Written by Don Byrd
On yesterday’s ABCNews This Week, Jake Tapper interviewed Pastor Rick Warren discussing matters of faith and politics. Where discussion of one stopped and another started was sometimes hard to tell. Check out this segue:
TAPPER: Mitt Romney will almost certainly be the Republican nominee, and if that happens, as it looks like it will, he’ll the first member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to be the nominee. A lot of evangelicals have been talking about whether or not Mormons are Christians. Are Mormons Christians?
Wait. What does Mitt Romney’s impending presidential nomination have to do with whether Mormons are considered Christians? What is the glue that holds together the first 2 sentences above?
Warren went on in some detail about his view of the difference between Mormon and Evangelical Christian theology. And I suppose that may be an interesting question in some settings, but why ask that in the context of a discussion on presidential politics?
When theology becomes a proxy for, or closely aligned with, assessing a candidate’s fitness for office, the spirit of religious freedom that guarantees “no religious test for office” suffers. Candidates, opponents and advocates would do best to leave theology out of the equation, likewise media could refrain from stoking that fire. We should, and do, have more relevant ways to discuss a candidate’s qualifications for office than by questioning the tenets of his faith.
