Mormons, Catholics and Me

Over the weekend a candidate's introduction made at the Values Voter Summit by the Rev. Dr. Robert Jeffress, raised two questions that have dominated the news for the last couple of days: "Are Mormons Christians?" and "Is Mormonism a cult?" While these are controversial questions, I was even more taken by another question that surfaced in the Texas pastor's remarks. "Do we want a candidate," he asked his audience, "who is a good, moral person--or one who is a born again follower of the lord Jesus Christ?" Jeffress obviously assumes that a born again follower of Christ is a good moral person. And considering his audience, it was intended to be a rhetorical question. But here's the problem: such a question runs contrary to the spirit, though not the letter, of the law.

I looked it up to be sure I remembered it correctly. And I did. The last part of Article VI of the Constitution of the United States clearly reads "no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." In other words, no law or regulation can require any office holder to be of a particular religious persuasion. I realize that doesn't rule out bringing personal preferences to bear on ones decisions as a voter. Still, in a pluralistic democracy such as ours, the wise voter recognizes that the best woman or man for the job may or may not be a coreligionist! Being a good Christian doesn't necessarily mean one would make a good president.

Maybe its time to revisit the speech John Kennedy made to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston who were challenging his candidacy based on the fact that he was a Roman Catholic. In that stirring defense of the separation of church and state, Kennedy spoke of the presidency as "a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group . . . ." Protecting the right of Roman Catholics and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses to hold office protects the right of all to hold office. To do otherwise would be a great tragedy. Speaking of his fellow Roman Catholics, Kennedy went on to say "if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser . . . ." What was true in 1960 is still true today--for Catholics, Mormons and Protestants like me.


(The full text of Kennedy's speech can be found at:
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16920600)