Carolina Inquisition: Presidential Hopeful Romney Faces Grilling About Religion
Are we in the middle of a race for the White House or The Inquisition?
According to the Associated Press, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has been campaigning for the Republican nomination in South Carolina. This week, Romney, a Mormon, attended the House Republican caucus there. The AP says that caucus sessions always begin with a Bible verse and a prayer in Christ’s name, led by Republican state Rep. Bob Leach.
The news service reports, “Leach told caucus members he asked Romney who Jesus Christ was, and Romney responded that Christ ‘was his personal savior.’ Leach said that was good enough to earn his vote.”
But the AP also reported that other elected officials were a little less persuaded.
Said State Rep. Gloria Haskins (R-Greenville Co.), “I don’t think that I could see someone who is a member of a faith so contrary to my faith having my support.” (Haskins is a graduate of the notoriously intolerant Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian school best known for banning interracial dating until quite recently.)
This theological grilling of Romney sounds like 1960 all over again. Back then, John F. Kennedy faced similar questioning about his Roman Catholicism. When asked his views on religion and politics, he answered simply, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference — and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”
That was good enough for a majority of Americans, and Kennedy won that election. It ought to be good enough for Americans today.
Voters ought to ask Romney where he stands on the war in Iraq, the economy, reproductive rights or any other political issue. They should ask him whether he will uphold the U.S. Constitution, with its separation of church and state. They could even ask him how his beliefs about religion might affect his policy-making. But questions about his personal religious affiliation — such as those in South Carolina — seem based more in bigotry than fairness.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution certainly didn’t intend for religious affiliation to be a bar to service in public office. Article VI says bluntly, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
Ironically, Article VI was the work of Charles Pinckney, a South Carolina delegate to the Constitutional Convention. If only public officeholders in South Carolina understood religious liberty and church-state separation today!