Going off the deep end . . .

We don’t talk about John McCain much here because every time he has dipped his feet in the religion pool he has looked foolish. That is pretty much to his credit. The less we discuss a candidate and religion around here, the better as far as I am concerned.

But McCain’s latest ad would be something I could get exorcised about if it were not so pathetically a “me-too” to the Huckabee Merry Christmas spot.

The WSJ - Of Two Minds?

Not really, but they published two “competing” op-eds today. The first was from Peggy Noonan who, for the second week in a row, decided to take Huckabee to task. I love this graph:

I love the cross. The sight of it, the fact of it, saves me, literally and figuratively. But there is a kind of democratic politesse in America, and it has served us well, in which we are happy to profess our faith but don’t really hit people over the head with its symbols in an explicitly political setting, such as a campaign commercial, which is what Mr. Huckabee’s ad was.

But this one cuts to the heart:

Mr. Huckabee is clever. He puts forth his policies, such as they are, based on a faith-based understanding of public policy, and if you disagree with his policies, or take a hard shot at them, or at him, he suggests the reason is that you look down on evangelicals. This creates a new fissure in a party already riven by fissures.

Many people have told me that they think this blog enables “the victim card” for Romney. And, of course, we do work hard to find anti-Mormon bigotry and show it the light of day, but Noonan here has put her finger on the key difference. Romney is consistent in saying “don’t look at my religion, look at me.” Huckabee has proclaimed directly and openly, “I am defined by my religion.” In Romney’s case he is, on occasion, victimized by his faith. In Huckabee’s case, he makes himself out to be a victim. It is kind of like the difference between Martin Luther King in the ’60’s and Jesse Jackson in the ’80’s and ’90’s.

The other WSJ piece, by Jason Riley, looks at the now tired allegations concerning the institutional racism in the LDS. It is up to Lowell to explain Mormonism around here, but let me tell you about my Presbyterian church. Until the early 1980’s there were two major Presbyterian churches in the US, referred to in the parlance as the “northern” and “southern” churches. I belonged to the northern church, but because of family in the south attend the southern church pretty routinely, at least a month out of every year. The two churches formed in the wake of the Civil War over any number of issues.

Prior to the reunification of the churches, the spoken of sticking point was ordination of women, but the unspoken one was race. In the 1970’s, the only black person I ever saw in a southern Presbyterian church was the janitor and the people serving lunch after Sunday services. Of course, there was no written policy or anything . . . .

Mormon racism was wrong. So was Presbyterian racism. Both expressed themselves in the prevailing cultural circumstances of the churches at the time. There is nothing any more sinister about the Mormons’ open and direct pronouncement of their racism than there was of my church’s unspoken, deeply ingrained racism. Thankfully, both have reformed.

Lowell: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ policy was actually more nuanced than an “open and direct pronouncement of . . . racism,” but that subject is so tortured and complex and painful that I really can’t go into it here. (I suppose that will make me, in some readers’ minds, just another of those evasive, lying Mormons.) All I can say for sure is that the policy is in the past; that probably 80% of the current Church’s members either were not even alive or were not members in 1978, when the policy was changed; and that everyone who was an adult member at the time of the change in 1978, with a few oddball exceptions, is delighted that the policy is in the past. Notably, Africa is an area of explosive and sustained membership growth for the church. Whatever might be said about the past, the Church is not now a racist organization in any sense. Shouldn’t that be everything anybody needs to know about that subject, as far as Romney’s candidacy is concerned?

UPDATE (still from Lowell): Riley’s article falls into some of the same traps others in the MSM encounter when analyzing that issue. He relies on critics of the Church (the Ostlings) for information, and uses inflammatory rhetoric to discuss a sensitive and nuanced topic:

Mormonism was a defiantly apartheid faith that denied blacks full participation based on doctrinal beliefs that whites are “pure” and “delightsome,” while black-skinned people are “unrighteous,” “despised” and “loathsome” descendants of the biblical Cain, who was cursed for killing Abel. . . . [T]he ban was a manifestation of a central belief that blacks are unfit to be full members of the church on Earth, or to exist alongside whites in heaven.

Much 90% of that is simply wrong, or greatly over-simplified. Mostly it is simply over the top.  Long, scholarly articles have been written about what Riley reduces to a few lines of absolute conclusions. I’ll offer no analysis here, just remind everyone that this is not a subject that should have anything to do with whether Romney is a fit candidate for president.

We were speaking of Huck . . .

. . . something we seem to be doing a lot of lately, and sadly, today is no exception. Robert Novak talks of Huckabee’s expectations regarding support from within his own denominations.

Shortly thereafter, bitterness was demonstrated during an interview with Zev Chafets of the New York Times. Huckabee was irritated that Richard Land, a prestigious Southern Baptist leader, had not endorsed him. “Richard Land swoons for Fred Thompson,” he said, though as a policy Land endorses no one. Huckabee appears to believe that everyone in the Southern Baptist Convention is obliged to support him: “If my own abandon me on the battlefield, it will have a chilling effect.”

Playing the Mormon card is one thing - but threatening your own?!?!?! This is proof that this is pure identity politics on Huckabee’s part. Identity politics have never proven smart, ever. They are bad for the nation and the candidate, and in this case they are bad for religion. If religion is just a label, the left is right - who needs it?

Speaking of which, the areligious James Taranto had at Huckabee and religion yesterday.

Politicizing matters of theology runs counter to this pluralistic tradition, and it ultimately is a political loser. There aren’t enough Southern Baptists, or evangelical Christians, to elect a president. The religious right is powerful, and deserves to be taken seriously, only insofar as it transcends theological differences and focuses on issues. If it does not, it degenerates into just another form of identity politics. (Blogger Marc Ambinder raises an interesting analogy to failed Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, whose supporters used her “identity as a born again evangelical” as a selling point.)

And it has been reported that Huckabee keeps sawing the religion string:

Huckabee: People keep coming up to me and quoting Isaiah 54

Verse 17 to be exact, God’s assurance to his followers that the weapons of the enemies of the righteous won’t defeat them.

Here he is, once again near claiming divine providence ordaining his candidacy. Is it any wonder the left thinks religious people are nuts? - You know, like the Boston Globe and Washington Post.

But the left, this time in the form of E.J. Dionne, is not afraid to use Huckabee to try and drive a wedge through the heart of the Republican party ( like Noonan was talking about), but he also is right - the religious wing will lose if we can’t pull it together.

I Want To Vote The Way I Want To Vote…

Yet another contention that considering religion in the voting booth is neither prohibited by Article VI nor bigotry. First of all, bigotry is no defined by Article VI and conflating the two concerns as is done in this piece is just sloppy.

Secondly, as to the claims that “religion matters” — when the author cites how it matters, he relies on matter of character. And yet, there is no one-to-one correlation between religion and character. Indeed, a greater percentage of adherents to some religions are of good character than others, but I have met people of good character in virtually every religion I have ever encountered. And sadly, I have met people of very poor character in all religions too.

Which is, I think, the point. The religious label DOES NOT provide this author with the information he thinks it does. And that is where bigotry arise, judging the character of an individual, based on a label instead of judging the individual him or her self.

The March Of The Theo-nerds…

Since Huckabee gave them the green light with the “brother” crack, they have been popping up on the radar way too much. Here and here are two of the more egregious samples from yesterday. Aside from being terribly convoluted, can anybody tell me how anything said in these pieces has anything to do with the functioning of the presidency of the United States? Anything at all?

Final Thoughts…

Notice how little Romney’s name has been coming up here lately? What does that say about Evangelicals?

Only slightly related to this log is this MSNBC piece about science/religion/politics. Given my academic training in science and my personal faith, the religion/science debate has always been something I have watched with interest and occasionally participated in. This piece demonstrates that it is almost always really about power. Scientists upset that religion is gaining political prominence. Truth secondary to power. What does that say about what we normally talk about here?

And still more final thoughts, added later by Lowell:

Sorry to be late; I spent much of last evening in an airplane, circling above blizzard-stricken airports. This K-Lo piece is especially timely. Her point:

Huckabee is working right now, intentionally or not, on breaking down a winning coalition of religious conservatives.

It looks like Huck is going to speak (preach) this Sunday in Cornerstone Church, a Texas mega-church run by a very controversial and divisive pastor, John Hagee. K-Lo begs him to reconsider. Here’s a taste:

Mike Huckabee, who is not a conservative on all things, but is on social issues, should know that and treasure and protect and foster these alliances. He’s a riveting speaker who could rally social conservatives, at least to whip them up to fight another day. Instead, he’s executing a divide-and-conquer strategy.

When Mitt Romney was convinced he had to give a “Mormon speech,” he gave a speech about religious liberty and America. It wasn’t, in other words, about him. Of course, that was, in part, a political calculation — how much could be gained by talking about Mormon theology during a political campaign? But it was also just the right thing. It’s a political campaign and people want to hear about his political thinking — what America means to him and how he fits into it all, what he can offer Americans in terms of leadership. Since Mike Huckabee has found himself at the front of the Republican field, it’s been more The Mike Show than not. In a treadmill interview with the New York Times earlier this week, he claimed “I’m being questioned about the details of my faith like no one else.” Mitt Romney and Barack Obama might legitimately argue that point, Gov. He’s cast aspersions on another candidate’s religion. He’s highlighted hostilities among evangelicals and others in the Republican party. If he keeps this up, he’s going to do some unholy damage.

Read the whole thing. I certainly hope voters in Iowa and South Carolina do.
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