The Romney “Speech,” The Bible and the Candidates, Huckabee’s Critics, Identity Politics, and More

Not the speech again!…

Prior to yesterday’s announcement of a speech on Thursday, The Dallas Morning News makes a heck of a point, but then gets things all messed up. First the good point:

Here’s the problem: Mr. Romney would be arguing that his religion is irrelevant to his governing philosophy chiefly to a faction of GOP voters who believe religion should be relevant. And if he gets the GOP nomination, suspicion of Mormonism will follow him into the general election.

Now that is one heck of a point. One of the bigger problems for people, particularly Evangelicals, that keep arguing about Romney’s faith is they contend that faith should matter, but they never seem to quite figure out the how’s of that mattering. It is in that essential point that the distinction between Mormons and creedals becomes irrelevant. But after that they only get things half right:

Mitt Romney shouldn’t speak as a theologian. He should, however, talk in detail about how the broadly conservative moral values taught by Mormonism – as distinct from its theological claims – are held by many Americans and how those values would affect his presidency.

What in the world do they think the man has been doing for more than a year now?? He has pointed it out and said it and said it and said it. Which is why a speech should be pointless. People who fail to understand this essential point by now are unlikely to because Romney gives this speech. Wrongly done and all this speech will do, as we saw on Friday in the post-Bible-question after the “debate,” is become an excuse for people to tell us what Mormons believe, regardless of what Romney may say.

Lowell adds:

Here’s evidence of how long Romney has been doing exactly what the Morning News suggests, from Hugh Hewitt’s A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney:

“Look,” Romney told me when I raised the issue of belief in the founding narrative of the Mormon faith. “I believe my faith. I love my faith. And I would in no way shape, or form try to distance myself from my faith or the fundamental beliefs of my faith.

“But what I can say is this,” he added. “To understand my faith, people should look at me and my home and how we live . . . I am a better person than what I would have been. I am far from perfect and if you spend some time looking into my present and past, you’ll find I’m no saint. I have my own weaknesses as did my dad. We’re not about to be taken into Heaven for our righteousness. But we’re better people — I’m a better person, my kids are better people — than we would have been without our faith. So judge my faith not by how different the theology may be on one point or another, but whether it made me and my family and perhaps others in my faith better people.”

If memory serves, Hugh’s book was published last March, and yet analysts seem ignorant of what Romney said then and has been saying for months now.

All of which adds to the shame that

Speaking of which, here is the Salt Lake Tribune take on the Bible question. It is nice to know they, a famous anti-Mormon organ, finds that Romney’s answer “squares with LDS doctrine.”

Or Does It?…

Luo continues in a different part of the NYTimes to argue that Romney’s Bible Question answer is not a “true” representation of Mormon belief. As does a Lutheran pastor for whom I have a great deal of respect, but who challenges that respect a bit in this post.

Now first of all, my Lutheran pastor friend uses as his source of what Mormons believe a book written by a non-Mormon. Even Luo had the common respect to go to Mormon on-line resources. But then he concludes that Romney’s answer was less than genuine.

The problem is that Romney appears to want to say that he has the same view of the Bible as historic Christianity, in violation of the tenets of his own religion.

Now in the first place, Romney was asked about HIS views, not those of the Mormon church. I wonder if I queried the congregation of my friend’s church, how many of his congregants would be able to properly and fully assert precise Lutheran doctrine? It could be argued that having served as a Bishop, Romney should be able to so recite correct doctrine – well if high officials in my Presbyterian church are any measure of who can spout correct doctrine….

Then there is the matter of the CJCLDS’ very different view and use of scholarship and doctrine, but that would be a descent deep into theo-nerdville and we are deep enough in those waters already.

Lowell: Here’s why Romney’s answer on the Bible question was appropriate, and why he could not have said more without simply creating more confusion. What follows is not apologetics for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the “Church”), but a simple non-theologian’s explanation of what the Church believes about the Bible. (For new readers: I am a Mormon.) Our Eighth Article of Faith states:

We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.

So when Romney said he believed the Bible was the word of God, he was reciting Mormon doctrine. Yes, he left off the “as far as it is translated correctly” part. Now, before anyone gets too excited, let me explain: The Church teaches that the Bible is a gift from God to mankind and is His word. We love the Bible. I carry mine to church every single week and I open it for study in nearly every meeting.

We also believe that over the centuries after the original Christian church apostatized, errors were introduced into the Bible by the translations of men. One of our fundamental beliefs is that because God loves mankind, He restored the truth to the earth in our day and provided a way for us to clarify the errors in the Bible (errors which are quite few, but in some cases very important). We revere the Bible and consider it the first testament of Christ, and the Book of Mormon as “another testament of Jesus Christ.”

Now, that’s a very broad-brush explanation; you can get an official version here. My point: There’s a lot of nuance on this subject. For that very reason, Romney cannot, and should not, get into an explanation even as brief as mine. Can anyone imagine a presidential candidate delving into such matters? Look what happened when Romney even uttered a peep about hie belief in the Bible. Can you imagine what would happen if Romney tried to say what I said above? The MSM and the blogosphere would go nuts. It would be a mass of distraction and confusion. Besides which, as John notes, it doesn’t matter. Can’t we talk about the war against jihadism, healthcare, taxes, Supreme Court appointments, and subjects like those?

All About Huckabee…

An endorsement by Jerry Falwell’s son. Does it matter given his father’s prior statements?

Overstating the obvious, because the press wants inter-sectarian warfare.

And David Brody points out what exactly is at stake:

While that is good news for Huckabee, it raises the stakes. First of all, now we’re going to find out just how powerful this Evangelical block of voters really is? Can Huckabee ride Evangelicals to victory? Maybe in Iowa that’s possible but what about after that?

The mainstream Republicans who value lower taxes and reduced spending will make Huckabee’s life a living nightmare. Huckabee is ready to combat those attacks but if you just have the social conservative block working for you and not the economic and national security block, then it’s an uphill fight. [Emphasis added.]

As Evangelicals are lining up behind Huckabee in droves, they are betting the farm. If they do not go all the way, not just through the primaries, but all the way into the Oval Office, they will have squandered all the political capital they have accumulated in the last decades.

I started this blog not because I supported Mitt Romney (I didn’t – and am still keeping my options open, though I have come to like the guy a lot) but because the idea of Evangelicals not lining up behind a candidate, purely because of his faith – or conversely lining up behind a candidate precisely because of his faith – is simply a self-inflicted wound, and it could yet prove to be fatal.

Consider George Will from over the weekend:

Although Huckabee is considered affable, two subliminal but clear enough premises of his Iowa attack on Mitt Romney are unpleasant: The almost 6 million American Mormons who consider themselves Christians are mistaken about that. And — 55 million non-Christian Americans should take note — America must have a Christian president.

Another pious populist who was annoyed by Darwin — William Jennings Bryan — argued that William Howard Taft, his opponent in the 1908 presidential election, was unfit to be president because he was a Unitarian, a persuasion sometimes defined as the belief that there is at most one God. The electorate chose to run the risk of entrusting the presidency to someone skeptical about the doctrine of the Trinity.

If Huckabee succeeds in derailing Romney’s campaign by raising a religious test for presidential eligibility, that will be clarifying: In one particular, America was more enlightened a century ago.

Lowell adds: Dick Morris on Huckabee and Iowa:

[N]ow that everybody is on the air, Huckabee is emerging as a new alternative to Giuliani for socially conservative voters. Reliably pro-life and anti-gay marriage, he is now emerging as the real thing — a social conservative alternative to the ersatz Romney version.

And, of course, he’s not a Mormon. Many Republicans remain fearful that nominating a Mormon would be tantamount to handing the election to the Democrats.

“Many Republicans.” Don’t you just love that? Which ones, besides Dick Morris, who supports Rudy? Do they include any serious national Republican who is willing to say so openly?

And so…

We have accusations of something resembling “slickness” made at both Romney and Huckabee, and those accusation on both parts center on religion. What is the net result? Religion is now reduced to just another club in the political arsenal. No longer is religion the search for higher truth, or salvation, or epiphany, or whatever it is your particular religion seeks – it is just a label, and you are to be tested against the “beliefs” of that label to decide whether you are or are not genuinely of that label.

I actually believe my religion, I hold it dear, and I find this reduces it – my faith serves a much higher purpose in my life.

Because in the end, it really is just identity politics…

Consider this NYTimes story on Obama’s “blackness,” and this one on Utah Muslims. The Obama piece is particularly troubling:

Mr. Obama’s success is creating anxiety, uncertainty and more than a little jealousy among older black politicians. Black political and community activists still rooted in the politics of the 1960s civil rights movement are suspicious about why so many white people find this black man so acceptable.

It boils down not to issues, but to clubs – to old enmities and alliances – all of which have nothing to do with the issues of the day. This is the kind of stuff our constitution was designed to hold at bay. Are we really breaking down into little fiefdoms, complete with determinations of who are worthy courtiers for those in the throne of the fiefdom? What a giant step backwards for democracy!

Even Andrew Sullivan, of all people, gets this.

Now, of course, the imperfection of the Bible seems self-evident to me. It contradicts itself many times. But it sure doesn’t look that way to fundamentalists and many evangelicals. And the question is broad enough to make it into legitimate mainstream discourse. So the evangelicals don’t have to “go there” in attacking Romney’s Mormonism directly, or raising some of its more eccentric doctrines; they can simply challenge Romney on Biblical literalism and tell their followers why a Mormon can’t answer the question as well as Huckabee can. And it becomes very hard to tell them to knock it off: all they’re doing is defending their own approach to Scripture.

This actually raises an intriguing question – what constitutes bias and/or bigotry. Is it enough merely NOT to attack someone on some illegitimate basis? For example, is it enough to stop using the “N”-word, but only hire white people just because as an employer you find them somehow more suitable? Now of course, most people would say “no” to the example I have just cited, but is that not parallel to the game Sullivan just fairly accurately described?

Bigotry and bias stem from applying otherwise inapplicable criteria to a circumstance, whether that criteria is applied in the positive or the negative. This is why Article VI of the constitution applies even in the voting booth. The voting booth is where we hire our representatives, and just as in this nation we require employers to hire staff on the basis of specific criteria, regardless of their personal prejudices, so it should be with hiring a president.

Think about it.