Today’s Reading List – March 27, 2007
Well, there was quite the discussion yesterday surrounding Erick Erickson's review of Hugh Hewitt's book, which was presented on Human Events. Hugh took specific exception to one paragraph Erickson wrote and had Erickson on the radio show second hour yesterday, (transcript and podcast) featuring a call from our own Lowell. The conversation centered on the question of what are the boundaries of legitimate inquiry into Romney's faith with both protagonists agreeing in principle, but disagreeing in specific, although Erickson never got very specific.
Curiosity about Mormonism is natural and as we have seen; there will be much written about it over the next year. What matters here is that context is everything. In the interview with Hugh we published last week, Hugh said:
I was just ready for the experience because a lot of people view their own religious dramas as somehow at stake in this. And they are not. It’s the American drama that is at stake in this.
People have difficulty distinguishing which "drama" they are discussing at any given time. When discussing one's personal religious drama, then indeed the curiosity should be indulged. But the casting of a vote is not about our personal drama, it's about what is best for the nation as a whole. Where I have a problem, and based on the radio discussion I think Hugh does as well, is not being careful in defining which drama is being discussed when one discusses Mormons. This is the mechanism that makes the raft of stories about Mormon "stuff" we have seen in recent days so insidious. Those stories, absent specific admonitions to the contrary, will fuzz the "drama boundary" and create prejudice.
Lowell: I liked this graph from Hugh's post:
There is something about this issue that destabilizes otherwise grounded commentators, leading them off rhetorical cliffs and into lapses of logic. Erick ignores how Catholic Americans were very enthusiastic over Kennedy's candidacy, and how that was not the occasion for denunciations of Popery or assaults on the miracle of Fatima or Lourdes. I imagine quite a few italian Americans will be enthusiastic over Rudy's run, and I don't expect Erick to be defending the ethnic smears directed at Italians by the uncouth and the bigoted. Joe Lieberman's heritage was not a starting gun for the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism no matter how many Jews might have felt great pride in his candidacy and expressed support for his campaign.
Also, an important clarification: Erick may be arguing from a mistaken assumption. He seems upset about Hugh's prediction that Romney's Iowa effort will be aided by an "incredible not-so-secret weapon–a core of young people . . . not to mention experienced missionaries.” What Hugh is talking about is former missionaries, who have two years of fairly unique life experience behind them, from which they learned self-discipline, organization, and communication skills– including how to knock on doors and talk to strangers. Those are all useful in campaigns, especially among workers who are passionate about their candidate. Erick might be thinking that Hugh is talking about the young men in white shirts and ties who are currently full-time missionaries. They are in consecrated service to the LDS Church, and their involvement in any political campaign would be highly inappropriate and unlawful. But there's nothing whatsoever wrong with former LDS missionaries using their skills and experience to help the candidate of their choice. (I am a former missionary myself and I've been doing that for 30 years.)
Final thought on Erick: When I called Hugh's show yesterday, I asked Erick a condensed version of the questions posed here. Alas, time was too short for any discussion, and Erick pretty much dodged the question. Still, I'd love to see him answer. Erick, maybe you can tackle them on Red State?
This is a video out of Australia about a creedal (Pentecostal) Christian Women's conference in Sydney. I link to it as an object lesson. One could easily take out the references to creedal Christianity and substitute references to Mormons and have something we have seen 100's of times before. This illustrates that we have more in common with Mormons than we may think we do and that the left cannot tell the difference between us and Mormons.
Things around Thompson continue to get silly. Now The American Spectator's Washington Prowler is more-or-less making the accusation that there is some sort of Evangelical "conspiracy" – my word, not the Prowler's, based on the supposed DeMoss connection – surrounding the Romney campaign. Evangelicals for Mitt, who lie at the heart of this nonsense, set the record straight. I had no idea "cultic conspiracy" allegations could actually be contagious within conservative circles – the left has been doing it for a while now.
Lowell: Sci-fi fans will recognize Mr. Card as the author of the Ender's Way series and many other best-sellers.
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CarlH on 27 Mar 2007 at 9:41 am #
The Orson Scott Card article is one of the best I’ve seen anywhere, touching on virtually all of the alleged “issues” with some grace and self-deprecating humor. It deserves a much wider audience! Thanks for linking to it.
flataffect on 28 Mar 2007 at 3:23 am #
A year or two ago I read a sort of sampler of the writings of the early Christian apologists, who were writing to answer the attacks made in the Roman world upon the Christians of those days. What I found interesting was that the kind of attacks being made against Christians in the first few centuries of the common era were essentially the same as those leveled at LDS members today. They were a cult. They had secret practices, with all sorts of distorted and false description being rumored. They were impious and atheists because they didn’t worship the Roman Gods. They had strange, weird beliefs such as a god who was also a man who was crucified but resurrected, etc.
One of the best things Hugh has done is to remind Evangelicals and the religious of any denomination that our plurality and freedom depends on our openness to let other peoples’ religions be what they may, so long as they uphold our laws and Constitution, they have a right to participate and hold office based on their demonstrated character, talents, skills, experience and positions on issues of the day, without allowing judgments of their religious belief to rule them out.
We’re probably not at a point where many Muslims will be elected to national office, but if they demonstrated a firm commitment to this nation, its freedoms and law, I see no reason not to give them a serious consideration.
Mr. Romney is not running as a representative of Mormons. He’s running as an American, and his life is exemplary of the panoply of values we supposedly honor. He is now finding himself blocked by a glass ceiling, formed of religious prejudice and ignorance. I was thinking earlier today that Fred Thompson’s main appeal is that he’s neither a poor Catholic or a good Mormon.
From what I’ve seen, everybody who listens to Romney speak comes away impressed. He reminds more of a younger version of Ronald Reagan than anybody else running. He’s a good communicator, has charisma, is a financial genius and has proven ability to balance budgets and run complex organizations and make them work.
Yet there now seems to be a cloud over him, which mostly consists of the idea that Mormons have horns or capture young girls and force them into marriage, a la A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle.
I favored Romney early on, but now I’m undecided between him and Giuliani. But it strikes me as strange that so many people would take a very good and talented man out out of the selection over something as irrelevant as his church. It especially strikes me as odd that soem evangelicals insist that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not Christians because we do not recite the Nicene Creed. That’s a kind of technical argument and it begs the question, whether the Council of Nicea issued doctrine more binding on Christians than the Scriptures themselve.