Do Religious Views of Candidates for Public Office Matter?
Separation of church and state is a fundamental constitutional principle of our Republic. Our founders intended that the spheres of religion and government not impinge on one another. We expect our leaders, presidential candidates included, to affirm and be guided by that important Constitutional principle. We rightly insist that commitment to the separation of church and state means that public officials may pray or read their scriptures privately but not in public forums or in staff meetings and that they may attend the church of their choice or attend no church as they choose, but we also insist that they not attempt to impose their personal religious views on the rest of their fellow citizens.
The specific question being asked by pundits and citizens in the current political campaign is whether Mitt Romney's Mormonism or Mike Huckabee's fundamentalist protestantism should have any bearing on their candidacy for the Presidency. Regrettably much of the public discussion of this issue has been silly, misguided and unhelpful. In our great nation there is no religious test for public office: a candidate's religion does not qualify him for office and a lack of religion does not disqualify him or her. Some have argued that religion is purely a private matter and that it is prejudicial or bigoted to suggest that a candidate's religious views should be a consideration in the election. Unfortunately it is not that simple.
The assumption that our elected leaders' religious views are irrelevant is premised on the assumption that those religious views (or lack thereof) will remain private and will have no bearing on public policy. For most of our history our public officials have understood that our pluralistic society cannot remain free and democratic unless the fundamental principles of pluralism, including respect and tolerance for the views of others, are understood as fundamental to a free society and agreed to by our public officials. A candidate's religious views are not relevant and should not be considered so long as it is clear that the candidate's religious beliefs will not affect his or her policies and decisions.
That essential distinction between private views and public policy was the issue to which President Kennedy responded when he publicly committed that his Roman Catholic religion would have no bearing on his presidential actions, that in his public role he would not be a Catholic president but an American president, that the policies and positions of the Catholic Church would not guide his administration or dictate public policy, that he drew a clear line of demarcation between his personal beliefs and his public duty to act in accordance with American policy, not church policy.
The question we have a right to ask with respect to candidates for public office is whether their religious beliefs will have any bearing on their decisions and actions with respect to public policy issues, in short, (a) will they attempt to impose their religious and moral views on the rest of us, and (b) do they have a religious world view that might adversely impact public policy or that would inhibit their ability to lead a modern Western power in the technologically sophisticated 21st century?
I grew up as a Southern Baptist in the 1940s and 50s. In those days we had some highly moralistic clergy that railed against dancing, playing cards, attending movie theaters, wearing makeup, etc., arguing that these were sinful behaviors in which Christians should not engage. However these preachers did not seek to shut down movie theaters or criminalize dancing; they taught that the Christian should abstain from those behaviors that [they believed] were sinful. The same standard should apply now to behaviors that some of our citizens believe are immoral or wrong but that others believe for equally valid reasons are not wrongful.
Whether or not a candidate believes for religious reasons that drinking alcohol, or participating in war, working on the sabbath, having an abortion, having an affair, engaging in homosexual conduct, not wearing a veil in public, gambling, or whatever else is morally wrong, we expect our public leaders will accept these as personal standards of behavior for themselves but will not attempt to prohibit such behavior for everyone or compel others to act in accord with their particular view of morality. That is what is required in a pluralistic democracy.
So we come back to the question of whether the religion of Mr. Romney or Mr. Huckabee is relevant to their candidacy for office, and frankly based on their ambiguous statements so far about the role of religion in public life, their misunderstanding of the separate roles of religion and public policy, and their obvious catering to the extreme views of the "religious right," we are doubtful that either of them is able to separate his personal religious views from his public positions, goals and priorities.
Mitt Romney's current positions are inconsistent with his past record and his sincerity has been questioned by some religious conservatives, so I do not know how or whether his secretive Mormon religious views might impact his decisions as president. It is difficult to see how an educated person could hold some of the views that are basic to Mormon belief, and we have yet to see him discuss his views as they might affect public policy under his presidency. Moreover he revealed his appallingly deficient understanding of our early American history in his mis-characterization of the beliefs of our founding fathers in a campaign speech in Texas, when he said that our early leaders sought to put the stamp of Christianity on our government. Just the opposite is true, as was pointed out in a New York Times editorial on Sunday, December 9, that was widely reprinted in other papers. So we have some justification for being suspicious of Mitt Romney.
Some religious views are irrelevant to public policy. For example, whether or not Mike Huckabee believes in a literal heaven and hell, or whether Mitt Romney believes in the Mormon doctrine of multiple levels in the afterlife, or whether Ted Kennedy believes in the Catholic concept of Purgatory, don't appear to have public policy implications, and while they may be strange ideas to us they are not likely to affect public policy decisions one way or another. However, despite his likable personality, Mike Huckabee's religious views are clear and troublesome, and the more troublesome they seem as we hear more about them, not just because he has declined to say whether he will seek to impose his personal views of morality through governmental policies and priorities, but also because his biblical literalism with its medieval pre-scientific world view is out of step with everything we know about our world. It is worrisome to hear Huckabee the candidate attribute his surge in the Iowa polls to Christian prayers and to contemplate the audaciousness of his arrogant claim to be God's chosen candidate to lead this nation. We are not electing a Bishop of a theocracy, we are electing a president of our secular nation; and in any event we have had our fill of arrogant overly-certain self-appointed representatives of God in our White House. We need someone in that office with a bit more humility.
It scares me to think of the possibility that the man occupying the Oval Office thinks the world is only 6000 years old, that evolution is “only” a theory, that Israel is entitled by divine right to occupy Palestinian lands, that praying to the Christian deity has an impact on world events, that the Christian god determines the winners and losers in this world, that most of the inhabitants of our world (the non-Christians) are damned to eternal hell, that the world will end in cosmic cataclysm. Do any of us really want someone with those views with his finger on the nuclear trigger? Or affecting educational, medical and scientific policy? Or providing leadership of the free world?
Yes, folks, the religious views of a candidate matter absent a clear and unambiguous commitment to respect the rights and the values of all Americans, to respect the demarcation between Church and State, to keep religious views out of the White House and the halls of government, and to refrain from attempting to criminalize behavior that is deemed to be wrong only by some religious groups.