Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton discusses how presidential candidates are dealing with the immigration issue and how that may influence the Hispanic vote.
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By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 21, 2007 6:48 PM
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Professor Edwin Hernandez, research fellow at the University of Notre Dame's Center for the Study of Latino Religion, analyzes attitudes and influences among Latino voters.
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By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 21, 2007 6:20 PM
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Delegates to the 2007 conventions of the National Baptist Convention USA and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference talk about the issues that are important to them and what they want to hear from the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
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By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 14, 2007 5:43 PM
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Rev. Harry Jackson, an evangelical megachurch pastor in Maryland, says there is a fundamental realignment underway with the black vote. The traditional left-right divide will disappear, he says, and both Democrats and Republicans will have to earn the votes of African Americans.
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By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 12, 2007 5:44 PM
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Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly Managing Editor Kim Lawton has an extended conversation about Mitt Romney's faith speech with Shaun Casey, associate professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary and author of a book coming out next year about religion and John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign.
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The Rev. Barry Lynn, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says there has been too much talk about God on the presidential campaign trail, and voters don't really learn much of significance when they ask candidates about their faith.
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By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 7, 2007 3:52 PM
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I contend that the story of Mitt Romney's speech was as much about Mike Huckabee as it was about Romney himself.
The surface-level purpose of Romney's speech was, of course, Kennedyesque. He endeavored to reassure the American people that, if nominated and elected to the presidency, he would not be a mouthpiece for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Romney also took the obvious opportunity to remind Americans of the historic importance and contemporary value of our religious diversity. The speech succeeded on both counts.
The deeper question, however, is why Romney made this speech when he did. Earlier in the campaign, he seemed almost insistent on not making such a speech. Clearly he wishes to be judged on his merits, not on the basis of the specific religious tradition to which he belongs -- and rightly so. Yet he did speak on December 6, and in my view he did so primarily as a politician rather than as an American, a Mormon, or even a person of faith per se.
Today's campaigns have access to nearly inconceivable amounts of information about voters. Candidates and their staffs are able to track the attitudes, preferences, and even passing whims of key constituencies in great detail. Romney's campaign knows, perhaps better than anyone else involved in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, that Mike Huckabee's candidacy is red hot right now. This news is very ominous indeed for Romney, who has campaigned in Iowa as a social conservative for more than a year. Since Huckabee (a former Southern Baptist minister with gold-standard credentials on social and moral issues) is gaining ground in Iowa, we must assume that he is doing a good job attracting the support of "values voters."
Elections are won and lost at the margins, and in a crowded Republican field with no clear frontrunner, Romney cannot afford to cede any ground to Huckabee, especially among the very voters both candidates are targeting specifically.
Therefore, I contend that Romney chose to address religion when he did primarily to reach out to values voters in Iowa who have the capability to swing his electoral fortunes on their own. Clearly he wished to remind these voters that he, too, speaks for them; he, too, is a person of deep faith who espouses traditional values and conservative stances on their bread-and-butter issues. Do not let it go unnoticed that Romney professed his "love [for] the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals ... [and] the confident independence of the Lutherans." Iowa is home to substantial numbers of values voters from all three traditions -- especially Lutherans. Precious few politicians specifically mention Lutherans on the campaign trail. In fact, we rarely hear anything about Lutherans at all, except in Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion." Yet Romney reaches out to Lutherans and other potential values voters in Iowa because they might hold his political future in their hands. To paraphrase: "I am like you in many ways, and I will stand for the things you stand for," he says. "Please notice me now, and vote for me, not Huckabee."
-- Laura Olson is a professor of political science at Clemson University in South Carolina. She is a co-author of RELIGION AND POLITICS IN AMERICA: FAITH, CULTURE AND STRATEGIC CHOICES (Westview Press, 2004) and co-editor of CHRISTIAN CLERGY IN AMERICAN POLITICS (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 7, 2007 3:07 PM
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In political terms, Governor Romney's speech about religion and politics was a success. He was able to claim his Mormon faith with conviction and present his beliefs and values in terms that motivate many evangelicals to vote for candidates and participate in politics. While rejecting a religious test on the details of his Christology, he affirmed his allegiance to a political orthodoxy that includes a "common creed of moral convictions" and a rejection of secularism.
Governor Romney is surely right to emphasize that the Constitution opens public office to all faiths, but the fact that he had to make this speech also tells us that politics itself has become something very much like a religious test. We do not seek leaders who will tell us something that is distinctive about their vision for America. We want to know that they share the one we already have. We do not want to hear how they will build coalitions to arrive at working agreements on public problems. We insist on commitments that they will not compromise the short list of positions that have become like matters of faith to us. As a result, our elections, especially the primaries, are driven by polls and polarization. The irony that a candidate would make a speech about religious liberty to reassure an important bloc of voters that he shares their increasingly rigid political convictions seems to have been lost on most of the audience.
We should not blame our politicians for this. Candidates play by the rules we give them. Nevertheless, this confessional politics is very different from the relationship between religion and politics that the authors of our constitution had in mind. The patriots who gathered in Philadelphia were not secularists, but they knew enough about the history of religious warfare to want to keep the line between faith and politics clear. Faith is about commitments worth dying for. Politics allows people with different faiths to live together in a free society.
If we make politics into a kind of faith, we should not expect that it will still provide the opportunities for compromise and reconciliation that a free society requires. The partisanship that has marked our politics in recent years may intensify until disagreement becomes apostasy and innovation becomes heresy. The Founders looked to politics to set limits on that kind of conflict between religious beliefs. The ultimate irony may come when religion has to rescue us from political warfare by reminding us of a higher faith that also knows something about hope and charity.
-- Robin W. Lovin is the Cary Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University.
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 7, 2007 3:03 PM
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If Thomas Jefferson is turning over in his grave today it is because he is doing cartwheels of delight. Mitt Romney's speech hit all the right notes to mollify the concerns of believers, especially evangelical Protestants, about his Mormon faith. Non-believers may be less impressed than the so-called values voters. But all of those evaluating Romney's remarks are debtors to Jefferson's advice on how to live with someone who doesn't share your views about things divine: "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
The Jeffersonian moment in Romney's speech came not when he said, along with John F. Kennedy, that his duty as president would be to uphold the Constitution, not the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Whether they know it or not, American Protestants do owe a great debt to Jefferson's understanding of the separation of church and state, and at one time evangelical denominations like the Baptists and Methodists knew this and gave their political support to politicians like the third president of the United States. In contrast, Mormons like Romney and Roman Catholics knew first hand that Protestants did not always play by the rules of separation to which they gave lip service. While Protestants could (and did) appeal to Jefferson's ideal to prevent Roman Catholics from receiving public aid for parochial schools, those same Protestants required the residents of the Utah territory to prohibit polygamy as a condition for being admitted to the Union. American Protestants also had little trouble spotting the potential for conflict between vows to uphold the U.S. Constitution and, say, Alfred Smith's or JFK's beliefs as Roman Catholics or Senator Reed Smoot's duties as an elder in the Mormon Church. They had greater difficulty detecting the possible opposition between their own reverence for God's holy word as revealed in the Bible and their loyalty to the Constitution, which did not mention their God. American believers have generally played fast and loose with the separation of church and state, and yesterday Romney competed with the best of them.
The actual Jeffersonian moment came just before his appeal to the separation of church and state. Romney ran through the religious virtues of fellow believers, from the profundity of the Roman Catholic Mass to the prayer life of Muslims. He then said, "It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions." The "great moral principles," he explained, "urge us on a common course." Romney could have said it as bluntly as Jefferson did, but he affirmed Jefferson's view that theology doesn't matter compared to ethics. An American may believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, that there are three persons in one God, or that men and women have the potential to become gods. But as long as he or she believes in the nation's great moral principles they make darned good neighbors.
In case they missed it, evangelical Protestants painted Romney into a corner, and he used their own brand of faith-based politics to escape. For over a quarter of a century the religious right has insisted that faith should be a crucial factor in national life. The logic varies, but the premises seemed to run something like this: public officials should be people of character; religious faith produces character; ergo public officials need faith. As long as the officials comfortable with this logic were Christian, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic (not to mention Republican), the argument retained its apodictic quality. But once a Mormon appealed to the argument, problems ensued. Some Christians began to think that generic faith is not sufficient but that the actual contents of one's faith, namely, doctrine, is important. For some reason, that concern did not apply to Pentecostal politicians who believe in speaking in tongues or Roman Catholics who believe in purgatory. This is because most of the arguments for faith-based politics were conveniently silent about the dots connecting faith, theology, and ethics. Advocates for religion in public life sided with Jefferson by valuing ethics more than doctrine.
Of course, Jefferson was not the first president to take a pragmatic view of the intricacies of the divine mysteries. During the decade when Congress added "In God We Trust" to the nation's coins and "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, Dwight Eisenhower guaranteed that the deity being affirmed would remain vague and abstract: "Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is." Romney echoed that sentiment yesterday when he affirmed all of America's major faiths.
Rather than being faulted for squishy ecumenism, Romney should be credited for cleverness to figure out that the advocates of religion in public life have never been overly concerned about theological orthodoxy. In a subtle way, he was saying to American believers that if you're going to make an issue of my Mormon faith, then you should likely reconsider your great admiration for the likes of Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington. And although secularists may have felt that Romney excluded them from his considerations yesterday, his warning has as much salience for those who take inspiration from Martin Luther King, Jr. as those who listen to James Dobson. Practically everyone in America these days is willing to live with Jefferson's solution. As long as religion comes out on the right side of political debate, by all means, let's affirm it.
-- D. G. Hart is the author most recently of A SECULAR FAITH: WHY CHRISTIANITY FAVORS THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE (Ivan R. Dee, 2006).
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 7, 2007 2:27 PM
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A speech widely anticipated to be about Romney's Mormon faith turned out to be a speech explaining why there would not be a speech about his Mormon faith. In this regard, he made the right choice. Legitimate curiosity on the part of the American people about a little understood religion is one thing. Insinuating a question about biblical inerrancy into a presidential candidate debate, as happened at CNN, was a clear sign that sincere interest was morphing into religion-bating, sensationalizing, and rank impropriety. This speech was a call to sanity. Romney's poignantly understated sole allusion to a Mormon figure (Brigham Young) as "setting out" for Utah in 1847, when the historical context was the forced exodus of a religious group under siege and threat of annihilation, was a gentle reminder that a preoccupation with religious difference can all too easily lead to intolerance, hatred, and even violence. His allusion to the empty cathedrals of Europe also made a point that is a matter of historical fact: religious diversity, not religious conformity, is the best soil in which to nourish and preserve a vibrant religious culture.
-- Terryl Givens is a professor of literature and religion at the University of Richmond and the author, most recently, of PEOPLE OF PARADOX: A HISTORY OF MORMON CULTURE (Oxford University Press, 2007).
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 7, 2007 2:23 PM
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Mitt Romney's speech at the Bush Presidential Library is firmly anchored in what Jon Meacham, in his book AMERICAN GOSPEL, describes as the "public religion" of the nation's civic life. In a number of felicitous phrases replete with biblical allusions and echoes from the American civic canon, Romney pledged his absolute fealty to religious liberty, which he described as central to "America's greatness" and the survival of a free land. "Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in pray to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me," he declared.
Romney appealed to the "common creed of moral convictions" shared by all Americans, that every human being is a child of God and thus entitled to inalienable rights. In a Tocquevillian turn of phrase, Romney said that "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." "Freedom and religion endure together," he said, "or perish alone." Evocatively, Romney also linked the Constitution's prohibition against state religion to the religious vitality in America, in contrast to Europe's established churches with cathedrals "so inspired...so grand...so empty."
Because Romney's speech obviously harkens back nearly a half century ago to John Kennedy's address before Baptist ministers in Houston, it is instructive to compare the two. Like JFK, Romney pledged his loyalty to the Constitution and declared that if he was fortunate enough to take the presidential oath of office he would view that as "my highest promise to God." Like Kennedy, Romney assured his fellow Americans that "no authorities" of his church would "exert influence over his presidential decisions." In a direct echo of Kennedy's address Romney said that he was not a Mormon running for president but an American running for president who happened to be Mormon. Like Kennedy, Romney linked the history of his people to the American story of advancing tolerance and freedom, but he did so by shining the light on shortcomings: "Anne Hutchinson was exiled from Massachusetts Bay, a banished Roger Williams founded Rhode Island, and two centuries later, Brigham Young set out for the West."
Unlike Kennedy, Romney did not entertain the possibility that a conflict could arise between the dictates of his religious faith and his constitutional obligations. Kennedy declared that if such a rare choice presented itself he would resign from office. Romney made no such declaration.
Romney also had to go further in defining his faith than did Kennedy. Although he refused to explain his church's distinctive doctrines -- because to do so would "enable the religious test the Founders prohibited in the Constitution" -- Romney did declare his Christianity in simple, accessible language: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind." But he also embraced the "the faith of my fathers," pledging to be true to his Mormon beliefs. He did not think that would sink his candidacy because Americans respect "conviction" and "tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world."
Tellingly, where Kennedy outlined the challenge from communism, Romney identified as a mortal threat to America the "theocratic tyranny" of "radical violent Islam." Though not likely to be well received by American Muslims, this phrase seems designed to create solidarity with the majority of non-Mormons in the nation.
Romney's speech was more overtly religious than Kennedy's. Kennedy in effect said that his faith would have no bearing on his public work, and he went out of his way to oppose positions -- such as state support for parochial schools -- backed by his church hierarchy. Declaring that the separation of church and state should be "absolute," Kennedy envisioned a civic life in which no religious body would seek to influence public policy (which he described as attempting to impose its will on officials).
Reflecting the tenor of public discourse in conservative circles today, Romney, in contrast, charged that church-state separation had been distorted by secularists in an attempt to remove religion from public life. "We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders -- in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places."
In evoking both the Bible and America's public religion, Romney described how he "was taught in my home to honor God and love my neighbor." He saw his "father march with Martin Luther King" and his "parents provide compassionate care to others." He said he was moved by "the Lord's words," in Matthew 25, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.
Romney's speech celebrated religious pluralism in more vivid terms than Kennedy. Where Kennedy referenced the Jew, the Quaker, the Unitarian, or the Baptist who suffered persecution for their faith, Romney made a more personal declaration. He declared that he loved "the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews... and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims."
Romney's speech was thus even more ecumenical than Kennedy's. One could hear evocations, even, of John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio, when he spoke of how "reason and religion" join to lift the human spirit in the cause of liberty.
Will the speech make a difference? Probably. It was an often eloquent and evocative address designed to allay concerns of evangelicals, tie his personal story to the nation's heritage, and appeal to the broader public. But it remains to be seen whether it will do enough to win the hearts of born-again Christians who still view Mormonism as a non-Christian cult. One thing is likely: whether or not Romney wins the presidency, his quest will renew and advance the distinctly American refrain for religious freedom.
-- Allen Hertzke is professor of political science and director of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma.
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 7, 2007 1:52 PM
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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).
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 7, 2007 1:42 PM
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A minister friend used to say: "It's hard enough to give a good sermon, harder still to give a sermon that will do any good." A large congregation awaited Mitt Romney's sermon this morning, especially in Iowa, as he sought to explain his faith and how it would inform his presidency. It was a good speech but, given all that he needed to accomplish, it seems doubtful that it will do enough good to propel his campaign through Iowa and other tough Republican primaries.
Romney faced high expectations and an almost impossible dilemma as he delivered this message. On one hand, the American people as a whole are ambivalent about the matter of faith and religion in their public leaders. They want leaders who are religious enough to have strong personal values, but who are not too religious in the sense of looking to God to tell them which policies to adopt. That has historically been a fine line for any candidate to walk, but it has become more difficult in recent years because of the rise of evangelical Christians as a political force and the very different expectations they bring to religion in public life.
One way to assess the speech, then, is to identify the several audiences Romney needed to address and the messages they needed to hear:
1) The average American voter who wants religion, but not too much:
Here we could give Romney's speech high marks on content, but a lower grade on timing. The timing problem is that the American people generally aren't really paying attention yet to Mitt Romney and the stage full of Republicans running for president. If average Americans know, or care, that Mitt Romney is a Mormon, it is still not clear they know what that means. So, for the broad range of American opinion, this speech should have been given earlier, when Romney first entered the race, or later, as Kennedy did mere weeks before the general election when people were alert to the issues.
Still, the content was good in that what the average American wants to hear is that a candidate is committed to faith -- we're still not ready for an atheist as president -- and that this faith has produced strong character and values in the candidate's life. Romney's appeal to the founders and to our history demonstrated that his faith stands in a strong, mainstream tradition. He referred not so much to the particularities of his church but to the "great moral inheritance we hold in common." His faith is witnessed, he said, in his "marriage and family." This would have been a good speech if the average American voter was his most important audience. But the speech wouldn't have garnered as much attention if that were its main object.
2) Iowans (and other voters) concerned about a Mormon as president:
This was the audience people have assumed Romney needed to reach with some kind of explanation of Mormonism that would fit it into the mainstream of American faith and provide a defense against religious discrimination. Dealing with the particularities of Mormonism would have been too difficult in a short, national speech and was wisely not the tack Romney took. Instead, he sought to build a larger frame around his Mormon faith, one that placed it in the great middle of American values.
First, he explained that his was the faith of his fathers and he "will be true to them and to my beliefs." Most Americans "inherit" their faith and will understand his loyalty. Then he addressed his beliefs about Jesus Christ, affirming that "Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind," admitting that his church had "its own unique doctrines and history," without addressing them specifically. In fact, he said that defending his church's particular views would mistakenly make him a "spokesman for his faith" and would acknowledge that there was some kind of religious test for candidates. Instead, he said, we should focus on the "common creed of moral convictions" we all share.
This part of the speech should satisfy many, but not all, who are concerned about a Mormon president. Frankly, I think it's easy to overestimate that concern since polls say people who express it generally don't even know much about Mormonism. But this is probably as far as a candidate can or should go in dealing with the particularities of his religion. Just as John Kennedy did not deal with the specifics of Catholicism, Romney should build a larger frame around his beliefs and let it go at that, again earning relatively high marks here.
3) Evangelical conservatives who vote in Iowa and other Republican primaries:
At this stage of the campaign, this is Romney's most important audience for a speech on faith, and here he receives lower marks. The new force in Republican politics in the last decade is the relatively large and active group of evangelical and other religious and social conservatives. This group accounts for 30 percent of the GOP voting base, and perhaps as much as 50 percent in Iowa. It is also a highly energetic bloc that can turn out votes and communicate its message.
Unfortunately, it is not clear that Romney and his faith message can reach that group. So far this bloc, which helped elect George W. Bush, has been unable to agree on any candidate for president in 2008. In just the last couple of weeks, many evangelical conservatives in Iowa have concluded that Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, could in fact win if they got behind him, so support has been shifting away from Romney and toward Huckabee. One estimate is that two-thirds of Huckabee's support in Iowa comes from this group and only one-third of Romney's, so this is the key religious group for Romney to reach at this moment.
Romney's speech is not likely to sway this group. In fact, Romney is not a great match for evangelicals. Mormons come from a different religious tradition and culture than evangelicals, and Romney's religion naturally informs his values, convictions, and personal life more than it does his policy positions. But evangelical conservatives want precisely the opposite: they want to hear that a candidate is taking a particular stand on abortion and other social issues because of his faith. Romney's speech came close at one point, acknowledging that the "right to life" is a movement of conscience like "abolition or civil rights." But then he moved on. This will probably not be enough connection between faith and stands on issues to satisfy evangelical conservatives that Romney is their man.
One of the difficult aspects of presidential campaigns is you have to stir up your own base and win primaries, but also be able to move toward the center and win general elections. Romney's speech would have worked well next fall in appealing to the broad American voter base with his message of faith and values. But if the evangelical and social conservative voter group is as important to winning the Republican nomination as it appears, Romney may not satisfy them sufficiently to win primaries and make it to the fall general election campaign. It was a good speech, but may not do enough good with the one audience Romney most needs to reach right now, evangelical conservatives in Iowa and in other Republican primaries.
--David Davenport is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University. He teaches a course on "The Strategy and Rhetoric of Modern Presidential Campaigns"
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 6, 2007 6:43 PM
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Mitt Romney gave a powerful speech in which he forcefully defended religious liberty and related his own firm commitment to it. He insisted that no authorities of his church would exert influence on his decisions as president. For anyone acquainted with Romney and the Mormon Church this was not surprising, but nonetheless reassuring. He also made clear that he does not believe that religious freedom requires a public square stripped of all references to religion, and that doing so could be seen as establishing secularism as a new, state-supported religion. All this was to the good. Anyone who might have felt that being a Mormon in and by itself disqualified one from serving as president of all of the American people should be reassured by what Romney had to say.
But there is one promise Romney made at the beginning of his speech on which I thought he later did not adequately deliver. This is where he said that he "will offer perspectives on how my own faith would inform my presidency, if I were elected." He later explained how his faith has instilled in him certain moral values that he shares with all persons of faith, "the great moral inheritance we hold in common," as he put it. This is good as far as it goes. But is there not something more and deeper? Surely, each faith has more specific beliefs and values that shape how its adherents view the world, including the world of public policy issues and debates.
The Mormon tradition is well known for its emphasis on strong, traditional families and hard work, and on its opposition to abortion and same sex marriages, as well as other distinctive beliefs and values. How do such beliefs work to mold the development of his positions on public policy issues? This Romney did not seek to explain. He at one point referred to "the Creator," but did not explain how his seeing God as the Creator shapes his understanding of environmental issues, or creation care issues as some of us like to put it.
All of us have been shaped by our deepest beliefs, by our faith. I believe Mitt Romney -- as do all of the candidates for president -- have an obligation to explain how their various religious faiths have worked in their lives to inform their understanding of the world and shape the public policy positions they take. Romney did some of that today, but I am still looking for a fuller discussion of how his own faith would inform his presidency, if he were elected.
--Steve Monsma as a senior research fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College and professor emeritus of political science at Pepperdine University. His book HEALING FOR A BROKEN WORLD: CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC POLICY will be published in March 2008 by Crossway Books.
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 6, 2007 6:41 PM
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A lot can hang on a preposition. Mitt Romney first promised a speech about his faith, then backed off to offer a broader take on America's religious landscape and its heritage of religious freedom. So rather than offering an apologetic for his own faith, Romney instead offered an account of "Faith in America." But the speech has me wondering whether there's a difference; more specifically, I wonder what's at stake in that "in." From where I sit, it looks like Romney's "own" faith is faith in America. Americans needn't worry about Romney's Mormonism because, at the end of the day, the faith that trumps all others is "Americanism."
Don't get me wrong: this religion has a long and illustrious history (documented in David Gelertner's recent book, AMERICANISM: THE FOURTH GREAT WESTERN RELIGION). It is a noble faith that feeds off the blood of its martyrs - in particular "the greatest generation" to which Romney first appeals -- who made the greatest sacrifice for the sake of the religion's highest value: freedom (understood, I should note, in largely negative terms as freedom of choice). Indeed, "freedom" and "liberty" are the mantras of this faith, and Romney's speech invokes these shibboleths no less than thirty times (God or "the Creator" or "divine author" comes in at a close second with 21 references). And Romney doesn't fail to allude to the great artifacts of this religion. Americanism has its own sacred documents (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), its own saints (the Founding Fathers), and has even birthed its own cathedrals and grottos (just stroll the National Mall).
So if Mitt Romney was looking to quell concerns about his religion, I think he's performed admirably! He has indicated, in no uncertain terms, that he is an "Americanist" like almost every other presidential candidate (from I don't care which side of the aisle). He is an American before he is a Mormon. He is primarily interested in conserving America's role as a hegemon ("preserving American leadership" is the guise under which he segues to talk about religion). And he enthusiastically adopts Sam Adams's axiom that it's not the specifics of piety that matters, but rather whether one is a "patriot."
If conservatives were worried about his Mormonism, I think Romney has laid his cards on the table and said to them: "Look, don't worry. Mormonism doesn't prevent me from being an Americanist. We're brothers in that cause."
In a way, this is refreshingly honest theology. In fact, if one pays close attention to the actual theology at work here -- that is, if one starts asking just which God is being invoked -- one finds that it is a particular deity: "the divine 'author of liberty.'" The god of the culture warriors has always been a generic god of theism (precisely like the god of the Founding Fathers): a "God who gave us liberty" (to do what we want). The "Creator" is a granter of inalienable rights and unregulated freedoms, a god who shares and ordains "American values." If evangelical culture warriors had worries about Romney's faith, his jeremiad today should confirm that he pledges allegiance to the same "God of liberty" that they do. We're all Americanists now.
But I hope Mr. Romney and his culture warrior friends (whether on the right or left) won't be surprised if some of us find it hard to believe in Americanism and its God of liberty. Some of us just can't muster faith in the generic theism that is preached on the campaign trail, whether from the right or left. Some of us Christians have a hard time reconciling the Almighty, all-powerful, law-giving God of liberty with the crucified suffering servant born in a barn and executed at the hands of the elite. Some of us are trying to figure out what it means to be a people who follow one who relinquished his rights rather than asserted them, who considered submission a higher value than freedom. We serve a God-man who wasn't concerned with "preserving leadership" and the hegemony of the empire's gospel of freedom, but rather was crushed by its machinations for proclaiming and embodying another gospel.
We're not out to win a culture war; we're just trying to be witnesses. We're not out to "transform" culture by marshaling the engine of the state; we're trying to carve out little foretastes of a coming kingdom. And so we can't share Mr. Romney's evangelistic zeal for the god of Americanism.
-- James K.A. Smith is an associate professor of philosophy at Calvin College and a fellow at Calvin's Center for Social Research. His books include INTRODUCING RADICAL ORTHODOXY (Baker, 2004).
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 6, 2007 6:37 PM
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Governor Romney and his staff clearly knew they were dealing with the major issue that stands between him and the Republican nomination. This speech shows all the signs of careful craftsmanship. As written, it is a powerful address.
It must be remembered that Romney's current task is to win the Republican nomination, not the general election. He knows the electorate that awaits him in the primaries, with its disproportionately powerful bloc of conservative evangelical Christians. He needed to appeal to this group, many of whom believe that Mormonism is a kind of cult.
Read in this way, most of the speech offers material that could have been delivered by any socially conservative Christian preacher, activist, or politician. These standard themes include the following:
--Religion was central to the founders of our nation.
--Religious and moral values impose limits on the behavior of sinful people and thus protect our civilization and preserve liberty.
--The American way of life requires a robustly religious people.
--While we must institutionally separate church and state, we must not remove religious symbols from the public square or deny our religious heritage.
--God is the Creator and Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of humanity.
--Religious beliefs motivate movements of conscience in America.
--Religion is not merely a private affair.
But Governor Romney struck other notes that reflect his particular experiences as a member of a minority religious community in America:
--Linking himself to John F. Kennedy, Romney argued that no person should be elected or denied election to the presidency due to his faith.
--In another allusion to Kennedy, Romney flatly ruled out any influence of church authorities on presidential decisions if he is elected.
--In a creative move that attempted to draw a connection to Abraham Lincoln, Romney argued that America's "political religion" requires a president to place his obligations to the rule of the law and the Constitution above any other moral or religious duty.
--Romney refused to disavow or distance himself from his Mormon (a word he used only once) faith and indicated that to do so would be to deny his own beliefs and the "faith of my fathers" -- an allusion to the old hymn, perhaps?
--The governor emphasized religious liberty and toleration in a stronger way than one often finds on the conservative evangelical right; he lamented that our ancestors too often forgot the value of religious liberty once they had gained their own freedoms; and in naming exiled victims of religious intolerance he included Brigham Young.
--Romney refused to be drawn into a point-by-point defense of Mormon doctrine on the basis that this would enable violation of the "religious test" clause of the Constitution.
How shall we hear and interpret this speech?
If I were an atheist or secularist, I would not find that this speech included me in its circle of who counts as a constructive American citizen. If, as Governor Romney said, "Freedom requires religion and religion requires freedom," then atheists or secularists by definition undermine freedom, the most cherished American value.
If I were Hindu, Buddhist, or Confucian, or a member of any other non-western religious tradition, I would feel invisible, because such faiths were invisible in the speech.
If I were Muslim, I would appreciate mildly the weak affirmation of our tradition's "frequent prayer," but would probably be not at all happy about the various attacks on "radical Islamists," a staple of so many speeches on the right these days.
If I were Jewish, I would take little comfort in the brief mention of our "ancient traditions...unchanged through the ages," because Judaism is an evolving contemporary religion and not just an ancient tradition.
As a centrist evangelical, I accept some but not all of the basic Christian right boilerplate that Romney articulated in his speech. I appreciate the religious liberty notes that his own experience as a religious minority caused him to emphasize. I agree that no president should be elected or rejected because of his faith and that no official church body can be allowed to dictate a policy position to a president.
On the other hand, as one who believes that Jesus Christ is Lord of my life and of the whole world, I cannot accept that election to the highest office in the land somehow creates a religious transition in which one's faith commitments get trumped by the demands of the office. Surely it cannot be as simple as that. "You shall have no other gods before me" is a pretty non-negotiable religious command.
Instead, I want to know how any presidential candidate who claims to be a religious believer translates that faith commitment into moral convictions and then, by extension, brings such convictions to bear on policy positions.
Romney essentially granted this point when he claimed that Americans have a common core of moral convictions that flow from our various faiths and even from our founding documents. He summarized this core as "the conviction of the inherent and inalienable worth of every life."
For me, personally, this conviction is exactly right. I want to hear how Governor Romney squares that conviction with every policy position he takes, including, for example, his stance on waterboarding, on taxes, on health care, on climate, and on immigration. As an evangelical who cares about such issues, I want a president who is able to see the connections between his policies and the tenderhearted compassion embodied in a human dignity ethic.
We don't need a "political religion" that trumps religious faith. We need a religious faith that humanely informs our laws and our policies.
--David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and president of Evangelicals for Human Rights. His most recent book, THE FUTURE OF FAITH IN AMERICAN POLITICS: THE PUBLIC WITNESS OF THE EVANGELICAL CENTER, will be published in January by Baylor University Press.
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 6, 2007 6:34 PM
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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.
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 6, 2007 6:27 PM
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Whatever one thinks of his politics, one has to admit that Governor Romney's Texas speech on "Faith in America," like Senator Kennedy's remarks to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960, was expertly written and beautifully delivered. Both men rose to the occasion by reminding us of the hard-won American commitment to religious liberty. Both of them pulled off the delicate feat of downplaying their specific religious beliefs while declaring their loyalty to their church. Both said they would rather lose than give up their faith. (Kennedy brilliantly added that if he got beat because of being Catholic, the real loser would be the nation; Romney should have made the same point with the same understated passion.)
Speaking as committed men of faith, they could then claim, if they should become president, to represent all citizens of faith. Neither man worried about alienating the minority of non-religious voters. Kennedy, like Martin Luther King three years later in the "I Have a Dream" speech, spoke of America as a nation of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; Romney bravely brought Muslims into the fold, explaining that as a Mormon he had something to learn from people of other religious traditions. He appreciated the "frequent prayer" practiced by Muslims, just as he liked the evangelical Christians' sense of the "approachability" of God, the Lutherans' "confident independence," the Pentecostals' "tenderness of spirit," the "ceremony" of the Catholic Mass, and the "ancient traditions" of the Jews.
In that litany he very noticeably said nothing about what the rest of America could learn from his own Latter-day Saints. He came close to claiming devotion to family as a distinctive LDS virtue, but backed off, stressing that even his own family fell short of the "perfection" to which they aspired. But throughout the speech he argued implicitly that the Mormons' commitment to religious freedom stood as a model for all. Has any presidential candidate ever before stated that as a man of faith he wished his church would learn from the traditions of others? (Non-candidate Mario Cuomo has said so many times, adding that encountering other religions permits one to rediscover forgotten features of one's own tradition, as encountering Judaism led him to new appreciation of his Catholic faith.)
If anything, Romney surpassed Kennedy in the passion he conveyed while tracing the history of the battle for religious liberty, likening Brigham Young's trek West in the 19th century to Anne Hutchinson's and Roger Williams's struggles in the 17th. Romney said nothing about his specifically Mormon beliefs, but everything he said about faith in America -- his own and everyone else's -- was subtly and potently informed by his memory of the persecution experienced by his Mormon ancestors. The power of the speech reminds me of the power of Barack Obama's at the Democratic convention in 2004: Obama's vision of a multicultural America was rooted in his own biracial, binational past. I sense Romney's speech will go down as a memorable American political oration regardless of his success as a candidate. He spoke eloquently of what it means to be an American whose ancestors fought for the freedom of religion guaranteed to them by the Bill of Rights, and to practice one's faith in a religiously pluralistic society where everyone can gain by opening up to the spiritual insights of others.
Romney's speech was twice as long as Kennedy's (20 minutes to 10 minutes), but Kennedy stayed at the podium for 30 more minutes of questions from seven Protestant ministers, who were permitted to grill him with unlimited follow-ups. Kennedy shined in that format of quick-witted repartee, treating his questioners respectfully, almost deferentially, while still expressing himself forcefully. Romney took no questions. In the weeks and months to come, he will face some of the grilling to which Kennedy submitted right after his speech. Kennedy, by gaining the support of prominent Protestants in 1960 (Reinhold Niebuhr and John Bennett among them) probably saved Romney the trouble of having to reconcile the hierarchical structure of the LDS Church with American democratic values. And it should be easy enough for Romney to handle the narrow "Jesus" issue. He can keep repeating what he said in the speech: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind," then claim that he would rather leave the fine points to the theologians. It may be harder for him to explain what Latter-day Saints mean when they say that the 19th-century Book of Mormon counts as a revelation like the Old and New Testaments, or that all believers can aspire to being "gods."
Finally, Romney's speech shrewdly combined reaching out to Protestant evangelicals with an overture to the general religious population, liberals included, whom he will want to win over if he gets the Republican nomination. He went out of his way to distance himself from many Protestant Republicans by stating that "reason and religion are friends and allies." In a general election campaign he would try to position himself right on that boundary line: welcoming religion into public life (as many Democrats nowadays, unlike Kennedy, are also eager to do) while asserting that rational judgment and scientific expertise are fully compatible with faith. But some questioner may complicate matters for him by asking, for example, how, given his dual embrace of reason and religion, he interprets his prophet Joseph Smith's claim to have himself translated, from the hieroglyphics on gold plates he discovered on September 22, 1827, the Book of Mormon. -- Richard Wightman Fox is the author of JESUS IN AMERICA: PERSONAL SAVIOR, CULTURAL HERO, NATIONAL OBSESSION (HarperCollins, 2004).
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 6, 2007 6:23 PM
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A half century ago, Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois said "the first task of every politician is to get right with Lincoln." If he were speaking today, he might say the first task of every politician is to get right with religion.
Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts understood that he had a special burden to get right with religion today (December 6). Many commentators have likened Romney's challenge to the address by candidate John F. Kennedy 47 years ago to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, but the challenge was quite different. Despite the presence of an anti-Catholic spirit coming forward from the 1950s, Kennedy was a member of an ancient, large church whose membership comprised 33 percent of the population, whereas Romney is a member of a newer religious tradition whose membership comprises 3 percent of the American population.
The way each candidate framed his speech is revealing. Kennedy, a master speaker, built his tightly focused, briefer speech around a steady litany of "I believe in an America where...," with few specifics about the American religious landscape. He even said at the outset, "we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election," a comment that reflected accurately the very different America to which he spoke. Romney, by contrast, acknowledged that religion was a critical issue, and the architecture of his address contained far more building blocks, because his burden was both to reach out to an American public expecting to hear candidates speak their faith, but at the same time not turn away other Americans concerned that there is a recent conspiracy to construct a certain kind of religion in American society.
Romney chose not to place the focus on his personal faith but to make a plea for the role of faith in the public square. For me, his thesis sentence was: "It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions." He illustrated this conviction by listing as examples "abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself," thereby including causes from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries embraced by religious people from left to right on the religious spectrum. Romney was making a plea for a common ethic or morality as the ultimate basis for the role of religion in America.
This was a speech in which Governor Romney sought to earn the right to be heard. He did so by affirming his faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, but admitting that others may have differing beliefs about Christ. He affirmed the separation of church and state, but stated that the intention of the founders was not the elimination of religion from the public square. He recalled that the first Americans came to find religious liberty, but acknowledged that once here ended up denying religious liberty to those with whom they disagreed, citing Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and Brigham Young as examples. Romney celebrated the religious vitality in America by contrasting it with the empty cathedrals of a Europe "too 'enlightened' to venture inside and kneel in prayer." A strength of Romney's speech, and a contrast with Kennedy's speech, were his affirmations of the specific beliefs, ceremonies, prayers, and traditions of Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Lutherans, and Jews.
Romney's speech also contained a warning about "the creed of conversion by conquest." Although Romney mentioned the murder of Christians, Jews, and Muslims, his focus was on the danger of "theocratic tyranny" by "radical Islamists."
In the end, Romney offered an assurance that sounded very much like Kennedy in 1960: "Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church, for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions."
Did Romney get right with religion in 2007/8? He is in a box, and he knows it. On the one hand, he will never be able to get right with the religion of those who will never vote for a Mormon. On the other hand, in a brief address, Romney made a thoughtful argument for the role of religion in the public square that he hopes can reach across denominational divisions.
The question Governor Romney did not address was what was the content of that religion? He had to say, even as Kennedy had to say, that he would not be influenced by his church in forming the moral guidelines for his political leadership. But why not? What are the foundations of morality? In a religiously diverse society some have argued that we can simply separate ethics from theology. George Washington declared long ago that morality severed from religion will not long remain moral. Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address, combined an indicative, what God has done -- "The Almighty has his own purposes" -- with an imperative, what we are to do -- "With malice toward none; with charity for all." Governor Romney affirmed today that religion needs to be part of the public square. He, and other candidates, have yet to tell us in any specificity what the indicatives are that will allow us to act on what imperatives to make this a more loving and just society.
--Ronald C. White, Jr. is the author of LINCOLN'S GREATEST SPEECH: THE SECOND INAUGURAL and THE ELOQUENT PRESIDENT: A PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN THROUGH HIS WORDS. He is writing a biography of Lincoln that will be published by Random House in January 2009.
By Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on December 6, 2007 6:20 PM
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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 re
