A Referendum on Church and State

As long as we have come this far in George Bush's undeclared theocracy and Mitt Romney's open endorsement this week, doesn't the Republican Party owe Americans a clear choice--a Huckabee-Romney or Romney-Huckabee ticket--that would, in effect, be a referendum on the separation of church and state?

Some may fear the outcome of such a confrontation with a more secular Democratic ticket, but the alternative is to keep allowing the Religious Right to keep dominating the American conversation far out of proportion to be their true numbers and in contradiction to a consensus that existed in the nation's politics since 1776 until Islamic terrorists gave Bush's Christian absolutists a climate of fear in which to propagate their own extremism.

Failure to bring this debate out into the open allows a unthinking nod of heads to Romney's religiosity that asserts "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom."

For over 200 years, Americans have subscribed to the proposition that freedom requires freedom and that everyone, in the words of John F. Kennedy "has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice...where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."

In claiming his right as a Catholic to be considered for the presidency, Kennedy was affirming the separation of church and state. In claiming his right as a Mormon, Romney is blurring that tradition.

"I would not look with favor," JFK told Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960, "upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty...And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it."

Responding to Romney's speech, Huckabee, the former preacher, said "it's a good thing and healthy for all of us for people to discuss faith in the public square," but diplomatically evaded details of his own, such as his views on evolution and women as pastors, noting that "where two or more Baptists are gathered together, there are at least seven different opinions."

Until now, Democrats have been unwilling to confront this question, settling for affirmation of their own faith in addressing evangelicals but not drawing the distinction between religion as a private matter and a deeply divisive public issue.

By nominating Huckabee and/or Romney, the Republican Party would inevitably make that part of the choice for the kind of America voters envision and want.

What's Offensive Is Romney's Religiosity

He has painted himself into a corner and, no matter where Mitt Romney goes in tonight's speech on religion, he is going to leave messy footprints.

Even the locale is a mistake. Meant to evoke a parallel with John F. Kennedy's deft defense of his Catholicism in 1960, it only underscores how much the role of religion has changed in American politics and, in the Bush era, for the worse.

In Kennedy's time, separation of church and state was an article of faith for mainstream politicians of both parties. Until then, Presidents had all been white Protestant men. Kennedy, in trying to broaden the definition to white Protestant or Catholic men, was arguing that religious belief may be a reflection of a President's principles but is not substantively involved in how he governs.

"I believe," he told Protestant ministers in Houston, "in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish...where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all...

"I believe in a President whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office."

Voters agreed and, in Gore Vidal’s 1960 play, “The Best Man,” as a former President recalls the old days when politicians “had to pour God over everything like ketchup,” audiences laughed at the anachronism.

Nobody is laughing now. George W. Bush has erased the line between church and state to the point where Romney, as a candidate, has been pandering to the Religious Right to win the nomination. It is that religiosity, not his religion, that is offensive.

Now Romney, still holding the ketchup bottle, will try to persuade voters that as President he would "maintain our religious heritage in this country," as he recently put it, but that his own particular religious beliefs are beside the point.

Romney is essentially a salesman (in amassing millions, associates say he was the "presenter") who has tailored his pitch on many issues this year to what voters want to hear. If he can sell this one, maybe he deserves to be President and use his skills to persuade the world to stop hating us.