By J. Brent Walker, BJC Executive Director
We planned to release the Interfaith Statement of Principles on Religion in Political Campaigns the morning after the Presidents Day holiday. We hoped to hitch our star to the increased interest in presidents past and the election or re-election of presidents future.
And what interesting timing it was. The previous weekend and the following week brought a torrent of examples of the very abuses of religion in politics that we talked about in the statement.
First, there was Sen. Rick Santorum’s gratuitous slap at President Barack Obama’s religion during an address to more than 300 supporters while discussing climate change — claiming that the president believes in “phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology.” What better example can there be, in the words of the Statement, of candidates conducting their campaigns with “overt” appeals for support based upon religion? Yes, our theological presuppositions inform our ideas about public policy. Clearly we can have a debate about environmental policy. And, in communities of faith, in Bible study groups and in theological seminaries we can discuss how biblical principles inform our understanding of earth-care and ecology. But Sen. Santorum’s brazen, unprovoked and red meat attack on the president’s religion was way out of line.
Then the day after Presidents Day, the Rev. Franklin Graham — not a candidate, but a public figure — was asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to comment on President Obama’s faith commitment and that of other candidates. Unwilling to flatly take the president at his word that he is a believing Christian (and in the face of the incontrovertible fact that he is a member of the United Church of Christ), Rev. Graham would only say that he “assumes” that the president is a Christian. But then he went on to fail to repudiate the lie that the president is a Muslim (as almost one in five Americans still thinks he is). Of course, Rev. Graham was quick to acknowledge the bone fides of Speaker Newt Gingrich’s and Sen. Santorum’s Christian commitment while easily discounting Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism as not Christian.
As Baptist historian Bill Leonard has rightly observed, we should all — and famous preachers no less — “resist sound bite salvation.” It is “unbecoming to a church that takes conversion seriously…[and it promotes]… a salvific superficiality that trivializes the Gospel to the world.” All of this public speculation about other people’s religious commitment and, consequently, their suitability for public service flies directly in the teeth of the “no religious test for public office” principle imbedded in our Constitution and at the heart of the Interfaith Statement of Principles. Plainly put: “A candidate’s religious beliefs — or lack thereof — should never be used by voters [including preachers!], nor suggested by political candidates, as a test for public office or as a shorthand summary of a candidate’s qualifications.”
Finally, the following Sunday, Sen. Santorum reiterated his oft-voiced attack on the separation of church and state and on John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech to the Houston preachers, saying he “almost threw up” when he read the speech. Sen. Santorum has said over and over that Kennedy was trying to banish faith from the public square when he talked about his belief that his religion “should be important only to me” and that it was his “own private affair.” A fair reading of these words in the context of the speech, however, shows that this was not an attempt by Kennedy to privatize religion or banish it from the public square. Rather, he was giving full-throated affirmation of the “no religious test” principle embodied in the Constitution. Kennedy was saying his religion is no one else’s business; he was not saying that his religion could not inform his policy stands.
I think that Sen. Santorum knows better. Although he has backed off a little in the face of withering criticism (from even one of his fellow Republican candidates), Sen. Santorum continues to use rhetoric about the separation of church and state as a wedge issue for political advantage. One would think that Sen. Santorum, himself a Catholic, would applaud Kennedy’s classic speech and the door to political opportunity it helped open for Kennedy and future Catholics, including Sen. Santorum.
Is religion important? Absolutely. Can candidates for office explain their religious convictions to voters and how they would balance their faith with their obligation to defend the Constitution? Positively. But conducting campaigns with overt appeals based on religion and messages to voters that reflect religious prejudice, bias and stereotyping — while deliberately encouraging division in the electorate along religious lines — violates this country’s most fundamental values and ultimately threatens the protection of everyone’s religious freedom.
