Candidates and religion
Those of us old enough to remember when JFK was running for office (I was just a wee slip of a girl, myself) can recall the furor about his Catholicism. Kennedy’s allegiance was to the Vatican! was the cry. He was going to be run by the Pope! Kennedy was so bombarded with questions and criticisms about his Catholicism that he felt obliged to declare his support for separation of church and state and the fact that his decisions would be his own.
Of course, Kennedy became our first Catholic president. What’s less well-remembered is that, so far, he’s still our last Catholic president.
Except for Mormon Mitt Romney, all the candidates for president this year are Protestants, as well. But religion is an issue, and not just for Romney; there’s a lot of talk about Rick Perry’s religious views, for example, and potential-candidate Sarah Palin’s religion has long been a bone of contention.
In discussions of Romney (or in previous discussions of whether Obama is really a closet Muslim), the controversy is something like the traditional furor over JFK’s Catholicism: how much will their religion (or supposed religion) give them different values from mainstream America, and do they have some sort of dual loyalty? (This latter, by the way, is a commonplace objection to Jews running for high office.)
But in the cases of Perry and Palin, it’s not so much about the denomination to which they each belong as it is about their religiosity in general, and especially how it affects their view of science and/or what it says about their intelligence itself. There are huge numbers of Americans who are mostly secular, and who distrust religious people as a whole, and particularly anything that smacks of evangelicalism. For example, even though it is a relatively mainstream Republican position now to distrust the theory of anthropogenic global warming, and such a stance does not depend on a religious orientation at all, candidates who are religious and who also distrust AGW come in for special scorn.
The equation “religious=stupid” is an all-too-common one, especially among intellectuals today. It’s not especially valid, nor was it always the case. I quote William F. Buckley, a rather formidable conservative intellectual who was also a believing Catholic, from his book Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith (1997):
In my [earlier] book I had quoted a sentence from the inaugural address (1937) of historian Charles Seymour, who served as president throughout my own residence at Yale. “I call on members of the faculty,” he had said, “as members of a thinking body, freely to recognize the tremendous validity and power of the teachings of Christ in our life-and-death struggle against the forces of selfish materialism. If we lose that struggle, judging from present events abroad, scholarship as well as religion will disappear.”
That was a Christian mouthful, and Mr. Marsden is correct in suggesting that such sentiments could not safely be uttered today by an incoming president of a nondenominational university of good standing. In the opinion of Professor Marsden, my book (whose prescriptions he disagrees with), “presented a formidable case…that a Yale education was more likely to shatter a person’s commitment to Christianity than to fortify it.”
The earlier book to which the passage refers is Buckley’s own God and Man at Yale, written in his senior year at the university and published in 1951. The conflicts between intellectualism and religion which he recognized then (and reiterated in his 1997 book) have only become more extreme over the ensuing years.
Looking back at Seymour’s address, it certainly does appear to exclude nonbelievers and non-Christians from its charge, and to assume that all the professors he’s addressing are Christians. Or does it? Might it not just be asking people to understand that this is still a predominantly Christian country, and that the basic principles and values of Christianity (not the dogma, and not the faith) are part of what this country is based on, and that Christianity is not inherently incompatible with learning but often complements and supports it?
[NOTE: During the 2008 campaign, questions about Obama’s longstanding attendance in Wright’s church were not mainly about religion (although those questions did exist, but they were a separate issue and not limited to his attendance at that particular church). The controversy was about Wright’s politics. Wright preached a great deal of anti-American and anti-white rhetoric from his pulpit, and the questions for Obama involved why he stayed in a church in which the preacher espoused such views, and whether Obama was lying about his own lack of exposure to and knowledge of those views.]
I’m non-religious, so (in the immortal words of James Lileks), “I don’t have a god in this fight.” But it’s hard to imagine any of Palin or Perry’s religious beliefs being stupider than the secular religion–actually a spin-off of the age-old Cult of the State–now known as “liberalism.” If, by this time, you still think that Der Staat is our best buddy, and the more power and money we give it the better off we’ll all be, you shouldn’t be criticizing the credibility of someone else’s religious beliefs. Even worse, the secular religion of “liberalism” is theocratic, with its adherents wanting to use the power of the State to force their irrational dogma on the rest of us.
God is dead!! Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead
God…
Just fourteen years after the publication of Buckley’s (first) book, I matriculated at Yale. His book was still talked about, and I was lucky enough to see Buckley debate Gore Vidal (that was something to behold!). But I was liberal, thought I was smart, and tended to hold Buckley’s views in a mildly amused contempt.
In other words, I was an idiot.
Jamie Irons
Addendum:
I first began to take Buckley more seriously in the late 1970’s, when I took up ocean sailing. Buckley wrote movingly of his experiences sailing with his son, Christopher. (The latter, as everyone knows, sadly, supported Obama early on. Yikes!)
Jamie Irons
Jamie: we get too soon old and too late smart.
Of course, you and I aren’t old.
the fight embodied in the gallileo issue…
is not RELIGION against science..
it was philosophy against science using other means (threatening the Vatican over the issue)
and ever since the enlightenment overturned the ruler ship of the philosophers to tell us what life really is, as that was replaced with empiricism and investigation (Which kind of negates the philosophies that ignore that our mind is in a body that is in reality we experience apart from our own inner world and doesnt cooperate with us)
even today, they describe the ROMANTIC era which is ANTITHETICAL to the ENLIGHTENMENT, AS the enlightenment…
empiricism and history says men ate men, and the noble savage never existed, romantic philosophy says he is noble, and even lies and changes evidence to prove it.
heck…
one of my FAVORITE points in religion and the inane argument is when they say… do you really think Noah put all the worlds animals into one ship, etc..
yes… but i dont pick the most inane definitions that dont apply to show otherwise…
ie… World – it can be the whole earth… the local place you live in, or the mind…
ergo, they look to prove there was no world flood, and empirical science finds evidence of how the red sea can part, and that there was a local flood as an inland sea emptied.
you can look all over and what you get is either the left game of expanding definitions till its inane… (which is proof of nothing other than misusing communication for gain)
or you get people gettting wrapped up in different authors and such.
but if you consider animals… and dont expand it out to mean all animals in the world. but DOMESTICATED animals, which cant fend for themselves and which woudl die in a flood, and who depend on men to live… and in turn, wandering jewish nomadic tribes depended on to no longer be nomads.
seen this way…
noah was one of the early founders of society, and that seeing bad times coming… fashioned a boat large enough to save his family, the knowledge they had in animal husbandry care and such, AND the worlds first domesticated animals.
in this more reasonable interpretation not stretching things… noah was a farmer who built a raft and floated his cows and family to keep them from drowning, when the berm holding back the inland sea failed.
a hand me down story from katrina about a farmer prepared for the flood when the storm came would be similar..
and in their story, god brought them out of the desert as nomads and made a society… how did he do that?
to the idiot left who are more literal than baptists, god twiddled with his hand… to the more reasonable, he gave the gift of insight and intelligence and so gifted this line with some lucky animals, that were domesticatable.
now the funny part is that they are finding some of the earliest records of mankind as a society in that location…
so the tales of this time, are the tales of the start of ordered civilization… (and since its jewish, and capitalism was invented then, the left has to exterminate the jews to go back to eden and utopia before society!!! so who is really following a cult? )
the book of noah is about a time so old that man knew the names of the angels in creation.
and
have you EVER EVER EVER heard a marxist who did enough research to actually have a conversation as above on the subject? or have you always heard those who had no time to learn about what they ridicule? (funny how they are also the ones practicing the arts of the dirty angels)
anyway… back to gallileo
no gay alive today, or even contemporary leftist had ever experienced the oppresson that they believe was gallileo.
and not only that…they ignore galileos religion
ie. their archangel of science bringing reason to man and so forth, was a very religious christian.
Gallileo – The father of modern science!!!
a devout catholic all his life…
“The bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go” Gallileo citing CArdinal Bronius statement from 1598
it was the christian idea that if we spend our resources to study the “works of god” we would be closer to the artist.
the WHOLE idea of investigative science for its own sake witout it always needing a commercial application was born from this persuit.
as the colleges and such that the left reveres were called universities… and they were run by the dominicans who wanted gallileo out for declaring what they were teachign and getting money for and a nice comfortable life doing… was not valid, and in those days, you dont pay for invalid… or made up.. or prophecy from 1850 MORE wrong than the bible over 2000 years!!!
and note that when galileo died… he was interred in consecrated ground… not only that, but within the church of santa croce in florence.
heretics cant be buried in hollowed ground..
he wasnt dug up and put there later…
the defense to this is then that the religion was gallileos personal ideas… and not part of his science. a kind of internal separation of church and science…
but then again the liberals are following scientific socialism (communism) and so its really the separation of church and state in their eyes.
with the state being the god of their religion…
mans wisdom over gods wisdom
and following blindly the prophecies of another prohet after mohamed, jesus, and even that gold tablet finding mormon guy… 🙂
however, so far, marx even loses on those prophecies.
anyway…
look at his Letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany: Concerning the Use of Biblical Quotations in Matters of Science (1615)
so much for separation in gallileo..
“To me the works of nature and of God are miraculous.” gallileo / Brunetti, F. Opere di Galileo Galilei. Torino: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1964, p. 506.)
God could have made birds with bones of massive gold, with veins full of molten silver, with flesh heavier than lead and with tiny wings… He could have made fish heavier than lead, and thus twelve times heavier than water, but He has wished to make the former of bone, flesh, and feathers that are light enough, and the latter as heavier than water, to teach us that He rejoices in simplicity and facility. (Sobel, Dava, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. Toronto: Viking Press, 1999, p. 99.)
EVERYONE HERE KNOWS I CAN GO ON!!!
but again..
most everyone has been living a history and a world that never existed if they did not learn the ACTUAL history and learned the progressive re-imagined and deconstructed ones…
“When I consider what marvelous things men have understood, what he has inquired into and contrived, I know only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God, and one of the most excellent.”
yet that mind is separated from divine knowledge by an infinite interval… Galileo Galilei
But in this time and now the neo “Dominicans” of the romantic era won over the enlightenment!!!!!
As the philosophical prophecies and ideas of the romantic era has replaced the enlightenment and taken its name. till most following it dont realize that they are following the romantics and NOT the empiricist meritocratics
i share galileos quote:
“I render infinite thanks to God, for being so kind as to make me alone the first observer of marvels kept hidden in obscurity for all previous centuries.” (Sobel, Dava, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. Toronto: Viking Press, 1999, p. 6.)
but my work cant be seen….
its assumed to be invalid before examination and test..
i am erased and made nothing before anything…
they force world as whole earth, when for noah world was the local place that framed HIS whole reality… (he did not know what was happening in pago pago)
You only get bashed for religion if you are conservative. Harry Reid is a Mormon and it never comes up. Catholics on the left get a pass if they are pro abortion. Obama claimed to be a Christian and a frequent church goer. He claims to pray frequently. The media never looked into it. According to the left, conservatives are stupid and religious conservatives are really stupid. Sen. Lieberman is a practicing Jew who always got a pass as a liberal Democrat.
The left dislikes both religion’s (most religions anyway) call to personal responsibility and it’s struggles with science in explaining ‘life, the universe and everything’.
The personal responsibility and morality aspect has not always been solely the province of religion. And the left has established its own morality in PC terms.
Liberals really don’t understand science. They use it as a marker for intelligence in the wrong way. Evolution is the prime example (one could also add AGW). As the father of a paleontology student the concepts of deep time and natural selection are familiar, and also the fact that most people (including liberals) subscribe to one form or another of intelligent design. The liberals are more likely to ascribe it to “Nature” than God, but the effect is the same. Science says nothing about the value of any species or it’s right to persist.
It is common to look down on evangelicals who believe the earth is 6,000 years old as hillbillies, but this date is drawn from the histories of the Jews. As AVI has pointed out the date corresponds to the time when people first had organization much larger than small groups. How remarkable that the Jews maintained a history and coherence over such a large time!
In the end the religious pay much more attention to the past, future and current condition of humans than do the Liberal/Left.
Robert Weissberg just happens to have a nice piece up today at the American Thinker on this theme:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/the_wacky_world_of_liberal_fundamentalism.html
No sentient creature could fail to second the observation of Mr. Frank above. The ploy of the left with respect to religion is so obvious that the only danger one has of missing it is dropping dead from it being repeatedly bashed over one’s head.
Weissberg’s point is thus well-taken: the left does have a fundamentalist creed, and its God is Fedgov.
As the founding member of the Church of Denial I say, “Not me.”
Instapundit just happens to have a link to a little work from a Yale professor on God (written by “the devil”): http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3822&context=fss_papers
Artfldgr,
I appreciate you discussion of Noah. You are correct about the variable definition fo the “whole world.” Even as late as the Middle Ages, the average Euorpean born within 30 miles of the seacoast lived and died never having even seen an ocean from its shore. it gives a new appreciation to what a “whole world” is.
Furthermore, an intersting aside. Robert Ballard (of Titanic fame) also found evidence of ancient human habitation at the bottom of the Black Sea. He began to speculate that as the ice age ended, the glaciers melted and the sea levels rose, that the Mediterranean spilled over the Dardanelles in a Niagra Falls fashion filling the basin which became the Black Sea. If true, could this be “The Great Flood” referred to in just about every ancient religious text? Pure speculation at this point, but provocative nonetheless.
Again, much enlightening input from various posters.
Mr Frank nails the essence. Ironic isn’t it, that JFK’s (supposed) adherence to Catholic orthodoxy, few more conservative, was a political issue; but no one dare lump JFK with the stupid Christians? (I interject the qualifier “supposed” with due care.)
On another track, being a shallow Christian thinker, I have never been able to get my head around the idea that a person could claim to be Catholic and Pro-Choice. If you do not accept the fundamental tenets of the Church, are you really of the church?
“If you do not accept the fundamental tenets of the Church, are you really of the church?”
I’d argue that most don’t actually know the fundamental tenets. Churches are treated as country clubs by those who claim fealty, and outsiders can’t even be bothered with the barest glimmer of comprehension.
This is why you’ll get assertions like “Mormons aren’t Christian” which stands in stark contrast to the Church’s own proclaimed central tenets. The reality is that they aren’t like the “normal” Christian churches, so they get demonized. Never does it cross the spiteful mind to actually learn directly from the church and exhibit intellectual honesty, oh no, it’s easier to fight the strawman.
Isn’t what’s his face Huntsman a Mormon as well?
This age is literally washed in lies on the history of Christianity. Virtually everything that is put out on this by academia, the media, Hollywood is a lie. Not only almost everything about the crusades, Galileo, the origins of science and the universities, the development of medicine and healthcare, economics, the arts, music, philosophy, but also on the topic of what was BEFORE Christianity and what came AFTER.
Before: the horrific cruelty of the Roman Empire and the pagan European tribes, an After: the horrific cruelty of the French revolution, Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.
Hitler hated Christianity, preferred Islam and wanted to go back to Ancient Rome just like Mussolini. He also chose as symbol for Nazism the Swastica: a symbol of prechristian European paganism. He said he wanted pagan boys, not christian, boys ‘like ruthless predators’.
Lenin, when asked in a letter from a comrade what to do with religious people, wrote back: ‘just shoot them’. Lenin and Stalin murdered approximately 700000 priests of the Orthodox Church. And between 40 and 70 million ordinary people, many of whom where religious.
All this was predicted by Dostoyewky far better than by Nietzsche in his book ‘the possessed’.
He shows there how militant atheism necessarily leads to ruthless satanic pride which in turn will wash the world in murder, rape, torture, theft and lies.
What also is forgotten is the gentle world of 19th century classical Christian liberalism in almost all European countries. This classical Christian liberalism gave us Mozart and Beethoven and the most beautiful art, architecture and music the world has ever seen. It also produced literature and philosophical thinking which was highly sophisticated and elevated, but was also sane, harmonious and balanced. Very much unlike the hyperintellectual crazyness that Europe produced during the 20th century.
Ludwig von Mises, a European philosopher and economist, who founded the Austrian school of economics in the early 20th century, was a late flower of this now sunken world. He fought both Nazism and Communism and all the other intellectual craziness of his age and ended up a refugee in the US, where he was also largely ostracised. But, as testified by Murray Rothbard- one of his American pupils, he still manifested this typical combination of warmth and harmonious dignified
behavior that was a product of that old and forgotten world. And note that von Mises himself was a Jew, the Jews too could flourish in that world.
It has been my contention that religion is about each person’s relationship with God as they perceive Him. If one does not believe in God, that is still a relationship…….of non-belief.
On the other hand, government is about our relationship to one another. Over the years of history hummans have devised various ways of relating to one another. Tribal laws and practices gave way to much larger group laws and practices, which eventually lead to what I call the “Golden Rule.” That meant he who had enough gold to hire the necessary muscle, made the rules. They were known as Kings/Emperors/Dictators/Tyrants. We still have a lot of them around today. However, the Anglosphere moved on to representative government starting with the Magna Carta. What that does is attempt to satisfy most of the people most of the time. It’s quite messy because when you have competing interests, there is a lot of infighting. However, the evidence indicates that most people prefer it to the Golden Rule because it provides more freedom. And there are a lot of such governments beyond the Anglosphere now.
Back in tribal and Emperor days, religion was a part of government. God protected the tribe and the Emperor proclaimed he was an emissary of God. Religion worked hand in glove with government. Representative government has separated religion out and made it possible for people of differing religious beliefs or none at all, to work together on how they will work together.
Although the Golden Rule was the order of the day in the time of Christ, he advised to render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s and unto God those things that are God’s. That was good advice for representative government. Hard to follow though. Many people want to convince you that you are ignorant, evil, or both if you don’t follow their religious beliefs. If you have no religion except a faith that government should rule in the fashion of the old Emperors, then anyone who mentions religious values in government debates is suspect. That is where the progressives are. Their religion has reverted back to a worshiop of the state, which they wish to see rule like Emperors of old.
It is a debate between those who believe, n spite of all the evidence againstit, that the state can produce Heaven on Earth, and those who believe the nearest thing to Hell on Earth is a huge, centralized, micro-managing government.
I was raised in a Southern Baptist church in Dallas, but one that was located in a pretty ritzy part of town (Highland Park/University Park). Even though this church wasn’t culturally like a typical rural Southern Baptist church, I still developed some resentment over being asked to believe certain things that were hard for me to believe.
Later, in my young married and professional life in Houston, I attended and was active in a Methodist church that was located in the museum district, and just a few blocks from Rice University. Many of the members were Rice professors or successful, well educated professionals in the upper echelon of Houston society. In other words, the culture in that church was quite sophisticated and very comfortable for me. If you attended a service there, you would have thought you were in a “high Episcopalian” service.
Then I moved to a very small town and joined its Methodist church. The culture was quite different there and much more fundamentalist. I was appalled when my son told me his Sunday school teacher said that “If you believe in evolution, you don’t believe in God.” I thought to myself…”What have we gotten ourselves into, moving here?” Perceived intolerance by fundamentalist Christians always bothered me.
Then I began to notice things…the two men who showed up, unrequested, to help us move into our new house were members of our somewhat fundamentalist Methodist church. The people who volunteered for town cleanup projects, helped in the concession stand at football games, volunteered to coach Little League, helped with PTA projects at school, etc, etc. were usually members of the fundamentalist churches in town (Baptist, Church of Christ, Christian, etc.). These were the people I’d be happy to invite to my home for dinner.
It finally dawned on me…”Hey…maybe you should be as tolerant of their beliefs as you want them to be of yours.”
Since then, a politician’s religious beliefs have never bothered me.
I’ll call attention to the fact that, JFK, Carter, and G. W. Bush all had “controversial” religious beliefs but not one of them tried to impose their beliefs in the American public.
….errr….make that “ON the American public.
texexec.
Cruel joke on the west side of Michigan:
Guy’s house burns partially. The local evangelical or Dutch Reform guys show up on Saturday morning with trucks, generators, table saws, drills, lumber, dry wall, pvc, air hammers, and all that lower class stuff. The guys stand in a circle, arms over each others’ shoulders, pray that they can get the job done for Brother Bob and his family and that nobody gets hurt, for the glory of Jesus’ name.
The piskies show up with candles and hold a vigil.
Some exaggeration, but it wouldn’t be the knee slapper it currently is without some connection to reality.
Dittos to Mr. Frank @ 3:44 pm.
Actually, I think this is an illustration of Mainstream Media’s Top Rule # 2: Help the Democrats, Hurt the Republicans. I think that pretty much covers it.
Two jokes from 1960.
JFK – Lyndon, the first thing I’m going to do as president is dig a tunnel from the White House to the Vatican.
LBJ – That’s ok by me, long as Brown & Root get the contract.
Shortly before the election the Yankees fired long-time manager Casey Stengel. A rumor then started that JFK was going to hire him to manage the Cardinals (not the ones in St Louis).
Here’s an interesting take on JFK’s Houston speech declaring his support for the separation of church and state from Archbishop Charles Chaput, the new incoming head of the Philadelphia archdiocese:
“To his credit,” he noted, “Kennedy said that if his duties as President should ‘ever require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest, I would resign the office.’ He also warned that he would not ‘disavow my views or my church in order to win this election.’”
“But in its effect, the Houston speech did exactly that. It began the project of walling religion away from the process of governance in a new and aggressive way. It also divided a person’s private beliefs from his or her public duties. And it set ‘the national interest’ over and against ‘outside religious pressures or dictates.’”
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/jfk_speech_on_faith_was_sincere_but_wrong_archbishop_chaput_states
thanks for appreciating the post T
and thanks all for not jumping on me for its size.
i will never write to be smaller..
i cant
and just for those people that hate it; don’t worry, i am completely and utterly punished in my life and my ability to succeed and move forward for not having a better skill at it. so now y’all who love schadenfreude can gloat and sip some wine and love it. In essence, i am erased for it, and all the work of my life is not acceptable for it.
so thanks T
When your tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
VOTE the candidate that worships BaÊ¿al…
in case anyone hasnt noticed, this battle from the old Yaweh, Ba’al battle of the priests..
heck… given Obama we even got Akkadian influences
so will that mean Har Megiddo will fall?
Maybe given its the field outside of Mount Carmel in Israel…. and the world is turning its face away
It strikes me that this is a discussion that should not exist in the realm of right-vs.-left partisan bickering. After all, the liberals slamming GOP candidates for their engagement in religion are not likely GOP primary voters. The question as I see it is, how do the people who actually are going to vote in the primaries see this issue?
It was on the right that I saw a complete and utter disdain for Romney’s Mormonism in early 2008 after Rudy Giuliani faded. Giuliani had, after all, been the frontrunner for years. His strategy all of a sudden took a turn I can only characterize as suicidal, and I was left with the idea that he didn’t actually want to do this after all. This occurred to me around the time he met with Pat Robertson. With John McCain having felt it necessary to later meet with John Hagee, and subsequently distancing himself once he became aware of some of the things that Hagee says and thinks, particularly about, yes, Catholics, I just didn’t see Giuliani being a guy who wanted to do these things that these candidates apparently feel it necessary to do to run a successful campaign.
Now, prior to this country electing Obama, which for many was unthinkable not because they didn’t want to see a non-white President, but because they never thought it could happen, there was a lingering version of the anti-JFK-as Catholic bias on the basis of his alleged allegiance to the Papacy from 50 years prior. This manifested itself on blogs and discussion sites on the right. Romney was never going to attract the Evangelical vote. Now that we’ve moved into electing candidates like Obama, this may have changed. The “Bradley Effect” was not a factor. But, unless I am mistaken–I’m not going to take the time to look it up, but I remember this pretty distinctly–Romney was a logical front-runner in the early GOP primaries in 2008. He was conservative, but not to an extreme. He had the support of the likes of Ann Coulter. He played well on television. And no other candidates seemed to have the pluses he brought to the table–or, if they did, they had baggage that seemed like they would pose less of a problem in a GOP primary than in a general election. The most prominent specific example of that would be John McCain’s age.
I found it remarkable that GOP voters wouldn’t get behind Romney. Why would this be? My assessment of this didn’t tell me that they disagreed with him on policy, didn’t hold what some would characterize as flip-flops against him. “Romneycare” was not something that seemed to be an issue in the polls that placed him comfortably ahead of McCain (and Ron Paul!) during Rudy’s fade, just prior to McCain’s victories.
I will say that I spent enough time on sites like Free Republic to be exposed to enough people willing to say flat-out that they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon. I would assume those threads are still there, if anyone wants to look for them. Yet opposition to Romney now, centers around the idea that he’s a liberal. In early 2008…not so much.
So I don’t see this as a left-right issue. The question is, given that Obama managed to succeed in a game where people may indeed act based on their ideas about what a person is, rather than who he is (and indeed, liberal guilt and the reverse application of this sort of thing obviously contributed to his success), has the Right moved past an unwillingness on the part of Evangelicals to consider a candidate whose religion may be viewed in a negative light?
I mean, the liberal press will write what they write. Are conservative Evangelicals–particularly those who are socially conservative–really paying attention to left-wing hit pieces?
@Crystal, I can’t speak to conservatives listening to the biased media, but anti-Mormon attitudes are alive and well, especially in the South. Romney would have a hard time with Florida, for instance. Religious bigotry may not be as trendy as racism, but it’s deep and pervasive.
The only Mormons I ever met were better than average folks.
Can’t imagine anybody’s met a consistently bad string of Mormons.
Crystal: The vast majority of Republicans who can’t stand Romney can’t stand him because they think he’s a RINO.
They were known as Kings/Emperors/Dictators/Tyrants.
There’s an amusing progression to that list. It goes like this:
1. I am a god. You will obey me.
2. Ok, I bleed and can die. So I’m not a god. But I am god’s representative on earth, so you will obey me.
3. Ok, I’m not actually god’s representative on earth, but I have been put in a position over you by god, so you will obey me.
4. Ok, so you and your friends and that rabble that follows you out number me and mine. I’ll sign the bloody Magna Carta if you don’t chop my head off.
Senator Rick Santorum, a Catholic, is still a candidate for the Republican nomination.