The Believer

The conventional wisdom, which is heavy on convention and most decidedly light on wisdom, holds that Mitt Romney gave some sort of landmark address on the proper role of religion in politics last week. The address was held to be significant because Mr. Romney belongs to a religion that many Americans consider a heresy, much like John Kennedy in 1960.

Mr. Romney's address was significant in that it highlighted the depraved cynicism that distinguishes Romney from Kennedy. Kennedy was morally weak in many regards, but this did not extend to his religion; Romney may never cheat on his wife, but he will pimp out his faith without pause.

The beauty of Kennedy's speech was that he declared that his religious beliefs were nobody's business unless or until it affected the execution of his office, which he pledged would never happen, and which I have heard nobody argue did happen while he was president.

Essentially, Kennedy had the spine to say, "back off." Romney feigns to take a similarly principled stand, but he lacks Kennedy's conviction; he can not simply say, "back off." Instead, Romney says, "back off...but, while backing off, keep in mind that I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the savior of mankind."

Romney insists on his right to have it both ways, which is really "having" it no way at all. "There shall be no religious test..." That is one of the most important phrases in the most important document ever written, the United States Constitution. Romney has every right to assert it, but he cannot assert it and then proceed to ignore it. He seems to be saying, "There shall be no religious test, since my religion is even more provably ridiculous than most, but I would like you all to know I believe in Jesus as much as you do. If you ask me any specific questions about my dogma, however, I will play a martyr." How palpably disingenuous.

The most egregious line of Romney's speech, which at times was admittedly well-written and well-reasoned, was the following paroxysm of historical and moral ignorance: "Freedom requires religion." Really? Some case studies, perhaps?

Let's take Europe, which is largely post-religious except for Muslim minorities in western Europe, Catholic Ireland and Poland, and Muslim Albania. Could anyone rationally argue that Europe is not free? Regardless of how freedom is defined, if Europeans are not free, then nobody is free. So, clearly, freedom does not require religion, or else Europeans would have converted their now-empty cathedrals into torture chambers. Actually, has anybody noticed that the most enduring peace in European history coincided precisely with the abandonment of religious identity. Probably just a coincidence.

And what about the places where religion thrives? Here's a list: Saudi Arabia. That's a long enough list to make my point. In fact, I would argue that, looking at the earth as a whole, religion is more closely aligned with oppression than with freedom, both in the present and in the past.

The history of the spread of democracy, of freedom, on earth is the history of the restriction of religious power. Period. If freedom required religion, why wasn't first century Palestine a "free" country? People there and then were religious, to say the least. And where was the freedom under the Taliban?

The further sin in Mr. Romney's assertion is its logical inference; if freedom requires religion, then it follows that one can not be free without religion. Now, even if Mr. Romney held every recognized religion to be equally legitimate in bestowing "freedom" upon its practitioners, which I humbly doubt, that leaves a great many people, such as myself, who under Mr. Romney's definition can not be "free".

Mr. Romney did not say freedom requires faith. That is an assertion that I would be inclined to agree with. Faith is not, despite what many may claim, a willingness to believe provably absurd things; it is a willingness to believe things that could never be proven to be either right or wrong. Faith requires us not to believe that a virgin could have a child, but to believe that every child has equal dignity simply by the virtue of being alive, that every human being is equal in the eyes of the Creator God. That is a leap of faith; it is a forever unprovable contention.

Mr. Romney, instead, said that freedom requires religion. Faith is liberating; religion is restrictive. Faith opens our minds; religion closes it. Faith inspires the best elements of human nature; religion inspires the worst, even if they are not manifested as such by every practitioner.

Mr. Romney knew exactly what he was saying. He was saying that there should be no religious test, but that religion was the test. That his religion was nobody's business, but if that someone else had no religion at all, they could fairly be excluded from the club. The club of the "free".

I am not religious. But I am free. In fact, I am freer than Mr. Romney, since, unlike him, I am free to say in public that the idea that Jesus Christ came to Missouri is ridiculous. I, unlike Mr. Romney, can say in public that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was a charlatan, a pedophile, and a traitor. I, unlike Mr. Romney, can say that blacks were equal to whites before 1978, when Mr. Romney's God sent a prophecy to Mr. Romney's church informing them of as much.

Not only am I free, I am also..............a good person. See, I would never kill or rob. Not because Moses told me so, but because my parents and my God-given intuitive morality told me so. To Mr. Romney, I would say, "freedom does not require religion; it requires faith. And leadership requires that you have faith in the American people, rather than faith in their religions."