Religion, politics don't mix

This is a very religious time of year in the United States.

I'm talking, of course, about politics and the race for president, not the Christmas season.

The Democrats have their own problems, but increasingly the Republicans are being faced with the question -- are they becoming a religious party?

From Huckabee virtually declaring that God is on his side (and apparently getting a boost in the polls as a result), to the unfortunate questions of religion that have swirled around Mitt Romney, Republicans are increasingly tying their fortunes to the issue of religion. And the party may suffer in the long run because of it.

Religion has always been a part of American politics, usually hovering in the background as "core values" issues. And no legitimate candidate has ever come out and said that he tends to ignore religion in his daily life. Most people actually do, but they won't say so when asked directly for fear of being labeled a godless atheist or heretic.

Heresy of course is the greatest crime of all, because it transcends secular law and means you are in violation of God's will. Who defines what heresy is, of course, is the big question.

The founding fathers were exceedingly wise in attempting to create a separation of church and state. It helps prevent a given religious doctrine from being imposed on the rest of us. Still, general religious morality standards are at the heart of, and form the background for, a great deal of secular law in this country. It's important that a society have some basic standards to serve as its anchor.

But there are literally hundreds of "major" religious groups in this country, and as much as those on the far conservative right have banded together to politically influence some cases of secular law, if these people ever were to actually achieve power and try and impose their will on the rest of us, their own doctrinal disputes would quickly cause a disintegration of their political strength. Each religion is different, after all, because it doesn't agree with the doctrine of all the other religions.

Which brings me, in a round-about way, to the controversy surrounding Mitt Romney.

I actually had hoped we'd gotten well beyond measuring a presidential candidate by his (or her) religion. I thought the election of John Kennedy had put that to rest. Supposedly, a Catholic could never get elected in this country. Kennedy seemed to indicate that religion wasn't the standard by which we measured a candidate.

But Romney is facing similar pressures, and because of the process by which we select presidential candidates today, it may ultimately doom his campaign for reasons other than whether or not he'd make a good president.

In today's presidential selection process the radical wings of both parties carry far more weight during the race for the party nomination than they do in the general election, where they tend to cancel each other out.

For the Democrats, today that radical wing is reflected by the far left "greenies."

But for the Republicans, it's the radical religious right, a loose coalition of conservative churches and televangelists. It's why someone like John McCain, who might be able to win a general election fairly easily, won't get the nomination. He simply can't make more than a half-hearted effort to appeal to that wing of his party. He's too middle of the road, and today, a Republican candidate has to at least appear to give wholehearted lip service to the assembly of radical right religions. Bush did it and then laughed behind their backs at how he'd been able to use them, infuriating the fundamentalists who have redoubled their efforts to find a candidate who won't betray them and will wholeheartedly embrace their agenda.

And that fundamentalist coalition sees the Mormon religion as nothing less than a non-Christian "cult." I actually watched a major news-commentary program the other day devote an entire half hour to a spokesman for that position explaining why Romney shouldn't be elected simply because he wasn't a Christian -- at least in his opinion.

This, of course, comes as a huge surprise to all the Mormons in the United States, who consider themselves very much a religion that espouses the works and beliefs of Jesus Christ. And surprisingly, most Mormons are much more in line with the religious fundamentalism of their critics than members of the religious right would want to believe.

LDS church doctrine, for example, believes that the Constitution of the United States is divinely inspired. Romney, therefore, would take a much more traditional and conservative approach to interpreting that document than the vast majority of the other candidates running in both parties.

Because he's running, the LDS history and doctrine are undergoing unprecedented scrutiny these days. No, they don't believe in plural marriage anymore, and haven't in a very long time (more than a century), and yes, they were a little late in jumping on the bandwagon, but no, they don't exclude blacks anymore from priestly duties of church membership. Frankly, they've gotten pretty mainstream over the years. But that won't stop their critics, who will pick apart church doctrine to find something likely to offend someone, and if they can do that in enough cases, they can raise enough doubt to block Romney's chances for reasons other than his political policies. Whether or not he is the right man to solve the largely secular problems this country faces, is quickly being submerged in smear and innuendo over religious doctrine (the same ploy that was tried with Kennedy).

It would be interesting to see someone pick apart that fundamentalist coalition's own doctrines the same way, but then, that would amount to heresy, wouldn't it? And few people want to be accused of being Godless.

Ultimately, that's what worries me the most about efforts to impose a clearly religious stamp on at least one of our major parties, with the ultimate goal of imposing it on the entire nation.

Ours is a nation of laws. If you break a law, you face certain secular penalties. But when the law, as it is in the muslim countries of the Mideast, is also the religion, then breaking it becomes a matter of heresy, and penalties for heresy are usually draconian in the extreme (we once burned people at the stake in this country for heresy). Plus, you can't even argue against those laws or try and get them changed, because the "higher will" of God, as interpreted by those who've somehow found their way to being in charge, would clearly override any "will of the people."

Frankly, it's time to put the brakes on this growing and dangerous trend of making religious doctrine the litmus test for political correctness. And if you disagree, consider, do you want that other guy's religious views imposed on you? By the time you get down to a close scrutiny of the doctrinal details of the other guy's church, most people would back away from the edge of that cliff.

We enjoy religious freedom in this country. It's one of our great strengths. We allow each individual to choose the doctrine that best fits them, the moral code they feel most comfortable embracing. Imposing any specific religious doctrine on secular law and politics diminishes each person's freedom of religion considerably.

The founding fathers were largely all pretty religious men, but they understood the dangers.

The question is, will Americans today have the same wisdom?