The amount of anti-Mormonism in the culture right now is shocking. People unload on Mormonism all the time, John McCain’s mother, the New Republic…. Mitt Romney says he’s going to deal with it. Maybe give a speech.
Last night on Hardball, Chris Matthews brought up JFK’s famous speech to the Houston ministers in September 1960. In that speech, our first Catholic president-to-be promised the Protestants that he wouldn’t take directions from the Pope. (Did he use birth control?) The speech rang the bell of secularism, and helped elect JFK.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant
nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept 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, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an
act against one church is treated as an act against all.
Beautiful. Anyway, Matthews said that no one could give that speech now, because politics and religion are so "overlapped." Matthews is a political genius, and he’s on to something. But I hope he’s not right. What we need right now is greater secularism. The world is inflamed by religion, everyone is sick of religion in this country.
And one thing that means is that Matthews should grow a spine and talk about something he knows a ton about: the religious left, as I call it, the Israel lobby, which has a very strong religious component. Do it now, before we bomb Iran….
