The Quiet Weekend – Sort Of
It was an amazingly quiet weekend on the religion front, if not in the “invisible primary.” I was able to attend this event on Saturday, saw some old friends (one of whom we will get to in a minute) and Governor Romney was amazing. His stump speech is getting highly polished. He is a fairly formal and organized kind of guy, but he has become increasingly relaxed in the role of spokesman he has assumed and that shown through in his ad libs, quips, and personal reference as there were several friends in the crowd.
He did not do a meet and greet, but in a very special move he dispatched someone to call over four high school sophomores that were in attendance for a personal greeting during lunch. It was a classy move. I was lucky enough to be sitting at the table with the young people and they were, as you can imagine floored.
But enough about that…
On To The Invisible Primary . . .
Here’s a hint – when you start seeing Palin and/or Huckabee making serious campaign moves like this, then you’ll know they are serious. Right now, Romney and Pawlenty are the only serious players in the game and Romney has a huge jump on TPaw. Rumors emerged in whispers last week that Santorum and or Thune may be contemplating an actual attempt and not just floating trial balloons. If so, one has to think they will be efforts to build for a run at a later date – both are just too far behind-the-curve at this point.
But that said, Palin and Huckabee are both going to be prominent in the press’ mind for some time to come and they both have delicious religious angles, so you can look for us to continue to discuss them.
Speaking of which, the Huckabee commutations continue to reverberate. Romney was on Larry King Friday and King asked about the commutations. Depending on the pundit, some say Romney slammed the Huckster and some say he went soft on him. We’ve put the video in the widget at left here, you look at it, you decide.
Although I suspect there is a bit of sarcasm in Geraghty’s comment on “the love” Romney showed Huck as he brings up Huckabee’s now infamous “brothers” comment from Iowa.
. . . And The Religion Angle
Which brings us to former Huckabee Iowa staffer Joe Carter. You’ll remember last Wednesday, we took Joe, now the “on-line” guy at First Things, to task for publishing what remains one of the more baffling statements we have ever read concerning religion in public life. We will not here recount that discussion. Our old friend, John Mark Reynolds (the old friend I saw at the event Saturday), whom Carter has recruited as a contributor to the “Evangel” blog at First Things did respond to Joe’s post, arguing about how good it would be to have Romney in the White House at the moment, and recounting his classic “three tests” for considering religion and candidates.
Carter responded in the comments to Reynolds post. He claims that both Reynolds and we missed the point of his post:
One point that I did raise, though, was how that its [sic] strange that we can bring up issues about evangelicals (e.g., Sarah Palin’s eschatology) but if someone even asks questions about Mormonism (e.g., Are Satan and Jesus brothers?) then they’re a bigot. It’s a strange double standard.
We agree there should not be a double standard. We have never questioned Palin’s eschatology here. We have pointed out that such attacks are, to our mind, unwarranted. We have not worked especially hard to defend Palin specifically, but then this is a blog dedicated to Romney and the Mormon question. It is our contention that Mormons are the “tip of the spear,” as it were, when it comes to attacking religion in civil discourse and therefore should be the point of most vigorous defense. It is also our contention, precisely because we do not hold to a double standard, that attacks on Mormons, when allowed to stand, legitimize attacks on Evangelicals and others.
That, in fact, may be the bottom line for this blog, at least for its Evangelical half. The left wants religion out of politics all together – all of us. When we on the right attack religion, any religion on pretty much any basis other than actual behavior, we provide the left with a weak front on which to attack us generally. The very discussion of the difference between Mormons and more orthodox forms of Christianity provided the left with a weak point in our defense, and as the results of the last election show, they used it quite effectively. Not because Romney was not the nominee, but because with us divided over the issue, we were weakened.
Cater goes on to comment in response to Reynolds:
As for Mitt Romney, I don’t dislike him because he’s Mormon. I dislike him because he doesn’t seem to have any core political convictions that he won’t flip-flop on if he thinks it will help him get elected.
There are many people for whom the flip-flop charge is just that – a political charge of flip-flop. But coming from someone that “seconded” Joel Belz’ religiously based contention that Mormons purposefully mislead, it’s a little hard to separate the religious bias from the political charge. The charge that Belz leveled:
Do these officials hold to the fantastical 1827 golden tablets of Mormon founder Joseph Smith—or not? Well, they seem to say: We believe it when we want to, and we don’t when it’s less convenient.
is frankly no different than when the left charges us with being hypocritical as philanderers like Haggard, Swaggert, and Bakker, not to mention numerous priests with that problem, continue “in ministry.” “I mean how is this ‘grace stuff’ compatible with the behavioral standards of Christian faith? Either sex outside of marriage is forbidden or it is not.”
We have to learn to be very, very careful in how we parse our arguments. The die was cast the minute anybody said anything about Romney’s religion other than, “It doesn’t matter – we have a right to bring our faith to the public discourse and so do Mormons.” Anything short of that is religious bigotry, whether it the the left aimed at Evangelicals or Evangelicals aimed at Mormons. This includes, by the way, softer forms of bigotry, like plain old identity politics wherein we vote for the guy most like us instead of the guy we believe can best do the job.
OK – off my soap box for now – this guy does a pretty good job of it for me.
Lowell chiming in . . .
All I can add to John’s analysis is this: In dealings with this blog Joe Carter has been a gentleman and very generous with his time. (We once interviewed him at some length during the 2008 presidential cycle.) Even so, I just don’t find Joe’s thinking very compelling. Joe told us it was just fine, in his opinion, if people voted against Romney solely on religious grounds. Joe would have much more credibility in complaining about a supposed “double standard” for Romney if he hadn’t said so. And I guess I’ll just leave my comments at that.
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Doug King on 07 Dec 2009 at 10:43 pm #
I suppose it was equally fine in his opinion to vote against Hillary solely on gender grounds and against Obama on racial grounds. He may not have actually said those words, but he’s using the same logic. Such statements are textbook examples of prejudice. I just hope John represented Mr. Carter’s views fairly.
No one is surprised when they occasionally encounter ordinary Americans who think that way. But it’s disturbing when someone like Mike Huckabee who claims to be serious Presidential material surrounds himself with people like that.
John Schroeder on 08 Dec 2009 at 6:54 am #
Doug:
You are quoting Lowell there, not John, but it is an accurate recollection of the interview.
coltakashi on 09 Dec 2009 at 11:02 am #
Carter said: “One point that I did raise, though, was how that its [sic] strange that we can bring up issues about evangelicals (e.g., Sarah Palin’s eschatology) but if someone even asks questions about Mormonism (e.g., Are Satan and Jesus brothers?) then they’re a bigot. It’s a strange double standard.”
When you ask someone who is NOT a Mormon a question like that, you are obviously not seeking a real understanding of Mormon doctrine, but telling the reporter you are talking to, and the people who read his article, that you think Mormons believe outlandish, even offensive things. You are not seeking to improve your understanding of Mormons, or give them an opportunity to respond, perhaps with a question about your own belief in the existence of satan and his origins (Was he created by the triune Jesus? Is that a more desirable theological position, since it places full responsibility for the evil Satan does on God?)
Belz said: “Do these officials hold to the fantastical 1827 golden tablets of Mormon founder Joseph Smith—or not? Well, they seem to say: We believe it when we want to, and we don’t when it’s less convenient.”
According to Joseph Smith, once the work of translation was completed, the angel Moroni, a resurrected prophet who died circa 425 AD as the last custodian of the record, took the metal plates into his custody again. This happened before the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized in April 1830. The lack of the availability of the plates did not present a problem for the thousands of people who joined the CJCLDS Church from 1830 to 1844 when Smith was martyred with his brother Hyrum, by a mob that invaded the jail in Carthage, illinois, where they were being held without bail on silly charges of “treason against the State of Illinois” (Who was illinois at war with?). It was not the first time in history that government was complicit in the killing of an innocent man.
When they had voluntarily returned to Illinois to submit peacefully to arrest, Hyrum had read from the Book of Mormon to seek comfort, turning down the corner of the page he read. In the jail, Joseph bore his testimony to the jailer about the origins of the Book of Mormon. Hyrum had seen and handled the plates, and his testimony and the testimony of 10 other men attests to the reality of their existence. That is a testimony that they were all true to until their respective deaths, some of them 50 years later. It is a testimony that no one has been able to explain, other than the simple point that they sincerely reported what they had seen and “hefted”. Anyone who wants to attack the Book of Mormon has to explain why, if it was a conscious fraud, the people who were involved with it were believers in it even when they faced death.
Whispers See Print, Evangelical Republicans Asunder, Blame The Christians, and more… | Article VI Blog | John Schroeder on 10 Dec 2009 at 6:42 am #
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