Today’s Reading List – July 18, 2007
Making The Argument That It's OK To Make An Issue of A Candidate's Religion
I agree, it's a tough argument to make. Maybe that's why people keep trying – they love the challenge. For example, Matthew Yglesias and Ross Douthat engage in this "discussion" on Bloggingheads TV about Mitt Romney and Mormonism. Yglesias and Douthat seem especially interested in the notion that electing a Mormon president will legitimize Mormonism and aid its missionary efforts. Al Mohler has long promoted that worry, and Richard John Neuhaus has recently joined in. If you have the patience to sit through 15 minutes of breezy intellectual pomposity, the Ygelsias-Douthat video is an interesting glimpse into the left's view of religion generally.
Yglesias, of course, is a proud man of the left, and not someone we'd expect to be very sympathetic to organized religion. He describes himself in his bio:
Desperately out of touch with the American mainstream, Yglesias was born and raised in Manhattan and studied philosophy at Harvard where he was editor in chief of The Harvard Independent, a campus alternative weekly.
Douthat, for his part, think it's "silly" to argue that a candidate's religion should not be taken into account when voting. He also loves the idea that Mormonism is not Christian. All in all a pretty ridiculous video, but I'm sure Yglesias and Douthat thought it was profound.
As for Neuhaus, here's the most interesting paragraph of his recent First Things blog post:
Anti-Catholicism is, in my judgment, an unreasonable prejudice. Others, of course, will disagree, but not enough others to prevent the election of a Catholic president. Anxiety about the strengthening of Mormonism by virtue of there being a Mormon president is not unreasonable. One may or may not share that anxiety, but it is not unreasonable.
I am really beginning to wonder what it is about Mormonism that bothers Fr. Neuhaus so. Frankly, I find his argument above embarrassing, coming from a man of Neuhaus's stature. He is essentially arguing, I assume with a straight face, that anti-Mormon prejudice is "reasonable." John, am I off-base?
John responds: Pardon me while I get a bit historical/theological for a minute. Neuhaus is decidely Roman Catholic, and I think Douthat is, but I am not 100% certain. Roman Catholicism views itself as THE CHURCH, as does the LDS, something which freaks out a certain branch of Protestants as we have seen. The Roman Catholic church enjoys diplomatic, meaning nation-state, status. This is largely an old Europe historical artifact, but is still operative in parts of the world, and deeply implanted in the psyche of the Roman Catholic church. This fact is important to Roman Catholicism in its claims to being THE CHURCH – hence the Pope's declaration earlier last week that Protestants were not part of the real, true church.
Thus it is natural for Catholics, as very distinct from Protestants, to compete on a political level – it is part of how they view their legitimacy. Now the RC Church functions quite differently in the United States than elsewhere because of our political system, but that does not change the training and impulse, especially in higher ups with international focus such as Neuhaus. As Roman Catholics view such things, the election of a Mormon president is "a victory" for Mormonism and legitimacy.
The discussion is entirely baffling from Protestants whose religious views are antithetical to this kind of thinking on the part of the Roman Catholic church. The Protestant movement started largely out of protest to the fact that the Roman Catholic church had lost its focus on matters spiritual and become functionally a political body. It is from protestantism that the ideas on which America is built flowed. To worry about political legitimacy somehow granting spiritual legitimacy to an religious movement is decidedly against the foundations on which protestantism was built. But then politics has a way of corrupting religion as was seen in Roman Catholicism (BTW, I think the RC church has "reformed" since the 16th century, although their authority would be questioned if they admitted to it, so…) so it is unsurprising that the rise of Evangelical political power in the nation of the last two decades could result in some forgetfulness about our roots. This is one of the primary reasons that I participate in this blog.
The only real question in all of this is whether the LDS is more like Roman Catholicism in its view or more like Protestants. My studies of the last 15 months have shown me that while once decidedly in the Roman Catholic model, the LDS is now far more protestant in its outlook on these matters than catholic. This leaves the Roman Catholics competing with a wraith….
But more importantly, one has to ask if such questioning is American? The answer is decidedly – NO! The American political structure, born of the ideas about freedom that appeared in the religious oppressions of state-established churches, and the historical lessons of how such religious/political alliances served to corrupt religion, decided to separate the religious and political "spheres" (I am here borrowing a phrase from Abraham Kuyper who wrote much later than the American Revolution, but whose vocabulary is quite useful in this discussion). These spheres must, of necessity, interact with each other, but they do not, under the American system, gain authority from each other. There is a difference between authority and legitimacy, one is temporal, the other ephemeral; however, unless the ephemeral can be levered into the temporal somehow, something the American system is designed to prevent, then it is of little consequence.
Any legitimacy that might be granted to a religion by virtue of the election of an adherent to that religion being elected to high office would result in converts to that religion that were seeking authority that the American system would not grant them. The conversion would be in the political sphere, not the religious one. The question would concern whether the religion in question considered such a conversion genuine. That is a question that only the particular religion can answer and is far too theological for this blog.
Who's Out To Get Whom?
This Nation article is very interesting, and if accurate, is quite disturbing. The problem is, I am skeptical of any piece appearing The Nation. The article seems intent on attacking the Christian Right for attacking Romney. It's difficult for me to find the bad guy here.
John comments: The story, while quite conspiratorial in tone, is pretty much factually correct, and I am well acquainted with some of the players involved. No one that matters among the Religious Right has been quite as bald-faced about all this as this story paints matters, but there is little question that certain factions within the Religious Right are lining up behind Thompson and doing so at the seeming expense of Romney.
What matters here are the motivations for those moves, and there is precious little information in that department. Which presents a huge dilemma for the Religious Right. Without Thompson officially in the race, and all the subsequent speeches, policy papers, personal appearances, etc. that accompanies such a action, there is no substance upon which these people can hang their reasons for moving in this direction. That fact creates the opportunity for critics, most notably the left, personified in this instance by The Nation, to paint a picture of religious prejudice and bias whether that is the actual motivation involved or not.
At the moment there simply is insufficient evidence to say whether these moves are religiously based or otherwise, but that also means there is insufficient evidence to deny the charge. These factions within the Religious Right would be very smart to "keep their powder dry" until such time as there is some substance to the Thompson campaign. At this point they are leaving themselves wide open to this kind of attack, and it is one the left has been salivating over since anyone knew Romney was thinking about getting in.
The last time there was this much backing for an undeclared candidate in an already well-established race it was Ross Perot. Perot's only real effect in two campaigns was to split off mostly the dissatisfied Republican base and give us the Bill Clinton presidency. There is a danger of that here as well. If Thompson gets in, then grand, let the games begin, but right now all that can come of this kind of public maneuvering is a delegitimizing of the religious voice in politics because of the appearance of bias and even bigotry, and a loss of the White House for the Republican Party. Neither of these are outcomes that I particularly want to see. Nor do the players in this game that I know personally.
Elsewhere Around The Web
Fred Thompson wants that Evangelical vote too.
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mrclark411 on 18 Jul 2007 at 9:08 am #
It seems to me that if these folks want to keep converts away from the Mormon church, they’d stop talking about the church. Few, if any people will join the church if Mitt Romney is elected president, it is just a far fetched idea. However, the more The Question is brought up and the more their history and tenets of the church are discussed, the more people will learn. For many it will reinforce their ideas of the church, but to a few it will be their first exposure to the Mormon faith and maybe a few will join the Church. Not because Mitt Romney is Mormon, but because his faith is being scrutinized and debated publicly. If liberals, evangelicals, and other want to keep converts away from the Mormon church, they would stop giving it free publicity and stick to the political issues.