The Messenger or the Message

You can say a lot about the influence of religion in politics, especially presidential politics, but it's certainly never boring. In the 1960 election, John F. Kennedy felt compelled to address his religious views in order to defuse concern that his being a catholic would somehow mean that he would effectively be taking orders from the Pope. As with many things, it's been a long road since then and distance is seldom synonymous with progress.

JFK put his political future on the line to vindicate the right of politician's to freely partake of the Constitution's first amendment in their public life. 51 years later, we've moved from questions of whether a candidate would take orders from an earthly manifestation of the almighty to having a candidate explicitly talk in terms of what god is telling them to do. It should surprise no one that the candidate in question is Michele Bachmann.

Putting aside her supposed joke about the recent earthquake and hurricane on the East coast of the United States being a message from god to get the attention of politicians, Bachmann has said on a number of occasions that god directed her to take specific actions, ranging from introducing legislation against same-sex marriage in the Minnesota state legislature to the decision to run for President.

In some ways, it sickens me to think that JFK's stand back in 1960 may be one of the things that makes it possible that people are treating Bachmann as if she's a credible candidate for any elected office. Then again, that's how it often works. A courageous (albeit flawed) individual takes a principled stand to fight for the rights of far less principled people. Rather than dwell on that, I'll think about that masterful JFK speech for a bit.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

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; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Kennedy obviously had his faults, but he knew the score.