The
Realpolitik Of Article VI: Religious Test Required For Public Office
By Robert Weitzel
15 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“He won my vote when he talked about religion.”
-Candice Collins
In an October 4 New York Times
article, Marc Santora wrote, “The intensified assault by religious
leaders poses a central question about Mr. Giuliani’s viability
as a Republican presidential candidate and presents him with one of
his first big tests on the stump.”
The same day, the New York
Times published an editorial by James Dobson of Focus on the Family
entitled, “The Values Test,” in which Dobson put both the
Republican and Democratic parties on notice that their test—written
and proctored by religious conservatives—is fast approaching,
“If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual
who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will
join others in voting for a minor-party candidate.”
Earlier this year at an “Ask Mitt Anything” forum in Pella,
Iowa, Mrs. Van Stennis, a teacher at a local Christian school, asked
Mitt Romney where the Bible would be in his decision making as president.
“Would it be above the Book of Mormon, or would it be beneath
it?” Mr. Romney, affecting his best Jack Kennedy religious tolerance
stance, answered, “This is a nation where people come from different
faiths, different doctrines, different churches.”
Then tactically, if not disingenuously,
he added, “But, unlike the people we’re fighting over in
the Middle East, we don’t have a religious test to say who should
be able to run our country. It’s over there where people say,
‘You don’t go to my church, you can’t run our country.’
”
Had he been less concerned
with passing Mrs. Van Stennis’ religion test, he might have added
more honestly, “ But as you know, it’s over here where people
say, ‘You don’t go to church, you can’t run our country.’”
Contrary to Article VI of
the Constitution, which states in part that “ . . . no religious
Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public
Trust under the United States,” the realpolitik of American political
campaigning is that all candidates for public office must pass a religious
test. This is not a “de facto” religious test. It is the
real McCoy. But it has become the de facto law of our “Christian
nation.”
In a 1981 speech to the U.S. Senate, Barry Goldwater, the archconservative,
five-term Republican Senator from Arizona and author of “The Conscience
of a Conservative,” alarmed by the encroaching influence of the
Christian Right on the Republican Party platform specifically, and on
American politics in general, warned his fellow Senators, “The
religious factions . . . are trying to force government leaders into
following their position 100 percent . . . Just who do they think they
are? ? I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the
way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans
in the name of conservatism.”
Over a quarter of a century later, John McCain, four-term Republican
senator from Arizona—Goldwater’s immediate successor—and
author of “Faith of My Fathers,” confirmed Goldwater’s
prescience and fears in an interview with Dan Gilgoff of BeliefNet.
When asked if a presidential candidate’s personal faith has become
too big an issue, McCain replied, “I think the number one issue
people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United
States is, 'Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled
tradition . . .’”
Considering McCain was being
“quizzed” by a religious web site, one would expect him
to mince words to his faith-based, political advantage. But for a U.S.
Senator, whose secular “bible” is the Constitution, to then
tell Gilgoff and the country, that “ . . .the Constitution established
the United States of America as a Christian nation,” is either
inexcusable ignorance or plain pandering. Regardless, he just led the
Republican Party and the Republic down to the banks of the river Jordan.
But as Republican candidates
squeeze into the revival tent this campaign cycle, they find themselves
sitting next to a newly-converted Democratic candidate whose hands are
raised in exaltation, albeit, a bit self-consciously.
On a June 4 special religion
edition of CNN’s “The Situation Room” featuring Democratic
candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, moderator
Soledad O'Brien asked Edwards
if he thinks the United States is a Christian nation.
Edwards’ stumbling
attempt to pass his religion test was a veritable glossolalia of fundamentalist
God-speak and political correctness, “No, I think this is a nation
-- I mean I'm a Christian; there are lots of Christians in United States
of America. I mean, I have a deep and abiding love for my Lord, Jesus
Christ . . .”
Unlike John McCain who unabashedly
rewrote the Constitution for the Christian Right, Edwards’ seemed
uncomfortable in his role of Christian apologist, though his hedging
answer did contain the virus currently debilitating American politics—the
mistaken notion that since there is a preponderance of Christians living
in the United States, we are a Christian nation.
To appreciate how wrong-headed
this notion is, imagine a white politician seriously claiming that since
a preponderance of their state’s population is Caucasian, it is
a white state. Of course, they will quickly add that people of all colors
are welcome . . . sort of. Albinos, on the other hand . . .?
In a follow up question on
the same broadcast, the Reverend Sharon Watkins of the Christian Church,
Disciples of Christ asked Edwards the evangelical equivalent of “Did
you beat your wife again last night?” “When you pray, how
do you know if the voice that you are hearing is the voice of God or
your own voice in disguise?”
What was Edwards suppose
to say? “Yes, I hear voices that tell me what to do” or
“No, I don’t take the advice of the creator of the entire
universe.” What he did say was worthy of a politician, and a telling
example of the “point of singularity” to which the Christian
Right has shrunk political discourse in America, “ . . . some
would argue we sometimes have trouble telling the difference . . .”
John F. Kennedy—the
first Catholic to be elected president— didn’t have any
trouble telling the difference between what “God” wants
and what his conscience dictates. In fact, Kennedy passed his one and
only religious examination in his 1960 presidential campaign in a speech
to the Greater Houston Ministerial Alliance in a manner that would “excommunicate”
his Democratic torchbearers in today’s Christianized political
climate.
He told the assembled ministers
that religion would have no place in his administration. He assured
them that he “believed in an America where the separation of church
and state is absolute.” He further pledged that "whatever
issue may come before me as President . . . I will make my decision
in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest
and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.”
Kennedy understood the realpolitik
of Article VI as it applied to his presidential campaign, “I would
not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's
guarantees of religious liberty . . . neither do I look with favor upon
those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring
a religious test--even by indirection . . .” At the time it was
Kennedy’s religion, not his lack of one, that was his first big
test on the stump.
Hillary Clinton, like John
Edwards, is not exactly sure which way to step as she nudges her way
into the evangelical tent. Responding to Soledad O’Brien’s
observation that she doesn’t talk a lot about her faith, Clinton
said, “ . . . a lot of the talk about and advertising about faith
doesn't come naturally to me . . . I come from a tradition that is perhaps
a little too suspicious of people who wear their faith on their sleeves
. . .”
What Senator Clinton failed
to mention to O’Brien and millions of viewers is that she doesn’t
need to wear her faith on her sleeve since it is written down in the
352 pages of Paul Kengor’s recent book, “God and Hillary
Clinton: A Spiritual Life.” She also neglected to mention that
Paul Kengor has written two other books with similar titles: “God
and Ronald Reagan” and “God and George W. Bush.” Could
it be she doesn’t want to bask in the reflected light of these
two ultra right-wing conservative luminaries? More likely, she doesn’t
want to be tarred by the same brush?
Another aspect of Hillary’s
faith that is not worn on her stylish sleeve—or even admitted
to in public—but which may be of interest to potential left-of-center
supporters, is her ongoing active participation in a secretive Capital
Hill group known as the Fellowship. According to a September 2007 Mother
Jones article, the Fellowship is a conservative Bible study and prayer
circle that includes such committed right-wingers as Senator Sam Brownback
(R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).
Hillary Clinton, like all
Americans, has the constitutional right to pursue religion as her heart
dictates. However, if she plays the religion card for political gain,
she had better be willing to show her entire hand.
To illustrate the deleterious
effect religious tests have on the secular democracy envisioned and
codified by the Founding Fathers, consider that three of the first four
presidents of the United States, all of whom where instrumental in drafting
either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, would be
unelectable today if certain of their thoughts on religion were worn
on their sleeves.
Imagine the scurrilous hay right-wing pundits would make of the following
“blasphemous” snippets:
John Adams: “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if
there were no religion in it.”
Thomas Jefferson: “Christianity is the most perverted system that
ever shone on man.”
James Madison: "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the
mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
Now imagine denying men of
Adams, Jefferson and Madison’s intelligence and political acumen
a leadership role in the government.
Currently, Representative
Pete Stark (D-Fremont) is the only member of Congress who wears his
atheism on his sleeve. Since the best estimate is that one in ten Americans
is an atheist, statistically there should be at least 53 atheists in
Congress. Someone is not being honest with the American electorate .
. . little wonder?
But there are small, encouraging,
signs that the electorate is growing tired of the Sunday school miasma
pervading our “Christian nation’s” political process.
A recent poll conducted by the University of Connecticut’s, Center
for Survey Research and Analysis, found that 68 percent of those who
responded “don’t like it when politicians rely on their
religion in forming their policy,” while 44 percent said religion
plays too large a role in American politics.
On October 6 Barack Obama
asked the 12,000 congregants of the Redemption World Outreach Center
to “pray that I can be an instrument of God” as he campaigns
for the presidency.
Until candidates begin asking
the faithful among the electorate to pray that they be an instrument
of the Constitution first and foremost, religious tests for public office
will continue, religious platitudes will continue to pass for serious
political discourse and to influence both domestic and foreign policy,
we will continue to render unelectable eminently qualified women and
men who choose to keep their faith a private matter or to wear their
“faithlessness” on their sleeves, and the public square
of our nation will continue to be the exclusive meeting place of the
faithful.
Robert Weitzel is a freelance writer whose essays appear
in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He has been published in the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, Freethought Today and on popular
liberal websites. He can be contacted at: [email protected]
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