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