I finally watched online Mitt Romney's speech on religion -- you can watch it
here or read the text
here.It's not a bad speech. Whether it will do what he hopes to stem the tide of Conservative Christian concern about the distinctive tenets of his faith is unknown. It might help some become more comfortable, it likely won't do much for others.
The Speech itself is a combination defense of religious liberty and call for a broad "civil religion." In
Mark Toulouse's schema -- what I heard was a call for "
Iconic Faith" -- a use of religious symbolism and language in pursuit of national purposes. It's not a "Christian America" kind of message, in part because as a Mormon no one is going to give him credence on that level.
He tried to be in the mold of JFK -- in fact he invoked Kennedy's spirit and mantle. He insisted that while his faith informs his political views -- it is on moral an not doctrinal levels. He won't disavow his Mormonism, but neither will he go into any detail as to what those beliefs are. On the separation of church and state, he'd like the boundary to be a bit fuzzy and permeable. We are he says a "nation under God" and it is "In God We Trust." It's nothing new -- pretty much what's been there for some time. He claims to respect the traditions of all the faiths -- mentioning Christians, Jews and Muslims. If you're a secularist or an atheist, you probably were less comfortable with the speech than if you're a "believer."
I don't think Romney is a "closet theocrat." He's a pragmatic Republican who sees the need to take on the civil religious mantle, hoping it will play well in Wheaton, IL. Whether he does that or not remains to be seen. For Evangelicals who loathe Mormonism, I don't think he helped himself, because the only way he could we be to disavow his religion.
I'm not a Mitt Romney supporter -- obviously -- but I don't think he's a threat to our religious liberties. I do think, however, that like Rudy he probably will make token gestures to the religious base -- likely in the form of judgeships.
For more on this -- just google Mitt -- or you might check the articles in the LA Times about the
speech or a nice little article about the basic beliefs by
Stephanie Simon. You can see more at the Washington Post's On Faith site --
Randy Balmer and
Martin Marty both have insightful comments there.
Marty writes:
Today candidate Mitt Romney "solved the Mormon question by not solving the Mormon question," in an attempt to show that with no religions established or dominant, no one should have to deal with a specific faith, in his case, the Latter-day Saints version. To say that he solved the Mormon problem by not solving it is clear in that, while people of all political stripes listened to him to see how he would deal with Mormonism, he only mentioned it passingly in part of one sentence.
In doing so he showed himself to be in the great American tradition of relying more on civil religion or public faith than on any particular faith or community. This "civil religion" overarches and undergirds the religions of the churches, synagogues, and mosques. It stresses a very vague and general set of beliefs that in their generality make civil discourse and action in a pluralist society possible.
So what this says is that Romney didn't deal with the Mormon question -- he simply placed himself in a broad stream of American religiously inspired nationalism.
I end with Marty's closing comments, with which I agree:
What would I have told him to say? I'd probably have told him to address the issue the way he did, though I'd wish he'd temper that part of our civil religion which tells us how great we are, how great our achievement, how valuable all religion is for all people. Still, put two flags behind a political candidate and you will not expect him to speak of any dark sides or faithlessnesses in the American tradition and practice.
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