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EDITORIAL

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Preaching and politicking have a lot in common. Stump speeches and sermons both seek to win converts. In the prelude to this election year, the spotlight on faith has ranged from Mormon Mitt Romney’s speech about religious tolerance to the surprising surge of a former pastor, Mike Huckabee.

Declarations of faith are practically required for presidential aspirants. Most especially, Republican candidates hope to meet the expectations of evangelical Christians. In the current campaign, contenders’ efforts to prove their religious credentials have shown the potency of faith in American politics.

John McCain may have won points with evangelicals when he said “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.” But the Constitution does not mention Christianity, or even God. By saying what some U.S. Christians want to hear, McCain distorted history and seemed to devalue America’s religious diversity.

Romney’s campaign is testing the acceptance of that diversity. In a Dec. 6 speech, Romney sought to assure voters that a Mormon is fit to be president. But it was a tough sell: A third of evangelicals say Romney’s faith makes them less likely to support him.

Though some might rule out a Mormon president, Pat Robertson proved evangelicals could compromise in other ways. The televangelist conferred his blessing on Rudolph Giuliani despite the former New York mayor’s support of abortion rights and gay civil unions, as well as his own marital infidelity. Giuliani’s bellicose approach to terrorism was all that mattered.

Huckabee, Republican winner in the Iowa caucuses, might be the most fascinating faith-and-politics story. The former Baptist pastor and Arkansas governor has made his faith central to his campaign. One of his ads described him as a “Christian leader.” Of his late 2007 surge in the polls, Huckabee said: “There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one.” He appeals to the religious right, but his compassionate stances on immigration and poverty break out of typically narrow definitions.

On the Democratic side, the leading candidates seem to have learned from the mistakes of John Kerry, who has expressed regret for avoiding issues of faith in the 2004 campaign. But, since churchgoing Americans tend to vote Republican, the need for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards to pass a religious test is not as great during the primaries.

An interesting campaign footnote, especially for peace advocates, is Democratic longshot Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who favors immediate withdrawal from Iraq, a smaller military budget and the establishment of a Department of Peace. Of religion, he has said: “All manners of belief and even non-belief come from a common font, and that is the transcendent power of the human heart.”

Whether or not they would put it that way, many Americans can identify with the values of inclusion and tolerance expressed in these words. They also illustrate the principle that a politician who might fail a certain test of religious orthodoxy can still have excellent public policy ideas. A bad theologian might make a good president. Or vice versa.

Such are the the ironies of presidential politics in a nation where religion is separate from the state but closely linked to electing the head of state. — Paul Schrag