FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Kashmir has long been known for its peaceful vistas but for the 13 million inhabitants this mountainous region has been anything but peaceful. It is one of the world’s most militarized places. India alone has an estimated 600,000 troops in the part it controls, four times the number of American soldiers who were in Iraq at the height of that war. Although it has a two-thirds Muslim majority, Kashmir as a whole is quite diverse, the southern region mostly Hindu, the northeast Buddhist. But for six decades this province with a land mass the size of Idaho has been bitterly fought over by India and Pakistan.

It all dates back to 1947, when the departing British decided to partition the newly independent India. Muslim majority areas were to form the new republic of Pakistan. But Kashmir had a Hindu ruler, and he opted under pressure to join India. That set off the first of three major wars between India and Pakistan, ending in a ceasefire with India controlling about two-thirds of Kashmir, Pakistan most of the rest. The so-called “line of control” that divided Kashmir has served as an international border for 65 years, but Kashmir has festered as a sore point between the Islamic republic of Pakistan and mostly Hindu India.

Although the conflict has long been cast in religious terms, Joseph Schwartzberg, a leading scholar on Kashmir, says it’s more complicated than that. And within Kashmir, he says, there’s a long tradition of tolerance.

PROFESSOR JOSEPH SCHWARTZBERG: The Hindus frequently attended religious ceremonies that were held by Muslims, and the converse was also true. In terms of actual day to day religious practices it was a fairly eclectic area, and the type of strident militaristic Islam that we think of when we think of, say, the Middle East—that was not present in Kashmir at all.

DE SAM LAZARO: That began to change in the 1980s in Indian-held Kashmir with more religious tension and extremism. Schwartzberg blames corruption, non-functioning local government, and meddling from India’s capital Delhi in local elections.

SCHWARTZBERG: India is a pretty good functioning democracy in most parts of the country, but with respect to Kashmir it was exceptional. They felt that they couldn’t afford to lose elections. They managed to rig election after election, and the people simply got fed up. In 1987—and it was a pretty corrupt administration, so the people just had it— they initiated a series of demonstrations which were put down with a heavy hand, and in 1989 it really got out of hand, and the Indian government moved in in force.

DE SAM LAZARO: The clampdown triggered a militant separatist insurgency—or vice versa, depending on who is telling the story. India has blamed Pakistan, especially its intelligence service, and Islamist extremist groups. Pakistan says it offers only moral support for the insurgents. Groups like Human Rights Watch blame militant groups, but they also finger Indian security forces for widespread abuses under the guise of rooting out militants. India insists that most are infiltrators from Pakistan-held regions and beyond. Tens of thousands of civilians have died or gone missing. Kashmir’s grand mufti, the top religious leader recognized by India’s government, also blames both sides for excesses, and his numbers are much higher.

BASHIR UDDIN AHMAD (Grand Mufti): Since 1989, when the situation became more critical, hundreds of thousands of people are missing and hundreds of thousands more have been killed. We have no knowledge of where they are. The killing continues unabated, and the situation is still simmering.

DE SAM LAZARO: In recent years, the Kashmir dispute has taken on a new dimension as India has announced plans to build several dams, seeking hydro-electric power for its fast-growing economy. But Kashmir’s rivers also irrigate the breadbaskets of both India and Pakistan. So far there have been no problems sharing the waters under an internationally brokered treaty in 1960. However, Pakistan says the Indian dams could affect seasonal water flows to its farmland.

KAMAL MAJIDULLA (Pakistan Presidential Advisor): It’s devastating, because if the waters are not available to me in the quantities that I need them at the time that I need them, then I’m looking at a very low productivity of my agricultural sector.

DE SAM LAZARO: Pakistan has taken its protest to arbitration provided for under the Indus water treaty. India insists it is in full compliance. However, the fact that India, being upstream, could in theory manipulate flows could be politically toxic, particularly after the severe floods Pakistan has endured in recent years.

Hafiz Saeed is a man the US government has branded a terrorist and for whose capture it has offered a $10 million bounty. Saeed has blamed India for worsening the flooding. Pakistani presidential advisor Kamal Majidulla says such rhetoric resonates among farmers who are hurting.

MAJIDULLA: The farming community, which otherwise could look after their children, are unable to do, so the children have been going off and staying in madrassas instead of going to the local school system, because the madrassas feed them. I’m not saying all madrassas are bad. They do perform a social function, and some of them perform a very good social function, but a fair number of them are not. And this is where the cannon fodder comes from. So there is a direct linkage between water availability, low agricultural productivity, and the rise of terrorism.

DE SAM LAZARO: Officials in India’s capital Delhi say the Pakistani fears of water treaty violations are overblown. Ashok Jaitly, a scholar at a Delhi-based think tank, says the bigger threat is poor conservation and water mismanagement on both sides.

ASHOK JAITLY (Energy Resource Institute): If you had a cooperation based on good scientific river basin management of the Indus basin, and that’s where the Indus water treaty does not provide for it, it only provides for sharing of water. It does not provide for scientific integrated river basin management. If you could have that, then I think a lot, I won’t say all the problems would be solved, but a lot of the problems between India and Pakistan would be resolved, or could be resolved.

DE SAM LAZARO: Back in Kashmir, long squeezed as its two nuclear armed neighbors fight over it, Mufti Bashar Uddin says growing numbers want no part of either.

MUFTI UDDIN: As a religious leader, I would tell the people that if the option of independence is offered, that would be the best bet for Kashmir.

DE SAM LAZARO: That seems highly unlikely—both India and Pakistan reject the idea. So, to most analysts, does any quick resolution of the Kashmir stalemate. In recent months, there’s been a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan, with proposals to vastly increase the amount of trade across the border. Coincidence or not, Kashmir has enjoyed one of its quietest periods in years. The natural beauty is once again luring tourists. In 2011, more than one million visitors came here, most of them Indian. It remains to be seen whether and how much more tourism and commerce can repair 65 years of suspicion and upheaval.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: Karachi is several hundred miles from the main conflict zone along Pakistan’s Afghan border, but the war resonates almost every day in this commercial capital of some 16 million people. Hundreds have been killed in recent weeks, some in targeted violence, some randomly, most across the ethnic divides. This largely Islamic country is comprised of several ethnic groups, each speaking a different language. Karachi is often shut down when one or another faction declares its own curfew. Residents complain that the police presence is usually late and feeble. Amid the deadly chaos, one of the loudest voices appealing for calm has been that of an energetic 84-year-old devout Muslim named Abdul Sattar Edhi.

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: I’ve been asking people one question. We’ve been Muslims for 1400 years. Why don’t we become human beings? Why have we lost touch with our humanity? God doesn’t just love Muslims. He loves human beings.

DE SAM LAZARO: Pakistan’s and Karachi’s fledgling civilian governments are simply not up to the task of bringing order, he said, imploring the country’s top military leader to intervene.

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: Mr. Kiyani, I am appealing to you. Where have you been sleeping?

DE SAM LAZARO: Edhi moved to Karachi from western India not long after Pakistan’s creation 62 years ago. He began an ambulance service in the 1950s, trying to serve a city that was growing rapidly. It now has the largest fleet in the city—mostly simple vans with stretcher, lights, and siren. Partly because the country has few such services, the Edhi Foundation has also grown into one of its largest social service agencies. Edhi, who had little formal education, boasts that his entire budget of more than $10 million comes from ordinary Pakistanis. To demonstrate, he stood on a busy Karachi street for about 15 minutes. Dozens of passers-by thrust money in his hands. It has helped fund food relief in neighborhoods that have been under siege for days during the fighting.

RUMANA HUSAIN: I don’t know where we would have been if Edhi wasn’t around, really.

DE SAM LAZARO: In what sense do you mean that?

HUSAIN: In every sense, because he seems to be everywhere. I mean, even if an animal gets hurt, and if there is a donkey lying somewhere or a crow falling from a tree, it seems that it is Edhi volunteers who pick them up.

DE SAM LAZARO: Edhi has been partnered with his wife, Bilquis, of 40 years. She oversees facilities that house about 9,000: women in shelters, children in orphanages, schools, and this nursery for abandoned infants, most of them severely handicapped. Bilquis Edhi began working as a nurse for Edhi’s fledgling organization. She accepted his marriage proposal even though he was more than 20 years her senior. She says she admired his dedication to serve, drawn from a deep religious faith. The flowing beard, a symbol of his religious practice, was not a plus, she admits. But today, in a more conservative Pakistan beards are common, but she says they are a false symbol of piety.

BILQUIS EDHI: People had beards because they were practicing. Today there’s less practice but more beards. It is this high number of narrow-minded people that have created all of the trouble we have in our country.

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: When there is poverty, illiteracy, when people don’t get their rights that gives rise to organizations like the Taliban, and other such groups were formed, and it just spreads from that.

DE SAM LAZARO: Experts say it’s much more than religious extremism that’s stoked the unrest. A lot of it stems from the way Karachi has grown. Modern-day Karachi has been defined by migration. In 1947 at independence, when the British partitioned India, millions of Indian Muslims flocked to the city. So did people from other provinces of the new Pakistan, like Punjab and the Northwest along the Afghan border, and migration from that troubled region skyrocketed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and after 9/11. Today Karachi’s neighborhoods, its politics, and much of its strife happen along ethnic lines.

ARIF HASAN: Almost all of Karachi’s issues are related to the conflict in Afghanistan. Even the “ethnicization” of the city is related to Afghanistan.

DE SAM LAZARO: Arif Hasan, a prominent architect and historian, says the divisiveness first came under Pakistan’s military ruler in the late seventies and eighties. Zia ul-Haq also introduced a strict religious conservatism, which intensified as Pakistan, with US support, closely allied with the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation.

HASAN: And it was from this city that that war was fought, supplies, training, ideological training, the heroin trade that financed that war to a great extent, it all took place from here. Today, if you look the city, the supplies to the NATO troops all go through the city. Because they go through the city almost everyone has an interest in the city. The Americans have an interest. The Pakistani intelligence agencies have an interest. The Taliban are here, the Afghan intelligence agencies are here. They all have a presence.

DE SAM LAZARO: Not present is any consensus on how to govern among the political parties, which are largely drawn ethnic lines, competing for turf in convulsions of violence that have taken a huge toll.

HASAN: Every time you strike or the city closes down, apart from the formal losses that are made, at least half a million households don’t have any earnings on that day because they are day-wage earners, so poverty has increased considerably as a result.

DE SAM LAZARO: On Karachi’s streets, Edhi says there’s growing despair. These men pleaded with him to help them get more police protection in their neighborhood. It is encounters like these that Edhi says prompted him to call for military intervention, much to the surprise of journalists at his news conference.

Journalist: Do you want a dictator to come in, like Musharraf?

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: Brother, if for the time being you have to say salaam to somebody, there’s no harm. If a civil revolution comes in there will be anarchy and millions will die. What is needed for three to six months is somebody should come and control the situation.

Journalist: Are you inviting martial law?

ABDUL SATTAR EDHI: Brother, tell me if there’s a different road.

DE SAM LAZARO: Pakistan has already been on the martial law road. Until 2008, this country was mostly ruled mostly by military men. Ayesha Tammy Huq, a lawyer and talk show host, doesn’t think there’s much yearning yet for their return.

AYESHA TAMMY HUQ: We don’t want those people to come back and run this country. The military is responsible for a lot. They have run and controlled Pakistan for so long. The Afghan policy is theirs, foreign policy is theirs. Everything is the military’s, and so therefore we need to allow these terrible civilians who are so corrupt and so dreadful, we have to allow them a little time to get it together and to change the way things are done in Pakistan.

DE SAM LAZARO: And it will be up to Pakistan’s civil society to hold politicians accountable, she says, much as it did during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf. Civic groups led by lawyers fought successfully to restore judges Musharraf had dismissed, eventually forcing out the general himself in 2008. Abdul Sattar Edhi says he can only hope for that kind of change can happen in Karachi with a minimum of bloodshed. For now, demand for his services has never been higher.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this if Fred De Sam Lazaro in Karachi, Pakistan.

KIM LAWTON, guest host: The House Committee on Homeland Security this week held the first in a series of controversial hearings examining what it called “radicalization in the American Muslim community,” and there was widespread religious reaction. The hearing was called by chair of the committee, New York Republican Peter King, who invoked the memory of the 9/11 attacks.

REP. PETER KING (R-NY): Today, we must be fully aware that homegrown radicalization is part of Al Qaeda’s strategy to continue attacking the United States. Al Qaeda is actively targeting the American Muslim community for recruitment. Today’s hearings will address this dangerous trend.

LAWTON: First up on the witness list was Congressman Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, and the first Muslim elected to the House of Representatives.

REP. KEITH ELLISON (D-MN): It’s true that specific individuals, including some who are Muslims, are violent extremists. However, these are individuals, not entire communities. When you assign their violent actions to the entire community, you assign collective blame to a whole group. This is the very heart of stereotyping and scapegoating.

LAWTON: Ellison became emotional as he described a young Muslim paramedic who was killed on 9/11.

ELLISON: Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans. His life should not be identified as just a member of an ethnic group or just a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow Americans.

LAWTON: But several witnesses testified that the US Muslim community is not doing enough to counter radicalism in its midst. Family members described how two young American Muslims were recruited by extremists and persuaded to commit terrorist acts. The president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Zuhdi Jasser, said his faith is being hijacked by what he called a “theopolitical” movement that is promoting radicalization.

ZUHDI JASSER, M.D. (President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy): We have a problem internally. Where is that? It’s a minority, but there’s an ideology that exists in some mosques. Not all. Not a majority. But in some mosques. And it’s a significant number.

LAWTON: Throughout the week, religious groups mobilized around the hearing. In New York, interfaith supporters joined thousands of Muslims who rallied to show their support for America and their opposition to violence in the name of religion. A smaller counter-rally alleged that Muslims are linked to terrorism, and some in the faith community said Congress should be looking into this.

JORDAN SEKULOW (Director of International Operations, American Center for Law and Justice): Name another religion where there is an international coordinated effort today, where there can be an imam in Yemen talking to a member of our military in Texas to carry out an attack on troops, or young people recruited. It’s not happening. You can’t name another religion other than Islam.

LAWTON: US Islamic advocacy groups repeatedly accused Congress of unfairly singling out their community. On Capitol Hill, a coalition of prominent leaders from several faith traditions gathered to show their solidarity with American Muslims.

RABBI MARC SCHNEIER (President, Foundation for Ethnic Understanding): I feel Congressman Ellison’s pain. I share the pain. I share his concern that these hearings will only exacerbate anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamophobia in our country.

LAWTON: The group acknowledged that Congress has a responsibility to examine violent extremism, but objected to how this hearing was framed.

REV. MICHAEL KINNAMON (General Secretary, National Council of Churches): I can imagine hearings that would come under the heading of the role of religion in promoting violent extremism that would be able to address the real problem, not a group of people the vast, vast majority of whom have nothing to do with the problem, but rather are part of the solution.

LAWTON: Muslims in the group were grateful for the support.

IMAM MOHAMED HAGMAGID ALI (President, Islamic Society of North America): I do believe that by isolating and singling out a community we’re really feeding into the stereotyping and discrimination against the community. But this is the America that I know that is standing with me here—the America that I love.

LAWTON: The leaders announced a new interfaith initiative called “Shoulder to Shoulder,” which they said would promote tolerance and fight anti-Muslim bigotry. Congressman King said he thought the hearing generated a productive and worthwhile conversation. He plans to move ahead with other hearings on the topic in the future.

Joining me now is Gustav Niebuhr, associate professor in religion and the media at Syracuse University and author of the book “Beyond Tolerance: Searching for Interfaith Understanding in America.” Gustav, welcome. There certainly was an extraordinary conversation around religion this week. What do you think it says about this particular moment in the American religious landscape?

GUSTAV NIEBUHR (Syracuse University): Well, it’s really an extraordinary moment and somewhat ironic, too, given that the dominant images of Muslims are people fighting for freedom and human rights in North Africa at this point. But in terms of the United States, it says that there’s a lingering suspicion of Muslims as a community. It also says, given the push-back against the hearings, that there are a great many people who are invested in supporting American Muslims as part of the American community and interfaith dialogue.

LAWTON: We did see a big mobilization in the religious community, prominent leaders standing behind Muslims. But at the congregation level, at the pew level there are these questions lingering about links between violence and Islam. How big of a challenge is that for interfaith relations?

NIEBUHR: Well, it’s a big challenge. For one thing, the dominant media image of Muslims, say between 9/11 and up to 2009, was one of people who were associated with terrorist groups abroad. It was of fighting in—between U.S. troops and terrorists in Iraq. But I think things have begun to change over the last two years. For one thing, you had a tremendous and ultimately unsuccessful uprising in Iran against the disputed elections there, and then, as I say, very recently you’ve had a popular revolution sweeping across North Africa giving us a completely different image of Muslims, and I hope that does filter down to the pew level—that people do see that there are Muslims abroad and certainly Muslims in the United States with whom they can agree with.

LAWTON: And we did see diversity within the American Muslim community this week. A lot of people think of it as a monolithic body, but it’s really not.

NIEBUHR: It’s anything but. It’s anything but. There are, what—50, 60 different ethnic groups. There are people who are wealthy. There are people who are white-collar. There are all sorts of professionals. There are blue-collar people. There are people who have been here since the 1960s, people who’ve recently arrived, and geographically the community is very widespread.

LAWTON: How do you think the hearings, the images of this hearing is playing overseas among some of those people you were talking about?

NIEBUHR: In some ways I am concerned about that, because at the very time that you’ve got people fighting for freedom and human rights in North Africa you have internationally televised hearings questioning the patriotism of at least some American Muslims. On the other hand, what’s hopeful is that people from the administration, the national administration all the way down to the pew level, have stood with Muslims and stood with Muslims as Americans in this country, and I hope that the latter is received more strongly than the former, at least for American interests abroad.

LAWTON: All right. Gustav Niebuhr, associate professor of religion and the media at Syracuse University, thanks a lot for being with us today.

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: As the crisis in Egypt continued to unfold this week, many questions emerged about the religious implications. What role will religion play in a new government, and in particular, what role will the Muslim Brotherhood play? How will the new situation in Egypt affect the rest of the Middle East, including Israel and the peace process, and how will Egypt’s Christian minority fare? We explore all this with Qamar-ul Huda, a senior program officer at the US Institute of Peace. He’s a consultant in many parts of the Middle East on conflict resolution. Dr. Huda, welcome.

QAMAR-UL HUDA (Senior Program Officer, US Institute of Peace): Thank you.

ABERNETHY: In the demonstrations in the streets there wasn’t much evidence of a religious influence. It seemed pretty secular, but lots of people expect that in a new government there will be strong religious representation. Is that fair to say?

HUDA: That’s a fair assessment. We know that the mass protest in Egypt is a mass public crossing all ideologies. This is a national issue for Egypt, and it’s not contained to any one group. The new government or the transitional government that will be formed in the near future—I think the religious voices or the religious parties will be at the table but will not dominate the party.

ABERNETHY: Now there’s a lot of fear around, as you know and have read, about the Muslim Brotherhood—what it is, what it means, what its place might be in a new government, and what the implications of that are.

HUDA: Well, the Muslim Brotherhood is almost seven decades old, and it’s basically a group that reacted to a secular nationalist movement in Egypt. It’s—right now it’s been regulated to do mainly social welfare and social services.

ABERNETHY: Is it what you would call a radical Islamic group?

HUDA: I think there are fringes of the Brotherhood that had radical groups and voices. They’ve been, I think, mostly eliminated under Mubarak in the ’90s. Right now it’s a very small group that’s mismanaged but also has very little influence as we speak today.

ABERNETHY: And in a new government, whatever the name of it, you would expect there to be religious representation, and what does that mean? What does that imply?

HUDA: I think that what that means is that the religious representatives will try to push for more Islamic values in the government, perhaps more Islamic teachings and ethics in schools, and perhaps have law to represent more Islamic values, but I don’t think they’ll have any real influence in the beginning, because the concern is now constitutional reform and unemployment.

ABERNETHY: And what about the religious minorities, especially the Christians, the Copts? There are ten million, about, of those?

HUDA: Yes.

ABERNETHY: What would be the outlook for them?

HUDA: Well, at this time we know they are participating with the protests. They are looking for a change in Egypt. I think right now they are most likely positioned to take part in the government, and we’re hoping and many people are hoping there will be a more pluralistic government that will embrace the Christian Copts.

ABERNETHY: They might even have a place in the government?

HUDA: I think they will.

ABERNETHY: Well, what about Israel and the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians? What are the implications of that whoever makes up the government, the new government in Egypt?

HUDA: Yes, I think this is the big question and the big concern for many of the Western thinkers and analysts. What will happen to the treaty signed with Israel? What is the security risk for Egypt? But for what it seems like that right now the government, the transitional government will take care of internal matters but also may be—stay with international treaties that it signed with Israel. There’s no indication that radical Islam will come to the forefront, and there’s no indication that it will abdicate with current treaties.

ABERNETHY: And what about between Egypt and the US?

HUDA: Well, it’s looking like on the streets there’s some discontent with Western forces and American influence in terms of its delay in moving the regime out. But I think Egyptians are very positive with their alliances with the West, and I think they will continue with those alliances.

ABERNETHY: Dr. Qamar-ul Huda from the US Institute of Peace. Thank you.

HUDA: Thank you for having me.

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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.

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.

The parallels are unmistakable. Both men felt compelled to address what was openly discussed as the “religious issue” during the 1960 presidential campaign. Both men were reared from infancy in a tradition different from Protestantism, which in its various forms claims the allegiance of at least a plurality (if not a majority) of Americans.

But the parallels end there. Unlike Mormonism, Roman Catholicism was well known to most Americans in 1960, although many Protestants had a jaundiced view of the Roman Catholic Church. Many Americans today, by contrast, know little about Mormonism, officially named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Much like the anti-Masonic movements in the nineteenth century, Americans see Mormons as secretive; their temples, for instance, are closed to “gentiles” (non-Mormons).

For evangelicals in particular, some of the tenets of Mormonism are troubling. The Mormon notion of God as both male and female, baptism for the dead, and even the practice of wearing Mormon underwear (thought by many to have protective powers) strike many evangelicals as unorthodox, if not downright bizarre.

Most crucial, however, is the doctrine of revelation. Mormons accept the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament as divinely inspired, but they believe that the Book of Mormon, discovered by Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York, in 1827, is similarly inspired. And Mormons believe that the president of the Latter-day Saints is the conduit for continuing inspiration.

Evangelicals, on the other hand, have an almost talismanic view the Bible (Old and New Testaments), which they often refer to as “the word of God” and which provides their sole religious authority. For another religious group to “tamper” with the canon of scripture — much less add to it at any time — strikes most evangelicals as utter blasphemy.

All of these suspicions do not augur well for Romney. Politically conservative evangelical voters have become the core constituency for the Republican Party, much the way that labor unions once provided the backbone of the Democratic Party. In order to win the Republican nomination, Romney needs the support of politically conservative evangelicals, who are especially active in Iowa.

Throughout the early months of the campaign, Romney sought to downplay his faith, protesting that he is not a spokesman for Mormonism. But many voters, evangelicals especially, have not been mollified — which led him to the dais of the George Bush Library in Texas Thursday morning (December 6) to deliver his “JFK speech.”

Two of the most compelling arguments central to Kennedy’s speech in 1960, however, are not available to Romney. Kennedy unequivocally affirmed his “absolute” support for the separation of church and state, and he also foreswore government support for religious schools. Romney cannot echo those positions, and indeed he hedged on the former and refused to address the latter. The leaders of the religious right preach that the separation of church and state, as encoded into the First Amendment, is a “myth.” They also seek taxpayer support for church-related schools.

So, in the end, Romney was reduced to bromides about religious liberty and “family values.” (Mormons are good at “family values.”)

Ironically, Romney missed the opportunity to make his best case for a Mormon to be president. Mormons believe that America’s charter documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are actually divinely inspired. After seven years of an administration that views the Constitution as a nuisance, many Americans, I suspect, would welcome a president who sought to defend the integrity of the Constitution rather than subvert it.

Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest, is professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a visiting professor at Yale Divinity School. His most recent book, GOD IN THE WHITE HOUSE: A HISTORY: HOW FAITH SHAPED THE PRESIDENCY FROM JOHN F. KENNEDY TO GEORGE W. BUSH, will be released by HarperOne in January.