Iowa and New Hampshire represent less than 1.5% of the U.S. population, but the way many pundits talk, these two small states apparently possess some obscure Constitutional right to choose the short list of presidential candidates for the rest of us.

After the Hillary Clinton’s second place finish in the Iowa caucuses, several journalists—apparently stricken with Obama Fever—were writing her campaign obituary, never mind that she led national polls of likely Democratic voters and has enough campaign cash to buy Cuba.

On the Republican side, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson finished a respectable third in Iowa, but when he faired poorly in the New Hampshire primary last week (a state where he did little campaigning), the media began drafting his obituary.

Thompson apparently didn’t get the memo. A recent Republican debate in South Carolina revealed a Fred Thompson many Republicans have been hoping for but hadn’t yet seen—Fred with fire in the belly. He spoke with clarity and authority on issues of national security, and he forcefully went after some of Mike Huckabee’s left-leaning domestic policies.

The question is, does it matter? Is it too late? Maybe there are so many voters with their fingers in the wind that Iowa and New Hampshire really do get to choose the short list for the rest of us.

The idea should offend those who make up the core of the Republican Party. Conservatives are supposed to bridle at the idea of having their choices dictated to them by beltway insiders or by a national media establishment intent on telling them what to think and do.

Republicans should be particularly suspicious of such winnowing efforts given the short list the media seems intent on assigning Republican voters. Mike Huckabee supported heaping helpings of big government and higher taxes as governor of Arkansas. Mitt Romney endorsed bigger government and higher taxes as governor of Massachusetts, has flip-flopped on abortion not once but twice, and more recently made protectionist, big government noises in an effort to appeal to Michigan voters. Rudy Giuliani (who, ironically, didn’t even contest Iowa or New Hampshire), is pro-abortion. And as Thomas Sowell has commented of John McCain, his “track record in the Senate is full of the betrayals of Republican supporters.”

Each of these four candidates has conservative elements to their agendas, and personal qualities that recommend them. But is it any wonder that the left-leaning national media seems eager to use the earliest contests to winnow a consistent conservative like Fred Thompson from the short list of Republican candidates, a conservative who is arguably the only true Reagan Republican in the bunch?

Thompson isn’t a perfect candidate. And I’m not endorsing him or any other candidate here. Each of them has strengths and weaknesses that Republican voters in each state should carefully assess. What Republican voters shouldn’t do is buy the media line that 1.5% of the American population gets to tell the other 98.5% of us who is and isn’t still in the race.

The Acton Institute is proud to unveil the first edition of our brand new audio podcast, Radio Free Acton! We’re excited about the possibilities of taking our podcast to the next level, and we hope that if you haven’t already subscribed to our feed, that you’ll do so now. Just add this link to whatever podcasting program you use, or subscribe through iTunes right here.

For our first show, I’m joined by Jordan Ballor, Ray Nothstine, and John Couretas to discuss the upcoming Republican primary in Michigan. This particular race has provided a rich vein of material for those interested in the intersection of religion, economics, and politics, and we dig into all of those issues as they relate to candidates Romney and Huckabee especially. Additionally, we hear from Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse on how Marxist thinking about the traditional family still influences the modern left.

To download the podcast, click here (13.6 mb mp3 file).

One element that came out in the aftermath of “Romney’s religion speech,” an event highly touted in the run-up and in days following, was the charge that Mormonism is essentially a racist faith (or at least was until 1978), and that in unabashedly embracing the “faith of his fathers” so publicly (and uncritically), Mitt Romney did not distance himself from or express enough of a critical attitude toward the official LDS policy regarding membership by blacks before 1978.

One example of a person who raised this concern quite vociferously is political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell, who as a guest on the McLaughlin Group on the episode immediately following Romney’s speech, said this of Romney (among many other things):

Here’s the problem. He dare not discuss his religion. And he fools people like Pat Buchanan, who should know better. This was the worst speech, the worst political speech, of my lifetime, because this man stood there and said to you, “This is the faith of my fathers.” And you and none of these commentators who liked this speech realize that the faith of his father is a racist faith. As of 1978, it was an officially racist faith. And for political convenience, in 1978 it switched and it said, “Okay, black people can be in this church.”

Mitt Romney was 31 years-old in 1978 when the LDS church altered its policy toward “priesthood” membership for black males, citing a new revelation. You can check out the entire exchange between O’Donnell and the other members of the McLaughlin Group panel here:


It seems to me that Pat Buchanan misses O’Donnell’s point in the exchange. Buchanan cites scandalous examples from Christianity’s past, such as the condoning of slavery for 1,500 years, in effect to say that all religions have their problems, and that doesn’t mean that we associate every historical evil from a religion’s past with its contemporary adherents. But what O’Donnell’s charge is meant to show is that folks like Pat Buchanan and other Christians are inclined to judge their tradition’s own past, and pronounce that such and such a practice was an objective evil and upon reflection ex post facto, incompatible with the fundamental beliefs of their faith.

From O’Donnell’s perspective it’s precisely this criticism that is lacking in Romney. As Byron York puts it,

But now, Romney is faced with the simple question: Was the church policy before 1978 wrong? This morning, he wouldn’t say, and it might be difficult for him, as a former church leader, to get out in front of the LDS leadership on that. And he certainly can’t cite McConkie’s advice to forget everything that was said before 1978. Given all that, it’s an issue that’s likely to pop up over and over again.

It did pop up on Romney’s Meet the Press interview with Tim Russert the following Sunday morning:


Part of Romney’s defense is his claim that his family’s practices point to their beliefs about race in America: “My dad marched with MLK.” Now there’s controversy surrounding that claim.

Continue reading "Romney and the Racism Charge"

Acton has been called upon from several different outlets to provide commentary and analysis on Mitt Romney’s December 6 “Faith in America” speech. Following is a quick list of links to our various responses (which we’ll keep updated):

Audio:

• Religion and Politics
• Romney and the Role of Religion in the Presidency
• Romney’s Faith and the Presidency
• Analyzing Mitt Romney’s Religion Speech
• Reflections on Romney’s Religion Speech

News:

• Rev. Sirico on the Romney Speech
• Did Romney pass faith test?
• UPDATED: Mitt Romney -- Reassuring Evangelical Voters?

Background

• The Civil Religion Test
• Hugh Hewitt and the Mormon Question
• Private Faith and Public Politics

The following is a statement by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, on Mitt Romney’s Dec. 6 “Faith in America” speech:

Mitt Romney is right that religion and morality are core convictions in American society. Our freedom depends on this, I completely agree. Without the ability to manage our lives morally, the state steps into the vacuum, both in response to public demand and to serve the state’s own interests in expanding power.

But soon after spelling this out, in part, he makes this bold claim, which I believe repeats John F. Kennedy’s error: “Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.”

So here we have an odd tension. Religion matters, he says. But religious authority does not and should not matter in the management of our public lives. If this proposition had been believed by the kings of Europe in the Middle Ages, freedom would never have been born, for it was precisely the jealousy of religious authority that led to limits on the state and kept that state at bay.

Similarly, it was the churches before and after the American Revolution which said no to the leviathan state, precisely because it had intruded into areas that more properly belong to religious authority. The churches didn’t merely mind their own business; they spoke to the whole of society, and we should be thankful for that.

Maybe we are not accustomed to thinking of religion as a limit on government. But this has largely been so and continues to be so. It was the Catholic Church that beat back communism in Eastern Europe and just last week prevented dictatorship in Venezuela. In our own country, the churches are the main protectors of religious liberty, for they tend to resist intrusion by the state at every level.

The idea of authority is inescapable. If public officeholders are not to obey religious authority, what authority do they submit to? Perhaps we can say the Constitution but the signers of that document too held fast to religious convictions. More likely the authority to which they submit is legislation and its enforcement arm, meaning that to the extent that they brush off their religious institutions, they will tend to become obsequious toward the state.

For my part, I find it strange that American culture should require someone running for president to make a break with his or own religious authority. This strikes me as an attack on the conscience. The right question we should be asking: What does the religious authority teach about the role of the state?

After the jump is the (hyperlinked) text of a column I filed last week from GodblogCon. Here are some related items worth exploring:

• “Evangelicals and Evil Empires: Religious voters have long had an interest in foreign policy,” OpinionJournal (HT: CT Liveblog).
• “Rudy’s Gamble: Giuliani’s audacious strategy for the nomination,” OpinionJournal.
• “Evangelical flocks on their own at the polls,” LA Times (HT: J-Walking).
• “On second thought, conservatives give Huckabee an amen,” LA Times.
• “Clarifying Media Distortions,” Focus on the Family.
• “Robertson for Rudy,” God’s Politics.
• “The Robertson Effect?” Townhall.com.
• A 1992 letter from Ron Weddington, co-counsel on Roe v. Wade, to then president-elect Bill Clinton, arguing for government provision of “vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions...RU 486 and conventional abortions” (PDF) among the poor (HT: Judicial Watch). Compare this with Giuliani’s position as outlined in his 1989 speech.

I’ll also add that I discussed this topic with Hunter Baker, a columnist for ChristianityToday.com and contributor to Redstate and the AmSpec blog. Here’s what he said,

My own feeling is that Mayor Giuliani is probably the most thoroughly tested and proven politician in the United States today and that he is well-equipped for the job. However, I do not support his bid, despite his clear competency. I feel a Giuliani nomination would be a major setback for pro-lifers in the sense that neither of the major parties would have a pro-life candidate at the top of the ticket, something that hasn’t happened for over a quarter of a century. In a time when we are considering something that seems to me to be a unique form of cannibalism (embryonic stem-cell research), I don’t want to see the Republican party back off on the life issue. Rather, I’m looking forward to a time when pro-life is a given stance among candidates just as racial equality is today.

Continue reading "Giuliani and the Godbloggers"

Commentators call it “The Religion Test.” What does it mean when the Constitution says there should be no religious test for holding office in the United States? Historically it has plainly meant that no candidate, be they a Quaker, a Baptist, a Pentecostal or a Mormon can be barred from office because of their religion. The question is once again on the table with the serious candidacy of Mitt Romney for the presidency. And many who are concerned about Romney’s faith are evangelicals. There is a strange joining of prejudice here as the secular left seems to agree, to some extent at least, with some in the religious right.

It is fair to ask a candidate where they stand on school vouchers and abortion questions but what about their interpretations of the Bible? Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate, recently challenged some of Joseph Smith’s more outrageous doctrinal beliefs by suggesting that he was obviously a “con man.” Since Mitt Romney is a Mormon Weisberg wants to know if he really believes what Smith taught since if he does then Weisberg does not want him to run the country. Christian commentator and talk-show host, Hugh Hewitt, calls this kind of response “unashamed bigotry.” Is it?

Romney himself speaks of people using “caricatures that pick some obscure aspect of [one’s] faith . . . and assume it was the central element.” Make no mistake about it, many evangelicals are uncomfortable with voting for a Mormon. The issue intrigues me since the last time we had this kind of discussion was in 1960 when evangelicals were not yet ready to vote for a Roman Catholic. My own pastor told us that a vote for Jack Kennedy was “a vote for the papacy.” That was enough to scare many of the faithful into a vote for Nixon even though they were Southern Democrats.

Mormonism is viewed as a cult by many Christians. I am not thrilled with the common use of the term cult but I am firmly persuaded that Mormonism is not orthodox, confessional, apostolic Christianity. In 2001 the Vatican even ruled that Mormon baptism was not Christian baptism, an interpretation I also share. But should this matter in our choice of a president?

Very simply put, I think it all depends on the particular person. In Romney’s case he is the only one of the front-runners who is still married to his first wife and who has a role-model family. But what a person is, his actions and views, matter deeply with regard to his capacity to lead and serve, or at least they should. Does a Mormon have the intellectual seriousness to lead the country? Some in the secular left think Romney cannot pass such a test simply because he is a Mormon. Hugh Hewitt warns evangelicals that this kind of bias is double-edged and points at them just as much as at Mormons. Theology, Hewitt insists, must not become a “test” for the oval office.

The interesting thing here is that Romney’s role models for going forward have to be Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy, who both argued for a deeply felt religious faith that did not need to be tightly defined. Romney, following Ike’s approach, has said, “I think the American people want a person of faith to lead the country. I don’t think Americans care what brand of faith someone has.” Ike once said, “our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.”

We call this kind of faith civil religion. It has absolutely nothing to do with real Christian faith or the proper role of the church and its missional relationship to the kingdom of Christ. But it seems to have a limited role in our particular society, so long as it doesn’t turn faith into sheer mush and nonsense, which it can and sometimes has done. In our present context, where a growing percentage of folks want no mention of faith in public at all, there is a place for such civil religion to counterbalance the secularist assault on the freedom of faith expression. But in the end civil religion will never profoundly shape or change the nation. It is a kind of cultural expression of general religion that makes it possible for all faith, including real faith, to be expressed in charitable and civil ways. It is nothing more and nothing less as I see it.

There are two Buddhists and a Muslim in the U. S. House of Representatives now. Americans are clearly more diverse than ever before. I personally think it is time to retire the “religion test” as a litmus standard for the presidency. It is not time, however, to retire the character test. These two questions are not necessarily related. How will a man act when faced with broadly moral questions that determine his leadership? I hope that question always remains on the table but increasingly I think it is also being lost. Maybe this debate will put it back on the table in a positive way.

John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at “encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening.”