Mitt Romney's Speech

JB

The audience for Mitt Romney's speech on faith in politics was Christian conservatives in the upcoming Republican primaries, and hardly anybody else. As if on cue, Hugh Hewitt immediately pronounced the speech as "simply magnificent, and anyone who denies it is not to be trusted as an analyst."

Although this may lose any remaining respect Hugh has for my opinions, I beg to differ. The speech is chock full of (how can I put this delicately?) rhetorical tensions. On the one hand, "[A] presidential candidate [should not have to] describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution." On the other hand, two paragraphs later Romney emphasizes that "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind." Having announced that it would be wrong to go into details about his beliefs, why does he emphasize that one single issue, an issue which separates his beliefs from many religions, but says nothing that might separate him from conservative Christians? Why does he rush to emphasize Jesus's divinity but not other aspects of Mormonism that are just as important and perhaps more distinctive? The answer is that despite his statements to the contrary, he knows there is a religious test for public office, and the people grading the exams are the Republican base.

Again, on the one hand, "A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith." On the other hand, "[f]reedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom," and "We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. . . .Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'" These remarks strongly identify Americans and Americanism with belief in God. Romney does nothing to suggest otherwise. Indeed, his central point is that the religious share "a common creed of moral convictions." Note carefully his list of religions that form this common creed, all Western and monotheist:

"I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life's blessings.

"It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people."

What of Hinduism and Buddhism, which are growing in size in the United States and now outpace many Christian denominations? And what of the irreligious, the agnostic and atheist? Do they share a common creed? Do they share the distinctively American values that Romney celebrates?

Romney's speech is no masterpiece. It is as different from John F. Kennedy's famous speech in Dallas as night is from day. It is not a call for religious tolerance, unless tolerance means scrambling to identify yourself with majority religions and lumping together every other belief system as alien to American values and outside the "common creed of moral convictions" that all true Americans share. It is a little like a 1960s black civil rights leader arguing for racial tolerance by emphasizing how light skinned he was.

And it is not a plea that there should be no religious test for public office in the United States. Rather, it is a carefully contrived pander to conservative Christians in the Republican base who have a religious test for public office.

At one point in his speech, Romney says, without a hint of irony, that "Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world." Time will tell if that prophecy is true of Mitt Romney.
Posted 5:17 PM by JB [link]