Religious tests

[NOTE: Much of this post is based on an Emily Litella-ish misreading, in which I fail to recognize satire as such. Please scroll down to the bottom and read the update/correction first. Thanks, sorry, etc.]

Prof. Mark Elrod, of the Church of Christ-related Harding University, doesn’t believe that Fred Thompson is a Real True Christian. [Note: Not really, see update below.] He’s wagering $100 that no one can prove the lawyer/actor/senator/actor/candidate is more than a “lapsed member” of the conservative denomination.

Thompson’s sectarian bona fides really shouldn’t be an issue in a presidential campaign. Article VI of the Constitution wisely forbids any “religious test” as a qualification for office.

Individual voters, of course, are free to consider such “religious tests” individually if they choose to. Voting for Candidate X because he/she is or is not a member in good standing of any given sectarian group is a dumb reason to decide how to vote, but individual voters are free to cast their ballots for all sorts of dumb reasons.

When this dumb reasoning expands much beyond the realm of individual choices, however, it becomes dangerous. Al Gore explained why in response to a question from CNN’s Larry King about whether or not Mitt Romney’s Mormonism was a “fair issue” in the campaign:

GORE: I do not — I don’t think it’s a fair issue. I really don’t. … I think that he’s entitled to his own beliefs. … that goes back to our founding fathers, goes back to the debates that we had more than 200 years ago about why religion should be kept out of the way in which our decisions are made.

Except to the extent that individuals, of course, who are motivated by their religious faith, as I am, as so many people are, are going to make that a part of their decisions. But here’s the critical distinction. When America was founded, they — our founders said, OK look, we are not going to pretend that whoever is elected to office has been ordained by the almighty to be the decision maker. The person who is elected is elected by us, the people of this country. And the divine right of kings was rejected by the founders of the United States.

And what replaced that, the divine right of individuals in this sense, we believe that we are all created equal. And that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.

The imposition of religious tests leads to people who think they rule by divine right, to people who therefore think they’re above the law. That’s why religious tests are incompatible with a healthy democracy.

It’s also why they are incompatible with healthy religion. [Note: Here, in particular, you need to scroll down and read the update/correction below.] The striking thing about Elrod’s attempt to quantify the quality of Thompson’s church membership is how paltry it seems. It’s a remarkably shallow estimation of spiritual depth:

Specifically, Elrod is soliciting any information about Thompson having:

• Taught a Bible class,

• Presided at the Lord’s table,

• Served as a greeter,

• Or led singing …

Those are very nice things to do and I wouldn’t want to diminish the contributions of any of the very nice people who do these things every Sunday. But Elrod’s checklist doesn’t strike me as terribly useful for evaluating either Thompson’s state of grace or his ability to lead the ship of state. The only president in my lifetime that I’m certain did all of the above was Jimmy Carter (who did them all regularly while president), yet such actions are woefully inadequate for judging Carter’s merit as either a president or a Christian.

Elrod’s attempt to quantify whether or not Thompson is a “real Christian” winds up rewriting Galatians: “The fruit of the spirit is regular attendance, teaching classes, presiding at ordinances, chorus leading and ushering, against such there is no law.”

Elrod’s artificially flavored fruit reminds me of a recent discussion on Out of Ur, the (evangelical) Leadership Journal’s blog, asking “Is Your Gospel Robust?” (Worth a look as an alternative to, for example, the “magic words” gospel of LaHaye & Jenkins.)

The original “fruit of the spirit,” I think, provides a better set of criteria for evaluating candidates and their policies: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” If a candidate’s agenda promoted those kind of virtues, I wouldn’t much care how they spent their Sunday mornings.

Richard John Neuhaus, on the other hand, thinks how candidates spend their Sunday mornings is something voters ought to consider “very seriously.” Thus, he says, making a campaign issue out of Romney’s Mormonism is a reasonable prejudice:

Anti-Catholicism is, in my judgment, an unreasonable prejudice. … Anxiety about the strengthening of Mormonism by virtue of there being a Mormon president is not unreasonable.

It’s not unreasonable, he says, because:

The question is not whether, as president, Mr. Romney would take orders from Salt Lake City. I doubt whether many people think he would. The questions are: Would a Mormon as president of the United States give greater credibility and prestige to Mormonism? The answer is almost certainly yes. Would it therefore help advance the missionary goals of what many view as a false religion? The answer is almost certainly yes. Is it legitimate for those Americans to take these questions into account in voting for a presidential nominee or candidate? The answer is certainly yes.

He does go on to say that these are “not the only questions that matter,” but that qualification doesn’t much change the inherent strangeness of what Neuhaus is suggesting ought to be considerations in electing candidates to a secular office. He believes that casting a vote for any candidate entails endorsing and enhancing the “credibility and prestige” of their personal, sectarian faith, and thus also advancing “the missionary goals” of that sectarian faith. Elections thus become spiritual and sectarian contests in which the respective faith traditions of the respective candidates will either gain or lose “credibility and prestige.”

Sure they do. Everyone remembers the surge in Episcopalian membership following the election of George H.W. Bush. Or the mighty wave of Quaker prestige that followed Nixon’s “Checkers” speech. These examples are, of course, absurd — much like Neuhaus’ contention that fear of Romney’s candidacy sparking a Mormon renaissance is a “reasonable prejudice.”

Neuhaus’ confusion gets back to my earlier point that sectarian religious tests are bad for religion. His error echoes that of the religious wars of Europe, in which spiritual battles were fought in the temporal realm. If Neuhaus is concerned about the “missionary goals” of the LDS church, then the ballot box is absolutely the wrong place to address those concerns. He should instead, perhaps, be trying to figure out how young people from his own church might be persuaded to match the missionary commitment demonstrated by young Mormons.

Neuhaus, like many of the religious voters making the most noise about Thompson’s church attendance and Romney’s Mormonism, is an admirer of both President George W. Bush and President Ronald Reagan — the only two presidents in my lifetime who did not attend church. That tells me quite a bit about the legitimacy of their alleged concerns about Thompson and Romney.

One more note: Elrod’s wager stems from spanking guru James Dobson’s prior assertion that Thompson is not an RTC. In response to that, Thompson’s campaign began talking up his longtime membership in the Church of Christ. In that sense, Elrod’s contention is legitimate. If Candidate X says he attends church every Sunday when, in fact, he/she does not, then the honesty and accuracy of Candidate X’s claim is a legitimate issue. But the issue in question is the candidate’s honesty, not the candidate’s church attendance. The controversy thus ought to be no different than if the candidate had falsely claimed to belong to a Tuesday night bowling league.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Glad to learn from better-informed commenters that Elrod’s challenge is a largely tongue-in-cheek contention of the sort described in the paragraph above. I should’ve known better than to rely on WingNut WorldNetDaily’s characterization of it. Here is Elrod’s engaging blog, titled “Mark Elrod’s Lame-O Weblog.”

My initial (humorless) reading of Elrod’s list of Church of Christ bona fides misread what he’s after here. He’s offering a list of subcultural shibboleths, seeing if Thompson knows the idiom of the native speaker (which, it seems, Thompson doesn’t — Elrod’s $100 is safe). My old partner in crime Dwight Ozard would’ve been much quicker to recognize and appreciate what Elrod is up to here. Dwight always said that attempts to provide a theological or doctrinal definition of American evangelicalism were pointless, because its defining characteristics were not theological, but (sub)cultural. Elrod, like Dwight, seems to recognize the existence of these cultural markers while at the same time lamenting their inadequacy as evidence of meaningful faith.

His point, in other words, was pretty nearly the opposite of what I mistook it for above. You know that guy who doesn’t quite get the joke, and right after you give the punchline he loudly paraphrases it in less subtle terms, thinking he’s somehow rescuing you or correcting you when all he’s really doing is repeating what you said in less clever terms? You know, that guy? I was just that guy. Sorry about that.

P.S.: Mark Elrod drops by in person in comments below to confirm that, yes, I’ve been a tone-deaf, humorless git.