Dangerous Religion

It seems one of John McCain’s possible running mates is Mitt Romney, but a possible drawback to his being chosen for that position is that some 12% of the electorate says it would definitely not vote for him because he is a Mormon, and another sizable minority would have to give it some thought. That is, viewed from the perspective of the more mainline religious groups, the feeling is that he must perforce hold to some off-the-wall religious views.

Do I detect just a smidgen of hypocrisy here? Just how mainstream was the combination of Masonic beliefs and Unitarianism of some of the founders of our country? If Mormonism’s misdeeds of the mid-19th century be adduced, what about a notorious kidnaping and presumed murder on the part of some Masonic extremists of the same period? Does that act disqualify Masons forever from running for office? Or shall we talk about some of our recent presidents who at least superficially adhered to the more mainline religious groups but displayed the morals of an alleycat? At last count, a mere 43% of US voters considered moral character an important factor in a candidate.

So let’s see if I have this straight. A moral leper who gives lip service to, say, the Baptist or Roman Catholic faith is acceptable as a candidate, but a faithful member of a religious group outside the mainstream, but who is squeaky clean morally, is rejected out of hand. Okay, got it.

Presumably the fear is that Romney, should he ascend to the presidency, would either openly or, more likely in the nature of the case, underhandedly, impose Mormon doctrine and practice on an unsuspecting nation. I recall a political cartoon that came out just prior to the 1960 election, showing JFK in one panel and the pope in another, each with a phone in his hand. Kennedy is telling the pope, “Unpack. I lost.” Maybe if Romney fails to make it to the presidency we’ll have one showing a line of huge trucks arriving at the White House gate loaded with the disassembled Mormon Tabernacle, with Romney saying to the lead driver, “Take it back. I lost.”

About the most notable attempt to sell Mormon values to the general public that I have seen came about when a Mormon scholar was showing slides of archaeological sites in Mexico and pointed out a young Mexican who had become trail sick by drinking enormous amounts of Coca-Cola. Dangerous propaganda, that.

I confess that I would rather have a resurrected Suleiman the Magnificent as my president than someone who carries an unopened Bible once in a while to a mainline Christian church and uses that as a smokescreen for nefarious personal or political dealings. Suleiman behaved more like a Christian during the Crusades than most of the alleged Christians did, and he was a Medieval Muslim.

My point is that we need to get our electoral priorities straight. That a man such as Mitt Romney, who certainly did not attempt to impose a religious agenda on predominantly Roman Catholic Massachusetts, should be judged for something absolutely peripheral to his likely value as a vice president is simply dangerous. Not many of us doubt that we live in dangerous times, and we had better get serious about our criteria for choosing the people who will lead us through them.