Romney's Speech

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave his "Mormon" speech last night. You can read it here. I don't think he should need to say anything about his faith, but he is trying to win the votes of Evangelical Christians, some of whom think that Mormonism is a cult, so it was probably inevitable that he would need to address the issue. However, he said virtually nothing about the details of his faith except to acknowledge in one sentence the fact that his beliefs about Christ may be slightly different than orthodox Christian beliefs.

Mormonism, by the way, is a cult - in the language of religious studies. A cult is any new religious movement. A sect, on the other hand, is any variation of longstanding religious movements. Presbyterians and Catholics and Brethren are sects of Christianity. Mormonism is a cult movement in the sense that compared to its religious peers it is not very old. Christianity itself was once a cult movement amidst its more ancient pagan and Jewish religious peers. Interestingly, Mormonism is growing today at the same kind of rapid rate that Christianity once grew. Cult movements often do this.

Mormonism does have some "strange" beliefs. Mormon theology teaches, for instance, that there are many gods and that each Mormon man has the potential of exaltation, becoming a god. But, then, Christianity has some "strange" beliefs too, like the idea that a young woman was impregnated by God and gave birth to a child who was the Son of God. I find it strange that anyone in the twenty-first century would take either of these beliefs to be literal truths; I read them both as metaphor and myth. But, then, we seem to be living in strange times.

Mitt Romney was not the first Presidential candidate to address his religious beliefs. In 1960 John Kennedy felt the need to speak to how his Catholic faith would influence his decision-making if elected President. His words bear reading again:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute- where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference-and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish-where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source-where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials-and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For, while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew-or a Quaker- or a Unitarian-or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today, I may be the victim-but tomorrow it may be you-until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end- where all men and all churches are treated as equal-where every man has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice- where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind-and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, both the lay and the pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

I leave it to you to decide if, after reading Romney's speech side by side with Kennedy's, we have made any progress in the last half century.