Photo by Scot Facer Proctor

I’m a Christian.  Do you mind?

At Article VI Blog we watch closely the fascinating public discussion underway about the impact of Governor Mitt Romney’s membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on his candidacy for president.  Last week my co-blogger John Schroeder and I discussed a Richard Land quote that appeared in a Bloomberg piece that we also discussed.  Here’s what Land said:

I guess I was in the wrong mood for Land's comment.  Speaking charitably, I think it was silly.  I also think the public is perceiving such statements as sillier and sillier all the time. 

More to the point:  I am a member of the Church, and like all believing Mormons, I consider Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.  If someone has a problem with that, too bad.  Neither Land nor anyone else can expect any Church member to say otherwise; to do so would be to deny our faith.  My guess is that people will get wearier and wearier of hearing such theologically arcane attacks, which, whatever their underlying intent, are in effect cheap shots.  Over time people like Land are simply going to be marginalized.

Not that I feel strongly about this or anything.

Is it pragmatic to nominate a Mormon for president?

I also wrote about this National Review Online post by Ramesh Ponnuru, which may be the most disturbing I have read in months. Ponnuru's thesis is that Romney's Mormonism is a liability and therefore disqualifies him as the GOP nominee:

Why is this so disturbing?  There are many reasons, but here's the big one, in my mind:  A serious, respected conservative thinker, in perhaps the leading conservative journal, is making an argument for the GOP's taking religious bigotry into account in deciding whom to nominate. Many will find his argument persuasive; after all, it is logical, or at least pragmatic.  

And yet ... and yet ... Ponnuru is arguing for pragmatism over principle:  "The country's not ready for a Mormon president; it shouldn't be that way, but it is, so let's just acquiesce to that prejudice."

I happen to be a conservative.  Since when is Ponnuru’s view conservative thinking?  I remember during the early days of the Reagan Revolution, when Republicans who wanted to compromise on principle were labeled "prags" (short for "pragmatist").  I remember that well because I myself was occasionally labeled a prag. 

As John and I have argued for months now on our blog, once conservatives — especially religious conservative like Ponnuru — start to accept such morally lame reasoning, we open the door to the same reasoning being used against other religious candidates.

Let's play my favorite religious-bias game with the Ponnuru pull-quote above: 

Thought so. 

Mike Huckabee on “The O'Reilly Factor”

I rarely watch O’Reilly; the show is too close to my daughter’s bedtime.  On Halloween, however, I had a tip from Hugh Hewitt, a syndicated talk radio host who also follows the role of religion in Romney’s candidacy.  Hugh alerted me that O’Reilly was advertising his interview of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister also running for president. 

I think Hugh suspected that Huckabee’s religious beliefs would be a subject of the interview.

Hugh was right.  Thanks to our DVR, I found a few minutes in between trick-or-treaters to watch interview, and the back-and-forth between Huckabee and O’Reilly was fascinating. 

At one point O'Reilly pressed Huckabee on his religious beliefs, asking, "Do you believe only those who believe in Jesus will go to heaven?"  (A silly question to ask a presidential candidate.)  Huckabee properly avoided a direct answer, saying only that he believed that for him, faith in Jesus Christ is the only path.

In his view, Huckabee stated, the most important thing was for candidates to "be honest about" their faith.  At first I wondered what he meant by that, but he later clarified that he's talking about living up to one's Christian beliefs, rather than professing Christianity but living a lesser standard. 

In short, in his deflection of religious-based questions, Huckabee sounded a lot like Mitt Romney when he is asked such questions. My first thought was to if dialogues like the O’Reilly-Huckabee exchange aren't actually helpful by putting the issue in perspective and taking pressure off Romney.  If nothing else, the interview reminded voters that Romney's not the only religious conservative running in 2008 — and that the questions Huckabee is starting to get are just as irrelevant to his candidacy as they are to Romney's.

In fact, just the day before on our blog we had quoted, approvingly, a comment from National Review Online’s Jim Geraghty:

Additional Reflections

I thought about the Huckabee interview throughout the next day and developed some additional thoughts. 

The interview highlights the religion issue in a fascinating way:  To a certain extent, the shoe is now on the other foot. 

What do I mean by that?  Let's just discuss scenarios a little.

Imagine that going forward, Governor Huckabee is repeatedly pressed on the question O'Reilly posed to him:  Can a deeply religious person like Huckabee be elected president?  Imagine further that the MSM and others press Huckabee on particulars of his own faith — what does he believe about creationism vs. evolution, the Rapture, the eternal fate of non-Christians, and so forth?  How would Huckabee supporters react to that? For that matter, how will Southern Baptists generally react? 

I suppose they'll say Huckabee shouldn't be subjected to such scrutiny on a private matter like his religion.  (I would agree with them.)  They probably won't be saying, like some bloggers say about Mitt Romney, that Huckabee must explain his specific religious beliefs so voters can understand his "worldview." 

So if that reasoning applies to Huck, why doesn't it apply to Romney?

Also consider this: Some conservatives (e.g. Ramesh Ponnuru) argue that Republicans must be pragmatic and avoid nominating someone like Romney because the prejudice against Mormons (regrettable though it may be) is a hurdle Republicans don't need in 2008.  Does that same pragmatism hold true for Huckabee, whose only private sector job (I think) was as a Baptist minister?

If not, are Mormons somehow more deserving of prejudice than devout Baptists?

Imagine the discussion breaking down to the point where conservatives are arguing about which religions, if held by a candidate, warrant probing questions and intense scrutiny, and which do not.  Would that not be horrible? 

And if we go there, haven't we descended into sectarian bickering that helps no one but liberal secularists?

Just wondering.

A Postscript

Hugh Hewitt kindly linked to our post about the Huckabee-O’Reilly interview and added his own thoughts:

Indeed. We shall see just how far this debate slides.