The De Facto Religious Test in Presidential Politics

[rug]

By Amy Sullivan Friday, Oct. 21, 2011

Officially, the United States has no religious test for elected officials. The prohibition is right there in Article VI, section 3 of the Constitution: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Accordingly, the government may not prevent an individual from seeking or holding office because of their particular religious faith or lack thereof.

Voters, however, are an entirely different matter. Since 2000, more than two-thirds of Americans have told Pew pollsters that they want the President to be a person of faith, which effectively imposes a test of religious belief for candidates. And some voters go even further — often explicitly encouraged by their religious leaders — by reserving their support for candidates who openly profess theological beliefs similar to their own.

At the CNN debate on Tuesday night, Anderson Cooper asked the GOP presidential aspirants whether voters should subject candidates to such religious tests. Answers ranged from the enthusiastically pro-test position of Newt Gingrich — "How can you have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trust you with power if you don't pray?" — to the nonsensical response from Rick Perry — "I can no more remove my faith than I can that I'm the son of a tenant farmer. The issue, are we going to be individuals who stand by our faith?"

Only Mitt Romney was willing to challenge the concept of a religious test. "That idea that we should choose people based upon their religion for public office is what I find to be most troubling," he said. "The founders of this country went to great lengths to make sure — and even put in the Constitution — that we would not choose people who represent us in government based upon their religion." The answer was self-serving, yes, given that Romney has the most to lose if Republican voters judge him by his Mormon faith. But it was also right.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2097505,00.html

[bluestateguy]

1. The no religious test is in the Constitution concerning office holding

But in the privacy of the voting booth voters may impose whatever test they wish. Someone who wants to vote against Romney because of his Mormonism, that is their right.

[libinnyandia]

3. Bigotry

It is true that the government can't control what a person believes but bigotry is still wrong and it is our responsibility as citizens to fight it. Through education, of course, not through force.

[Jim__]

2. The larger question is: can democracy work?

As noted in the article, people are free to use a religious test if they so choose. They are also free to impose an ethnic, geographic, age, gender, etc. test if they so choose. But, the more people who vote based on these artificial criteria rather than on criteria that have a direct bearing on what policies they want to be implemented by the government, the less workable a democratic type of government will be. If people dissolve into various little groups, and vote the narrow interest of their group, any attempt at a pluralistic democracy is bound to fail.

[cleanhippie]

5. I think it is already failing.

The powers that be have done a fine job of inserting the "wedge" issues that appeal top emotion and religious teachings, capitalizing on the superstitions and fears they learn in the churches. By doing so, they have gotten many to vote against their self-interests, and THAT is what is causing the system to fail.

When they convinced seniors, who get a SS check and receive Medicare benefits to protest against those services and to vote for people who would take that away from them, I knew we had lost.

[Jim__]

9. I think we can all agree with Lincoln that:

You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time; the important question is can you fool enough of the people enough of the time so that democratic government, long term, is in the interest of the few. Can we create a democratic system where you cannot? The people who have been anti-democracy don't seem to offer us much hope. Philosopher kings and dictatorships of the proletariat may work for a while, but the long-term prospects seem dim to me. Democracy, perhaps a better formed democracy, still seems preferable.

[laconicsax]

10. Wasn't that Barnum?

[Jim__]

12. Spanky Arbuckle said it too. But the original attribution is to Lincoln. - n/t

[nebenaube]

4. So much for "Thou shalt not judge"... n/t

[ChadwickHenryWard]

8. Forgive me, but I don't think that's in the Bible anywhere.

"Judge not lest ye be judged..." surely, but "Thou shalt not judge?" I'd like a citation on that.

[laconicsax]

11. You can find it if you play the ellipsis game.

"Thou shalt not...judge." Leviticus 19:15

Of course the passage from Leviticus reads: " Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

13. That completely changes the meaning.

Here we essentially have an admonition to judge, not the other way around. "Judge not..." is closer.

[laconicsax]

14. That's the point of the ellipsis game.

You get the quote you want at the expense of the original meaning.

It's also known as quote-mining.

[NMMNG]

6. Right

Only Mitt Romney was willing to challenge the concept of a religious test. "That idea that we should choose people based upon their religion for public office is what I find to be most troubling,"

He says that because his religion is being scrutinized for not being Christiany enough. But what are the chances that he'd vote for a Muslim, a Pagan, a Satanist or an atheist?

[trotsky]

7. You got that right. n/t