In a testy exchange with a Christian radio host, Mitt Romney bridled at being linked to Mormon church doctrine on abortion and other fundamental concerns. "I’m not running as a Mormon," Romney said, "and I get a little
tired of coming on a show like yours and having it all about Mormon."
I admire what Romney’s maybe trying to do. To show that he’s evolved, that he isn’t limited by some idiotic religious doctrine. It is what Mario Cuomo did in 1984, when he went to Notre Dame to say that he would separate his private beliefs on abortion from his role as a policymaker. It is what JFK did at Houston in 1960, assuring America that he wouldn’t take his cue from the Vatican.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant
nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions
on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any
other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose
its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public
acts of its officials…
Beautiful. One of the amazing possibilities in Walt and Mearsheimer’s forthcoming outing of the Israel lobby is that it could at last place the issue of the deed that the Bible grants Jews to the Holy Land–a piece of religious devotion as formidable as fundamentalist Christian teaching on abortion and gay rights, but more dangerous–in the public square, and offer Jewish politicians an opportunity to distance themselves from it.
