Our friend Matt Franck is absolutely right that those of our friends who use the “no religious test” clause of the Constitution to condemn religious bigotry have got it absolutely wrong. There are many evils associated with religious bigotry, but the solution is not to assume that a Constitutional provision that prohibits barring all but the orthodox from officeholding also applies to the private deliberations of voters and the appropriate range of political speech in the public square. The interpretation of the no religious test clause propounded by good people like Bill Bennett and William McGurn would put it at odds with at least two clauses of the First Amendment.
To be sure, in a sinful world religious freedom and freedom of speech will be abused. But there are plenty of ways of identifying those abuses without misinterpreting the Constitution and further weakening its barriers against an all-encompassing government.
October 11th, 2011 | 4:07 pm
Yup. People are free to use whatever criteria they like for voting. But once someone’s voted in, the government can’t block someone from taking office for religious reasons. It’s that simple.
October 11th, 2011 | 4:53 pm
Right on, Matthew and Ray (how often do I get to say THAT?)
October 11th, 2011 | 6:06 pm
I agree, but I would add that anyone who says, “I would never vote for a Mormon (Catholic, Evangelical, Jew, Muslim, etc.),” while well within his or her rights constitutionally speaking, is somebody I would not want to have much to do with. Feeling positively toward your own is only natural. Feeling antipathy to everyone else but your own is unfortunate, at best.
October 11th, 2011 | 10:14 pm
“Feeling antipathy to everyone else but your own is unfortunate, at best.”
But is it not possible to have convictions about why a certain set of beliefs, if firmly held and put into practice, would be detrimental in a candidate, without “antipathy?” Why does this idea of “antipathy” always come up when people exclude a specific, very particular sort of action toward or relationship with a particular kind of person?
I am not saying that there is not frequently antipathy in the mix when people categorically exclude a vote for a particular kind of person — all too often, unfortunately, there is. But does the fact that I would never vote for a Scientologist for public office because I find their beliefs both fanciful (therefore indicating a level of credulity I mistrust) and dangerous, mean that I “hate” Scientologists and wish them ill?
Even more so, I would never vote for a far leftist Democrat for public office, though I happen to know one who’s run for office, and he’s a quite a nice guy, and my husband is involved in a club with him. I “would never vote” for such a person because I think the values and policies he would seek to impose would have a negative effect on his constituency, not because I hate him or reflexively hate members of the belief set to which he belongs. It’s true that someone having membership in a particular religion doesn’t mean he’d consistently apply his beliefs, but if there’s reason to think he would, I don’t see why not wanting that influence in office and rejecting his candidacy on that basis equates to “antipathy.” It can, and often does, but it seems to me that it’s actually quite prejudicial to label and denigrate a person who has qualms about certain belief systems in a candidate as having “antipathy” toward the candidate and his co-religionists.
October 11th, 2011 | 11:51 pm
pentamom,
There are certainly people with religious beliefs—and ones I respect, too—that would disqualify them in my eyes for certain offices. Given that our president is also our commander-in-chief, I wouldn’t vote for a pacifist for president. But Nixon was a Quaker, and I believe Quakers tend to be pacifists, but Nixon certainly wasn’t. So I think it always boils down to the individual.
I am really pretty much talking about what we’re seeing right now and what we’ve seen in American history. I don’t think there is now or has ever been a major candidate whose religion was a justification for voting against him or her. I don’t think being a Mormon should count against Romney, and I think talk of Mormonism being a “cult” is inappropriate.
I do not have a favorable opinion of Scientology, but if there were a Scientologist running for office, I would at least want to hear what he or she had to say before making a decision about my vote.
October 12th, 2011 | 9:47 am
As Lord Macaulay pointed out in the debate over Catholic Emancipation, to infer from the nature of some doctrine which a person holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will act in a particular way is a very dubious assumption.
“If, indeed, all men reasoned in the same manner on the same data, and always did what they thought it their duty to do, this mode of dispensing punishment might be extremely judicious. But as people who agree about premises often disagree about conclusions, and as no man in the world acts up to his own standard of right, there are two enormous gaps in the logic by which alone penalties for opinions can be defended…”
“We do not believe that every Englishman who was reconciled to the Catholic Church would, as a necessary consequence, have thought himself justified in deposing or assassinating Elizabeth. It is not sufficient to say that the convert must have acknowledged the authority of the Pope, and that the Pope had issued a bull against the Queen. We know through what strange loopholes the human mind contrives to escape, when it wishes to avoid a disagreeable inference from an admitted proposition. We know how long the Jansenists contrived to believe the Pope infallible in matters of doctrine, and at the same time to believe doctrines which he pronounced to be heretical…”
“Why,” he asks, “should we suppose that conscientious motives, feeble as they are constantly found to be in a good cause, should be omnipotent for evil?”
October 12th, 2011 | 10:45 am
David Nickol — okay, that’s a fair distinction. I guess that was the import of your phrase “I would never.” I suppose “I would never” is a strong and ill-advised statement in this context.
Still, I’m not 100% comfortable with chalking it up to antipathy, regardless. For example, someone could hold the view unreflectively that (as in Michael’s example) all Catholic Englishmen would necessarily be committed to the assassination of QEI (or that JFK would be inclined to take domestic and foreign policy orders from the Pope.) That would be an ill-judged view, but nonetheless it might spring more out of ignorance or hastiness than hatred.
October 12th, 2011 | 1:43 pm
As Lord Macaulay pointed out in the debate over Catholic Emancipation, to infer from the nature of some doctrine which a person holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will act in a particular way is a very dubious assumption.
However, if a Catholic were asked a question relating to this very thing – let us say we were to ask JFK a question about whether his first allegiance would be to the Pope or the Constitution – would it be meaningless if he refused to answer the question?
October 14th, 2011 | 3:25 am
Blake
Yes, the answer to such a question, in the abstract would be pretty well meaningless.
As Macaulay says, “Doubtless there was many a jolly Popish priest in the old manor-houses of the northern counties, who would have admitted, in theory, the deposing power of the Pope, but who would not have been ambitious to be stretched on the rack..”
Or, in the case of a President, impeached.
October 14th, 2011 | 2:39 pm
[...] 14, 2011, 2:39 PM Joseph Knippenberg I have already opened my big fat mouth about this a couple of times here, but I’m finding it hard to resist another attempt to make myself [...]
October 16th, 2011 | 5:25 am
The religious test (the personal one, but by the candidates) is actually being used against Perry.
http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2011/10/perry-faces-religious-test-not-romney-or-huntsman-%E2%80%93-dallas-pastor-robert-jeffress-in-firestorm/
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