Romney, Religion, and the Speech

If you follow the presidential election campaign it would be hard not to know that Mitt Romney gave a speech today about religion. It would be almost as hard not to know that John F. Kennedy gave a (some would say) similar speech on September 12, 1960. You probably know that they both gave their speech in Texas.

Why Texas? The Romney campaign is trying to win Iowa. So why not give the speech in Iowa. My guess is that Texas was chosen as a way of increasing the number of parallels that could be drawn between the two Massachusetts politicians, Romney and Kennedy.

Both men are from the same state. Except that Kennedy was born and raised in Massachusetts and Romney is from Michigan and moved to Massachusetts at the age of 24 to attend Harvard. If Harvard had been in Providence, Romney might have ended up as governor of Rhode Island.

Both men ran for president. The candidacy of both men faced or faces opposition because of their religion. Both men gave a speech about religion, in Texas.

The parallels end there. However much Romney would like to acquire some sort of "glory by association" from President Kennedy on this issue, Mitt did not give the Kennedy speech - not by a long shot...

As a small example, take this quote from the John F. Kennedy's speech:

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind...

Romney seems to agree with the pragmatic issue of the Kennedy speech. Romeny said this: "A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith." But compare Kennedy's larger vision to Romney's speech:

There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator...

As Romney's philosophy on the relationship between religion and government is fleshed out he makes the statement that "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." For Kennedy, we are free and we have religion; the two do not need to be connected. For Romney, it seems as though we are free because we have religion and we keep our religion because we are free. Many in the Republican Party would agree with him.

The most insightful quote from Romney's speech is this: "It's important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions." Emphasis added. Romney is talking to churches and their members; he is trying to associate himself with the Religious Right by reassuring them that he shares their values even if their theologies differ on minor details (like the incarnation or the nature of God.)

Kennedy sought to decrease the influence of religion in politics; Romney wants to promote it. It's just that, with the people who are already doing that Mitt has to convince them that he's one of them. I doubt he accomplished that.

Mitt Romney did prove a couple of things today. He proved he can give a great speech. And he proved that he is not JFK.

In a Moment of Insanity, Romney Makes Religion an Issue

It can't end well for Candidate Romney, but Mitt has decided to talk about his religion - kind of...

A quote from the Associated Press muddies things up a little:

Romney said Monday his speech will not focus on the tenets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the formal name for his Utah-based faith. But he's hoping his willingness to discuss religion openly, and put his wife and sons on stage with him, will convince critical evangelical Christians he's worthy of their support in the approaching Iowa caucuses and later Southern contests across the Bible Belt.

That makes it sound like he will talk about some aspects of his religion, but not others. That process, I suspect, will make it seem like he's hiding something. And that impression will make the Mormon faith seem more (not less) mysterious to lay Evangelicals in the GOP...

The political situation is fairly simple. Romney wants to win Iowa. He wants to be considered the GOP frontrunner going into New Hampshire and South Carolina. Until recently it was a Romney-Giuliani race, a scenario that made Romney look conservative.

Romney and Giuliani beat each other up so badly in the last GOP debate that one commentator said that they had each achieved their goal of discrediting the other. And in the meantime, Iowa Republicans discovered Mike Huckabee...

Huckabee is a former Arkansas governor and an ordained Baptist minister who seems to recently have become the conservative Christian candidate that the rural Bible Belt has been looking for over the course of the last year. Romney has courted the GOP's Religious Right extensively but has never been able to close the deal. He's spent $7 million in Iowa. That's about 22 times what Huckabee has spent. And now Huckabee leads by a few points even though a short three months ago he was considered something of a vanity candidate who could never actually win.

As the Christians of Bible Belt America gather to listen, what can Romney possible say on the subject of religion that he thinks they will enjoy hearing.

• Will he say that he has lived a good life without drinking or smoke or getting divorced? They will think that he lacks an understanding of concept that human beings are sinful creatures who please God only by accepting His grace. And they'll be right; Mormons believe that Jesus came to set an example, not to make an atonement for sin.
  

• Will he say that he believes in Jesus? I doubt he'll be that folksy in his choice of words. But if he were to say that, to say something along the lines of "Hey, we both believe in Jesus!" to an audience of conservative Christians, most of them would know that he meant something different than what they do by that statement.
  

• Will he talk about the Mormom Church's view of Protestants and Catholics? The Mormons teach that other forms of Christianity are apostate, that true Christianity died out centuries ago and was revived only with the Angel Moroni reveal the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith. I'm guessing Romney won't discuss his church's position on that issue - at least not voluntarily.

The central issues of Christianity were defined early in Church history. Heretics were thrown out of the Church for teaching incorrect views of the nature of Jesus. It is correct to say that he was the Son of God. Mormons can, I believe, make that statement. But that statement, however correct, is insufficient; to be Christian one must go the whole nine yards and insist that Jesus is God, the Son. Not a god, but the absolute and only God, a unique Being. Mormons can't say that.

Heretics were also thrown out of the Church for arguing that God accepted individuals because they tried hard and lived right. In sections of the Bible like Galatians, Christian belief is based on faith in what Jesus did - not the hope that we can be good enough to make God happy. But Mormonism is a religion of good works, not faith.

At the end of the day, Christian leaders will be polite. They'll all shake hands. Some of the more politically oriented will embrace Romney as perhaps being the candidate that can free up the stalemate on abortion or roll back the clock on civil unions and gay marriage. But the laypeople of the Evangelical churches in Tennessee and Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama are going to sit around and try to remember what they were told about Mormon's in Sunday School.

And here's that message, from the pen of Josh McDowell - the poster boy in the minds of Evangelicals for telling true Christian beliefs from heresy and cult theology:

The Mormon doctrine of God is contradictory to what the Bible teaches. The Mormons believe in many gods and teach that God himself was once a man. Moreover, Mormon doctrine teaches that Mormon males have the possibility of attaining godhood.

My point is that you don't have to be either a Mormon or an Evangelical Christian to see how this will end. There's not an endorsement that Romney can get that will make the average Baptist churchgoers in the Midwest or Southeast feel like "Oh, well, he is one of us..." And the discussion coming up on Thursday will only make Romney's target audience more aware of their differences, and make them like Huckabee more...

The bad judgment involved in making religion more of an issue in the campaign may by itself be enough to disqualify Romney from being President in the minds of many.

Election 2008 and the Evangelical Dilemma

The Christian Right (Religious Right, whatever you want to call them) faces a dilemma at the moment and I'm not sure they even see it...

In 1979 when Rev. Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. founded the Moral Majority, the Christian Right in America entered a golden era of political influence. Leaders like Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson (to name just a few) wanted to bring America back to God, and wanted government to reflect the values of the Bible.

The most heated issue on the Evangelical plate is abortion. Sure, they're against gay marriage, have strong views on educational issues (like prayer in school, vouchers, the teaching of evolution, etc), and want to see God incorporated more into government with things like the posting of the Ten Commandments in courthouses. But abortion is THE issue.

The dilemma they have is that Democrats (like me) all belong to a party that supports a woman's "right" to choose to have an abortion. That's the consensus of the Democratic Party. there are individual party members (like me) who don't believe in abortion; but the Party does. So the Religious Right can't support a Democrat. But none of the Republicans this go around are particularly interested in religion. Economics, yes; religion, no. Except for one: Mitt Romney.

I said that I don't think the Christian Right see their dilemma. What I mean is that the Christian Right thinks that their dilemma is that they don't have a really good candidate to support. Rudy Giuliani is leading in most of the national polls among GOP candidates. But he's not very strong on abortion (and he's been divorced umpteen times). I think their dilemma is that they could end up embracing Romney as a candidate. Romney is leading at the moment in Iowa and New Hampshire; if he wins those races he could gain a lot of momentum...

Don't misunderstand me. This is analytical, not emotional. I don't have a problem with Mormons. But if the idea originally was to take America back to God, the Christian Right ought to be skeptical about the whether a Mormon doing that. Why? Without making this a profoundly theological discussion,

• Christians (especially members of the Christian Right) believe that Jesus Christ was God Incarnate (made into a human being); Mormons don't.
  
• Christian believe that Jesus died to rescue us from a hopeless bondage to sin; Mormons don't. Mormons believe he came to live a good life, teach, and set an example for us to follow.
  
• Christians believe that we get to Heaven by having faith in Jesus and trusting in the fact that he died for our sins; Mormons believe that we get to Heaven by being good (an error that half the books in the New Testament, particularly Galatians and Hebrews, were written to refute).
  

Mormons aren't Christians. Mormons find this statement offensive. Unapologetically, I regret that. But in years (centuries) past those who believed as Romney does would have been called heretics.

The dilemma for the Christian Right? Do they embrace a heretic who is against gay marriage and shares a few other political goals with them, or do they embrace someone they disagree with but who at least pays lip service to the fundamental truths of Christianity, or do they stay home on election day?

The irony, if they end up endorsing Romney, is that he's not that strong on abortion...