Mixing religion and politic is dangerous it is a fact! the middle east is a good example. religions have to stay out of politics. Period!
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Church and State
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The College Station speech was not without its clunkers. "Religion requires freedom" is, in one sense, true, in that coerced faith is no faith. But religious faith has flourished under harsh persecution, not least during the twentieth century (when more Christians died because of their convictions than in the previous nineteen centuries of Christian history combined). That "freedom requires religion," the obverse Romney assertion, was another clumsy formulation. A freedom that reduces to "my way" is, if course, no freedom, but simply license. And it is certainly true that biblical convictions about human nature, human community, and human destiny have shaped the freedom project in the United States and elsewhere. Still, great champions of the politics of freedom ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Winston Churchill have been "religious" in only a generic, even deistic, sense. Here, Romney's attempt at the kind of rhetorical parallelism that Ted Sorenson made a trademark of JFK's speeches ("Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.") didn't quite come off, at either end of the proposition. (Memo to all presidential candidates and speechwriters: trying to imitate Sorenson is like trying to imitate H.L. Mencken; it can't be done. So don't do it.)
One might also raise questions about Romney's promise that no church "authorities," of any faith, "will ever exert influence on [my] presidential decisions." Well, yes, if by "exert influence" you mean "determine." But if by "influence" you mean "persuade," why should a President Romney, or any president, deny himself the counsel of the nation's religious leaders? And on the flip side of the coin, do religious authorities lose their rights as citizens to "petition the government" when they assume responsibility for their congregations? The point Romney was trying to make here is a crucial one: that there is a crucial distinction between political authority and spiritual authority in a just state. But Romney's formulation left something to be desired.
Another failed attempt at a Sorensonian parallelism was Romney's assertion that "No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion." The second half of that claim is certainly true; but wasn't the Southern Christian Leadership Conference "dictating" to the state when it declared segregation and miscegenation laws a violation of both the Constitution and the moral law? We all understand--or should--that religious organizations ranging from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to Focus on the Family to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations do not constitute a parallel government. Still, American public life would be much the poorer if religious organizations could not call the state to judgment when, in their conscientious reasoning, the state was acting unjustly.
These clunkers do not, however cancel or significantly detract from Romney's accomplishment. In the midst of some very high-stakes presidential politics, Mitt Romney gave eloquent expression to the conviction that the institutional separation of church and state does not, and cannot, mean the exile of religiously informed moral conviction from the American public square. By lifting up the grammar of shared moral convictions as the means by which all Americans can engage in the public conversation that is democracy's lifeblood, and by reminding us that the adventure of democracy involves far more than the contest of interests, Governor Romney did his country a genuine service--whatever the political consequences for his campaign.
George Weigel, a NEWSWEEK contributor, is distinguished senior fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center.
© 2007
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