Absolutely Totally And Completely The Wrong Tone
Rick Santorum is as over as the Monkees. Covering him is like covering last week’s news. However, the real beat of this blog is religion and politics and he keeps stepping on that ground. He is clearly having trouble accepting the fact that it is over, so he keeps swinging. In his latest effort at campaign CPR, in an apparent attempt to capture the Catholic vote (his native vote that he has continually lost to Romney), he takes to Real Clear Religion with an op-ed entitled:
What’s wrong with this picture? For one thing, this is not exactly an outlet that will attract a lot of attention – more indication that Santorum is done. But let’s focus on substance; its narrow Catholic focus could be one part of the issue. If you want to be president, you have to president for everybody, that means to some extent you have to do away with labels. In an identity conscious age, defining too tight an identity will send away more voters than it will capture. This sort of thing works on a local level, but nationally, not going to happen.
Santorum rightly goes on to decry many of the Obama administration’s assaults on religious liberty. But in making his case strictly Catholic, in forgetting to be inclusive of all religious expression, he seems to imply that the rest of us do not have problems. Nonsense. Indeed the latest Obama raid is against Catholics, but in such Catholics represent all of us of faith – just as Mormons represent all of us of faith as they are particularly under assault from the gay community.
Then Santorum moves into a detailed refutation of JFK’s 1960 Houston speech:
Three pictures hung in the home of my devoutly Catholic immigrant grandparents when I was a boy and I remember them well — Jesus, Pope Paul VI and John F. Kennedy. The president was a source of great pride and a symbol to Catholics that all barriers had finally been broken. What my family and maybe even candidate Kennedy at the time didn’t realize was that in a key moment in that election of 1960 in Houston, Kennedy helped began the construction of another, even more threatening wall for our society — one that sealed off informed moral wisdom into a realm of non rational beliefs that have no legitimate role in political discourse.
JFK delivered a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to dispel suspicions about the role the Catholic church might play in the government of this country under his administration. Let’s make no mistake about it — Kennedy was addressing a real issue and real prejudice at the time. But on that day, Kennedy chose not just to dispel fear, he chose to expel faith. Let me quote from the beginning of Kennedy’s speech:
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”
The problem here is that Santorum is shooting at the wrong target. The problem is not, nor has it ever been, Kennedy’s speech. The problem has been how the left has warped that speech over time. No church may dictate national policy – that is pretty doggone absolute. “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” That is about as definitive and absolute a separation as you can get.
The problem is that people confuse church and religion and morality. Church is an institution – religion is a belief system – and morality is a code of ethics. These are different things. These three things tend to mutually reinforce each other, but they are distinct. The left has sought to blur the distinction between these things in order to drive simple morality, primarily in the realms of sexual behavior, from the public square. There is no constitutional requirement for a separation of morality and state, but if one thinks morality and religion and church inseparable, well….
And this is the problem with Santorum’s argument – it plays into the lack of distinction of these three things – and in doing so he buys into the essential argument of the left and ends up weakening the nation as a whole. A free nation like ours, requires a people of moral character. For many of its citizens that morality is reinforced in religion, and that religion is institutionalized in church – many different churches, and several different religions. All of us that share that morality should rise together in its defense because without it our nation will descend in the chaos that has plagued many a great nation before us. If we grant the left their argument that there is no distinction between church, religion, and morality then we grant them the argument that allows our voice to be squelched in the public square.
Now, indeed, Catholic doctrine is that religion and church are inseparable, but morality is not. That means that within the coalition of those of us that wish to defend this morality publicly, we will have some heated discussion – but we have to keep such internecine debate to ourselves. I honestly cannot tell if Santorum thinks he is speaking for all of us of faith by speaking of the problems from a uniquely Catholic perspective, which would be an expression of this Catholic doctrine, or if he is just being close minded about the rest of us. But let’s grant him the nobler motive for the sake of this discussion.
There are two problems with the way he advances his argument. For one – the rest of us do not necessarily share that Catholic doctrine. In fact Protestantism, and its child Evangelicalism, are born pretty much out of the realization that church and religion are in fact separable. So, while Santorum may indeed be arguing inclusively from his own perspective, he is being exclusive from the perspective of the rest of us. And considering that the only vote he has consistently won is the evangelical vote that sounds like an enormous political mistake to me.
But far worse are those in our nation that hold to our shared morality from an areligious, or only nominally religious, perspective. His uniquely Catholic argument is on its face exclusive of such people. When our moral coalition is divided, the left wins.
Thus once again, Santorum fails to advance that which he claims to want to advance. It is this failure more than any other that makes Santorum unsuitable as a national leader, let alone president, for the social conservative movement. It is a shame for a good man. I hope he has a good media career because his political one is over.
Afternoon Update: Catholic blogger Wesley J. Smith picks up on another problem with Santorum’s piece:
I certainly agree that about our founders’ “inspired brilliance and agree that the USA is a nurturing home for faith. But, faith certainly does not require freedom.
In fact, freedom can lead to a weak faith because it remains untested. Indeed, the strongest and most enduring faith is often forged in the hottest fires of oppression. Consider, for example, how the Church was persecuted by Rome. Those martyrs eaten alive in the arena were hardly free. But they sure had faith! And because of their sacrifices, the Church grew.
Faith has historically thrived in the face of tyranny and deadly persecution wielded against it. Look at how the Russian Orthodox Church survived what may have been the worst religious oppression in history during the Soviet era–only to emerge and rebound strongly from its grievous wounds. Look at the Buddhists in Tibet who today maintain their faith in the face of Chinese occupation and oppression. Good grief, look at the history of the Jews!
Agreed – that is gross misspeak – Faith DOES NOT require freedom. However, I think it is fair to say that real freedom requires faith.
Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Doctrinal Obedience, Political Strategy, Religious Freedom, Understanding Religion | 17 Comments » | 
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mahonri on 30 Mar 2012 at 8:12 am #
I just found your website. It appears to be a blog that supports the idea of a Mormon President. While I’m an admirer of LDS members and their values, I’m not sure Article 6 is really the issue here. Naturally, Romney is qualified to be an elected official, regardless of his religion.
I think the point is about alleviating and assuaging the understandable concerns and suspicions of the non-mormon electorate regarding the undue or inappropriate influence between church (LDS Church) and state (Mormon President).
I think you’d have a hard time convincing the electorate to just rely on Article 6 if, in the case of a devout presidential candidate, or Supreme Court nominee, of the Islamic faith – a faith that, for some reason which I admittedly do not understand, is allowed the leeway for its adherents to implement Sharia Law in the land of America (surely to be constitutionally challenged) – you feel there is no further need for scrutiny of the candidate’s worldview?
For the non-mormon electorate, it’s all about wanting to understand the candidate’s worldview, which stem from his religious beliefs, in a very complex, pluralistic society with very complex domestic and global challenges.
coltakashi on 30 Mar 2012 at 9:07 am #
Your take on Santorum’s essay is one that did not occur to me as I read it. I think the essay within itself presents an internally consistent line of reasoning. However, where it breaks down is at the interface with external facts, much like the speech Barack Obama gave during his campaign in response to the discovery that the pastor who converted him to “Christianity” and whose church he attended with his children for over a decade was a practitioner of an extreme hatred toward America despite his own highly remunerated career. The speech was praised as effective by many and largely given a pass even by conservatives, without an examination of the places where it departed from reality.
For me, the most significant discrepancy between Senator Santorum’s essay and reality is his failure to fully and accurately condemn the lies and religious bigotry about Mormons and Mitt Romney by one of his enthusiastic supporters, who allowed him to speak over the pulpit to his church, the Reverend Dozier. Hugh Hewitt’s questions to Santorum about it failed, for some unknown reason, to force him to confront the fact that Dozier was pushing a big lie against Romney, labeling Romney specifically and all other Mormons generally as racists who hate blacks, Native Americans, and Jews. There is no way that any person of integrity who examined facts rather than internet slander could honestly make that accusation. Santorum seems totally ignorant of the most elementary demographic facys of Mormonism, namely who the Mormons are.
How can hundreds of thousands of black Mormons in Africa, Brazil, Haiti and the US (including my congregation in Washington State) be prejudiced against blacks? How can the million Mormons in Mexico, and the many others of American Indian descent throughout the US and Latin America, be prejudiced toward Native Americans? How could BYU operate its campus on the Mount of Olives near Hebrew University if the authorities in Israel thought Mormons were prejudiced against Jews? And how could BYU have become a major participant in the scholarly team that has studied, preserved and published digital images of the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Dozier’s accusations of racism against Mormons, who are predominantly NOT US citizens and NOT English speakers shows incredible ignorance of Mormons, and it is intentional ignorance because it could be alleviated with a visit to an actual Mormon congregation in Dozier’s city (whose bishop is black) and a visit to Mormon.org or to watch the General Conference being broadcast worldwide via satellite (Dishnetwork BYUtv in the US) and internet this weekend from Salt Lake City on Saturday and Sunday and viewable on lds.org. The LDS Church magazines are repkete with articles about Mormons from six continents, and the weekly Church News and the Mormon Times section of the online version of the Deseret News daily newspaper show Mormons in all their diversity. One of the moments during the Conference will be near the beginning of the Saturday afternoon session, when the names of Area Seventies who oversee congregations in their own nations will be read; not all of them, just those being newly called and those being released after serving their term in office. Lately it seems like this task has fallen to President Dieter Uchtdorff, who has more facility in pronouncing names that are from a hundred different nations on six continents. Those leaders represent the diversity of congregations of 14 million Mormons, who were first recruited into the CJCLDS by “white” North American missionaries, now joined by hundreds of thousands of missionaries working in their native lands.
No critic of Mormon demographics and racial attitudes can honestly keep up his charade if he watches and listens to the eight hours of meetings that are being held this weekend. So they will intentionally ignore those inconvenient facts.
But can Santorum, who claims to be a national protector of religious freedom, and whose principal opponent is a prominent member of this much maligned religion, afgord to ignore it? If he does not watch himself, shouldn’t a member of his family or other trusted supporter record it on Tivo and give him a report of what the Mormons look like, and what they are saying?
Perhaps Santorum knows that, unlike many of the churches he has used in his campaign, none of the speakers will be talking about Mitt Romney let alone Santorum. The primary use of religious freedom among Mormons is to practice their religion, not to try to influence partisan elections and elect people who will use governmental power to advance their churches. But if he aspires to be president of the Mormons in the US, shouldn’t he try to learn more about them?
John Schroeder on 30 Mar 2012 at 9:15 am #
mahonri:
May I suggest that you spend a bit more time with this blog. There are over 2 million words written over the course of 6 years. There are links to resources that can answer virtually any question you may have.
Lee Allred on 30 Mar 2012 at 9:25 am #
One could also say that given the current political climate, It’s Hard to Be a Mormon in Public Life and that the penumbra eminating from Santorum’s campaign style has helped bring that about.
BTW, the previous comment is rather peculiar. Commenter “mahonri” posits being “an admirer of LDS member and their values” yet “mahonri” is a decidedly (uniquely?) inside-baseball Mormon given name (coming as it does from an individual in the Book of Mormon).
“mahonri” is an odd way for a non-member “admirer” to tag themselves. “Admirer” (without stating ones membership in the Church) is an even odder way for a member to describe themselves.
Curious.
JLF9999 on 30 Mar 2012 at 10:33 am #
I am glad mahouri found this site. It shows there is a part of the electorate that wants to know what intelligent well-read bloggers like John, John and Lowell have to say and recognize they venture beyond the elite media outlets to get it. I am encouraged.
Santorum says it is hard to be Catholic in politics. I took that to mean he has to tell people he is a good Catholic because they don’t see him as one. Why? I suppose it is because Rick thinks he can get more votes by drawing a contrast between his “real” Christianity and his opponent’s “not real” version of Christianity. Maybe the reason Rick has lost so much of the Catholic vote is because Catholics see that and it just doesn’t seem like the Catholic thing to do.
TVHall on 30 Mar 2012 at 1:11 pm #
It appears to me that Sen. Santorum is making the same, or at least a similar, mistake that many of “our friends” on the left make. The separation of church and state does not require, or equate to, the separation of religion and state.
A church is really nothing more than a sect, of which there tend to be many within a given religion. Even if this were a strictly “Christian nation” (a proposition with its own shortcomings), it would still require this “separation” to retain its pluralistic nature. The same would hold true with the Jewish and Muslim religions. I suspect it would apply to eastern religions as well.
The more basic problem with Sen. Santorum, and some of his supporters in the Evangelical community, is that they have begun to “loop around” to the same type of self-righteous rhetorical flourishes that are so common within the chattering classes of the left.
It is my understanding that William F. Buckley is credited with making the Conservative movement a more viable entity with his successful effort rid the movement of the “John Birchers.” I have begun to wonder if something similar will be required in dealing with the “preachers” of religious bigotry within our ranks.
JLF9999 on 30 Mar 2012 at 6:45 pm #
TVHall is headed in the right direction although I think it is a self policing movement. We don’t need another WF Buckley for the chaff to separate itself from the wheat. All we have to do is look around at the legitimate followers of Christ and how they live their lives. The pretenders look seriously out of place. Compare John Schroeder to O’Neal Dozier or Robert Jeffries.
mahonri on 30 Mar 2012 at 8:03 pm #
@Lee: No, I am not LDS. Just an admirer. However, since I have been approached by many missionaries, and even taught by them in my home, I am quite familiar with the Book of Mormon.
One of the names I particularly liked was Mahonri… and I prefer to use it as my handle.
@JLF9999: I’m hoping to find answers to what I believe are very serious separtion of church and state issues regarding a potential Mormon Presidency. When I’ve inquired in other blogs and commentaries, I’m typically shouted down with terms such as bigotry and intolerance. Yet, no one wants to try to answer the points I’m bringing up.
Perhaps there are more reasonable individuals on this blog.
lizzie on 30 Mar 2012 at 8:55 pm #
Hear Hear, Lee Allred.
I’m definitely thinking, It’s Hard to Be a Mormon in Public Life would be a far more true statement and compelling article than the one which Mr. Santorum penned.
It’s all the more galling to me in that Mr. Santorum is one of the ones trying to profit on how hard it is to be a Mormon in public life.
Too bad that he feels it’s so hard to be a Catholic.
I’m not too compassionate in his complaint.
David Steele on 31 Mar 2012 at 8:43 am #
@Mahonri – you must be fairly well acquainted with Mormonism to use that name. BTW – Mahonri is not in the Book of Mormon. He is just referred to as the ‘Brother of Jared’.
To Santorum – your op-ed piece reminded me of the Cheez-it commercial in that you are the not mature cheese. You are not ready to be a Cheez-it (President). I’ll not further expound upon those things, but point you to an important talk given by President Dallin H. Oaks at the Chapman University School of Law on February 4th, 2011 on Religious Freedom.
coltakashi on 31 Mar 2012 at 8:50 am #
@Mahonri– I would like to second John’s comment. He and his fellow bloggers have built Article6blog.com into one of the hubs in the internet on the issue of the relationship between politics and religion in America. And because the focus has been on the real world issue of how Americans have responded to the unusual fact that a Mormon, a member of a much maligned minority religion, has been a leading presidential candidate since 2007, the discussions are very concrete and vivid. If you enjoy thinking about how Article VI and the First Amendment play out in the real world of politics and religious organizations, this is a good starting point.
There is a lot of archived discussion here about Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech given in 2008 at the Bush presidential library. Some critics have complained that it did not give insight into the particulars of a Mormon Church view on the particulars of political issues, with the same depth and detail that many other churches have offered, from the American Conference of Catholic Bishops to politically active Baptist pastors like Jeffres.
But that is missing the point. There is no major Mormon political position. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not cpncealing its political agenda from the world: it HAS NO political agenda. Aside from rare instances when a particular policy proposal or law affects very basic principles of religious belief or practice, the Church is neither Republican nir Democrat, neither conservative no liberal. Its majority of members are not even residents of the USA, so those categories are not priorities for them.
The Mormon Church has no official policy on how to handle Iran, or the unemployment problem, or the mortgage crisis. Its leaders are fully engaged in meeting the needs of the members worldwide, and don’t have time to debate such issues.
The Mormons who have done the most thinking about foreign and domestic policy in the US are those who are engaged fulltime in them, namely Mormon politicians like Harry Reid and Mitt Romney. They are two Mormons in good standing (Reid was invited to speak to all the students at BYU a couple of years ago), but their diametric opposition on many major issues shows that being Mormon does not dictate where they come down in balancing the many factors that are at play in each policy decision. I know of no evidence that the Church has ever advised Reid how to vote or Romney how to govern in Massachusetts. And consider how a group of very conservative Tea Party affiliates in Utah deposed Senator Robert Bennett, even though he and his challenger were both from well known Mormon families. There is no hidden Mormon agenda in politics because there is no Mormon agenda.
The one unifying political goal of the Church is freedom to live one’s religion. That includes full support for the religious freedom of other churches and individuals. The Mormons do not seek government money nor government power in their support, or aid in competing with other churches. They do not offer their pulpits or bulletin boards or magazines or membership lists to any political party. The Mormons offer an identity as children of God the Father that transcends all national, ethnic, racial or political identities, that unites millions of people across all such boundaries. They teach that every human being, regardless of religion, is just as beloved by God as they are.
John Schroeder on 31 Mar 2012 at 3:45 pm #
@mahonri – it is never our desire here to “shout anyone down.” But we will name prejudice and bigotry when we see it. I do not make that accusation in regards to you, but I do want to define it so you will be aware of where the lines are around here.
Consider this – in the trial of an Islamic terrorist for murder, evidence of the teachings of Islam are likely to be excluded as “prejudicial.” It is considered legally prejudicial to suspect someone of a specific wrongdoing simply because they associate with others that have done such a wrong or even if they have done such a wrong in the past. In such a murder case, evidence may be brought about what the accused believes, but not what his religion believes. In other words, if you want to read the Koran in open court in such a trial you would have to bring evidence that the accused has specifically read and stated belief in the passage you choose to read – otherwise the reading would be prejudicial.
Bigotry arises when a prejudice is turned into action. So, if a juror in our trial reads the Koran on his/her own and votes the defendant guilty based on that reading, absent evidence that the defendant believes what the juror has read, then the juror is a bigot and has practiced bigotry.
Now. let’s apply this to the question of a Mormon running for president. To find a Mormon teaching and say it disqualifies a candidate for the presidency is prejudicial unless you cannot prove that the specific candidate in question believes that specific teaching. To then actively campaign against that candidate based on this teaching, when it is unsubstantiated that the candidate believes it moves your prejudice to the level of bigotry.
The most often quoted Mormon teaching from people who are concerned about church/state separation is the so-called “White Horse Prophecy.” If I start suspecting you of being concerned about that, then I too am being prejudicial. Just because statistically such would seem a reasonable assumption, there remains a significant probability I could be wrong. However, when people do bring it up they are similarly being prejudicial unless they can demonstrate that Mitt Romney believes that teaching and is in fact trying to fulfill it. Lowell and I both know Romney to some extent and some of his family pretty well – I am unaware of any such evidence.
Now, let’s apply this to this blog. Mormon teaching is often discussed in the comments. Our “Resources” page links to all sorts of places maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints where their teaching and doctrines can be extensively explored. However, we spend little time on the blog trying to dispel people’s suspicions about Romney because of one or the other Mormon teaching they have found – unless they can bring evidence that the teaching in question is specifically affecting Romney’s candidacy or governance – something no one has done to date – which means they really are prejudiced, as we have just defined it – and since they are usually trying to scold me not to vote for Romney, they make the bigotry standard as well.
Many protest, “How do we find out if we do not ask?” Let’s go back to our murder trial of an Islamic defendant. A prosecutor may not call the defendant to the stand and start asking him what he believes – unless he has first introduced sufficient evidence that the specific beliefs he is questioning about have played some role int he crime in question and the defendants life. Now, defendants often do not take the stand, but that is a 5th amendment thing – let’s assume the defendant in our case has waived his 5th amendment rights.
Now, with that background, there is nothing wrong with curiosity about Mormon teaching, but answering it is simply not something we do a lot of here on this blog. The purpose of this blog is not to teach the world what Mormons believe. Only one of us could even begin to do so because only one of us is a Mormon (Lowell.) Now, most of our readers and virtually all of our commenters are Mormon, and we try to maintain a loose hand on the comment approval buttons – so it does get done in our comments to some extent – but we have been known to shut that down too if it gets out of hand.
Doug King on 31 Mar 2012 at 9:14 pm #
Great comments everyone. I’d like to return to Santorum’s article. I think he missed the mark in denouncing separation of church and state. Separation is necessary to protect the rights of religious minorities from domination by the majority. If Santorum can think of a better model, he should describe it.
I often hear objections to Jefferson’s “wall of separation” phrase on grounds it came from a private letter and not the Constitution. But I find this irrelevant. The Supreme Court, per the Constitution, interprets the law. And the SCOTUS says church and state must be separate. Therefore, IMHO, separation is the law. Granted, I don’t like everything the court decides. (Who does?) But picking and choosing which SCOTUS rulings to obey or disobey is the same as making the court irrelevant. Is Santorum advocating civil disobedience here? And how can people who say they love the Constitution talk as if the court were irrelevant?
The problem as I see it is not that church and state are separate, but that the separation has forced the church to retreat from the public square as the government’s role has expanded over time. Santorum should not attack separation but the expanding heavy-handed, presence of government in education, parks, hospitals, insurance, mortgages, business, industry, etc. Moreover, as the Limbaugh-Fluke controversy showed, certain people want Big Government to subsidize secular life-styles.
Santorum said it’s hard to be a Catholic in America. I’m sure he is right; I suppose it’s hard to be a good person of any faith in America. (It’s certainly not easy being Mormon; especially if your name is Mitt Romney.)
I admire Santorum’s passion. His heart seems to be in the right place, but he’s becoming a Don Quixote character who tilts at windmills.
tobekc on 01 Apr 2012 at 8:02 am #
To me the most striking point in Santorum’s article is the “poor me” whining again, “It’s tough to be a Catholic). The worst thing about a Santoum presidency (which will never happen thankfully) would be four more years of blaming someone else for all the failing of his administration. Grow up Rick, and take some responsibility for your own decisions.
coltakashi on 01 Apr 2012 at 8:03 am #
Speaking as an attorney, Senator Santorum’s specific critique of the Supreme Court’s use of Jefferson’s metaphor, which has largely replaced addressing the actual words in the First Amendment, is actually the strongest part of his essay. The Court’s reliance of the metaphor rather than the actual terms and contextual history of the Constitution has produced an incoherent body of precedent that provides little guidance to citizens or government officers apart from specific cases. An example is the ruling that a monument displaying the Ten Commandments on public land may or may not be constitutional, depending on contextual factors that have nothing to do with the content of the Commandments or the public ownership of the plaque on which they are displayed. This, from a Supreme Court whose own building displays Moses and references to the Ten Commandments because of their seminal role in the concept of law in western civilization descended from Christian Europe.
Justice Clarence Thomas has called in a number of separate opinions, whether concurring or dissenting in a particular case, for the Court to do a reset of its interpretation of the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment. The first thing it needs to do is jetison the Jefferson metaphor, which was a rhetorical flourish, not written as a prescriptive limit which would overrule the actions of Federal, state and local governments for hundreds of years into the future.
The second requires recognizing the true history and meaning of the Establishment clause, which was intended not only to prevent the new Federal government from picking officially sponsored churches, but also to prevent it from interfering with the existing state established churches which still existed in half the states, and which continued to operate for decades before all the states finally dissolved state sponsorship. The notion that a clause which was meant to preserve state support for religion could be inverted to stamp out anything resembling state support for religion has few parallels in its irony and hypocrisy (although the perversion of laws intended to establish racial equality into creation of racially selective use of government power is the other contender).
Third, much of the irrationality and lack of consistency in the Court’s religion decisions have been due toa hypertechnical focus on the Establishment clause as a stand alone entity, rather than reconciling it with the Free Exercise clause, and specifically failing to adopt as an interpretive guide the obvious fact that the Free Exercise of Religion clause is the primary value, and the Establishment clause is merely instrumental in support of Free Exercise. That erroneous emphasis has led to limitations on religious expression that not only infringe on religious freedom, but also on Free Speech rights. The Court has obsessed about the coercive effect of government religious expression on elementary school children, and then carried it over to assume that persons graduating high school are going to be unduly influenced by a prayer at the high school graduation ceremony which marks their passage into adulthood and independence, and then that an adult atheist is being intimidated by seeing religious displays on public property, or the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, even though it is a direct quote from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Surely the Consitution cannot be interpreted to prevent Congress from adopting once again the invocation of divine sanction that begins and ends the Declaration of Independence which established our nation. Yet the Establishment Clause cases would do precisely that.
Phil T. on 02 Apr 2012 at 5:53 am #
One statement that highlights a big inconsistency Senator Santorum has is, “Our founders’ vision, unlike the French, was to give every belief and every believer and non-believer a place at the table in the public square. Madison referred to this “equal and complete liberty” as the “true remedy.” Admittedly our country hadn’t always lived up to that ideal — in particular with respect to Jews and Catholics, thus the legitimate reason for Kennedy’s speech.”
Senator Santorum’s failure to count the Mormons as being denied a place at the table in the public square is quite surprising given their history of being religious refugees who fled the land of religious liberty in the mid-1800′s. I makes me think he’s agenda driven. Given that he has never denounced the evangelicals who would not let the LDS be full participants in National Day of Prayer gatherings it’s not likely he will reject the support of those evangelicals that oppose the LDS any time soon.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/595060930/Prayers-without-LDS-hit-a-nerve.html
http://www.article6blog.com/?s=dobson+national+day+of+prayer
Senator Santorum also displays his leadership style in his op-ed.
Adhering to the precepts of a religion with the power to save us eternally can also sustain us through the storms of life if we humbly draw on the powers of heaven for solutions. Some who have felt they were led to solutions to their problems through divine intervention might question if Senator Santorum has fallen short in his analysis by not concluding that it is worth being Catholic because he knows where to go for guidance to weather the storms of life.
At the conclusion of the Declaration of Independence, they wrote, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Had Senator Santorum in some way made reference to, “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” I would not be writing this comment.
If we go through life really relying on God, we come to know failure is not an option and fully expect something is going to come to pass that we’ll be thrilled with.
This engenders optimism which is an essential trait of a successful leader.
Doug King on 02 Apr 2012 at 9:29 pm #
I always enjoy Coltakashi’s thoughtful and informative comments, but I disagree with him regarding separation of church and state @15.
I’m neither attorney nor scholar, but I don’t see how we can enjoy full religious freedom without separation from government as suggested by Jefferson’s “wall” analogy. Remove that wall, and politicians will start dictating religious correctness. In addition, religious clerics will start dictating government policy. Both are unconscionable.
The First Amendment unites us because it’s language is universal. It does not speak of Baptists, Jews, Catholics, or Mormons but of rights of all Americans. Among those who criticize the separation principle are the Christian Nation crowd whose agenda is having “true Christians” run the national government. This is flat wrong because it betrays First Amendment ideals. (Wasn’t King George III a true Christian?) Any American who applies a religious litmus test in an election has a very different vision for this country than me.
There are many values I share with the Christian right. I am staunchly pro-life, for example. I believe in traditional marriage. But we’ve got to fight those battles with persuasion, not political coercion. If religious conservatives emphasized charity far more than winning elections, their influence would grow significantly.
I acknowledge that good people may disagree on these issues. But as a Mormon who belongs to a religious minority, I believe in the absolute separation of church and state.