Jeffrey Goldberg sets out to demonstrate that "Romney Isn't Christian, And That's All Right" in Bloomberg today. Okay, that's fine with me, as far as it goes. What really troubles me is our tendency to allow Christianity to be the measuring stick for "faith" in this country and -- even worse -- to become the official/unofficial state religion. From that point of view, Romney's Mormonism is "not Christian enough" to be acceptable in the Oval Office.
But let's look at Goldberg's rationale for telling Romney he's no Christian.
Robert Jeffress, a prominent Southern Baptist pastor who supports Texas Governor Rick Perry for president, provoked a predictable uproar this month when he labeled the Mormon faith of one of Perry’s rivals, Mitt Romney, a non-Christian “cult,” and suggested that Romney’s beliefs should disqualify him for Christian support.
Jeffress was widely censured for his intolerance, but ritualized condemnation won’t stop such anti-Mormon eruptions between now and next November should Romney win the Republican nomination.
One reason why is that Mormonism isn’t, in fact, Christian. Today’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn’t resemble a cult in any meaningful way. But its relationship to Christianity is similar to Christianity’s relationship to Judaism.
Christianity grew from Judaism, but it soon distanced itself in fairly dispositive ways (that whole business about God having a son, for example). Mormonism reached escape velocity from Christianity virtually at the moment of its creation. Richard Land, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, told me that in his view, most Mormons are “socially and culturally Christian,” but theologically they are a thing apart.
From my point of view -- shared by lots of Americans (and the Constitution) -- Christianity, per se, does not belong in the Oval Office, at least not as a player, a member of the team, a decider -- no more than Mormonism or whatever. Voters don't vote for god, son of god, mother of god, shaman, totem; they vote for a candidate they can see and hear and who is a natural born citizen having both a track record and known political opinions.
Still, an awful (really awful!) bunch of voters believe a presidential candidate should be able to show (prove, if he's also black and the son of a Kenyan) that he (another prejudice, this time sexist) is a Christian whose buttons are pushed by a being the rest of us can't see or hear from.
Goldberg adds that eventually just about any faith will wind up in the Oval Office -- even Wiccan, he says -- except for atheism.
All this tells Americans really bad things about where we've gotten to. It's about time we explore what the bulk of Americans think faith is all about. My own impression, having lived outside of the country for a couple of decades, is that between the '60's and the '80's a real shift took place in who goes to church and why. I actually asked quite a lot of people that question about themselves -- "How come you're now a churchgoer?" Almost all pointed to one or another kind of problem with addiction in their 20's and 30's. The way out was to take up what some of them even admitted was a replacement addiction: church.
People in the grip of addiction can be pretty fierce with others, pretty sure they're right and everyone else is wrong. We know how an alcoholic spouse can make life hell -- even dangerous -- for his or her partner. Alcohol breeds certainty and a tendency towards violence. Faith, too, breeds certainty and violence. The faith addiction is making life hell -- and demonstrably dangerous -- for democracy and freedom.
