Romney in Iowa: Civil Religion and Religion

This article suggests that Mitt Romney may have found a way—what took him so long?—to reach some religious folks who are suspicious of Mormonism on theological grounds.  Consider this passage:

On Sunday afternoon, potential voters in Atlantic waited for Romney at the Family Table restaurant. A few tables down from a group of Mormons, Karen Poe, 68, fresh out of church services, sat with her husband, Phil, around ketchup-stained plates. “Beating Obama is my bottom line,” she said, but isn’t sure she can get behind Romney.

“He’s a Mormon,” Poe said, grimacing at the mention of Romney’s name. “Everyone needs to base their decision on something, and the basis for his decisions would be different. I’m not convinced it’s a good point of view to be coming from.”

Poe, an evangelical [sic: charismatic would be a better descriptor] member of the Assemblies of God church outside Des Moines, said that while she’d also have issues with a Jewish or Muslim candidate, Mormons worried her more. “They are a very controlling religion,” she said.

“He could put Mormon judges on the bench and things like that,” interjected her husband.

A few minutes later, Romney, flanked by his wife, Ann, and the couple’s youngest son, Craig, entered the packed restaurant to applause.

“This is an election not just about replacing President Obama, it’s an election about the soul of America,” Romney said, as Poe gingerly climbed a chair to get a better view. As Romney cited the Declaration of Independence, Poe nodded in agreement. “They said that we had been endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. And as you know, those rights came not from the state, not from the government, but from our creator.”

“He did great,” Poe said as Romney walked around the room shaking hands. “If he were the chosen candidate, I could support him, yes.”

Romney is here using what we are at least supposed to have in common—commitment to our founding principles—to bridge the gaps that divide us (particular creeds).  The principles support limited government, a common ground on which believers of many stripes can agree.  They’re more ”robust” than a Rawlsian “overlapping consensus,” which abjures any “metaphysical” statements about inalienable rights.

If this is any clue to the way Romney the nominee would comport himself, then we’d have an interesting debate between someone who takes the founding principles seriously and someone more comfortable filtering them through a Rawlsian lens.  I’ve long thought that the latter “liberal” response to pluralism cannot sustain what it purports to sustain.  Romney, on the other hand, is making common cause with Thomas Jefferson (not religiously orthodox, but politically true): ” [C]an the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?”