Colorado’s marquee religious leaders praised Mitt Romney for delivering his vision of the role of religion in presidential politics but would not go so far as to say his speech would allay concerns of the Republican candidate’s Mormon faith.
Romney’s speech at George H.W. Bush’s presidential library in College Station, Texas, had been cast as analogous to one John F. Kennedy made nearly 50 years ago when the candidate addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on concerns about his faith as a Roman Catholic.
The results were mixed. In the words of Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, “In some ways, it’s the speech John Kennedy should have given in Houston, but didn’t.”
“Romney, unlike Kennedy in Houston, does not separate his faith from informing his citizenship, and by extension, his vision of public service,” the Catholic leader wrote in an e-mail response to questions. “Romney offered a more reasonable and fruitful explanation of how faith actually works in public service, regardless of one’s political party.”
Evangelicals, a key audience for the speech, were more circumspect.
“Gov. Romney’s speech was a magnificent reminder of the role religious faith must play in government and public policy,” James Dobson, the founder of the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family, said in a prepared statement.
“(Romney’s) delivery was passionate and his message was inspirational,” Dobson wrote. “Whether it will answer all the questions and concerns of evangelical Christian voters is yet to be determined, but the governor is to be commended for articulating the importance of our religious heritage as it relates to today.”
Reticence and praise
In October 2006, Dobson said in a radio interview, “I don’t believe that conservative Christians in large numbers will vote for a Mormon, but that remains to be seen.”
The observation was momentous, as Dobson’s first-ever endorsement to the Christian faithful of a presidential candidate is cited by political operatives as crucial to President Bush’s 2004 re-election.
The view also has proved prescient, as most religious leaders saw the timing of Romney’s speech as tied to the sudden rise in popularity of rival primary candidate Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a Baptist preacher.
And certainly, reticence remained Thursday. The new pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Brady Boyd, wrote in an e-mail that Romney’s speech didn’t work for him.
“I appreciate Governor Romney’s commitment to upholding moral values, but his comments are no different than many of the other candidates and failed to inspire me as a voter,” Boyd said.
Romney impressed Scott Van Lanken, an evangelical pastor with the Front Range on Fire network of ministries, who said that nothing in his belief system would preclude a vote for a Mormon strictly on the grounds of his faith.
“With a guy like Mitt Romney, I think he’s a fine man,” Van Lanken said. “If it came down to a presidential vote I could be able to cast a vote for what I would believe is best for the country.”
Skills trump religion
Chaput said he appreciated in Romney’s speech the candidate’s effort to defend matters of faith in the public square, a much-repeated observation by religious leaders and scholars Thursday.
“Religious officials shouldn’t and can’t determine public policy,” Chaput said. “No sensible person would disagree with that. But that’s very different from claiming — as some people now do — that religious believers, communities and leaders should be silent in public debate or stay out of public issues.”
And the archbishop — who stressed he is not endorsing the candidate in his remarks — downplayed the debate on Romney’s Mormon faith, saying, it “has never been a serious issue for me, and I doubt many Catholic voters will make their political choices based on that factor.”
“Catholics, like most other people, want to elect someone who has the skills, the moral character and the real commitment to the common good that will enable him or her to lead,” Chaput said. “This applies whether you’re a Democrat or Republican. In some ways, given the record of public service of the Romney family, the Mormon issue has always seemed irrelevant.”
“Papering over” issues
Some religious scholars in Colorado found the speech lacking, in that it relied on a generalized notion that all people of faith shared common values.
Regis University professor of religion John Kane said such language became a kind of “rhetorical papering over” of issues like abortion and America’s Iraq war policy.
By simply asserting that people of faith respect and should protect such things as the “equality of human kind,” Kane said, Romney avoids some of the key debates that split along moral fault lines.
With abortion and Iraq war policy, Kane said, sincere and thoughtful people of faith often disagree as to what is best.
“I hear in it the rhetoric of the religious right, and in that sense I think it’s a weak speech as a serious speech about the whole nature of religion and political life,” Kane said. “I think it’s incomplete. It verges toward a kind of religious nationalism.”
Staff writer Electa Draper contributed to this report.
Chuck Plunkett: 303-954-1333 or cplunkett@denverpost.com
