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Allies' Voices

Jeffrey S. Nielsen

Romney, Religion and Secularism

Jeffrey S. Nielsen
8 December 2007

A former BYU instructor, Jeffrey S. Nielsen is founder of the Democracy House Project and teaches philosophy at both Westminster College and Utah Valley State College. This is an editorial he sent to the Salt Lake Tribune. Posted with the author's permission.

I have been trying to decide what to make of Mitt Romney's faith speech. I have wondered, can it be considered political courage to proclaim your faith in God and your loathing of secularism (and Europeans) to a conservative religious audience?

Can it be considered statesmanlike to string together a bunch of made-for-media sound bites that, when taken as a whole, appear inconsistent and whose meaning evaporates into thin air when looked at objectively? After all, what could "Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone,” possibly mean?

Is it an historical moment when a politician articulates a message designed specifically to appeal to a particular audience, whose votes he seeks, while failing to educate and challenge people to really reflect on their beliefs and prejudices?

It certainly is not a good thing for our democracy when Romney says that religious tests are unfair, but then, by confessing his faith and saying such religious belief is essential to our political well-being, merely creates another type of religious test. We need men and women of integrity and constancy, not those of expediency and inconsistency. We need men and women who will educate public thought, not just pander to public opinion.

Unfortunately, his speech, though a masterful political performance, won't help him win the Republican nomination. He seems to have decided his only hope of winning is to appeal to the religious conservatives - the very people who will reject him out of religious prejudice. But you can't pander to religious beliefs without triggering faith-based prejudices; and then, when it does occur, to cry "foul" seems a bit insincere. The forces of religious prejudice that Romney is up against can only be tamed with the tolerant secularism he fails to understand, but so clearly despises.

It is odd how often certain groups try to portray our founding fathers as religious conservatives. Their guiding star was not Christianity, but Enlightenment secularism. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison would all be quite surprised by Romney's statement that political liberty requires religion. Certainly, religious tolerance requires political liberty, but political liberty has often been the victim of religious conservatism.

The great benefit of secularism is that it has left room for religious practice in our private lives while protecting it from the intolerance of religious fundamentalism - something that hasn't occurred in governments where secularism is despised. So, for someone to praise religious toleration while condemning secularism is to be simply ignorant of our history, and foolish about the possibilities of our future, if religion and government are not kept separate.

The meaning of secularism is that law and public policy should be based on reason and rational discussion, not revelation, scripture and religious authority. Not only does this protect government from religious extremism, but it also protects religious faith from religious extremism. Contrary to what Romney supposes, when religion becomes political and politics becomes religious, both are corrupted.

The best defense of pure religion is a healthy secularism, where religious faith is a private and protected matter. In fact, Romney's Mormonism is more respected among secularists than among conservative evangelicals. His faith would be suppressed in a government controlled by religious conservatism, while it has been allowed to flourish with a secular government. Of course, I realize that Romney's objective was to win votes, not to educate or conduct an important conversation on the role of faith in a pluralistic society.

I believe that his speech was a step backwards in that it implicitly suggested that to win a nomination, any candidate with unusual ideas must publicly express his faith in the Christian God in order to be acceptable.

The end result will be to coerce candidates to confess their belief in Christianity, while searching for ways to manipulate the religious emotions of the electorate. So we have the implicit establishment of a religious test, which is contrary to the wisdom of our founding generation and to the intent of our Constitution. Indeed, his words and actions affirm a dangerous trend of religious fundamentalism in our country that is not healthy for the future of our democracy.

Perhaps the final word is best left to someone who understood much more clearly than either myself or Mitt Romney the split between secular political authority and private religious belief: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's” (Matthew 22:21).