In last night's Republican presidential debate, Newt Gingrich reiterated an unfortunate claim he's made before: the President must be religious. Apart from that, most of the candidates affirmed support for the idea that there should be no religious test for office. The particular religious beliefs, church, doctrine of a candidate, they mostly agreed, should not be considered relevant to evaluating fitness for governmental leadership. Here's a partial transcript of the CNN debate, moderated by Anderson Cooper (my emphasis):
SANTORUM: I — I'm a Catholic. Catholic has social teachings. Catholic has teachings as to what's right and what's wrong. And those are legitimate things for voters to look at, to say if you're a faithful Catholic, which I try to be — fall short all the time, but I try to be — and — and it's a legitimate thing to look at as to what the tenets and teachings of that faith are with respect to how you live your life and — and how you would govern this country.
With respect to what is the road to salvation, that's a whole different story. That's not applicable to what — what the role is of being the president or a senator or any other job.
COOPER: Speaker Gingrich, you agree with that?
GINGRICH: Well, I think if the question is, does faith matter? Absolutely….Now, I happen to think that none of us should rush in judgment of others in the way in which they approach God. And I think that all of us up here I believe would agree….
But I think all of us would also agree that there's a very central part of your faith in how you approach public life. And I, frankly, would be really worried if somebody assured me that nothing in their faith would affect their judgments, because then I'd wonder, where's your judgment — how can you have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trust you with power if you don't pray?
Who you pray to, how you pray, how you come close to God is between you and God. But the notion that you're endowed by your creator sets a certain boundary on what we mean by America.
A religious boundary defining what we mean by America? What kind of freedom is that?
