I see precious little evidence that any of the candidate's declarations of
faith - all of them claim to be Christians - have a direct impact on their
policies. John McCain's commendable renunciations of the use of torture (at
least until a recent Senate vote on the issue) appear to derive from his own
experiences as a prisoner of war, not necessarily from his religious
commitments. Hillary Clinton, to my knowledge, has not explicitly linked her
health-care proposals to the New Testament mandate to care for "the least of
these." Barack Obama wants to restore a sense of decency to foreign policy
and thereby to redeem America's standing in the eyes of the world, but I see
little evidence that this is motivated strictly - or even primarily - by
Christian values. Jesus told his followers to "welcome the stranger," but I
see little resonance of that sentiment in Mick Huckabee's immigration
proposals.

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In what may be seen as the defining moment of his campaign, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a Mormon, sought to address the issue of his faith and its bearing on his pursuit of the presidency. Pundits and historians inevitably compared Romney’s speech in College Station, Texas, with the speech that John F. Kennedy gave at the Rice Hotel just down the road in Houston on September 12, 1960.

The parallels are unmistakable. Both men felt compelled to address what was openly discussed as the “religious issue” during the 1960 presidential campaign. Both men were reared from infancy in a tradition different from Protestantism, which in its various forms claims the allegiance of at least a plurality (if not a majority) of Americans.

But the parallels end there. Unlike Mormonism, Roman Catholicism was well known to most Americans in 1960, although many Protestants had a jaundiced view of the Roman Catholic Church. Many Americans today, by contrast, know little about Mormonism, officially named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Much like the anti-Masonic movements in the nineteenth century, Americans see Mormons as secretive; their temples, for instance, are closed to “gentiles” (non-Mormons).

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I think it’s fair to inquire about a candidate’s faith, but we should pay careful attention to the answers.

I just completed a new book entitled “God in the White House: A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush.” Essentially, what I tried to answer was how we got from Kennedy’s speech to the ministers in Houston on the eve of the 1960 presidential election, when he implored voters to set aside a candidate’s faith when they entered the voting booth, to George W. Bush’s declaration on the eve of the 2000 Iowa precinct caucuses that Jesus was his favorite philosopher.

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Christopher Hitchens and his fellow secular fundamentalists – Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et al. – are having a field day. And who can blame them? Terrorists claim the mantle of God in peddling their destruction. Girls and young women undergo genital mutilation for “religious” reasons. The government here in the United States is headed by a man who claims to be called by God – and whose administration will very likely be remembered as the most morally bankrupt in American history.

No wonder Mr. Hitchens is in high dudgeon.

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I try generally to avoid the term “cult” because it’s almost always pejorative, and that puts me in the position of adjudicating matters that people hold dear. Besides, I’ve yet to encounter anyone in my travels throughout North America who said, “Yes, I’m a member of a cult!”

Having said that, however, I reserve for myself the option of referring to groups that tightly regulate their members’ behavior as “cults.” I’m not speaking here simply of groups that encourage – or even demand – spiritual discipline of one sort or another: regular reading of scriptures, prayer, and the like. Nor would I include monasteries (Christian, Buddhist, et al.) in that category.

I’m referring instead to those groups that demand a regular, strict accounting of their members’ activities, especially how they spend their time. The Shepherding Movement, popular among some evangelicals in the 1970s, would be one example. Here at Columbia a few years back, to take another example, there was a (Christian) group active among the students that required its members to give a weekly accounting of how they spent their time: how many hours sleeping, studying, reading the Bible, evangelizing, etc.

I consider that cultish behavior because the individual is so deeply submerged within the group’s identity and mores as to have abdicated completely her own individuality and sense of self.

I continue to be flummoxed by the current fixation on homosexuality in Protestant denominations. Jesus himself said nothing about the matter, although he did affirm the Levitical proscriptions (which also, by the way, include prohibitions against the interbreeding of livestock and wearing garments made of two different kinds of fabric).

Jesus did talk about such issues as peacemaking and care for the poor and divorce. Regarding the latter, Jesus had nothing good to say, and he was pretty clear in his condemnations. Yet, curiously, that proscription against divorce has all but dropped out of view.

When I was researching "Thy Kingdom Come," I sat in on a gathering of conservative religious leaders as they were strategizing how to take control of mainline Protestant denominations. They were confident that the current struggle over the ordination of openly gay clergy and the ecclesiastical blessing same-sex unions would provide them the leverage they needed to wrest control of these denominations. For a day and a half in that Holiday Inn conference room, I heard almost nothing other than talk about sex.

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Roman Catholics believe that one bishop, the pope, has authority over all others because he is the linear spiritual successor to Peter, the first bishop of Rome. The scriptural basis for this, according to the Catholic Church, is Matthew 16, where Jesus declares to Peter that he is “the Rock” and upon that rock Jesus would build his church.

I certainly mean no offense to the Roman Catholic Church or to our Catholic sisters and brothers. But I respectfully disagree with this interpretation. I think this is one of the rare stabs at humor in the New Testament, or at least irony. Jesus was making a play on words – Peter or petra means “rock” – and we all know that Peter was anything but solid. When Peter wanted to walk on the Sea of Galilee, like Jesus, he stepped out of the boat, did okay for awhile, but then took his eyes off of Jesus and sank below the waves. Like a rock.

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At the core of the problem with our Iraq policy is that this putatively "Christian" president utterly ignored centuries of thought and writings in the Christian tradition about what does or does not constitute a "just war."

Is the use of force taken as the last resort? Is it a defensive war? Is there a reasonable chance of success? Is the amount of force roughly proportional to the provocation? Finally, and most important, have provisions been made, as much as possible, to shield civilians from being collateral damage?

Despite the labored efforts of such neoconservative theorists as Jean Bethke Elshtain and George Weigel, the invasion of Iraq meets none of these criteria. (Elshtain, for example, totally ignores such crucial bits of evidence as the Downing Street memorandum in constructing her justification for war in Iraq.)

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I've come to believe that doubt is not the antithesis of faith. It is, rather, an essential component of faith, because if matters of religion or belief were all verifiable by rational means, what's the role of faith? My favorite passage in the New Testament is the statement from the father of a young boy. "I believe," he tells Jesus. "Help my unbelief."

All of this renders chimerical the attempts to "vindicate" Christianity by rational or empirical means -- so-called "scientific creationism," for instance, or the "intelligent design" movement. I decided long ago that I would not allow the canons of Enlightenment Rationalism be the final arbiter of truth. I elect to live in an enchanted universe where forces are at play beyond my ability to comprehend, much less explain, them.

I wouldn't live anywhere else.

I think the Bible is pretty clear that faith and works are inseparable, though I’m enough a creature of the Reformation to hold that good works do not earn salvation. Martin Luther (following St. Paul) believed that good works would issue spontaneously out of the life of the believer, but they were not the catalyst for salvation.

And it must be an arid spirituality indeed that makes protestations of faith, but those commitments find scant expression in how one lives from day to day.

Life is good. I have a wonderful wife and family. My older son will graduate from Columbia this week; my daughter is completing her sophomore year at Fordham, and my younger son his first year at Columbia.

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Growing up fundamentalist, I spent a lot of my childhood thinking and worrying about the end of time as predicted in the New Testament book of Revelation. I was taught that history would come screeching to a halt and the world as we know it would dissolve in some kind of apocalyptic judgment.

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I must say, Richard, that I find your attempt to connect me with an “inside-the-beltway urban myth” rather amusing.

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As a raging heterosexual, I confess that the notion of same-sex attraction has always been a puzzle to me.

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It would be a grievous mistake in a pluralistic society to exclude anyone from engaging in public discourse, and I happen to believe that the arena of public discourse would be impoverished without voices of faith. Despite their manifold excesses and distortions in recent years, the leaders of the Religious Right have every right to make their views heard.

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