December 2007 Archives

On yesterday's Meet the Press, Tim Russert taxed Huckabee with a line, apparently from his speech to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Salt Lake City in 1996, where he urges the audience to "take back the nation for Christ." This has roiled the waters a bit, causing various cries of outrage in the liberal blogosphere and making Yahoo's top news stories this morning. Huck's response was to say that such a remark was appropriate to a gathering of Southern Baptists--not very illuminating. What he should have said was that this is typical evangelistic language--what you tell the troops when they are going out to spread the word--not a summons to establish Christianity as the official religion of the United States, as some outsiders might suppose.

This weekend's NYT has worthwhile piece by David Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick explains how the rise of Huckabee might be signaling a change in the traditional anatomy of the GOP.

"Now his success is setting off a debate in his party over whether his success marks the fading of the old Reaganite conservative coalition — social conservatives, antitax activists and advocates of a muscular defense — or, rather, offers a chance for its rejuvenation.“It’s gone,” said Ed Rollins, who once worked as President Reagan’s political director and recently became Mr. Huckabee’s national campaign chairman."

The New York Times' estimable David Kirkpatrick has a good piece in today's Week in Review on Huckabee and the putative collapse of the Reagan coalition of social conservatives, economic conservatives, and defense, ah, conservatives. Ed Rollins, the old GOP hand now managing Huck's campaign, pronounced it dead, claiming that the "key" is a "whole new coalition." What would that coalition look like? Mostly, Rollins and the other Republican wise heads Kirkpatrick spoke to seem to be looking back to reviving connections to the Reagan Democrats, who before that were Wallace Democrats--socially conservative (to say nothing of racist) white working and lower-middle-class folks who defected from the New Deal coalition for various reasons.

The most important quote is the kicker:

“My fantasy out of this race is that Huckabee will create another Christian Coalition,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, recalling the group that grew out of Pat Robertson’s 1988 campaign and became a political force for much of the next decade. “If you could have the equivalent of the Christian Coalition, it would be a bulwark for the Goldwater-Reagan wing of the party.”

To the extent that the wise heads are conjuring with this possibility, they couch it in terms of William Jennings Bryan-style populism. Huck may or may not be Bryan redivivus. But as students of American religious history recognize, Bryan's populism had bona fide religious roots, and Huck's candidacy shows that these roots can still send up shoots. As William Lindsey shows in the forthcoming issue of Religion in the News, the Missionary Baptist church that Huck was raised in was strongly imbued with the spiritual imperative to help the least among us. A new evangelical movement concerned as much with AIDS and Third-World Debt and universal health care as with abortion and gay marriage may very well be part of a new political coalition, but it's unlikely to be a Republican one.

Looking back at year’s end on Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech, I see it as a touchstone for the new role of religion in contemporary American politics. The speech contained three major messages that indicate how much more complex faith-based politics have become since John F. Kennedy’s speech to the Houston Ministerial Association in 1960.

Romney’s first message concerned public skepticism toward Mormons. He argued that neither his nor any other candidate’s religious affiliation should be the basis for rejection—or election—to public office. This claim is based on a demand for religious liberty. Such liberty is imperiled by those who are critical of the special doctrines and practices of particular religious communities. Recounting well-known examples of bias against religious groups in American history, he admitted that his Mormon faith may “sink my campaign.” In response to this threat, Romney refused to discuss his Mormon faith in any detail, noting that “no candidate should become the spokesman for his faith” and he also pledged his church would not dictate his actions in the White House. This position closely parallels John F. Kennedy’s argument about separating his own Catholicism from politics in 1960.

Check out these confessions of a Christian conservative. How many are in this kind of recovery remains to be seen, but I have the feeling that the numbers are not tiny.

From this Dallas Morning News piece, it looks like Huck is doing quite well, thank you, working around the lukewarmness of many of the Religious Right's Big Dogs.

Reuters' Jim Forsyth has this story on how Mike Huckabee's appearance at a controversial church might anger some Catholic voters. The anger surrounds the church's pastor John Hagee.

"Hagee has a history of denigrating the Catholic religion," said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, the largest Catholic civil rights group in the United States. In his recent book "Jerusalem Countdown," Hagee wrote: "Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews."

Barack Obama clarified his faith Sunday telling voters in Iowa that although his father lived in a "Muslim dominated village in Kenya" he "didn't practice Islam."

I was just watching the hour-long interview with Obama conducted last October by editorial board of the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, which endorsed Obama today. About eight minutes from the end, the candidate is asked whether his faith has ever come into conflict with policy positions he has taken. His answer is no, though it he seems to hint that he and his wife are personally opposed to abortion (for themselves) while not wishing to impose that view on others. At the end of his response, he gives the classic answer, in just about the same words, from Kennedy's 1960 address to the Houston ministers: that he would resign his office rather than do anything that would violate his conscience.

This story by Politico's Kenneth Vogel on clergy political contributions testifies to the new faith-based appeal of Democratic candidates. The raw numbers don't mean much; clergy don't have much to give. What's most significant is that whereas four years ago religious professionals were giving the GOP 59 percent of their campaign contributions, they're now giving 56 percent to the Dems. Obama's the big winner with Clinton not too far behind. One caveat (of which Vogel seems unaware) is that the LDS Church has no clergy as such. All Temple-going adult male Mormons are considered priests, however, and if their contributions to Mitt Romney were counted, the numbers would look very different.

The Dallas Morning News endorses Huckabee and Obama. When the biggest journalistic voice in Texas decides it's time for both parties to turn the page, it's worth taking note.

On Huck's religion the money quote is:

His religious conservatism, particularly his past rhetoric on women and gays, can be alarming. But religious conservatives aren't easily pigeonholed. A liberal Arkansas professor told The New York Times Magazine that Mr. Huckabee was a good governor. ''When he first came to office, people like me were worried about the religious aspect," she said. "And he is very orthodox on gays, guns and God. But he knows there's more than just these issues."

On Obama, the kicker goes, "Americans are tired of divisive, hard-edged politics. Democrats would inspire a refreshingly new approach by choosing Mr. Obama as their 2008 candidate."

A few days ago, Mike Huckabee told David Brody,

There is a level of elitism that has existed, the chattering class if you will who lives in that corridor between Washington and Wall Street and they sort of live in their protected world, and frankly for a number of years many of them thought of people like me - whether it was because we were evangelicals or because maybe we were out from the middle of America. They were polite to us. They were more than happy for us to come to the rallies and stand in lines for hours to cheer on the candidates, appreciated us putting up the yard signs, going out and putting out the cards on peoples doors and making phone calls to the phone banks and - really appreciated all of our votes. But when they got elected, behind closed doors, they would laugh at us and speak with scorn and derision that we were, as one article I think once said "the easily led." So there's been almost this sort of, it's okay if you guys get a seat on the bus, but don't ever think about telling us where the bus is going to go.

Across the pond, former PM Tony Blair officially converted to Catholicism on Friday. Blair had been a member of the Church of England during his years on Downing Street. He “told the BBC this year that he had avoided talking about his religious views while in office for about 10 years for fear of being labeled "a nutter." CNN went on later to say that “Britons often are surprised by people who openly and fervently discuss their religious views, and the degree to which faiths such as evangelicalism can influence U.S. politics.” Any thoughts on this cultural difference?

As both Christmas and the primaries near, the candidates are each crafting their own holiday messages to the voters. Mike Huckabee caused quite a stir with his "What Really Matters", floating cross video. However, the other campaigns' ads are not to be ignored for the way they choose to integrate Christmas with politics. Here are some of the more notable ads;
Barack Obama:

John Edwards:

Hillary Clinton:

A Similar Theme from Rudy:

John McCain's which is very similar to Huck's:

The Weekly Standard's Christopher Caldwell tells the readers of the Financial Times here why he believes religion appears to matter more in this race than before.

Does the discovery that Mitt Romney only metaphorically "saw" his father march with Martin Luther King, Jr.--and that George Romney maybe only "marched" with King--give the lie to Mitt's whole account of his feelings about the LDS Church's 1978 change of position on admission of blacks to full membership in the church? As someone who was moved by the account, I'd say not entirely; but it does give the fib to it. As summarized by Michael Luo in today's New York Times, the controversy points to a certain proclivity on the candidate's part to stretch facts for the sake of, ah, the greater truth. But God is in the details, and it's the details--like the weeping by the side of Fresh Pond Parkway--that make the case for greater truths. And when the former are called into question, the case for the latter is weakened--as are all future cases that the teller may wish to make by way of telling details.

Turns out CBN's national political correspondent has a sense of humor.

The Boston Globe's Lisa Wangsness does a nice job getting a fix on evangelicals in New Hampshire (and New England generally), thanks in no small part to our own Andrew Walsh. Good quotes, Andrew! Credit also to the Huffington Post's OffTheBus folks for fanning out to 30 Iowa congregations to see how the churchfolk are feeling about the campaign. Unfortunately, however, HP's "citizen journalists" don't bring much of a sense of religious differentiation to the table, so we get no Catholics, one Mainline Protestant, and a lot evangelicals representing "the churches."

Huckabee pleads complete innocence on the Xmas Greeting ad. Someone ask the cameraman.

Those with access to Lexis-Nexis should check out this good Religion News Service piece by Daniel Burke and Cecile Holmes on the struggle between Clinton and Obama for the votes of black folk in South Carolina. For black church women in particular the choice is hard, they report: Do I vote for the woman or the African American? I think, in the end, Barack will be harder to resist.

For almost all Huck almost all the time, check out the Arkansas Times' Arkansas Blog. Editor Max Brantley is no fan.

Useful overview in Slate of the contest for converts between Baptists and Mormons.

Robert Novak sticks his shiv into Huckabee not for being too religious but for not being religious enough--or at least, for failures on the barricades of the Baptist Wars of yore. The reason the panjandrums of the SBC are not backing Huck, saith Bob, is that when the charge was on to drive the liberals from the Temple, Huckabee gave aid and comfort to the other side. He actually made himself sufficiently acceptable to the Southern Baptist left in Arkansas that he managed to get himself elected as head of the state association. How much of a black mark this will be with rank and file Southern Baptists around the country is not for me to predict, but given that the denominations current leaders seems to be trying to get away from the ideological combat of the past, my guess is, not too much.

And for the "outside the Beltway" view, here's Rod Dreher. I do think he may underestimate the GOP's problem. It will be a lot harder for the GOP to offload economic conservatism that for the Democrats to onload religion.

I'm not sure Meyerson would appreciate Reid's post. But it's clear that across the ideological spectrum the bien pensant pundits at the Post are rebelling against too much religion in politics. We await the pronunciamento of Dean Broder on this weightiest of matters.

Harold Meyerson's piece today echoes earlier sentiments from Charles Krauthammer. Both men are concerned about the role religion is playing in today's Republican party. Meyerson: "We've seen this kind of Christianity before in America. It's more tribal than religious, and it surges at those times when our country is growing more diverse and economic opportunity is not abounding. At its height in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was chiefly the political expression of nativist Protestants upset by the growing ranks of Catholics in their midst."

When JFK ran for president, he made sure to carve out differences between himself and his church on a couple of policy issues--aid to parochial schools and a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. This was important because a central concern of those who opposed having a Catholic in the White House was that he would take orders from the Catholic hierarchy. That is a less important concern among those who are wary of Mitt Romney's Mormonism--indeed, it's a little hard to grasp what exactly is the basis of their concern other than just not liking Mormonism. Still, it's interesting that Romney vigorously resists letting any light appear between himself and the positions of his church. He made that clear again last Sunday on Meet the Press when, on the issue of the status of blacks under the previous (pre-1978) dispensation, he said, "I'm not going to distance myself in any way from my faith."

Be that as it may, you'd think that it would be in Romney's interest to indicate his independence of mind by calling attention to any divergence between a position of his and that of his church--if such exists. And it actually seems to. So far as one can tell--here's an account--Romney opposes public funding for embryonic stem cell research. Yet unlike the Catholic Church and a lot of conservative evangelicals, the LDS Church has no objection to it. The reason is that Mormon doctrine posits a theory of ensoulment under which embryonic tissue does not become a human being until implantation--and embryonic stem cells are taken for research purposes prior to implantation. It is thus consistent with their church's position that Mormon senators like Orrin Hatch and Gordon Smith have always supported federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. (For an excellent account of all this, see this article by Drew Clark's that appeared in Slate in 2001.)

Is there any reason for Romney not to say, "Well, my church does not hold that it is destruction of human life to harvest embryonic stem cells for research purposes, but I just am not comfortable with doing so"? Yes. It would highlight the distinctiveness of Mormon doctrine in a way that he seems at all costs to want to avoid calling attention to.

Stuart Rothenberg agrees with the notion that Romney's speech did little to sway evangelicals. He feels that the speech did not bridge the fundamental gap that causes evangelical objections of Mormonism.

"Given that evangelicals see Mormonism as deceptive and an attempt to pass itself off as a form of Christianity, one speech about tolerance and the importance of faith is not likely to convince evangelicals to support Romney. I'm willing to bet that American Jews would overwhelmingly feel the same about voting for someone who is a "messianic Jew.""

I agree, Reid, that it's a must watch. I'm reminded of a trip I took to South Carolina exactly 20 years ago, when I was briefly covering Jack Kemp's run for the Republican presidential nomination for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. There we were at the Greenville Rotary Club, and Kemp began his speech by wishing everyone the best "in this Christmas and Hanukkah season." Kemp loved to do the then pretty new religious side of GOP campaigning, and enjoyed some real support in that quarter; but he also considered it very much his duty to convey a message of religious inclusion. Now we live in a different era, when (thank you, Bill O'Reilly!) social conservatives have been encouraged to think that seasonal inclusivity constitutes a War on Christmas. Huck's ad proffers not the least tip of a hat in the direction of those who might be celebrating the season in non-Christian ways. It takes a subtle dig at all those other candidates who clearly don't care enough about what really matters to ease up on the political throttle. It is of a piece with the faux naivete of his innocent question about Mormonism. It has "Christian Leader" written all over it.

Update: I may be visually impaired, but a lot of other folks aren't, and they're drawing attention to the "floating cross" in Huck's Merry Christmas ad. Me, I think they're on to something. The way the camera is fixed on Huck while the background slowly rotates onto the bright cross and thence to the Christmas tree--very, very clever.

This new Huckabee commercial is a must watch. It is an advertisement where Huck denounces traditional political ads and reminds us that the importance of this season is "the celebration of the birth of Christ."

Mike Huckabee’s question about whether Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are siblings moved a decades-long guerrilla campaign that conservative Evangelicals have been waging against Mormonism into the political arena. Zev Chafets, who wrote the Huckabee profile for yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, said the preacher- politician posed the query “in an innocent voice.” But ingenuous it was not. Along with Huckabee’s being hesitant to identify Mitt Romney as a Christian and his initial unwillingness to recognize his opponent’s faith as something other than a cult, its intent was making sure that religious concerns would be expressed in the Iowa caucuses and in voting booths in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and beyond.

A brief history of perceptions of the Mormons is helpful here. From its beginnings in the 1820s, Mormonism troubled lots of folks. Some thought that followers of an American prophet posed a danger to the nation. Others were afraid of the new religion’s unorthodoxy, convinced that its heretical beliefs put Christianity at risk. Throughout the 19th century, the fear of a Mormon kingdom populated by perfidious polygamists kept Mormonism in the political sphere, while worry about its theological beliefs kept it in the religious sphere. But at the end of the century, the Mormons gave up their most visible religious distinctive, plural marriage, allowing their underlying devotion to the nation to shine forth. The result was a de-emphasis on belief and more on behavior.

Sunday, John McCain was asked whether he had "accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior" on a campaign stop in South Carolina. McCain answered he is "a man of faith." Read the full story from CNN here.

Good piece in the Washington Post today on the role of home schoolers in the Huckabee campaign. These make for a perfect network in a caucus state--reminiscent of Robertson's use of church-based organizing to propel him into a second-place finish in Iowa in 1988. The numbers get tougher where there are true primaries--even in states where home schoolers are thick on the ground like South Carolina. As Robertson also found out in '88.

It's hard not to be moved by Romney's answer to Tim Russert's question on Meet the Press today about the LDS Church's 1978 shift in position on full spiritual equality for blacks. The testimony to his and his parents' commitment to civil rights is powerful, but above all what's striking is seeing Romney's eyes well up when he describes hearing the news on the radio, pulling his car over, and weeping.

Russert begins his interview with a series of tough questions (transcript here) on Romney's views of religion--fair enough, given that the candidate had put the subject on the table in his College Station speech. (This was what my students found wanting in comparing JFK's appearance in the Houston ministers' lion's den to the excruciatingly controlled environment of the Bush Library.) At the end, Russert raises the discrimination issue, and concludes by asking, "You were 31 years old, and your church was excluding blacks from full participation. Didn't you think, 'What am I doing part of an organization that is viewed by many as a racist organization?'" Romney begins his response by saying:

I'm very proud of my faith, and it's the faith of my fathers, and I certainly believe that it is a, a faith--well, it's true and I love my faith. And I'm not going to distance myself in any way from my faith.

So imagine the difficulty of belonging to an ethnic group that is also a church whose doctrines you believe to be the product of ongoing divine revelation, when one of those doctrines seems profoundly at odds with one of your own core beliefs. And your relief when a new revelation wipes the doctrine away.

Those anxious to get up to speed on Huckabee and religion should hie themselves to Zev Chafets' New York Times Magazine piece ("The Huckabee Factor") and to Liz Clarke's story in today's Washington Post ("A Higher Power"). Chafets has the longer and fuller account, but Clarke has some critical additional information--most critically, in my view, Huck's attendance at the 1980 Public Affairs Briefing in Dallas, which was the birthplace of the Religious Right as a national force. The Briefing was cooked up by GOP operatives and prominent evangelicals as a way to turn white evangelicals into Republican voters and activists. At the time, Huck was the publicity guy for the Fort Worth evangelist James Robison, who was one of the big dogs on the religious side. That Huck should seem to show--and in some sense does show--the face of a new kind of political evangelicalism needs to be put together with the fact that he was present at the creation, and in a pretty significant role.

By comparison, George W. Bush came late to the party. His religious conversion didn't occur until 1986 or so, and his first experience of evangelical politics was working in his father's 1988 campaign. So under the circumstances, it's easy to understand Huck's distress at not having an easier time picking up the support of old comrades in arms like Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention. Some put this down to a kind of coming of age of the Religious Right, as if the leaders have learned over the years to emphasize electability over ideological purity. But the movement has always been about supporting the electable, beginning with George H. W. Bush, the anointed candidate of the party establishment whose primary opponents included two candidates who were much more in tune with religious conservatives--Jack Kemp and Pat Robertson. Huck is simply dealing with what has always been the case, and as a player on both the religious and political sides he's got to know it. His posture of injury--why aren't they supporting me?--must be considered a bit of an act.

While Fred Thompson hasnt been feeling much love from Iowa evangelicals, check out this video of a warm reception from a Miami area church.

David Domke and Kevin Coe have teamed up to publish a new book, The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. The book highlights the increase of religious rhetoric in recent years.

"On average, presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter mentioned God in less than half of their major addresses. Put another way, more often than not presidents during these years made no mention of God in important speeches. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush (through year six) all did so in more than 90% of theirs."

The conservative website Grassfire.org is touting its latest survey of "grassroots conservatives," and what it shows is that this group--how defined I don't know--likes Huckabee a lot. No surprise there. The most interesting results have to do with the percentage who say they would skip to a third party depending on which GOP candidate were to run against Hillary Clinton. Romney comes in at 15 percent, well below Giuliani and McCain (20 percent) but ahead of Huckabee and Thompson (11 and 12 percent respectively). Evidently it's easier for a grassroots conservative to vote for a Mormon than for a social non-conservative like Giuliani or an immigration moderate and campaign finance reformer who once insulted social conservatives like McCain.

The Krauthammer column flagged by Reid signals that conservative members of what they like to call the chattering class are beginning to question the wisdom of the GOP's enveloping itself in religion over the past generation. Naturally, K can't quite put it that way himself. By him, the left always has to be guilty of something, so he's got to triangulate himself between its sins and the sins of his own kind. But the left of his assault is a straw man. Ever since Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority first appeared on the national scene, liberals have acknowledged the right of conservatives to bring their religious values to bear on public debate--you can look it up. Positioning aside, K's real darts are intended for the current GOP presidential candidates. He's quite right to point out the empirical weakness of Mitt Romney's recent claim that liberty and religion are inextricably connected. And it is hard not to join his contempt for the unlovely spectacle of Mssrs. Huckabee, Romney, and Giuliani pledging their troth as Bible believers in the CNN-YouTube debate. But it would be more impressive if he had at some point acknowledged that this is a case of chickens coming home to roost. Or, to use a biblical image, of reaping what you've sown.

Tomorrow's Washington Post will feature a piece by Charles Krauthammer who is a bit perturbed about the current religious debate. Check out this change of pace in our national dialogue.

A useful if hostile review of Huckabee's career qua Christian Right Governor of Arkansas. It is dawning on liberals that, yes Virginia, there is still a Christian Right out there.

If you want to know what gives the GOP's economic conservatives (i.e. The Club for Growth) the willies about Huckabee, take a look at his response in yesterday's debate to a question about how he would put his faith into public policy.

THE TWO OVERRIDING PRINCIPLES ARE YOU TREAT OTHERS AS YOU WISH TO BE TREATED. IN HEALTH CARE THAT MEANS WE RECOGNIZE THAT THE PERSON WHO IS SICK SHOULDN'T BE TREATED DIFFERENTLY BECAUSE HEIR [THEY'RE] IN POVERTY THAN A PERSON WHO HAS EXTRAORDINARY WEALTH. THAT WE HAVE SOME SENSE OF BALANCE IN HOW WE APPROACH THAT. THAT'S THE ESSENCE OF WHAT AMERICA IS ABOUT. THE SECOND BASIC PRINCIPLE IS THAT IN AS MUCH AS YOU'VE DONE IT TO THE LEAST OF THESE, MY BRETHREN, YOU'VE DONE IT UNTO ME. AS IT RELATES TO HEALTH, EDUCATION, OR ANY POLICY.

In an effort to break the monopoly Republicans are holding on Spiritual Politics, I went searching to see if any Democrats have extended a hand to religious voters. Obama did, and he too, had his own "Faith in America" speech in June '06. It had some remarkable similarities to Mitt's including;

"I informed Mr. [Alan] Keyes that I was running to be the United States Senator from Illinois not the Minister from Illinois."

"I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives and in the lives of the American people... We need to understand that Americans are a religious people."

"Folks tend to forget, that during our founding, it wasn't the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment," but "persecuted minorities" such as Baptists "who didn't want the established churches to impose their views."

I confess I am not a big Ron Paul follower, so perhaps I should know better. But I've tended to view him as a Fortress America libertarian who just wants government, especially the federal government, to go away as much as possible. Anti-abortion yes, but what else is a Texas Republican supposed to be? So it was with some surprise that I discovered the following Religious Right boilerplate in his remarks on what is wrong with education in America in today's GOP presidential debate.

DO YOU KNOW THE MAJOR PROBLEM? WE ALLOWED THE JUDGES TO DRIVE GOD OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS. WE ALLOWED THE MORAL FOUNDATION OF THIS REPUBLIC WHICH IS THAT WE ARE CREATED EQUAL AND ENDOWED BY OUR CREATOR, NOT BY OUR CONSTITUTION OR OUR LEADERS WITH OUR RIGHTS. IF WE DON'T TEACH OUR CHILDREN THAT HERITAGE AND THE MORAL CULTURE THAT GOES ALONG WITH IT, WE CANNOT REMAIN FREE, THEY WILL NOT BE DISCIPLINED TO LEARN SCIENCE, TO LEARN MATH, TO LEARN HISTORY, TO LEARN ANYTHING. AND THEY DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS EXCEPT WHEN THEY'RE SQUABBLING ABOUT THEIR OWN PERSONAL FAITH AND FORGETTING THAT WE HAVE A NATIONAL CREED. AND THAT NATIONAL CREED NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT TO OUR CHILDREN SO THAT WHETHER THEY WERE SCIENTISTS OR BUSINESSMEN OR LAWYERS THEY WILL STAND ON THE SOLID GROUND OF A MORAL EDUCATION THAT GIVES THEM THE DISCIPLINE THEY NEED TO SERVE THE RIGHT, TO EXERCISE THEIR FREEDOM WITH DIGNITY, AND TO DEFEND JUSTICE BECAUSE THEY UNDERSTAND IT IS OUR HERITAGE.

Huck apologizes.

I really didn't know. Well, he was telling me things about the Mormon faith, because he frankly is well-schooled on comparative religions. As a part of that conversation, I asked the question, because I had heard that, and I asked it, not to create something -- I never thought it would make the story.

Sunday's NYT Magazine will feature this piece on Mike Huckabee. Zev Chafets covers all aspects of Huck and what makes this piece worthwhile is that he doesnt avoid the negative parts of Huck. The best part has been grabbing media attention this afternoon and will no doubt be fodder for cable news tonight.

"I asked Huckabee, who describes himself as the only Republican candidate with a degree in theology, if he considered Mormonism a cult or a religion. ‘‘I think it’s a religion,’’ he said. ‘‘I really don’t know much about it.’’I was about to jot down this piece of boilerplate when Huckabee surprised me with a question of his own: ‘‘Don’t Mormons,’’ he asked in an innocent voice, ‘‘believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?’’"

More negatives....

"Huckabee’s affability and populist economic and social views have sometimes been misinterpreted as a moderate brand of evangelical Christianity. In fact, as he wrote in his book ‘‘Character Makes a Difference,’’ he considers liberalism to be a cancer on Christianity."

"Many Republican strategists remain dubious about Huckabee’s chances. ‘‘He’ll get hammered in New Hampshire,’’ the Republican consultant Mike Murphy told me. ‘‘A primary campaign is like a book. Iowa is just the first chapter. After that come more chapters. Opponents will hit Huckabee for being soft on immigration, Arkansas allegations, that kind of thing. And at some point, Republican elites will begin to ask, Is what we need a smallstate governor who doesn’t believe in Darwin?’’"

In a forthcoming issue in the NY Tinmes , an article about Mi

For those looking for bona fide anti-Mormonism at work on the ground in Iowa, check out this post from the Iowa blog, Caucus Cooler. It discusses, and links to, an email from Marion City councilman Craig Adamson that is about as unvarnished as anyone could want. It seems the email was sent to "dozens" of conservatives in the state. How much of this there is out there circulating is anybody's guess. Mine is that, if it's doing so electronically, it's going to get out. Of course, there can be misdirection at work. Back in 1928, there were charges that Al Smith was taking advantage of anti-Catholic propaganda in order to portray himself as the victim of prejudice. Of course, he was the victim of prejudice, and any advantage he took of it wasn't enough.

In a video interview with the Atlantic's Atlanti-Cam, Romney notes that he caught some flak for not mentioning non-believers in his Address on Faith. "Well," he said, "I thought that was assumed within the general purview of faith." Count me a little skeptical on that one.

National Review, the hoary old man of American conservative journalism, has with controlled enthusiasm anointed Mitt Romney its presidential candidate. The magazine's argument is structured around the need to keep "the coalition" together--that's the quondam Reagan coalition of social, economic, and national security conservatives, so called. Romney stands as the only guy who doesn't, or whom the magazine believes shouldn't, alienate any one of those constituencies.

The Politico has this quick piece on Congressman Steve King (R-IA) proposing a resolution stating that "Christians and Christmas are important." And people complain that this is a do-nothing Congress...

My old colleague (from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Jeanne Cummings, now at the Politico, has a nice piece about the IRS' ramping up of its scrutiny of church-based politicking and its possible impact on the Huckabee campaign. Personally, I don't think that churches with a sufficiently high proportion of politically like-minded voters (conservative evangelical, African-American) will have much difficulty mobilizing their folks as per usual. What the scrutiny is likely to do is make it even more difficult for the rest of us to know what's really going on. Not that political reporters have ever tried very hard to find out.

On Meet the Press last Sunday, Giuliani was asked whether he agreed with Huckabee's 1992 description of homosexuality as “an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle.” He dissented: “I don’t believe it’s sinful.” But then went on to say:

My moral views on this come from the, you know, from the Catholic Church, and I believe that homosexuality, heterosexuality, as a way that somebody leads their life is not, isn’t sinful,” said Mr. Giuliani, who as New York mayor temporarily moved in with two gay roommates after he separated from his wife. “It’s the acts — it’s the various acts that people perform that are sinful, not the orientation that they have.

I watched the videos of Oprah and Obama addressing their huge crowd in South Carolina with an eye to tallying the sum of religiosity on display before the largely African American Sunday audience. Both, sure enough, began with churchly comments.
Oprah:

“It is Amazing Grace that brought me here.”
“For me, it’s stepping out of my pew.”
“Each one of us has a calling here on earth to do the good and the great thing.”

“I am so grateful to be here to be here today, giving all praise and honor to God. Look at the day that the Lord has made.”

If you want to see what is driving Huck's success among evangelicals, watch this video of a Texas mega church pastor telling his congregation to support Mike. Fast forward to about 3 min to see the endorsement. The video is part of a series of pieces on the Governor for Newsweek's latest issue: "Holy Huckabee!"

This piece seems to echo what Mark was saying about a seperation between Republican pundits and Republican people. John Heilemann of the New Yorker explores why Romney has faced such challenges and how this represents a change from old school(beltway) Republicans and a new direction coming from the heartland. Money quote:

"In the past, of course, none of these campaigns would have stood a chance in the GOP: the orderly party, the disciplined party, the party of primogeniture. What the old Republican Party would have done is anoint a front-runner and let him run the table. Someone who’d touched all the bases, ticked off all the boxes. Someone like Mitt, that is."

What I love about other religious traditions, memo to Mitt.

Two new Huckabee spots end with the words "Authentic Conservative" in place of the earlier "Christian Leader." Evidently too much negative press, too many questions about evolution and Jews getting into heaven...

After contemplating Reid's round-up and hearing the Monday morning summaries of political news, I find myself concluding that Beltway pundits have decided that it's time to get on the Romney horse. They seem to have figured out that Giuliani is a dead man walking, what between Kerik and Shaggate and all the social-issues apostasy. Huckabee is too poor in cash, too far out religiously, and of course too much the economic populist for the moneybags who make the GOP engines turn. From what I gather, Romney has not endeared himself to the GOP establishment, but that's a pretty depressed enterprise these days, and hardly in a position to persuade anyone. So the hyperbolic enthusiasm for the Romney speech emanating from the O'Beirne and Matthews types has less to do with honest assessment and more to do with ingratiation. The logic, presumably, is that Huckabee's victory in Iowa will be offset by Romney's in NH, and that no matter what happens in South Carolina enough GOP voters will be freaked out by the thought of voting for a creationist who wants to quarantine AIDS patients that they will turn to Anybody But Huck, and that Anybody will be Mitt. The Neocons won't be happy about having to jump ship on Giuliani, but now that bombing Iran is off the table, they will decide that they overplayed that card anyway. Mitt will not have Norman Podhoretz hanging around his neck. And in due course, the social conservatives will recognize that A Republican Person of Faith is better than a Democratic Person of Faith, especially if it's Hillary.

It seems that reactions to Mitt Romney's speech seem to fall into three categories. The first is positive. It comes from inside the beltway or Mormon circles; the speech was a hit. The second are the mixed results coming from the heartland; the speech will do little to sway evangelical voters. And the third, from across the nation is negative; it was unfortunate that the Governor had to explain his faith and that Mitt is no JFK.

First, the praise.

"Mitt Romney, who sure looked presidential, explained effectively that he is a man of faith who is committed to America's values."
-- Kate O’Beirne - National Review’s The Corner

"For the first time in this campaign and it has been long already, I heard greatness this morning."
-- Chris Matthews - MSNBC

"It was a magnificent speech, splendidly delivered, it was moving… I don't know how he could have done it better. I mean I was very moved."
-- Pat Buchanan - MSNBC

The Salt Lake Tribune: Speech was a hit.

E.J. Dionne was one of the few journalists who offered praise, albeit muted.

Next, the uncertainty.

Friday, the Des Moines Register published this piece asserting that the speech was a day late and a dollar short for the average man. The LA Times echoed such sentiments, here. The Wall Street Journal ran the same story.

Bill Tammeus of the Kansas City Star wrote a positive article, but it still started out reminding Kansans that, according to Mormons, American Indians descended from Hebrews.

Bill’s colleague Rhonda Chriss Lokeman wrote a snarky piece that referred to Romney only as “Big Love”, a reference to the HBO series about a polygamist.

The final category of reactions, regretting that the speech happened and comparisons to JFK.

The Salt Lake Tribune's Rebecca Walsh bemoaned the fact that the Governor had to make the speech, here,

NYT's David Brooks touched on the culture war aspect of the speech.

Maureen Dowd wrote perhaps the most scathing opinion piece on it.

David Kusnet wrote a similar piece, "Mitt Romney, you are no JFK."

And a Boston Globe editorial regretted that Romney had to target evangelicals so explicitly over other religious groups.

Clearly, reactions were mixed.

I hope we'll be able to provide you with a survey of reactions to the Romney speech shortly. In the meantime, my initial impression is that there's been something of a Rashomon effect--everybody's seizing on something different, according to their lights. Nothing very surprising in this, since the speech had something for just about everybody, meaning that there were things that just about everybody could like and dislike. My guess is that the consensus judgment will thus have to wait for the polling results. And why not? The object of the exercise was to get Romney's numbers to head north, and if they do, then the speech will deserve to be regarded as a success. I'm betting, however, that like the speech itself, the polls are not going to register very strongly one way or another.

Anyone who wants to understand what makes religion in public life different in New England should take a look at this article in today's Hartford Courant. The Connecticut Valley Atheists erect a sign (with official permission) in Rockville's Central Park with a picture of the Twin Towers and a quote from Lennon's "Imagine"--to wit, "Imagine No Religion." A few angry phone calls, but otherwise, no biggie. The local Congregational minister and Catholic priest find it interesting, useful. The headline tells it all: "Atheists' Sign Spurs Talk, Thought." Ah, the Land of Steady Habits...and free exercise.

Check out Newsweek's latest Iowa poll. Golly. Looks like the Mittster should have struck while his iron was hot. Ambinder thinks this could actually be good news for Romney because it depresses expectations, makes Iowa Huck's to lose. I suspect such logic is cold comfort in the Romney camp today.

Just before Romney's speech, Ralph Reed told Anderson Cooper:

And I think what we need to do is, we need to stop doing doctrinal frisks of presidential candidates and theological G.I. tract exams, and let's do something that's more mainstream and -- and, frankly, more in line with our traditions, which is, let's ask them what their values are, what their public policy stands are, and what their ability to lead is.

Jan is still learning how to use the technology, so I'm posting this for her. MS

To great hoopla, Governor Mitt Romney gave an address about “Faith in America” on Thursday (December 6, 2007). What he said was designed to deal with what has become a contentious issue, particularly in Iowa: his Mormon faith.

Following the candidate’s speech, some commentators complained that the speech was not Mormonism 101 and some even suggested a lack of truth in advertising. But Romney’s said he would talk about faith in America and how, if elected, his faith would inform his presidency. That is what he did.

Had he not stayed with his announced topic and had gone the Mormonism 101 route instead, he might well have sounded like he was delivering a missionary message. If he managed to avoid that, he would have been forced to oversimplify the thoroughly complex LDS theological system so much that many of his listeners probably would have concluded that what Mormons believe is, in fact, really weird.

In any event, the candidate made no effort to explain Mormon beliefs. Nor did he describe his faith tradition more generally. Yet in the way he talked about religious diversity, the nation’s symphony of faiths; how religious liberty stands at the heart of the American Constitutional system; and how religion should have a place in the public square, his was a very Mormon speech.

The news from his campaign is that Romney wrote this speech himself and this is surely correct. As a student of Mormon rhetoric as well as LDS history and religion, I recognized elements of what Romney said that could have come from the mouth of the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith. The founder of the LDS movement was passionate about religious liberty, believing it to be a gift not simply from the framers of the Constitution, but a gift from God to this new nation.

Violence against them forced the Mormons from their homes in Ohio and Missouri. But they continued to insist that religious liberty was an American value and when they built a town they named Nauvoo on banks of the Mississippi River, they put that belief into practice. In that very Mormon place, the Saints were careful to welcome persons of all faiths. Moreover, the prophet included members who were not Mormon in his “Council of Fifty,” the body that oversaw the civic dimension of the Mormon realm.

After the prophet’s murder, the Saints were again driven from their homes. While many of them scattered across the East and Midwest, the largest Mormon group followed Brigham Young to the inter-mountain west. There they established a theocratic kingdom that lasted about a decade before they were forced by the federal government to share political power with non-Mormons. Soon afterward, the U.S. began efforts to suppress the Saints’ most distinctive religious Mormon practice, plural marriage (polygamy).

Regarding the government’s action as a form of despotism, the Mormons were convinced that the fight against polygamy was a desecration of the nation’s commitment to religious liberty. It took a while, but the Supreme Court’s decision that religious liberty did not extend to the polygamous practice of plural marriage had the effect of moving Mormonism into the political, economic, and cultural, but not religious mainstream.

What happened next is a paradox: The nation made the Saints move into a post-polygamous universe mandatory, but as that move come about the Mormons became super-patriotic. And as they did so, the connection between religion and liberty was elevated almost to the point that it is now Mormon doctrine.

The consequence is that Mormons value tolerance as much or more than any other U.S. citizens. So if Romney failed to talk very much about his Mormon faith directly in this speech, he nevertheless revealed a great deal about his being Mormon.

Whether his candidacy will carry the transformation forward, bringing Mormonism into the religious mainstream, is still an open question.

The Hartford Courant's story on the speech used my class's reaction as the frame. Buck did a nice job, though I would have liked to see more of the students, less of me. Romney did come off poorly in comparison to JFK--but since most people will only see, at most, Romney sound bites, I suspect our reaction was more negative than the consensus judgment that will emerge. What's now happening is that The Speech has put religion on the table in a way that reminds me of 1987, when the revelation that Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg (remember him?) smoked a lot of dope put marijuana on the table, and every would-be president had to start answering the "have you ever smoked" question. Now Huckabee's starting to get peppered with questions about what he believes re: creation, Jews going to heaven, etc. Blowback? Well, if Huck did not put the Mormon Problem on the table, he has, as Krauthammer notes today, not refrained from exploiting it. What K fails to mention--not a surprise--is that it is the GOP establishment that has been oh so happy to encourage evangelicals to make having a "Christian leader" a priority. Now there's blowback for you.

It's been a long day of talking and thinking about Mitt Does Houston. As it happened, the speech took place at 10:30--in the middle of the last class of my Religion and the Media course. So I threw out the plan and showed the class the video of the Kennedy speech, and then we watched Romney. The consensus view was that Kennedy was a lot more impressive--especially because he had ventured into the ministerial lion's den. The standard accounts of this event just tend to talk about JFk's speech itself, but it is striking how hostile the questioners were. Romney, by contrast, operated from within the friendly confines of the George H. W. Bush Library, with George H. W. himself on hand. The students suspected that someone was holding up applause cue cards, so kempt was the exercise.

My own view of the speech was that it was a small net plus for Romney. His personal testimony of belief in Jesus was perhaps calculated to make people understand that he is, a good Mormon like him is, in fact a Christian. If so, it can't have done much to enhance his appeal to the many evangelicals who don't like Mormonism precisely because it insists that it is Christian.

To me, the most interesting part of the speech came towards the end when Romney gave his take on American religious history. Here's the relevant paragraph:

Mitt Romney delivered his "Faith in America" speech at 10:30 this morning.

Here is the video

On the eve of Romney's big speech the world is waiting with bated breath. How will it compare to Kennedy’s 1960 address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on the role of Catholicism?

To help you analyze how well Governor Romney did or didn’t mirror Kennedy here is the full transcript of Kennedy’s speech.

And here it is in video.

I want to welcome John Green and Jan Shipps aboard for the inaugural sail of this blog. We'll be getting this site in more presentable shape very soon--a banner that identifies it as an enterprise of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, bios of the main contributors, etc. But it seemed good, on the eve of the biggest religion speech since JFK addressed the Houston ministers in 1960, to get up and running. Our purpose is to provide smart and reasonably evenhanded commentary on all matters having to do with religion and American politics--with perhaps a nod now and then to religion and politics in other parts of the world. For those of you--if any there be out there at the moment--interested in bathing in Mormons and politics, you might be interested in taking a look at the video of a conference on the subject that took place in Princeton last month. The contribution of yours truly is #20. For Jan's excellent discussion of the early history of Mormons in politics, look here. So far as I can tell, they do not yet have what John had to say online. Which is a great shame, because he had some excellent survey data to impart.

"I don't disagree with the Bible. I try to live by it." In other words, I try to live by what I don't disagree with. Somehow, Romney's going to have to do better Thursday.

Here is the clip of Mitt Romney on the Bible from last week's CNN/YouTube debate.

Thoughts?

Fred Thompson recently defended attacks on his faith on CNN's Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer questioned the former Senator based on comments made in David Domke's USA Today column here. Domke's spiritual crib sheet on the top candidates quoted James Dobson's now infamous email. Dobson said,

"He is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"

To which Thompson responded in the Sit Room:

“I’m OK with the Lord, and the Lord is OK with me as far as I can tell.”

This may not suffice in South Carolina where as Domke reminds us, "faith runs deep and wide."

You can watch the whole interview here. Wolf and Senator Thompson begin talking about his faith at one minute thirty seconds.

So now Romney decides to give "the speech"--the discussion of religion that he has been contemplating lo these many months. It's hard to avoid the suspicion that the only reason it's happening is that he's now behind in the polls in Iowa, and so must do the thing he'd hoped to avoid having to do. It's also hard to avoid thinking that this is coming too late to help him with the evangelical constituency that is its object. A month ago, evangelicals seemed to be in search of a candidate, and so were prepared to jump Romney's way if he gave them sufficient reason to do so. But now they seem to be coalescing around Huckabee, one of their own.