Romney's Religion

A pastor is staying at a hotel. An employee grabs him in the lobby and says, “We need your help! There’s a man on the fifth floor ledge who’s planning on jumping!

They both go to the fifth floor, and there outside the window of one of the rooms is a middle-aged man standing on the ledge.

The pastor says to the man, “Don’t jump, for God’s sake. There’s too much to live for. God loves you. You do believe in God, don’t you?”

The man says, “Well. Yes. Yes I do.”

The pastor says, “Good, good, see, you believe in God. That’s good. I personally happen to believe in the Christian view of God as a God of grace. Do you believe in the Christian God?

“Yes. I grew up Christian.”

“Great! Great! You’re a Christian. You have so much to live for. Would you happen to be a Protestant or Catholic?”

“I’m a Protestant,” the man says. “A Presbyterian, actually.”

“You’re a Presbyterian?” says the pastor. “My gosh, I’m a Presbyterian, too! That’s just fantastic! What kind of Presbyterian are you? Are you a member of the Presbyterian Church USA or the Presbyterian Church of America?”

“Presbyterian Church USA.”

The pastor then shoves the man off the ledge. “Heretic,” he says.

Indeed. Religious people often split theological hairs and often find ourselves feeling as divided from people who are slightly different from us as from people who are wildly different from us. For many Europeans, who have been particularly prone to religious fighting, it has become too much to stomach, which is why they've gone secular.

Yet in America, old divisions among Catholics and Protestants and Jews have healed rapidly due to new political realities that has unified their conservative branches. As note in the article to which I linked, Ted Sorenson claimed that anti-Catholicism may have been the major reason to oppose JFK (especially among those people who liked Nixon's 5 o'clock shadow).

I suspect conservative Mormons will soon enough be a part of a major alliance with conservatives of other stripes. So, come next fall, I don't expect Romney to lose to Hillary on account of his religion. (He may lose over other reasons, of course. And let me add that I'm not a Romney supporter, simply one curious about the "Mormon issue.")

As I once noted in a piece that Chris was kind enough to publish around the 4th of July of 2004, the majesty of America is that, while religion has sometimes been messy, it has mostly been a positive affair. Europeans fought ugly and exhausting battles over morality, papal authority and the nature of the wine served during communion, which helps explain why they now flinch when religion is even brought up. In the case of Christendom, what finally freed up the best in thought and deed? The "America bug" did -- that peculiar influence that makes people live and let live, in search of life, liberty and the pursuit of the good life. Once here, people were willing to fight to the death over injustices but not over matters of conscience. That should bode well for Romney.