Article VI Blog

Time doesn’t permit a long post today, but we can offer a few quick hits:

Mike Huckabee, Convicts, and Religion

Anyone not living in a cave for the last 48 hours knows that Maurice Clemmons, the murderer of four police officers in Seattle, was once in state prison in Arkansas – until Mike Huckabee commuted his sentence.  Huck has been running away from that decision and attempting to spread the blame to others involved in processing Clemmons through the legal system.  It’s been suggested that Huckabee’s faith played a huge role in his clemency decisions as governor.  The man himself has not yet addressed that question, probably because he doesn’t want to touch it.

That’s understandable.

Consider:  While Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee issued 1,033 pardons, twice as many as the prior three Arkansas governors combined.  Just as a point of comparision, Mitt Romney did not issue a single pardon while Governor of Massachusetts.  I have a hunch that Huckabee, as a potential 2012 presidential candidate, is now . . . toast.

David Frum Thinks The Whole GOP Religion Situation Is Terrible

At least that’s what he seems to be saying here.  Frum, who’s unhappy with religious conservatives generally, sees the Manhattan Declaration’s failure to include Mormons as yet another example of Evangelical bias against that faith.  Well, the Declaration was authored not just by Evangelicals but also Catholics and Orthodox Christians, something Frum doesn’t seem to grasp.  Also, as I noted here, the Declaration is a doctrinal trinitarian document.  Mormons and other heterodox Christian faiths could not have signed it (to say nothing of Orthodox Jews), so the document’s drafters didn’t even invite them to sign.  There are political reasons to quibble with the Declaration’s narrowness, but to this Latter-day Saint it doesn’t look like a slap at Romney or Mormonism.

Meanwhile, this writer at the Frum Forum plows ground that have already been plowed ad nauseam.  An atheist, he thinks Romney’s religion is fair game:

Devotion to Mormonism, which is completely outside of the American mainstream, requires a certain level of commitment. To what extent will Romney’s faith influence his decision-making? I ask that question of devoted evangelicals and judge them accordingly, and I will do the same of a Mormon. And I am not going to apologize for that.

What a stunning insight.  Move along, folks, nothing here to see . . . .  (And thanks to our reader Mary Lynn, who told us about this piece.)

And Finally: The Question, Studied Once Again

This recently-published study reaches some intuitively unsurprising conclusions:

Our results do, however, indicate that there is something Romney’s supporters can do to assuage concerns about his Mormonism. People who objectively know a lot about Mormons — that is, those who scored 100% on a short quiz on facts about Mormonism — were much less likely to be bothered by the claim that Mormons are not Christians. In contrast, respondents who claimed they knew a lot about Mormons, but who actually did not, were bothered most of all by claims about Mormonism. . . .

In other words, our study suggests that Romney’s supporters would do well to encourage those who are troubled by his faith to become better informed about Mormonism.

Such a discussion would likely help Romney: Information helps and ignorance hurts his chances. More important, it would help broaden religious tolerance in America.

Well, we certainly agree with that.

John Adds His Two Cents

There is much I am tempted to say about Mr. Huckabee and the role religion played in his commutations.  It is an expression of much that is wrong on a religious level with the shallowness that has become Evangelicalism.   But this is not a religious blog so I shall let that be.

Huckabee has been striking out at his critics over this, even when he admitted he was unlikely to run just 24 hours before the story broke.  Therein may lie the problems for future politics.  Huckabee has been the standard bearer for many Evangelicals and as he plays this so are they likely to go.  Slipping into defensive “You don’t get it’s and “I told you so’s will not be productive for that group.

Which brings me to the Manhattan Declaration.  Religiously motivated political activism was, in the 2008 election cycle highly fractured.  It fractured along left-right lines, which is not new, but visible for the first time, and it fractured between the ideologues and the pragmatists.  The ideologues retreated to Hucks and Palins of the world- fueled no doubt by anti-Mormon sentiment amongst some as the study cited above demonstrates – and as a result hurt conservative effectiveness.  Unity needs to be restored amongst the traditional coalition or all is lost.

The trinitarian references in the Manhattan Declaration, as one of our commenters has pointed out, are pro forma and not necessary to the primary stances taken therein.  They are a reference that would come for many involved as straightforwardly as breathing.  Their inclusion is likely because to debate them would have increased the fracture lines that were attempting to be healed.  Little can be judged about the relationship with Romney and Mormons on a political level until the healing is complete.

Frum’s commentary is designed to foment fracture along any fault line he can find.  It’s quite obvious that is what is at play here.  And yet, the commenter at Frum’s site shows why we must heal all such fractures.  To the non-religious, who are primarily left-leaning, there is no real distinction between the orthodox and the heterodox – such distinctions appear to them to be infighting and to be politically exploited.  Huckabee’s defensiveness, and that of his supporters, is another such fracture line.

When things like this happen, we would be wise to look for ways to heal the fractures not widen them.

EVEN LATER ADDITION BY JOHN:

Our old friend Joe Carter has posted an important response to the Frum commenter (Alex Knepper) that we discuss above:

Knepper has a valid point about certain religious beliefs and traditions being fair game for scrutiny while others are off-limits. There is a peculiar double-standard in place, though the criteria for which ones are included is difficult to discern. I also agree that religious beliefs—indeed I would include all beliefs of any type—should be considered fair game when evaluating a candidate. The question Knepper leaves unanswered, though, is how such beliefs are to be evaluated in the public square. Where is the line between reasonable criticism and irrational bigotry?

Personally, I’m open to being exceedingly tolerant of raw religious bigotry as long as its accompanied by a healthy portion of religious liberty. When we enter the public square I’m willing to allow anyone to make whatever nasty remarks they like about evangelicalism as long as I can presents arguments that are rooted in my faith and that are given a fair hearing.

Interesting approach, but I am not sure it works.  The entire point of prejudice and bigotry is to discount arguments by the object of the prejudice and bigotry.  Hence prejudicial references are not admitted in courts because they mean the jury’s judgment is compromised with regards to the pertinent facts of the case.  In other words there is no religious liberty when there is raw religious bigotry – bigotry precludes liberty of any sort – total bigotry against blacks resulted in total slavery, the ultimate denial of liberty.

Bigotry and prejudice are the enemy of law and ours is a nation of laws, not men.

Lowell’s Postscript:

I’ll be more blunt than John:  Joe Carter’s argument is just plain nuts.  To say “raw religious bigotry” is just fine “as long as its [sic] accompanied by a healthy portion of religious liberty” is an argument so internally inconsistent as to be laughable. But there’s nothing funny about what Carter says. There can not be any acceptable level of religious liberty in the presence of raw religious bigotry. I fear that Carter is simply trying, however feebly, to make an argument that leaves room for his own approach to Romney’s faith in the public square. He needs to re-think his position, and soon.

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