Rev. Robert Jeffress got himself 15 minutes of fame by calling Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney’s religion a cult. He started out completely unashamed of this but has taken so much heat about it that he feels like he has to explain in a Washington Post Op-Ed this morning.
Just to remind you of what this all about; Jeffress has been saying, loudly, proudly and all over the place, that the Mormon faith is a cult. It is not the first time that he has been nasty about other Christian religions, he previously called Catholicism a “Babylonian mystery religion, that represents the genius of Satan” Pretty nasty stuff, if you are a follower of those religions.
He is now trying to deflect the heat away from his harsh words to an argument about whether we should be able to talk about a candidate’s religion at all. I think we are going to have to score this effort as a swing and a miss.
Jeffress starts out by refuting something that happened to him on Hardball with Chris Mathews. Mr. Mathews pointed out that religious tests are barred, specifically by the Constitution. The good Rev. Jeffress takes this to mean that somehow conversation about a candidates religion is being stifled.
He comes up with this paragraph:
Interestingly, John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court and co-author of the Federalist Papers, thought a candidate’s religious beliefs should be a primary consideration in voting. Jay wrote, “It is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” According to Jay, preferring a Christian candidate is neither bigoted nor unconstitutional.
Nice quote mining, but hardly relevant. We are talking about a Chief Justice who presided over a United States where there was legal slavery, where women could not vote, in fact where only land owners could vote.
I know it is a favored tactic of the Right to reduce everything to our founding, but that is only acceptable if we are going to ignore the last 235 years of the existence of the United States. Things are not what they were in the last quarter of the last millennium and trying to go back to the way they were is a bad choice for everyone.
But I will give Rev. Jeffress this, for all that he is clearly a religious bigot of the first water, there is no prohibition on talking about a candidate’s religion. However, is this really a good yard stick?
One of the reasons that we have primaries is to evaluate the candidates. We are supposed to be looking for the woman or man who will best serve the voice of the party and the needs of the nation. If we use a highly emotionally charged topic like religion as a major factor, we are introducing a large chance of error.
There is a tendency to downplay faults when someone is part of a group you belong to. Religions have this in spades. I grew up in a Irish Catholic family. I am well aware of the past and ongoing crimes of the Catholic Church, yet there is this part of me that wants to try to rationalize them when I hear about them. And I am not a Catholic, I am an atheist!
Now take someone like Rev. Jeffress, who obviously loves his church and religion (and just as obviously hates all others religions). He is going to be willing to rationalize a lot of things for someone who has the right god. If they believe as he does, then he is likely to let them slide on things that probably shouldn’t be overlooked.
And then there is the fact that there is variation within any group and especially within a large group. Everyone has heard the phrase “Good Catholic”, but that is hardly a set of hard and fast measurements, it is more of a value judgment.
If, as Rev. Jeffress obviously wants, people are to vote for the candidate that shares their religion, how are they to know if that person really shares their religion? It has been my experience that even people of the same faith are not of one mind on things, no matter what their religious leaders say. Just take a look at Catholics and birth control.
In the end it all comes down to this; when looking at a candidate for office there are many things that go into a persons decision. But one that is probably the worst is “Is he like me?” Think about it for a second.
Do you really feel like you are someone that could be president and lead this nation? If your answer is yes, well I look forward to seeing you on the campaign trail. But for most of the nation that answer is going to be no.
Given that, why in the world would you be trying to pick someone like you to get that job? Shouldn’t you be looking for someone who is better at the things it takes to do the job?
This whole issue of religion and politics is, sadly, not going to go away. The Right insists that their candidates, at the very least pay lip service to religion so it is going to be an issue for a long time to come.
That does not mean we have to put up with hateful and intolerant bigots like Rev. Robert Jeffress. He has shown on multiple occasions that he is irrationally hateful towards other belief systems and is not the least bit reticent to say so.
If we must have religion mixed with politics, then we should be clear about where the boundaries of this discussion lay. It is one thing to say that you’d prefer a Southern Baptist be the candidate of your party, it is quite another to imply that it is unacceptable to have someone of another faith as the candidate, based on their faith.
This is what cause the furor that Rev. Jeffress is tying to deflect in his Op-Ed. He made a concerted effort to make a splash about this, so he should own it. So should anyone accepting his endorsement. That means you Rick Perry.
The floor is yours.