Religious Test: How Important Is A Candidate’s (Family) Faith?
“I am not the Catholic candidate for president, but the candidate who happens also to be a Catholic.”
Religious affiliation conveys information about a person – but only so much. It is, at best, a shaky guide for judging political candidates.
Nevertheless, the media and some segments of the electorate seem to obsess over the religious views of candidates. Two recent examples come to mind.
The Associated Press reports that Republican Mitt Romney’s great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather practiced polygamy. The practice, says the AP, “was not just a footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon President.”
This wouldn’t have been unusual for Mormons living in the nineteenth century. Mormons once endorsed plural marriage but dropped the practice before the turn of the last century. Only renegade ultra-fundamentalist Mormons today engage in polygamy and Romney isn’t one of them.
At the same time, Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Barack Obama is dealing with claims that his father, who abandoned him when he was 2 years old, was Muslim. An online right-wing magazine called Insight went so far as to accuse Obama of concealing his Muslim heritage. Obama, the magazine said, “spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary in Indonesia. He was a Muslim, but he concealed it.” In fact, the school was secular, but religiously diverse.
In defending himself, Obama pointed out that his stepfather, who raised him, was skeptical of religion and that his family now belongs to the United Church of Christ (UCC). Some on the far right then attacked him for that, labeling the UCC as too liberal.
It is going to be a long campaign, and it’s best to lay down some ground rules about candidates and religion. Americans can and should ask candidates how they would run the country. Where, when and how they worship should be of less interest.
Here’s one reason why: Attempts to pigeonhole a candidate by his or her religious affiliation are often not useful. Former president Bill Clinton is a Southern Baptist but never adopted the far-right views on social issues that the Southern Baptist Convention pushes today. Romney was once pro-choice on abortion and wooed gay voters by vowing to be more gay friendly than U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy – views that most Mormons would reject.
If you want to know where a candidate stands on an issue, ask him or her. Don’t assume the candidate’s religious affiliation will give you the answer. The Roman Catholic Church opposes abortion in all instances, including cases of rape and incest. Few Catholic office-holders take such a hard line; many are pro-choice.
President John F. Kennedy handled this issue well. Confronted by charges that he would take orders from the Catholic Church if elected, Kennedy set the record straight. In a famous 1960 speech he said, “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.”
Concluded Kennedy, “I am not the Catholic candidate for president, but the candidate who happens also to be a Catholic.”
By all means, find out where the candidates stand on the issues that concern you. But don’t obsess over their church-going habits. As for where and how their great-grandfathers worshiped, it’s beyond irrelevant.