In a Washington Post op-ed over the weekend, Kathleen Kennedy-Townsend takes on former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin for views expressed in her book "America By Heart" on the separation of church and state, and on the idea of a religious test for office. Like former Senator Rock Santorum, who has been questioning President Kennedy's famous speech to Houston ministers, Palin in her book complains that the President Kennedy championed an "unequivocal divorce" between religion and public service, rather than "telling the country how his faith had enriched him."
Kennedy-Townsend responds:
With that line, she proceeds down a path fraught with danger – precisely the path my uncle warned against when he said that a president's religious views should be "neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office."
After all, a candidate's faith will matter most to those who believe that they have the right to serve as arbiters of that faith. Is it worthy? Is it deep? Is it reflected in a certain ideology?
…
To demand that citizens display their religious beliefs attacks the very foundation of our nation and undermines the precise reason that America is exceptional.Palin's book makes clear just how dangerous her proposed path can be. Not only does she want people to reveal their beliefs, but she wants to sit in judgment of them if their views don't match her own. For instance, she criticizes Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), a Democrat and a faithful Catholic, for "talking the (God) talk but not walking the walk."
Who is Palin to say what God's "walk" is? Who anointed her our grand inquisitor?
This highlights the key problem with encouraging and rewarding candidates for talking openly about their faith as part of a campaign for office. There is always that temptation to cheer, or to jeer, candidates based on how well their religious views align with ours. Taken to an extreme, we no longer vote for the most experienced and qualified, or the person with the best plans and policies for the country; instead, elections become a religious race, despite the warnings of our country's founders about just such a system.
President Kennedy was right.
