Written by Don Byrd
Dominating the Sunday morning talk shows yesterday was a focus on religion and politics and the role of church-state separation in matters of policy. The LATimes has more, including a strong statement disclaiming the idea of a candidate’s particular faith being relevant to the election:
On “Face the Nation,” Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan said he hoped that if Mitt Romney were to become the Republican nominee for president, that his Mormon faith would not prove a liability.
“There may be reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney as president of the United States,” Dolan told host Bob Schieffer. “That he’s Mormon cannot be one of them.”
Later in the show, panelist Andrew Sullivan warned of the problem brought on to the church by over-politicization:
Sullivan countered that religion and politics had grown too close. Conservative Christians constitute an enormously powerful political force. Their close cooperation with the Republican Party, Sullivan said, has made “many people feel that faith and Jesus is about politics and power and partisanship, in ways that’s turning off an entire generation.”
Meanwhile, writing in the NYTimes, columnist Ross Douthat suggests that religious diversity in the presidential election is not necessarily a good thing.
[T]he inescapability of religious polarization — whether it pits evangelicals against Mormons, the White House against the Catholic Church, or Rick Santorum against the secular press — during an election year that was expected to be all about the economy is a sign of what happens to a deeply religious country when its theological center cannot hold …
…
[T]here are costs to being a nation in which we’re all heretics to one another, and no religious orthodoxy commands wide support. Our diversity has made us more tolerant in some respects, but far more polarized in others.
