Today’s Reading List – July 20, 2007
Religion in The Public Square, Cont'd
NRO's Joshua Treviño e-mails this response to yesterday's post about his NRO piece on The Question. He quotes us, then comments:
"Even so, I disagree with Treviño's apparent argument that Romney's faith may and should be discussed, and discussed, and discussed, to the point that Mormonism becomes the central narrative of his campaign."
If that appears to be my argument, then I have written poorly. I simply wish to state that it is permissible to discuss religion — including Mitt Romney's religion. For the record, I have many problems with Mitt Romney, and none of them are related to his faith.
Thanks for the kind words, and for reading the piece.
We appreciate Josh's clarification, and I need to add one of my own: He says in his piece:
[W]e may fairly discuss Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and what it signifies for his governance. We may further discuss Mormonism per se and its role in public life . . . ."
I simply worry about where such an approach will take us. In Romney, we have a candidate with a religious faith that is not well-known and that is therefore subject to much distortion and appeals to bigotry. Indeed, such bigotry is more than a theoretical worry; Mormonism's adherents have in the past suffered intense persecution. So have other believing peoples, of all kinds, even today in America. If it becomes commonplace and accepted to engage in public discussion of Romney's religious faith "and what it signifies for his governance," and of his faith "per se and its role in public life," I am quite sure that discussion will take over the campaign narrative. It's simply an awful scenario to contemplate.
John adds these e-mailed comments in response:
We always appreciate when people whom we link to and discuss write to us and respect us.
If Josh has read Hugh Hewitt's book, then he knows where we are on things, so we have some areas of disagreement, and frankly, I don't think Hugh would disagree with him as much as he thinks. Hugh's problem with Geraghty was what I alluded to, the establishment of a code. Geraghty's piece was poorly written in my opinion. Josh's was well written and he did not create the impression that we referenced. We have no problem with Romney being identified as Mormon, nor do we have a problem with the press writing about Mormonism. (Remember, I am the evangelical one of this blogging pair), provided they do so truthfully and thoroughly – something that is entirely rare. I do think Mormonism as Romney's religion is more "off limits" than say Giuiliani's because it is much less well known, and what is commonly known is usually bad, and contemporarily untrue.
Matt Anderson Of Mere Orthodoxy has additional thoughts.
John decides to get long-winded: After reading through all this as Lowell as so well summarized it, it may be time to come up a with a loose set of boundaries for what is and is not legitimate religious discussion in a political setting. In the Mere-O post linked above, Matt quoted me on how the religious and political spheres do interact – the question is how and where?
We have discussed this before here, but let's try it again. Religion has a fairly narrow focus in its proscriptions to behavior and thought. Thus when it comes to the problems of governance, one must build a thought structure on top of and out of the religion to help decide what to do – this is called a worldview. For example, no religion I know has specific instructions on the welfare state in a republic. We must take the principles of our faith and extrapolate into the specifics of a circumstance like that. Interestingly, even adherents to the same religion can come to different conclusions about such a specific issue when forming their worldview.
This gives rise to the first fallacy in virtually all media writing about religion and politics. They attempt to tie a specific political stance to religion, thus "All Evangelicals are pro-life." Such attempts then lead to the religion becoming a political label, and that is where bigotry can arise, soon the label supplants the thought behind the stance. The label then becomes a stereotype, which when used pejoratively becomes bigotry.
Thinking people, people like Matt Anderson and apparently Joshua Treviño, want to defend their well thought out intellectual reasoning, and they have every right to do so. However, they often forget that the shorthand I just described is what most people think and all the deeper they ever go into a subject. Much as we wish deep thinking and reason could supplant ignorance and bigotry, sadly that is often just not the case. The intellectually lazy shorthand that creates bigotry can only be overcome in the larger public context by a different shorthand.
Thus, context matters. In the halls of academia, discussions about religion and politics are probably fair game and well-done. But, in this Internet age, those discussions leak into the greater public consciousness like never before, and they are often misunderstood, misquoted, and grossly misused. While I am certain both Matt and Josh would take the time to reason thorugh their discussion, their defense of discussing religion in the public square will be pull-quoted by someone out there as permission to say the obviously bigoted statement, "Mormons are fools and you cannot vote for one!"
Thus, a mass-media specialist like Hugh Hewitt would have general prescription against talking religion in politics because he knows such a conversation in his setting will reach the lowest common denominator very quickly. So the general rule becomes, "Know your audience, speak accordingly – and imagine your audience broader than you think."
There is another huge fallacy in these discussions, and that is it is important to have a secular viewpoint when discussing religion in politics, it is first a question of religion or no religion, not which religion – religious people tend to forget that. For example, attempting to disprove the miraculous claims of Mormonism while holding the miraculous claims of creedal Christianity is a losing battle for both faiths. To the secular mind, miracles are miracles are miracles. If you discredit the miracles of one faith, you discredit the miracles of your own.
In other words, save it for seminary. To my mind, because our politics, if not our society, is definitionally and constitutionally secular, this does make any discussion of the miracle claims of any religion off-limits in the political public square. And since most religion is established in its miracle claims, it puts religion pretty far out of bounds to begin with. To do otherwise would abrogate the freedom of individual religion that is as deeply held by our constitution as its secular nature.
Again, audience is the key and in a new media age, audience is not necessarily as limited as we think it is.
So, the bottom line is this. In the new media age we must all become public spokespersons. It is no longer enough to think we are just talking to four guys at the lunch table. One of them might blog it, it will get linked, picked up by the MSM and the next thing you know that statement that was acceptable at the lunch table because of what everyone "understood," is now completely out-of-context and justification for something incredibly heinous.
It is sad but true, we must think lowest common denominator….
The Wisdom of Small-Town Newspapers
Look at the second letter to the editor here. I wonder if this seventh-grader would like an internship on this blog?
John: I think there is a joke in that – even a 7th grader gets it.
And here's a Christian writer who grew up in the West, around Mormons; doesn't care much for the religion; but likes Mormons themselves and is open to voting for Romney.
Elsewhere Around The Web
This analyst thinks conservative evangelicals have found their man in Fred Thompson. So does the LATimes. John adds: I pretty well said my piece on the Thompson/Evangelical thing here. Nothing would please the left better, including the MSM, than to watch he religious folk eat each other alive in a primary campaign. In fact, as the next link shows, they are kind of counting on it.
Finally, in The Left Wing and a Prayer, Noemie Schaefer Riley comments provocatively on Democratic candidates' efforts to invoke religious themes. You need to read the whole thing, but here's one 'graph:
[L]et's be honest, no one thinks the 2008 election is going to be decided on gay marriage. Secularists probably won't risk having a president who will keep the troops in Iraq just to make a point about abortion.
Interestingly, the fact that the election will not be determined by social issues may make it a watershed for both parties. Despite the protests of some evangelical leaders, the Republicans may nominate a vocally pro-choice politician for the first time in a quarter century. And the Democrats may start to sneak God back under their big tent.
As Riley notes elsewhere in her piece, that last attempt may be much more difficult than the Democrats think.
John snips: if we chew each other up in the primary, the Dems might just be able to claim religious superiority – then where will we be?
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