Mitt Romney also gives pause to a couple of op-ed columnists, David Brooks and Gail Collins of
The New York Times. Brooks (a Jew, and politically conservative) expressed his pause
on December 7:
When this country was founded, James Madison envisioned a noisy public square with different religious denominations arguing, competing and balancing each other’s passions. But now the landscape of religious life has changed. Now its most prominent feature is the supposed war between the faithful and the faithless. Mitt Romney didn’t start this war, but speeches like his both exploit and solidify this divide in people’s minds. The supposed war between the faithful and the faithless has exacted casualties.
The first casualty is the national community. Romney described a community yesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not....
Collins expressed hers
the next day (December 8):
The peak of my sympathy for Mitt Romney came when he was being battered on one side by Christian fundamentalists who think his faith is a cult and on the other by fellow Mormons, who were irate when he fudged the fact that they believe Jesus will return to earth and build a new Jerusalem in Jackson County, Mo.
This week, Mitt made his much-anticipated religion speech, and stood up for his rights not to be discriminated against for his beliefs, and not to have to explain the part about Jackson County. Good for him on both counts.
... Except that you have to wonder why he felt compelled to dip into dogma just long enough to assure voters that he believes “Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind.”
Romney’s message, which boiled down to "let’s all be religious together," was certainly different from the John Kennedy version, which argued that a candidate’s religion is irrelevant. But then Kennedy was speaking to the country, while Romney had his attention fixed on the approximately 35,000 Iowa religious conservatives who will tip the balance in the first-in-the-nation Republican caucus....
Of course, some were not given pause by Romney's speech. Here's one Mormon's assessment of it:
From what I heard, I see no reason that anyone would feel that Romney tried to separate believers from non-believers. Non-believers are just those that have not yet seen fit to believe. Hopefully all will believe prior to their judgment day.
Leaving aside the question whether I will ever again believe (whatever efficacy
that could possibly have), I told her about some of the pauses that I and others had gotten from Romney's speech. She seemed incredulous, and I was surprised that she seemed much threatened by our reservations:
I cannot understand how any intelligent being can deny the creator of our universe. Refusal to do so seems to me to be following the devil, who got kicked out of Heaven because he wanted to force everyone to do his bidding instead of using his right that God gave him to make his own choices to do right or wrong. The people who choose not to believe should stop trying to force others to lose their right to believe....Why are the non-believers trying to destroy all evidence of God from our buildings and money? If the name is so bothersome, why don't they just stay out of those buildings and not spend any money that has "In God we trust" on it? I find the pressure to remove all trace of God from America shortsighted and repulsive. I am not going out of my way to change someone else's beliefs by destroying what is important to others. I would appreciate the same courtesy.
I'm still trying to make sense of this, still trying to understand how belief in believing (as opposed, for example, to moral behavior) could have come to have such sway over Americans, we citizens of a nation born of Enlightenment political philosophy.
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