Ken Starr: Can I Vote For a Mormon?

January 9, 2012 By francisbeckwith Leave a Comment

Judge Ken Starr, the President of Baylor University (where I am a tenured faculty member in the philosophy department), published a thoughtful essay in yesterday’s Washington Post, “Can I Vote For a Mormon?” It begins this way:

Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary looms large on the political horizon. In the midst of lively public debates over taxes, jobs, the national debt and similarly important questions related to the future vitality of our nation, a different kind of question continues to privately occupy the minds of some prospective voters: Can I vote for a Mormon?

This is an important question in our constitutional democracy. Without endorsing or even praising (much less criticizing) any candidate, I strongly encourage Americans who would ask this question of themselves to consider and weigh thoughtfully our nation’s constitutional traditions. At their best, those are traditions of welcoming religious forbearance.

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Note: I have addressed this and similar questions in several posts and essays over the years:

Filed Under: 2012 Election, Baylor, Mitt Romney, Mormonism, politics Tagged With: , , Leave a Comment

Taking Rites Seriously: Political Liberalism and the Problem of Marriage

January 6, 2012 By francisbeckwith Leave a Comment

That’s the title of my latest column over at The Catholic Thing. Here’s how it begins:

Political Liberalism, as we know it today, is not even three decades old. It began to develop in the early 1980s in the writings of several well-known philosophers that included Thomas Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, and John Rawls. The purpose of their project was to offer the political culture an intellectually respectable way to sequester the policy goals of the fledgling movement of religious conservatives while at the same time claiming that their project is consistent with an older liberalism that allows for full political participation by all citizens.

The Political Liberal correctly observes that the differences between citizens on the culture-owar issues – e.g., abortion, marriage, euthanasia – stem from their contrary, though reasonable, worldviews or comprehensive doctrines (as Rawls would put it). Rawls concedes that his understanding of “reasonable” is “deliberately loose.”

“We avoid excluding doctrines as unreasonable,” writes Rawls, “without strong grounds based on clear aspects of the reasonable itself. Otherwise our account runs the danger of being arbitrary and exclusive. Political liberalism counts many familiar and traditional doctrines – religious, philosophical, and moral – as reasonable, even though we could not seriously entertain them for ourselves. . . .” (Emphasis added)

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Filed Under: American Culture, John Rawls, Marriage, Political Liberalism, politics, Religious Liberty Tagged With: , , , Leave a Comment

Newt Gingrich, Redemption, and the Presidency

December 9, 2011 By francisbeckwith 2 Comments

That’s the title of my latest entry over at The Catholic Thing. Here’s are some excerpts:

In 2009, Gingrich was received into the Catholic Church, the faith of his third wife, Callista Bisek. Because Catholic conversion requires the sacrament of confession, Gingrich has been absolved of his sins. This, of course, suggests to many, including me, that one cannot evaluate Gingrich’s candidacy and character without taking his conversion seriously. It is a mistake for Christians to emulate the world and treat a man’s conversion as if it were the metaphysical equivalent of a change in hobby.

On the other hand, Rod Dreher raises an important point in suggesting that Christian conservatives take care in their choice of standard-bearer. Relying on insights by New York Times writer Ross Douthat, Dreher argues that Christian conservatives, in the toxic atmosphere of the culture wars, cannot afford to have as a public face a figure who for most of his adult life has shunned the virtues and ways of life that Christian conservatives want to advance in the public square.

Read the whole thing here.

Filed Under: American Culture, Conservatism, conversion stories, Newt Gingrich, politics, Republican Party, The Catholic Thing Tagged With: , , 2 Comments

Religion, Politics, and the Public Square

November 18, 2011 By francisbeckwith Leave a Comment

Over the years I’ve published several academic articles dealing with the separation of church and state and the status of theology as knowledge. I bring this to your attention because of the increasing attention on the religious beliefs of those running for the U. S. Presidency. Here are some of my articles with links:

Filed Under: American Culture, politics Tagged With: , Leave a Comment

The Question Behind Our Political Divisions

November 11, 2011 By francisbeckwith Leave a Comment

That is the title of my most recent entry over at The Catholic Thing. Here’s how it begins:

The political regime of the United States of America is one founded on three core philosophical ideas:  natural rights, consent of the governed, and the rule of law. The American Founders put in place a structure – a federal constitutional government of divided powers consisting of states with their own republican governments – in order to ensure that these core philosophical ideas stood the best chance of surviving the tumult of human depravity. Thus, the Founders’ government was a limited government, but it was not a libertine one. It offered what some call a regime of ordered liberty. That is, one in which the preservation and development of certain institutions and ways of life – already present in civil society – could be allowed to flourish for the sake of the common good.

The Declaration of Independence provides a philosophical snapshot of the grounds by which the infrastructure of this government was fashioned:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That is, human beings are rights bearers by nature, and these rights are given to them by God. And because the human being, in the words of Justice McLean, “bears the impress of his Maker,” we are in fact creatures of equal dignity and immeasurable worth (even when our government does not live up to this truth).

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(picture of U. S. Supreme Court Justice John McLean, who served on the Court from 1830 until 1861)

Filed Under: American Culture, politics, The Catholic Thing Tagged With: , Leave a Comment

Government Forms (or Deforms) Your Soul

October 17, 2011 By francisbeckwith 1 Comment

That is the title of an article I published last year (vol. 21, no. 5, September 2010) in This Rock (now Catholic Answers Magazine), the magazine of Catholic Answers. It is now available online. Portions of this article are adapted from portions of my most recent book, Politics for Christians: Statecraft as Soulcraft (InterVarsity Press, 2010). Here’s how the article begins:

“Statecraft,” Aristotle instructed his pupils, “is soulcraft.” What he meant is that the state or government, by its policies, procedures and actions, places moral ideas in thesocial and legal fabric and these ideas shape the quality of its citizens’ character. This central truth animates the understanding of politics supported by Catholic teaching.

Some thinkers, however, believe that the government should, and can, remain neutral on several controversial moral and social questions about which Catholics and other Christians have taken a strong stand, including the sanctity of life and the protection of marriage. These thinkers maintain, contrary to Aristotle, that statecraft is not soulcraft, that the government should not take a position on which views are right or wrong, since taking such a stance would violate the right of citizens to make up their own minds on these questions.

This view is mistaken for one simple reason: No matter what the government permits or forbids, it is taking a stance on what it believes about the nature of the human person and what is right or wrong, even if it denies that this is so. To demonstrate that this is the case, I will focus primarily on the issue of abortion and then two other issues: the right to suicide and same-sex marriage.

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Filed Under: Abortion, Catholic Answers, Marriage, Moral Theology, Philosophy, politics, Politics for Christians, Sanctity of Life Tagged With: , , , 1 Comment
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