The Drudge Report works in wondrous ways.
The banner this morning, under a picture of Mike Huckabee wagging his finger, is 'Take This Nation Back for Christ' leading to a news report of his speech at a Southern Baptist Convention. The small type notes it was made in 1998.
Click through, and you get the story from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, making the then-governor sound as if he wants, not to be President, but Pastor-in-Chief of the nation.
"The reason we have so much government is because we have so much broken humanity," it quotes him as saying. "And the reason we have so much broken humanity is because sin reigns in the hearts and lives of human beings instead of the Savior...
"Government knows it does not have the answer, but it's arrogant and acts as though it does. Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed...
"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."
The provenance of this Drudge scoop is suggested by the fact that the speech was made in Salt Lake City, where reporters were given copies of a book Huckabee had written as well as one titled "Mormonism Unmasked," exposing the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Cui bono to make Huckabee look like a religious nut? Or, in today's world, would his supporters consider the story a plus?
Showing posts with label freedom and religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom and religion. Show all posts
Monday, December 10, 2007
Saturday, December 08, 2007
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.
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.
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