Obama’s Church: Clarifying the Politics-Religion Intersection
John Mark Reynolds, as usual, has written a persuasive post that gets to the heart of the Article VI religious test question, in the context of Obama’s membership in The United Church of Christ and its impact on the Senator’s policy positions.
Also as usual, Professor Reynolds’ post is so meaty that it defies excerpting. So although I can share this taste, you need to read the whole thing:
When Mitt Romney ran for president, I argued on the Washington Post site that mainstream religious groups and their theological ideas are not relevant to the political process except where they touched on civic affairs. Since the LDS Church supports traditional American views on human life and the family, voters who wanted to experiment with both life and the family had reason to ask hard questions of Romney. This was especially true when he was claiming to be “pro-choice.” His religious convictions, one of the most consistent things about him, were at odds with his stated political views. His shift to a pro-life position actually made sense of his church affiliation.
It is fair to ask a politician where he agrees or disagrees with the stated civic goals of his religion. . . .
I propose no “religious test” for Senator Obama. However, much of [Obama's United Church of Christ] practice and “theology” is not religious in the traditional sense of that term, but secular or civic. It is a social gospel in line with the left-of-center social gospel of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Does Senator Obama agree with this point of view? If he does, it will have powerful implications for his views in office. This is no different than noting that the Thomism and natural law theology of a Catholic jurist will also be meaningful.
In other words, it’s eminently fair to ask a politician who attends a particular church that has stated civic, as opposed to religious, goals whether he or she subscribes to those goals. Sounds pretty simple to me.
For those interested in the demographic and cultural impact in the West of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this Salt Lake Tribune article is a good read. I suspect our readers will be interested from the standpoint of understanding the Church’s political influence, which is considerable in certain parts of the West outside Utah. (Note: Many, including me, will quibble with the completeness and context of some of the article’s statements; so those who are unfamiliar with the Church should not take those statements as . . . well, gospel.)
Here’s a response to our post Monday about the World Magazine article reporting on Paul Weyrich’s apparent regret over not backing Huckabee.
And that’s what we have for today.
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texan on 02 Apr 2008 at 10:06 pm #
I quibble with the mistaken impression that the article cited by Lowell leaves about LDS demographic influence in the West. The article states:
The LDS population definitely helped Romney win in Utah; however, the statement about the LDS influence in the Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming contests does not stand up to scrutiny.
* We have exit polling from Nevada (go to the 2nd page at this site to see the religious data), so we can gauge reasonably well the impact of the Mormon vote there. Romney beat his closest competitor by almost a four-to-one margin. If we subtract off all of the Mormons who voted for Romney, he still would have beat his nearest competitor by almost three-to-one. He won the vote of every religious group that had enough voters in the entrance polling to be able to make a judgment about who won among that group (he won among Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, and “other Christian”). The only religious group he didn’t win was the “no religion” group, and he still took second place among that group. Romney didn’t need any Mormons to allow him to win in Nevada.
* Wyoming is 11% LDS according to the 2008 Church Almanac published by the LDS Church, while the Pew Forum estimates Wyoming is 5% LDS. The Pew Forum puts the Evangelical population at 26% and the Mainline Protestant population at 21%. It’s hard to believe, based on these numbers, that the Mormons boosted Romney to victory.
* Colorado is 2.7% LDS. It’s rather ludicrous to think the Mormons “boosted him to easy primary victor[y]” there.
The statement about California fund raising is similarly weak:
This statement leaves the impression that Mormons may have been responsible for the strong fund-raising in California. However, it seems probable that the secret to Romney’s high fund-raising in California was due more to the fact that 36 million people live there, rather than being due to the fact that 2.1% of the state is LDS.
I agree with Lowell’s caution not to treat statements in the article he cited as “gospel”, at least not without doing some independent research.
ldsmom on 03 Apr 2008 at 6:20 am #
So Paul Weyrich expressed his regret that he did not back Huckabee, “the one most like” him and his fellow evangelicals. Is this not the same candidate who was on Judicial Watch’s 2007 list of the most corrupt politicians (Huckabee is ranked #6), and who had 14 ethics complaints and 5 fines assessed by the Arkansas Ethics Commission for ethics violations?!?!? This is their chosen representative of evangelical voters?!?!?? And now they wonder WHY their voice and votes are irrelevant?!?!? Maybe it’s time to rethink a few things…….like getting beyond the “Mormon thing” and looking at the whole record of each candidate before pulling that lever.