The American press habitually handles stories involving religion with all the dexterity of a surgeon wearing mittens. Still, it was hard to read this week's accounts of religion's role in the race for the Republican presidential nomination without feeling that some unseen and clumsy hand had sent us all stumbling right through the looking glass.
Start with the fact that nearly all this week's political coverage focused on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the speech he gave in Texas on Thursday, asking voters not to reject his candidacy because he's a Mormon. Much of the media response to that address was built on superficial, mostly misleading comparisons to John F. Kennedy's landmark 1960 address before Protestant clergymen hostile to his Catholicism. What was missing was any discussion of the numerous and very legitimate questions that ought to be asked about religion and the candidacy of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose surging popularity in Iowa sent Romney to the podium in the first place.
Romney, after all, simply does what most religiously affiliated Americans do; he practices the faith into which he was born. Huckabee, by contrast, is a Baptist minister. Has the notion of distinct temporal and spiritual spheres -- each with its proper concerns and distinct competency -- really been so utterly obliterated that the political press simply shrugs at this? Doesn't anybody think it's worth asking whether it's proper or even desirable for a clergyman to occupy the White House?
One of the suspicions Romney was forced to address was the notion that, as a Mormon chief executive, he would be compelled to accept direction from his church's leaders, even if it means acting in ways contrary to the nation's interest. In other words, some ancient Mormon elder in Salt Lake City is going to pick up the telephone and order President Romney to do something kooky. Huckabee, by contrast, already believes kooky things for religious reasons -- in things like creationism, which he thinks should be taught in the public schools. Doesn't anybody thing it's worth asking whether a nation fighting to remain technologically competitive can afford a president who -- for religious reasons -- wants to encourage as many children as possible to join him in scientific illiteracy?
