With Mitt Romney's suspension of his presidential campaign and James Dobson's endorsement of Mike Huckabee, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton discusses the challenges frontrunner John McCain faces as he tries to convince religious voters to support him.
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Despite the prominent role of religion this campaign season, exit pollsters have not asked religion questions of Democratic voters in most of the primary contests so far and only limited religion questions of Republican voters. Zogby International has been asking religion questions of likely voters in its pre-election tracking polls and gave Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly exclusive access to that data. It offers a picture of how religious voting groups are leaning this year. Among the highlights: Hillary Clinton has done consistently well among Catholics and especially white Catholics. Barack Obama and Clinton have divided the white Protestant vote, including white born again Protestants. Obama has consistently won black Protestants, especially in South Carolina, and Clinton has won Hispanic Catholics. Obama has done especially well among the most and the least religiously observant. John McCain and Mitt Romney were in a tight competition for white Catholic and white Protestant votes, and although Mike Huckabee has been doing well among evangelicals, he is still not the consensus candidate for born-again Protestants.
Religious conservatives helped give Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee a decisive win in the Iowa Caucuses. In this September 2007 interview with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton, Huckabee talks about his personal faith and how that faith influences his politics.
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Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee urges religious conservatives not to put political expediency or partisan allegiance above standing for their convictions. (October 20, 2007)
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Mitt Romney's speech sought to do several things. First and foremost, it sought to reassure wavering evangelical voters in Iowa that Romney shared their values and at least a core of their faith. In recent weeks, Mike Huckabee has been gaining rapidly on Romney's much better funded campaign, and Huckabee has been quick to trumpet his background as a Baptist preacher and his "Christian" credentials. Many evangelicals do not believe that Mormons are Christians and have been reluctant to support Romney at least in part for this reason. Second, it sought to present Romney as a candidate grounded in religious and family values to help him overcome an image as a candidate whose political views on abortion, gay rights, and immigration are dependent on which office he is seeking and what voters in that state believe. More generally, Romney sought to have a "presidential moment" -- to make a speech that would be remembered along with John F. Kennedy's famous speech of 1960 and express both the civil religion of America and also the nation's tradition of tolerance and inclusion. He probably failed at the first two tasks, but succeeded in the third.
Romney's speech probably did little to reassure doubtful evangelicals. He mentioned his Mormon faith only once, without any discussion of how that faith has informed his values. He professed a belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God and Savior of mankind, said that he would take the oath of office on the Bible, and promised not to allow Mormon leaders to influence his policies. He also sent various signals: that he would appoint judges who might overturn Roe, that he supported the phrase "under God" in the pledge, that he opposed radical Islam. But Romney's single mention of his Mormon faith was the same number of times that he positively referred to the prayer habits of Muslims, and far less often than he referred to Catholics. His comment that he wished his faith tradition included elements of various other traditions seemed strange for someone strongly endorsing his own faith, and by downplaying entirely Mormon doctrine the speech appeared both somewhat defensive and perhaps not sufficiently serious about the ideas central to all faith communities.
The speech also did little to reassure those who believe that Romney has changed his politics to suit the voters he faces. If his faith informs his moral values, then why was he once a social liberal and now a conservative? Why has he recently taken such a harsh stand on immigration? Romney did point to his stable family -- something he shares with Huckabee but few other GOP candidates. But the speech did little to tell voters what core values have animated his political life.
On the third task, Romney did far better. He certainly looked presidential at the George Bush Library. He has the best head of hair among the Republican candidates, and it shone under the lights. He seemed serious, he seemed firm, he seemed inclusive. The imagery of the speech worked well.
More substantively, he hit a number of important themes about the relationship between religion and politics, between church and state, and between tolerance and a religious people. Overall the text has drawn praise from conservatives who already supported Romney and from some liberals who would never vote for him. There were rhetorical flourishes that we associate with strong presidents, including a poetic reference to the "symphony of faith." His telling of the story of Sam Adams leading an ecumenical prayer echoes the great orators of the presidency, who bring anecdotes to bear at the right time to sell the audience on broader but more abstract points. His linking of Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and Brigham Young was a powerful statement as well. The speech was well written and well delivered.
But three things about the substance of the speech struck me as odd. First, Romney made a strong claim that "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Certainly genuine religion requires freedom to flourish, but many deeply religious states are not free. And freedom seems to flourish quite well in the secular soil of Europe, where Romney notes that the cathedrals stand empty. Certainly Sweden is freer than Nigeria, for all of the secularism of the former and the religiosity of the latter.
Second, the speech sought to strike an inclusive tone, but also to perpetuate the culture war. It tried to put evangelicals, Pentecostals, conservative Catholics, Muslims, and Mormons on one side, and the religion of secularism on the other. In Romney's telling, the founders were all deeply religious, but in fact some were secular, and they fought alongside Christians and Jews for freedom and helped to establish the Constitution, which gives no religious tests and allows all to worship but establishes no church. Thus, Romney tries to have it both ways -- to give a speech that extols the virtue of tolerance while still stoking the fires of cultural conflict, at once uniting Americans and then dividing Americans into us versus them.
Finally, the speech that boldly proclaimed no one should be held to a religious test also very carefully spoke of religious doctrine -- of the role of Jesus. Many evangelicals with whom I have spoken since the speech have suggested that they found this note jarring, reminding them in fact of theology after they had been primed to put it behind them. Strategically, Romney may have believed this is necessary to win in Iowa, where he has invested so much. But it leaves him open to questions about the way Mormons conceive of Jesus in their faith, and groups working against Romney in Iowa have already begun to highlight this theological divide.
Overall, the speech was a strong one and may well help Romney if he wins the Republican nomination. But whether it helps him in Iowa remains to be seen.
-- Clyde Wilcox is a professor of government at Georgetown University. He has written and edited many books and articles on religion and politics, including ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IN AMERICAN POLITICS (Westview Press, 2006).
Mitt Romney's speech today focused ostensibly on religious liberty and tolerance, with the direct implication that his Mormon faith should not be an issue for voters. But it is not clear that the political goal for the speech -- to woo evangelical Republicans in early primary states -- was achieved.
There was, apparently, quite a bit of controversy within the Romney campaign about whether this speech should be given at this point or at all. Most observers believe that it was the recent success of the Huckabee campaign in Iowa that prompted the speech at this time. I think pundits will be debating the wisdom of Romney's choice for quite a while. Romney had very little to gain and much to lose with this speech. Most general polls suggest that the average voter cares little about Romney's Mormon faith, but that a significant portion of likely Republican primary voters (and caucus attendees) are evangelicals who don't fully support the idea that a Mormon should be president. Endorsements of Romney's candidacy by Christian Right leaders aside, most evangelicals believe that Mormonism is a cult and not a Christian denomination. Some evangelicals were willing to vote for Romney because he was a better alternative than the pro-choice, twice divorced Rudy Guliani. But the advent of Mike Huckabee as a legitimate candidate, with his social conservative and evangelical faith credentials, makes Romney second choice for many evangelicals. This could be disastrous for the Romney campaign, particularly in Iowa and South Carolina.
So Romney's challenge was to convince evangelicals that it doesn't matter that he's Mormon, that he'll support the right policies when the time comes. In a race where there were no viable evangelical candidates, this would have been a winning strategy. But a focus on civil religion and the importance of faith in American's lives is not enough for most evangelicals to choose a Mormon over a former Baptist preacher. Romney's strongest argument to evangelicals is not his faith tradition or the need for Americans to be religiously tolerant; it is that he is the only conservative candidate that can win the Republican nomination. But Huckabee's recent surge calls even that argument into question. So while the goal of the speech was to reassure evangelicals that being a Mormon is OK and that he is still a good candidate for them, all it likely did was more starkly draw the lines between his Mormon faith and the evangelical faith of his newly strong competitor. That is not a recipe for a Romney win in Iowa or South Carolina.
-- Kimberly H. Conger is an assistant professor in the political science department at Iowa State University.
In 1960 John F. Kennedy gave two major speeches on what he described as the "so-called religious issue" in the presidential campaign. The second, presented to the greater Houston Baptist Ministerial Association in September, after he received the Democratic nomination, has passed into political folklore. It has been cited incessantly in this week's run up to Governor Mitt Romney's address today. The first, given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April 1960, when Kennedy's nomination remained very much in doubt, lingers in obscurity. Both speeches were impressive political performances, filled with signature JFK themes like his wartime record and the imminent threat of international Communism. Both stressed the central point that, as Kennedy told the Baptists, a president's "views on religion are his own private affair." But his more candid and annoyed address to the editors went further. "The President is not elected to be protector of the faith -- or guardian of the public morals. His attendance at church on Sunday should be his business alone, not a showcase for the nation."
From the perspective of 2007 -- indeed, from the perspective of presidential politics since 1976 -- such views sound almost as archaic as Thomas Jefferson's declaration that he cared not whether his neighbor believed in no god or twenty gods. This change in the political zeitgeist does not simply reflect growing religiosity in the electorate. On the contrary, depending on where and how we look, Americans in the aggregate are less religious now than in 1960. Rather, starting with the polarized high "sixties" that began a half decade later, social and cultural issues related to religion have become a larger part of the nation's political divisions. As religion-related issues multiplied, so did rival groups dedicated to mobilizing the devout, the secular, and those in between. In 1960, despite rising Catholic and Protestant tensions during the previous decade, Kennedy could affirm the "absolute" separation of church and state, reject diplomatic relations with the Vatican, call federal aid to parochial schools unconstitutional, and be done with it. The chances of Congress passing a foreign aid bill funding birth control seemed "very remote," he said. And of course Kennedy spoke thirteen years before Roe v Wade legalized almost all abortions.
With varying degrees of piety, sincerity, and success, presidential candidates have adapted to and promoted the proliferation of religion-related issues and a zeitgeist that now seems to impose a de facto religiosity test for the major party nominations.
Jimmy Carter's courtship of his fellow "born again" Protestants helped him win the 1976 election but many of them defected from his coalition when they discovered on closer inspection that Carter was theologically and politically more liberal than he had sounded. Ronald Reagan, an eclectic Protestant with a Catholic father, toyed with religious beliefs ranging from Baha'i to premillennial prophecies of Jesus' imminent return. On the thinnest of evidence, he convinced most evangelicals and fundamentalists that he, too, was a born again Christian, and the briefly influential new Christian right accepted a very junior partnership in the Reagan coalition. As president, Reagan's religious style recalled Eisenhower's affirmations of religion in general; he began the contemporary practice of ending speeches with "God bless America." On thinner evidence and with less success, George H. W. Bush claimed that he, too, was sort of born again. Bill Clinton, who combined spiritual searching and womanizing in the fashion of Lyndon Johnson, continued the speech-ending ritual of asking God to bless America. George W. Bush, a moderate evangelical himself, has given a larger governmental role to the Christian right than Reagan did because that interest group is now more firmly established in the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, the specific issues related to religion have waxed and waned. For instance, most Americans stopped noticing that numerous presidential contenders since 1960 have been Catholics. Even among pundits, who knew in 1988 that Alexander Haig's brother was a Catholic clergyman? Throughout these three decades, however, religious liberals and militant secularists have continued to warn that the "wall of separation" between church and state has been breached and perhaps seems on the verge of collapse.
In short, the period since 1976, characterized by religion-related issues and an open mixture of religion and politics, looks like most eras in American history rather than the atypical "fifties." Yet even in that stereotyped era, conflict, including substantial religious conflict, could be found just below the enforced consensus.
Viewed in this context, in which conflict relating to religion is viewed as the American historical norm rather than the exception, is there a major "Mormon issue" in contemporary presidential campaign? If so, is it comparable to the "Catholic issue" in 1960?
There is at the moment a Mormon issue in the Republican Party centered on the state of Iowa. Specifically, there is a close race in the upcoming caucuses between former Massachusetts Governor George Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and television evangelist before he entered politics. This competition has drawn attention to differences between Mormons on the one hand and evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants on the other.
In theological terms, the differences are substantial. Although the LDS Church developed out of the lively Protestant religious stew of the early nineteenth century, Mormons under the leadership of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young intended to improve upon Christianity, with significant departures even from the increasingly amorphous standards of the day. These included new scriptures, including most famously the Book of Mormon, new core beliefs, such as Jesus' presence in the western hemisphere after the resurrection, and controversial practices, such as direct revelation and (until 1890 and most notoriously) plural marriage.
Until the early twentieth century, evangelical Protestants often paired popery and the LDS as comparable autocratic and lecherous evils. If anything, the Mormons looked worse. Catholicism could be viewed as a precursor, a legitimate defender of the pure faith until it went astray. The LDS Church claimed to be a successor, holding that all of the proliferating denominations growing out of Reformation Protestantism needed to be replaced. To reformed Protestants this upstart faith looked like an un-Christian cult. Indeed, Joseph Smith had called himself the second Muhammad.
Our lives are often more flexible than our doctrines, and the religious rank-and-file in America have always mixed incongruous beliefs in ways that distressed their clergy. By the 1950s most animosity to Mormonism had dissolved in the solvent of religion in general. By the late 1970s, evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Mormons often united in defense of "traditional" values. Jerry Falwell might have suspected that Mormons were doomed to hell but, in the meantime, they were welcome to join the Moral Majority. During the past quarter century, Mormons have typically placed a stronger emphasis on Jesus Christ as savior and in general sounded more and more like evangelicals.
Yet significant tensions remained. Not only was Mormonism not really Christian in the eyes of many evangelical and fundamentalist leaders, but also these theological conservatives and the LDS competed in the missionary field. Doctrinal differences and lingering suspicions provided an opening for political exploitation -- especially in the insular world of Republican caucuses and primaries.
Governor Romney apparently thought he could win the Republican presidential nomination by combining relatively cosmopolitan appeals in places like New Hampshire, where there were few religious conservatives, while fitting into the traditionalist family values niche in places like Iowa, where there were lots of them. Few Republicans in New Hampshire seem to care that Romney is a Mormon. But evangelical and fundamentalist Republicans in Iowa apparently do, as they almost certainly will in states with comparable religious constituencies.
Still, how deeply they care and what this says about religious tolerance in the United States is hard to say. Undoubtedly they would care less about Mormonism if Romney's chief opponent were Rudolph Giuliani, a thrice married Catholic of sorts. But Governor Huckabee fills the traditionalist family values niche just as well as Romney, and he is, more importantly, an evangelical himself.
An even harder question is to what extent evangelicals in Iowa are supporting Huckabee because he is one of their own, a fact he is strongly advertising, and to what extent he is winning support because his campaign is exploiting anti-Mormon sentiment. According to press reports, Huckabee has declined to say whether or not he considers Mormonism a cult or just a different but legitimate version of Christianity. An American is certainly allowed to believe and declare that "my religion is better than yours," but at least since the 1930s no serious presidential candidate has said so even in private. Perhaps Huckabee should be the candidate giving a speech on church, state, and religious tolerance.
Romney's speech on those subjects contained few surprises. Much of it echoed Kennedy in 1960. He was a American running for president who happened to be a Mormon rather than the Mormon presidential candidate. He endorsed the separation of church and state. He would not take orders from LDS leaders. He would rather lose than repudiate his faith.
Most of the civil religion passages could have been lifted from addresses by Eisenhower or FDR. The merit of religion in general was a persistent theme. Liberty was said to be God's gift. John Adams and Abraham Lincoln were invoked as men of faith, as indeed they were, but Romney did not note that their Christianity was considerably less orthodox than Hillary Rodham Clinton's Methodist social gospel. Following the now standard ritual, he ended by asking God to bless America. He did not suggest, along with Lincoln, Jimmy Carter, and even Richard Nixon, that God might decide otherwise.
Three points were noteworthy, if far short of extraordinary. First, fighting for the traditionalist family values niche, he promoted religion in general in the public square, including religious symbols in literal public squares, and scorned the "religion of secularism." Second, perhaps to reassure evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants, he called Jesus the "Son of God and Savior of Mankind." Third, Romney admitted that religious intolerance is one of our American traditions, and he cited the travails of dissident puritan Anne Hutchinson and LDS leader Brigham Young as cases in point.
Romney's speech will probably not affect the outcome of the Iowa caucus. It does not rank with either of Kennedy's 1960 addresses as a political performance or a serious discussion of church and state. Nonetheless, the speech shows that Romney has begun to think about questions that he will face over and over and over again if he wins the Republican nomination.
One thing that has not changed significantly since 1960 is the dismal performance of the news media when covering religion and politics. There are exceptions. This week these included Kenneth Woodward's New York Times op ed on the differences between the situations faced by JFK and Romney. Reporters now feel obligated to call scholars to explain, for example, the difference between Mormons and evangelicals. But expert advice rarely affects the main narrative line, which still highlights the atypical and the lurid. As Kennedy told the editors in his lesser known 1960 speech, they should stop "magnifying" and "oversimplifying" religious issues.
-- Leo P. Ribuffo, a professor of history at the George Washington University, specializes in 20th century U.S. history and American intellectual history.
