Well, I suppose it wasn’t a bad speech in political terms, although I doubt it will change the minds of those who believe Mormonism is a cult. I do, however, have a substantive problem with statements like this:
“Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.”
And this:
“Liberty is a gift from God, not an indulgence of government.”
Certainly, freedom of religion requires freedom…although I’m not sure that the Church (or the Mosque) has been a bastion of freedom over the centureies. And freedom would, presumably, be available to a nation of secular humanists who didn’t much like religion (as the vibrant state of democracy and comatose state of religion in western Europe, which Romney referenced, will attest).
And as for liberty being a gift from God–why didn’t God give it to everyone? He didn’t like the Chinese? In fact, liberty is no indulgence, but the hard work of government. Freedom and democracy require vigilance and sophistication. As John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address: “Here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”
The best treatment I’ve read of these issues appears in a new book by John DiIulio, Bush’s first director of the Office of Faith Based and Social Policy (and a Democrat), called The Godly Republic. DiIulio argues that the First Amendment sanction against the “Establishment” of religion doesn’t mean a strict “separation of church and state,” a phrase that appears nowhere in the Constitution. DiIulio’s middle road would allow the state to support non-prosyletizing religious programs like the after-school reading and mentoring programs that many inner city churches run; it would not allow the government to fund prosyletizing. This is a position that has been supported by Democrats from Paul Wellstone to Al Gore to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton–and also by many Republicans. DiIulio disapproves of those Republicans who see the United States as a “Christian” nation and who tried to jam an extremist faith-based bill through the Congress early in the Bush Administration.
In this area, as in most, the moderate path between the secular and religious extremes is best.