{"id":1015,"date":"2007-07-04T04:29:06","date_gmt":"2007-07-04T10:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/07\/04\/1015\/"},"modified":"2007-07-03T15:39:39","modified_gmt":"2007-07-03T21:39:39","slug":"1015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1015","title":{"rendered":"Faith Matters. Among Many Other Things."},"content":{"rendered":"

In North Dakota, the Missouri River is sort of the eastern edge of the zone of heavy Mormon settlement.\u00a0 As you go west from Bismark, you start to meet Mormons, and then see tabernacles, and then as you get into southern Idaho and southwestern Montana\u00a0 you start to see big <\/em>tabernacles…at any rate, I grew up around more than a few Mormons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of my best friends in college was, as it happens, a pretty devout Mormon, the oldest of 12 children, plus four adoptees.\u00a0 And they found room to take in an exchange student and the occasional foster kid.\u00a0 They were great people, who lived by a code that, in some ways, I find admirable; their goal of self-sufficiency, especially in emergencies, I find in particular laudable and worthy of emulating.\u00a0 But while my friendship (with my pal from college among others) and my admiration for certain aspects of Mormon secular practice are very genuine, so were my doubts (to put it mildly) about the Mormon faith.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That being said, I never said anything.\u00a0 Tact is a good thing.\u00a0\u00a0My pal was a great person (still is), and\u00a0he never tried to convert me (fat chance!), and the overriding fact was that he was a good guy and a good friend. \u00a0<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Chad the Elder quoted Richard John Neuhaus<\/a> on the subject of the faith-based reasons to look closely at Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith.<\/p>\n

For millions of other Americans, the<\/em> [question of Romney’s Mormonism does] not matter. And for those for whom they do matter, they are not the only questions that matter. Mr. Romney is a very attractive candidate in both substance and style. As in most decisions, and not least of all in voting, the question comes down to what or who is the alternative. We will not have an answer to that question for some months. But I can now register a respectful disagreement with John Fund when he writes, “We will be a better country if even people who don’t support Mr. Romney for president come to recognize that our country is better off if his candidacy rises or falls on factors that have nothing to do with his faith.” On the contrary, we are a better country because many Americans do take their faith, and the faith of others, very seriously indeed. Also when it comes to voting. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Neuhaus swerves into, through and past a good point; we are a stronger country because of the pervasiveness of faith and its presence in the national dialogue.\u00a0 Faith counts in this country, thank goodness.<\/p>\n

But Fr. Neuhaus then tries to have his communion wafer and eat it too:<\/p>\n

Does this line of argument mean that anti-Catholicism should have prevented the election of JFK? No. Anti-Catholicism is, in my judgment, an unreasonable prejudice. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, I\u00a0tend to agree.\u00a0 However, that\u00a0agreement would get\u00a0tossed out the window (or smothered) if we were to elect a Catholic president who used his office as a bully pulpit to\u00a0proselytize Roman Catholic doctrine worldwide and\u00a0expand Vatican power.\u00a0 Wouldn’t it?<\/p>\n

An absurd example, right?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sure.\u00a0 Because although that was what the anti-Catholic meme of the day purported to fear (and it was a meme that helped scupper Al Smith’s presidential bid\u00a0in 1928), JFK governed not as a Catholic President, but as a President who happened to be Catholic.\u00a0 Just as Ronald Reagan<\/a>, Dwight Eisenhower<\/a> and Woodrow Wilson<\/a> governed as Presidents who were Presbyterian, and didn’t spend their terms spreading Knoxian doctine via their office (as much as this country could use it).<\/p>\n

Which is how a President, whatever his\/her faith, is supposed to act in office.\u00a0 One wouldn’t think twice about a mainstream Christian candidate’s faith (lefty paranoia about conservative Christianity aside) because of worries about their intentions to use their position to benefit the faith, whether they were Baptist, Episcopalian, Catholic, or Presbyterian.\u00a0 Beyond that, I recall no worries about Joe Lierberman’s hidden effort to Judaify America.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So Romney is different how?<\/p>\n

Others, of course, will disagree, but not enough others to prevent the election of a Catholic president. Anxiety about the strengthening of Mormonism by virtue of there being a Mormon president is not unreasonable. One may or may not share that anxiety, but it is not unreasonable.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But how – Neuhaus’ statement aside – is it any less reasonable than that same fear, held by many Americans before we took the great leap into the theological unknown in 1960?\u00a0<\/p>\n

What evidence is there that a Romney presidency would benefit Mormonism any more than Kennedy’s benefitted Catholicism – or that either of those were a bad thing?<\/p>\n

For the millions of citizens who do take religion so very seriously, the fact that Mr. Romney is a Mormon may not be the determinative factor, but it will be a factor, and, for many, an important factor.<\/em>Well, he’s got that part right.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Will it be an important factor for the right reasons?<\/p>\n

Chad the Elder picks up the narrative<\/p>\n

Neuhaus articulates (much better than I ever could) a view that I share on this matter. The notion that voters should never take a candidate’s religious faith into account when deciding how they’re going to pull the lever is unrealistic and smacks of the sort of relativism that has tried to convince us that all cultures are equally valid and that it’s not possible to judge them on their individual merits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except that that’s an unrealistically (to me) absolutist view of the question.\u00a0 Of course <\/em>a candidate’s religious faith is an important factor in\u00a0 my vote.\u00a0Most important, to me, is that they are <\/em>a person of faith – which one is secondary – whose faith forms and informs them as people, and helps guide their actions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you can’t take Romney’s Mormonism into consideration, then what happens when a Scientologist runs for office? How about a Wiccan? I’m not trying to make a direct comparison between the LDS and either of them, but the idea that we can’t use a candidate’s religion–no matter what it is–as a basis for evaluating whether they are the best choice for office will lead you right down that path to religious relativism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So here’s a question:\u00a0 what if, in 2008, the race ends up being one between the Mormon Romney and, say, Hillary Clinton, who’d seem to be as dilatory a Methodist\/Southern Baptist has we’ve seen?\u00a0 What would Neuhaus suggest; vote for the good of the nation at the expense (whatever that means to you) of hypothetically building a stronger Mormon church?\u00a0 Or dooming this nation but keeping Rome<\/strike> Salt Lake City at bay?<\/p>\n

Further out:\u00a0 Let’s say in 2012 the race is between a Wiccan,\u00a0moderate Moslem or even an atheist\u00a0with impeccable <\/em>conservative credentials and a strong record of personal integrity, and a pro-death, pro-surrender, pro-tax, pro-Castro, pro-weasel\u00a0Catholic (who doesn’t happen to be John Kerry, althought he’d fit the bill)?\u00a0 What then?<\/p>\n

Faith?\u00a0 Or politics?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In North Dakota, the Missouri River is sort of the eastern edge of the zone of heavy Mormon settlement.\u00a0 As you go west from Bismark, you start to meet Mormons, and then see tabernacles, and then as you get into southern Idaho and southwestern Montana\u00a0 you start to see big tabernacles…at any rate, I grew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faiths-and-their-followers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}