Another Answer To The Question, and More…

The Second Of Many Answers To THE QUESTION…

. . . this one from New Hampshire, is . . . MAYBE.

Romney did not win New Hampshire, but religion was barely on the radar there. This was about John McCain and Mitt Romney, not Mormons and Baptists, or Episcopalians, or whatever. I will leave the political analysis to people more qualified than I – but, unlike last Thursday, this is far, far more acceptable as second places finishes go. Religion was just not an issue, but that did not keep people from talking about it.

The REAL Knives Are Starting To Appear…

Tim Rutten, no fan of conservatives and especially Romney, has come out in the wake of yesterday’s results with a piece that sheds real light on the real problem. In it, Rutten compares and contrasts Obama’s Iowa victory speech and Romney’s “Faith In America” speech a month ago. He lauds Obama’s speech as a genuine breakthrough in American politics, and particularly the politics of race, making me wonder if he wrote this before the results were fully known.

But when he turns his attention to Romney, much is revealed:

In December, Romney attempted to emulate — in an attenuated fashion — John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 appearance before a group of Protestant ministers hostile to the notion of a Catholic president. Kennedy hit the issue head on, mentioning his Catholicism 14 times, forthrightly embracing separation of church and state and promising to resist any attempt by the church hierarchy to dictate his conduct as an elected official.

Instead of addressing the issue forthrightly, as Kennedy had, Romney temporized and attempted to placate the religious right by soft-pedaling his own faith — which he mentioned only once — and by attacking secular humanism and proclaiming his own belief in Jesus Christ.

It wasn’t simply pandering, it was oddly bloodless. How, for example, could a Mormon candidate for the Republican presidential nomination fail to mention that his party’s very first national platform was built on two planks — the abolition of slavery and the elimination of Mormonism, both of which those first Republicans deemed “barbarous?” How could he not take the opportunity to remind his handpicked Republican audience that, as recently as the 1890s, thousands of Mormon men were arrested and imprisoned by the United States Army or that the U.S. Senate refused to seat a lawfully elected member from Utah because he was a Mormon?

Rather than do those things, he attempted to ingratiate himself to that very sector of popular opinion in which anti-Mormon prejudice remains most intact. In the process, he helped legitimize fundamentalist preacher-turned-pol Mike Huckabee’s naked appeals to Christian voters in Iowa. It’s a pitch Romney — and America — are likely to hear a lot more of in South Carolina and beyond, where the evangelical vote is even stronger.

That is a reasonably accurate description of what Romney did in The Speech, minus the rhetoric, but in decrying that effort the real issue is revealed. Read the tone there, it assumes that the religious voice in politics is illegitimate under any circumstance. Instead of reaching out to creedal Christians, Romney was supposed to repudiate them.

Practically, Huckabee’s success has shown that the Evangelical crowd cannot be repudiated, they are important and vital. But more, Rutten here reveals what the left really wants. The continued secularization of our society and they are hoping the Romney campaign would help them do it. Sadly, the way Huckabee has succeeded has played into their hands, as the near non-sequitur in the fourth paragraph quoted reveals.

Herein lies the key difference between the left and correct thinking people on the right. The left never wants to hear from religion in politics ever again in any form or fashion. The right understands there is a role for religion in its proper perspective – a perspective that Mitt Romney put forth in The Speech very well. Part of that perspective is that people of varying faiths can and should work together in the public square on issues and goals on which they agree. In the case of Mormons and creedal Christians, that is almost everything.

Lowell: Tim Rutten’s a good example of what I call a pure liberal voice. I think he has integrity and that he expresses his views consistently, although I usually disagree with him deeply. That’s why this Rutten column is so interesting. Because Liberals dislike the “Christian Right” even more than they dislike political conservatives generally, they are sympathetic to Mormons when victimized by the likes of Huckabee or other Christian conservative foes of Mormonism.

But for Rutten and his ideological soulmates, that sympathy disappears when Mormons try to make common cause with Evangelicals on values and political issues. They say, “How could you make an alliance with those people! They’re all a bunch of anti-Mormon bigots!”

Of course that’s a ridiculous over-generalization for Rutten to make. But is does highlight the fault lines in the uneasy alliance between politically and socially conservative Evangelicals, on the one hand, and Mormons on the other. As we discussed a couple of days ago, Mormons are understandably wary of Evangelicals, and this presidential campaign so far has not improved that situation at all.

The discussion continues . . .

History News Network looks at Romney’s father presidential bid and the role religion played, actually did not play, in it.

And though he was never questioned during the campaign on his faith, George Romney’s political career, and his life as a whole, was certainly influenced by his faith. In December of 1968, just following Romney’s appointment as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development by president-elect Richard Nixon, a New York Times article stated that Romney “sees himself bringing the idealism of his Mormon religion to business and politics in general.” Still, it is to be noted that clips such as this usually noted Romney’s religion as an advantage to his position, not a weakness, and did not spring up until after he had left the race.

Mitt Romney simply does not have the luxury of avoiding the topic of religion like his father did because religion has become such an influential part of our public debates, whereas it was almost nonexistent in the political realm of the ‘60s. Certainly religion played a prominent role in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections, as Kevin Coe and David Domke demonstrated in an article published on HNN a few weeks ago. Almost certainly religion will continue to play an outsized role.

And the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette agrees that religion is playing a new and unique role in this election cycle.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee: Two presidential candidates, two political parties, a common approach — and the same result.

The question now is whether this strategy has legs beyond Iowa. As the candidates worked through New Hampshire, they found voters a bit more cautious about intimate relationships between religion and politics. But soon after the New Hampshire primary comes South Carolina, where faith runs wide and deep. Indeed, Mr. Obama’s campaign presented a “40 Days of Faith and Family” focus there in autumn.

One thing is for sure: We’re light years and a religious political revolution from John F. Kennedy’s candidacy in 1960, when he famously declared that “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” and “I believe in a president whose views on religion are his own private affair.”

That was a winning message then. Today it would be a voice in the wilderness — on both sides of the partisan aisle.

Of course, that is pretty much the voice that Romney sounded in The Speech…

Rod Dreher contends it’s not faith, its the economy. But then he cannot resist trying to figure out “what kind” of Christian Huckabee is:

I don’t get why Andrew [ed.: that's Sullivan] calls Huckabee’s rise a sign of “the perils of fundamentalist politics.” For one, Huckabee is not a fundamentalist. He’s more of a Rick Warren Evangelical, which is not exactly an Andrew Sullivan Catholic, to be sure, but it’s not the same thing as a fundamentalist.

I really hate to agree with Andrew Sullivan on anything but the war; however, I think he has a point here. Theologically, Huckabee is not a fundamentalist, but his shots at Mormonism smack of it. Christians, like all groups live on continuums and Huckabee seems to slide all over them sometimes. The point is we really should not be tying stances on issues to religious labels, that turns issue discussions into religious wars.

Going Deep . . .

John Mark Reynolds takes a philosophical look at casting a vote.

I am a voter who thinks Jesus Christ is Lord and not Caesar which means I do not put much trust in secular princes. At the same time, I do not trust absolute liberty and know that it is the weak (whether physically, culturally, or mentally) who need law to protect them from the strong.

Christians this side of heaven live with a tension between attempts at perfect liberty which leads to mob rule and attempts at perfect law which leads to tyranny.

Think about it….

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