Article VI Blog

Yesterday, as I began to look at the current question I said that the first argument I would use with someone that stated he/she would not vote for Romney purely on religious grounds was

Our constitution prohibits a â€œreligious testâ€ for governmental office. While any voter can vote as they see fit, on whatever merits they choose, to use religion as the primary merit would violate the spirit of the American way.

The pertinent language in Article VI of the Constitution reads

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Interestingly, the Cornell Law School Annotated Constitution makes no comment on this whatsoever, meaning this is one of the least contested, least discussed provisions in the constitution. It also means this is quite plain language - officially, religion simply may not be used as a criteria for governmental office.

The rub here comes in the fact that what any individual does in the confines of the voting booth is their business and their business alone. Some individual may indeed choose to cast their vote on the basis of a candidate’s religious affiliation, but to do so clearly violates the spirit of the American experiment.

Here, we are clearly called by our formative document to vote for the individual, regardless of religion, and where that individual stands on the issues that they will have to deal with while in office. Now indeed, the religion of the individual may affect how that individual stands on an issue or issues. That said; however, where a candidate stands on a particular issue is not necessarily dictated by their religious affiliation.

The interesting thing about this principle is that it protects your religion. You see, a religious test for office is the first step to the official establishment of religion discussed and prohibited in the First Amendment. The state establishment of religion not only serves to enforce provisions of the established religion on the populace; it also serves to squash all other religion. Further, it robs the established religion of its genuineness as that religion is eventually subverted to being merely an instrument of state.

A religion is more than simply a code of ethics, it is a theology, it is a spirituality, it is worship. Establishment of religion robs that religion of all aspects but its ethical ones, and they lose their truly persuasive force as that persuasion is gradually undermined by brute force.

A truly religious candidate would take the constitutional provisions quite seriously and seek to govern in accordance with them, not only for the protection of America, but for the protection of his/her religion.

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