It has been said that the American founders, as in the First Amendment to the Constitution, "solved the religious question by not solving the religious question." The religious question was: which religion should be established, which should be dominant in the new nation, where nine of thirteen colonies had established and dominant churches. The Bill of Rights took care of that by not taking care of it--by taking it off the table.
Today candidate Mitt Romney "solved the Mormon question by not solving the Mormon question," in an attempt to show that with no religions established or dominant, no one should have to deal with a specific faith, in his case, the Latter-day Saints version. To say that he solved the Mormon problem by not solving it is clear in that, while people of all political stripes listened to him to see how he would deal with Mormonism, he only mentioned it passingly in part of one sentence.
In doing so he showed himself to be in the great American tradition of relying more on civil religion or public faith than on any particular faith or community. This "civil religion" overarches and undergirds the religions of the churches, synagogues, and mosques. It stresses a very vague and general set of beliefs that in their generality make civil discourse and action in a pluralist society possible.
Why do we Americans, Republic and Democrat and mild agnostic and patriot settle for or choose this approach? In the back of our minds is recall of what established religion did to promote holy war in the European past of Euro-Americans or of what dominant religion does to "everyone else" in contemporary nations ruled by a religion.
Philosopher George Santayana wrote that "the religions" have some things in common and implied that they do well to find these, people are not members of "religion" any more than they speak "language." No, they speak particularly, be it Korean or German or
Swahili. In Santayana's terms, one is religious in a particular way, and the animating power comes from what he called the "idiosyncratic" and "surprising" stories they tell. Romney lives with such stories, Mormon version. Let any one from any faith community look closely at any other, and she will find the stories to be idiosyncratic and surprising. But because they are more familiar, they are less disturbing. Non-Christians find basic Christian beliefs such as the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be weird, while Christians are at home with them.
By not spending a single word on Mormon stories, Romney did what "all the others do." If Mormon teachings are a threat to the republic or a limit to one's governing ability, it would become relevant and have to be solved. I've studied the Latter-day Saints for decades, and would be hard pressed to name something in its teachings (since 1890) that would be a threat to the republic.
Some evangelicals will take their suspicion of Mormon "surprising" and "idiosyncratic" stories into the political sphere. But the ball is now in their court: they have to show what specific Mormon teaching would be a problem for a president in his or her public roles. The fact that some evangelical leaders immediately praised Romney's talk means either that they agree with him politically and will forgive his idioscynrasies, or that they want religion to be off the table.
What would I have told him to say? I'd probably have told him to address the issue the way he did, though I'd wish he'd temper that part of our civil religion which tells us how great we are, how great our achievement, how valuable all religion is for all people. Still, put two flags behind a political candidate and you will not expect him to speak of any dark sides or faithlessnesses in the American tradition and practice.
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