’t believe in God, we’ll have a constant refrain of fake religion in public life. And it isn’t going to change in this election cycle.
One day, people will do what Ireland did. They’ll wake up one day and throw all the bums out and their religion with it. But, in America, religion is resilient and powerful. And we just have to tolerate that for now.
It is going to be hard to get rid of religion because religion has become very big business in the very worst sense of those words or as I’ve mentioned before the religious mafia coalition. If you want to make money and not pay taxes then start a church…it’s the new American Way. Hey Tori Spelling just became some sort of pastor and performed her first marriage.
Perhaps there is something to that Choc.. but instead of making a new one, why not take over an existing sect and use it to expose the man-serving rediculousness of so many so-called religions by publicly dissembling the mafia-aspect of said sect.
Or better yet :
And this is a goood one…
Restart and promote the ‘Deist’ faith of Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, and Allen so evangelicals can’t claim to be somehow related to the founding fathers. The great thing about all the leg work the evangelicals have done is that it is easily coopted (see Turd Blossom et al).
I am totally down with Deism. You?
Booman, you’re completely wrong on two counts.
First, as others in this thread have pointed out, Romney’s speech was not embracing separation of church and state, which is what you affirm in your post. Instead, Romney was saying that Mormons have a legitimate place in America, since America is a Christian country, and Mormons are Christians. Of course, the proposition that Mormons are Christians is a blatant lie.
That brings me to the second point. Mormonism is not a religion: it is nothing but a made-in-America religious cult. If you tolerate Mormonism, you might as well tolerate agitators of the “right to life”, neocons, and Bush enthusiasts in general. You write about Mormonism:
Your analogy between the world of the Romans and our world is completely invalid. The Romans did not have modern science, or a fully worked out critique of religion, which explains the idea of God as nothing but a construction by human beings to help them deal with their various problems.
To create a new religion in the modern age, as the Mormons did, or to follow such a religion, is nothing but lunacy. To treat it as something else, and indeed to claim that it deserves to be tolerated, as you claim, requires rejecting reason, which is the foundation of today’s Republican Party. So if you want to argue that the Mormon “religion” deserves to be tolerated, you might as well go all the way and join the Republicans.
“To create a new religion in the modern age, as the Mormons did, or to follow such a religion, is nothing but lunacy.”
Why is Mormonism any more or less lunatic than Protestantism (which technically is also a cult, since it split from the Holy See in the 16th century, and a multiheaded cult at that : Calvinism, Lutheran, Methodist, Wesleyan, Anglican, etc….) or Catholicism (which is culted into Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and so on) or Islam (Sunni, Shi’a, Wahabi…).
Actually, since they are pretty damn unified, I’d almost call them less of a cult.
But what is the “creation” of religion, and why does it need to be dated. Consider the Baha’i Faith, which originated in Persia, mid-19th century. It’s the second most widespread religion in the world after Christianity, and after Islam it’s the fastest growing religion. They believe in ‘progressive revelation’, which means that they believe god revealed a new message after he revealed to Mohammed.
I don’t believe in any of it, but I certainly don’t think that one religion has any more or less credence, or basis in reality, than any other.
My concern, again, is that faith is not used as a basis for policy making. I don’t want that out of Romney or Huckabee, or Clinton or Obama. We have a rulebook that we should follow, it’s called the Constitution. That’s why religion should not rule out any candidate, as long as their history of public office doesn’t indicate that their religion takes precedence in their public service over the Constitution. On this point, I think a number of candidates fail.
And the reality is that the people who are most reviled, and less likely to be elected to office are, like myself, atheists. This is a failure of the American people to understand that ‘freedom of religion’ extends to those who don’t believe in God.
Jason Call
http://www.Call4Democracy.org
Candidate, US Congress, New Mexico CD 1
Those are very good points you make about atheism. “Enlightened” Christians have made the same critical point in response to Romney’s speech. Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, noted that
As for the relationship of Christianity to other religions, that’s too complex an issue to get into here. I will just point out that, with the discovery of the Gnostic gospels, we can now have a better understanding of what Christ’s message really was. And most people would consider that message to be a form of atheism. That is what makes Christianity rational, in contrast to other religions.
Where am I wrong?
I won’t vote for Romney because he’s a jerk. His opinions on religion in public life offend me. But the fact that he is a Mormon? I don’t care. I don’t think Mormons are more or less crazy than non-Mormons. Most people keep the religion of their parents. If we didn’t get indoctrinated as Children, if we freely chose our religion upon reaching adulthood, and we had all the religions to pick from, and someone chose Mormonism? I’d think that they’re a few ice chips short of a sno-cone. But that is not how the world works.
If I examine Jimmy Carter’s faith, I’m gonna think the man is dangerously insane and unfit for office. Right? It’s bullcrap.
What matters is not that Romney is a Mormon, but that he’s a Republican asshole.
What matters is not that Romney is a Mormon, but that he’s a Republican asshole.
Everybody can agree on the latter part. He’s also a Republican asshole in that he pushes faith (whether Christian or Mormon) as being central to the American way of life, and that aspect of his religious attitude, at least, should not be tolerated, even if his faith is.
BTW, maybe most Americans do keep the faith of their parents, but Americans also “shop around” for religions much more than Europeans do.
Also, I know someone who converted to Mormonism (partly to stop drinking, as far as I know), and he is the biggest asshole I’ve ever met in my life. He actually sued my wife, who was faculty in the same department as he, on completely specious grounds (the suit was dismissed), while she was dying of cancer. And Mormons call themselves Christians!
Finally, any religion that bans alcohol is broken, and cannot be taken seriously on those grounds alone. But I think we’ve already had this discussion. (You brought up the Methodists and their discouragement of drinking alcohol.)
If you look at Christianity dispassionately and from the outside, it’s a truly strange religion, and no less so than Mormonism.
Some angel impregnated a woman on god’s behalf, who gave birth to a boy that was visited by wisemen but then did nothing for twenty-something years until he started performing miracles, healing the sick, walking on water, and making a general nuisance of himself by calling the politicians and rabbis a bunch of phonies. He got the death penalty for his efforts and then spent a few months making appearances to a select group of religious wackos, until he disappeared forever, but he can get you into heaven if he puts in a good word for you with his father, but of course, he is his father, because of the doctrine of the trinity.
Basically, it makes gold tablets and Jewish American Indians seem normal.
Christianity is such a huge tradition and has had such a huge influence on Western culture that one cannot avoid confronting it. If one does, I personally have found that Christianity makes perfect sense and expresses a profound yet very unobvious truth; but coming to this conclusion requires making a very selective and non-literal reading of the Bible and giving a lot of weight to sources outside of it, and adopting a very heterodox position.
There is no corresponding need to make sense out of Mormonism. Thus, the “strangeness” of Mormonism can be taken at face value, whereas I think we owe it to ourselves to make sense out of the strangeness of Christianity.
I see no validity in that view. If you read the Celsus link for two seconds you’ll see how arbitrary your view is.
BTW- Mormonism is growing at about the exact same rate that Christianity did in its first two centuries.