Of Course It Matters that Mitt Romney Is a Mormon
May 14, 2007
U.S. presidential aspirant Mitt Romney continues to attract attention because of his allegiance to the religion of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), known popularly as the Mormon Church. Above all that attention is the “meta-question” about whether his Mormonism should even matter in political discussion. I suggest that there should be no question that it does.
Many point to John F. Kennedy as the first successful non-Protestant to win his nation’s highest office. So if Kennedy’s faith wasn’t a problem, so this logic runs, nor should Romney’s.
But Kennedy, as several decades of history have subsequently shown, was different from Romney not only in the type of religion he had–Roman Catholic versus LDS, which is a pretty big difference in outlook–but also in his adherence to it. Romney, by all accounts, is a faithful Mormon. Kennedy, by all accounts, was no one’s idea of a faithful Catholic. So of course Kennedy could be relied upon not to take political orders from Rome. He certainly wasn’t taking sexual orders from the Church. His Roman Catholicism literally didn’t matter. But Romney really believes LDS doctrine and really practices that religion’s faith.
Coercion? Or Church Discipline? Jehovah’s Witnesses, Blood Transfusions, and the Sovereign Individual
April 17, 2007
The British Columbia Supreme Court has been deliberating over whether the parents of sextuplets can refuse blood transfusions for their children on the basis of the parents’ religious beliefs.
Clearly there are a number of crucial issues at stake here: the proper interest of the state in the well-being (as it sees it) of its citizens, and particularly its most vulnerable ones; the freedom of individual conscience on matters of medical treatment; and the freedom of individuals to act according to their religious beliefs. But there is also the question of the freedom of religious organizations to impose consequences on members who flout their shared convictions.
William Wilberforce as Evangelical Leftist?
March 24, 2007
Folks on the Religious Right continue to sputter in outrage as evangelicals get involved in HIV/AIDS work in Africa (and at home), as evangelical leaders warn against global climate change as a moral issue, and recently as evangelicals have spoken out against the use of torture.
Whatever happened to proper evangelical social concerns: abortion, promiscuity, euthanasia, homosexuality? You know: beginning of life, end of life, and sex in between?
Well, those concerns haven’t disappeared, of course. And they remain important for evangelicals, as they do for many other Christians and, indeed, for many other people of various outlooks. It’s just that they are not the only concerns, and not even the ones currently getting the most attention.
But is this a betrayal of evangelical priorities? Not according to the career of every evangelical’s favourite political hero, William Wilberforce–whose film biography is currently in theatres as “Amazing Grace.”
My Favourite Muslim: Irshad Manji
January 7, 2007
If you don’t know about Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today, then you probably should. Her website is here.
Irshad is a rare bird indeed: Islamic, liberal, reformist, feminist, lesbian. The New York Times calls her “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” She is articulate, passionate, vivacious, sweet, and almost unbelievably courageous. (One of the first photos on her website is a shot of her with Salman Rushdie, not everyone’s favourite Muslim in, say, Iran.) Read the rest of this entry »
Liberal Fascists (Still) on Campus?
January 6, 2007
When I was a student at Queen’s University in the late 1970s, I attended precisely one meeting of the student government there–the Alma Mater Society. I went there to protest the AMS decision to de-fund religious student groups (there was only one non-Christian group, Hillel House) because, well, religion was controversial, like politics, and the AMS didn’t like controversy.
We tried to respond that the AMS somehow had a high enough tolerance for controversy to fund the newspaper of the Engineering Society, a sometimes-amusing publication that trafficked mostly in blasphemy, scatology, and sexual outrage.
Too bad, the AMS president said. Plus, we didn’t have standing at the meeting anyhow, since we weren’t elected representatives, but mere students. And that was that.
No big deal. We didn’t need their funding anyway. But as a 19-year-old leader at the time, I thought: “I don’t think this should happen. We’re university citizens, too, engaged in a socially-acceptable–some would even say socially-helpful–activity. The state provides financial help to churches. Why shouldn’t a state university provide help to student religious groups?”
Fast forward twenty-five years, through all the debates over “political correctness,” and move west to the University of British Columbia. Since I have come to Regent College (1998), I continue to see instances of official intolerance of cultural diversity (read: “views we don’t like”).
Politicians and religious identity
December 28, 2006
A reporter talked with me today about a poll he tried to take of Canadian Members of Parliament, on behalf of the major print medium for which he works (and which discretion forbids me to identify).
He noted that about half of the MPs’ offices failed to return his calls, and of those that did, more than half of them refused to participate. Of the minority, then, that did participate, a majority said they were religious. He asked me what I thought of these numbers. And so I’ll tell you what I told him:
