| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"buckeye" |
| Date: |
16 Dec 2007 04:03:40 AM |
| Object: |
Mitt the Mormon’s twisted idea of freedom |
Mitt the Mormon’s twisted idea of freedom
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article3021127.ece
Andrew Sullivan
In Mitt Romney’s carefully choreographed, partly self-financed and
meticulously planned campaign for president, last week’s speech was
premature. He always intended to give a speech at some point, addressing
the fact of a Mormon running for president. But he assumed he’d give that
speech after his nomination by the Republicans, pitching a general and
uplifting message to all Americans about the need for religious liberty and
pluralism.
The only reason he gave the speech last week is that he felt he had no
choice. In Iowa, a critical state for his momentum-based candidacy, he was
slipping into second place. The insurgent, Baptist minister Mike Huckabee,
was subtly appealing to the overwhelmingly fundamentalist Christian voters
of the Republican base. Hucka-bee ran a disgraceful ad touting himself as a
“Christian leader”, “defined” by his faith. And the pool of votes Romney
had been banking on began to shift rapidly away from him.
And so the speech itself, entitled Faith in America, had to be a little
different. It was not in the end a call to American pluralism. It was a
rallying cry to all believers to wrestle the public culture of the United
States away from nonbelievers. It was a pitch designed to say that whatever
doctrinal differences Mormons have with mainstream Christians, they are
trivial compared with the war against secularism.
So we were told, rather baldly: “Freedom requires religion just as religion
requires freedom . . . Freedom and religion endure together or perish
alone.” Of course freedom and religion can go together. But freedom
requires religion? There are many free, secular societies where this
doesn’t seem an exhaustive explanation. And while freedom of conscience can
indeed be defended by religious doctrine – just read your John Locke or
Second Vatican Council – it has also in history been persecuted and
repressed by religion. Why were Locke and the second council even
necessary?
And then you noticed that Romney’s embrace of pluralism does not actually
include atheists or agnostics or those with no faith at all. This was not a
minor oversight. In fact those who want to preserve a secular hue to public
debates were given no quarter: “It is as if they are intent on establishing
a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.”
Romney, moreover, explicitly stated a core religious doctrine of his:
“There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I
believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God
and the saviour of mankind.” If his point were to say that it is irrelevant
what your religion is when you run for president, merely that you have a
religion, then why this explicit statement? It tells his audience that he
is not a Jew or a Muslim.
In his famous 1960 speech to the Houston ministers, John F Kennedy issued
no such theological credo. And the explanation for Romney’s doing so is
pretty simple: he wants the political benefit of being a Christian without
the political cost of being a Mormon “Christian”. The speech was therefore
a purely political manoeuvre, as is almost everything that comes out of
Romney’s mouth. In order for a Mormon to win over the Christian right, he
has to unite with them against a common foe: the religion of secularism.
To do that, he needs to have a broad public embrace of Christ, but not of
the actual doctrines of his own church. Recall that Romney is not just a
Mormon but has served as a bishop, and for nine years was a stake president
– a position of considerable authority and power within his denomination.
He knows the doctrines as well as anyone, but he will only explain that
part of them that reassures the Christian right.
Will they be reassured? That remains to be seen. By touting active faith as
the prerequisite for American public life, Romney appeals to those who see
religion primarily as a benign force in American culture. He effectively
says to the Christianist right: I’m with you on abortion (even though he
long wasn’t), on gay rights (even though he once claimed he’d be more
pro-gay in the Senate than Ted Kennedy) and in favour of appointing
justices who would get out of the way of Christian majoritarianism. So
forget about our theological differences. What matters is that someone
believes in something and advances your political agenda.
Romney, it should be remembered, is not the first Mormon to run for
president. That distinction is awarded to the founder of Mormonism himself,
Joseph Smith Jr, who ran in 1844 on an abolitionist platform and in defence
of the rights of religious minorities. Mormon political history has long
been strongly secularist in this respect – because Mormons were once a sect
brutally persecuted by majority Christians.
But in that campaign, Smith coined a term that strangely resonates today.
“There is not a nation or a dynasty now occupying the earth which
acknowledges almighty God as their lawgiver,” Smith told the Neighbor
newspaper in Nauvoo, Illinois. “I go emphatically, virtuously and humanely,
for a theodemocracy, where God and the people hold the power to conduct the
affairs of men in righteousness.”
Theodemocracy: the blending of government with a universally Christian
populace in which faith is the prerequisite of public office. This is the
vision of America that Romney is proposing. He has behind him the power
brokers of the Protestant right, the theocons of the Catholic right, the
Mormon church and the vested interests of a Republican party elite that, in
the wake of George W Bush, wants to extend the theodemocratic principles of
an antisecular movement.
Romney has in front of him all those – believers and nonbelievers – who
feel that too overt a religious identity in the public square is a
dangerous tyranny of the majority, and the true believers whose faith is
not instrumental to anything but itself.
And that’s why, in my view, what Romney represents is not quite as benign
as he makes it out to be. I would have had no qualms in supporting a Mormon
for the presidency, as long as he vows to represent people of all faiths
and none. But Romney decided against that. That matters. It is veiling
intolerance under the guise of tolerance.
Nonbelief is rooted in the same freedom of conscience as belief. In fact
they are inseparable. Freedom of religion must mean the right to come to
the conclusion that there is no God at all. By eliding that critical piece
of American mosaic, Romney revealed that he isn’t actually a pluralist. He
is the anointed son of the organised religious right. And his own religion
is still irritatingly in the way.
***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************
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