In an earlier post, I tackled Mitt Romney’s speech on religion and the political implications, but I also wanted to take a moment to consider some of the substantive flaws in his criticism of church-state separation.
For example, Romney sees some nefarious forces working to undermine religion.
“They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism.”
Romney didn’t field questions today, but I have a follow-up inquiry: name one. Name one prominent figure in America, who has any official and/or political influence, who believes religion has “no place in public life.” I suspect some of my conservative friends may point to the ACLU or my friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, but that’s absurd — both want the government to remain neutral on matters of faith, but neither have ever expressed any hostility of religion. Indeed, both AU and the ACLU have gone to court, countless times, to protect the rights of the faithful.
“The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation ‘Under God’ and in God, we do indeed trust.”
Actually, the Founding Fathers did quite a bit more than oppose the creation of an official church; they created a purely secular government by way of a purely secular Constitution. They wanted a government that, in the words of James Madison (who, not incidentally, wrote the Constitution), had “no cognizance” of religion.
As for this notion of religion in “the public square,” it’s a phrase used so frequently by conservatives, it no longer has any meaning.
Pick almost neighborhood in the country and go for a walk. You’ll cross houses of worship, homes with nativity scenes, homes with menorahs, newsstand with religious magazines, door-to-door evangelists, religious bookstores, TVs with religious programming, radio stations with religious programming, and political candidates tripping over each other to campaign in pulpits, and give houses of worship taxpayer-financed grants.
Is this the religion-free public square that Romney’s so worked up about?
No, his argument is more subtle — he wants an environment in which the government is responsible for promoting religion. It’s not enough for a church and a home-owner to erect nativity scenes, City Hall needs to do the same thing. If you disagree, you must believe religion has “no place in public life.”
Please. In our culture, religion is common in the media — I can barely remember the last month Time and/or Newsweek didn’t feature religion as a cover story — almost exclusively in a positive light. In sporting events, celebrating athletes routinely express their religiosity. At awards ceremonies, entertainers routinely “give thanks to God” from the outset, usually to considerable applause.
What’s wrong with this? Not a thing. It’s a free marketplace of ideas, and people can be as religious as they choose, without the government’s or Mitt Romney’s help.
And in politics, out of the 535 members of Congress, 50 governors, the president, vice president, the Bush cabinet, and nine Supreme Court justices, there is exactly one person — not one percent, just one guy — who does not profess a faith in God. Indeed, in the last presidential election, one candidate announced during a presidential debate, “My faith affects everything that I do, in truth…. I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith.” This was John Kerry, the more secular candidate of the two.
Romney’s fears of wicked secularists driving the faithful from American culture are just so tiresome. This kind of rhetoric might play well in the minds of paranoid conservatives, but it’s still nonsense.