Mitt Romney is now the GOP\u2019s presumptive presidential nominee.\u00a0 Mitt is also a Mormon.\u00a0 There has already been much talk over whether this last fact should be of any relevance to his bid for the presidency.\u00a0 A shocking number of people\u2014it seems like most\u2014think that Romney\u2019s religious commitments should be off limits for discussion.<\/p>\n
It shocks <\/em>that so many Americans think this; it does not surprise.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n In fact, we should expect that the children of the Age of \u201cJudeo-Christian values,\u201d \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism,\u201d and the like should speak as though all faiths were at once interchangeable as well as immaterial to politics.<\/p>\n The concept of \u201cJudeo-Christian values\u201d is a useful fiction that, in conflating Judaism with Christianity, essentially denies both.\u00a0 \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism\u201d is no less a fiction, but a particularly invidious one, for on its behalf, countless numbers of human beings around the world have lost their lives in America\u2019s quest to promote Democracy and Human Rights.<\/p>\n Religion, if it is real, should make every difference vis-\u00e0-vis every <\/em>aspect of a person\u2019s life.\u00a0<\/p>\n This, of course, doesn\u2019t mean that any given politician\u2019s religious commitments will necessarily conflict with his commitment to the Constitution.\u00a0 His faith may even require that, either as an American citizen or an office holder, he uphold it.<\/p>\n Or it may be silent on the question of politics.<\/p>\n In any case, a genuinely religious person can\u2019t but be offended at the suggestion that his religiosity (or anyone\u2019s, for that matter) can or should be bracketed off to one side when he enters the political (or any) arena.\u00a0<\/p>\n This brings us back to Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n If Romney takes his Mormon faith seriously, then it is only upon pain of lying that he could deny his faith a central role in making him the person\u2014and the candidate\u2014who he is.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet consistency calls on Romney\u2019s critics to acknowledge that if Romney\u2019s faith is fair game, then so is that of Barack Obama.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n The linchpin to discovering what makes Obama tick is <\/em>Jeremiah Wright, his pastor and \u201cspiritual adviser\u201d and \u201cmentor\u201d of over twenty years.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Obama had donated thousands and thousands of dollars to Wright\u2019s church.\u00a0 He arranged for Wright to officiate at his wedding service and to baptize his children. Such was Wright\u2019s influence over Obama\u2019s thought that our President entitled his second memoir after one of Wright\u2019s sermons, a sermon within which the pixilated parson waxed indignant over his belief that \u201cwhite folks\u2019 greed runs a world in need.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There are only two kinds of people who think that Obama\u2019s worldview is not essentially that of Wrights: those who won\u2019t think or those who can\u2019t think.\u00a0<\/p>\n To elaborate, either those who know nothing of either religion or politics or those who know nothing of religion could sincerely believe that twenty-plus years under Wright\u2019s tutelage didn\u2019t exert a tremendous influence over Obama.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, yes, the faiths of Romney and <\/em>Obama should be placed under a microscope this election season.\u00a0<\/p>\n If Americans can transcend their racial fears and irrationalities, they will discover in no time that for all of its problems, it isn\u2019t Romney\u2019s Mormonism that threatens our secular government, but the Black Liberation Theology (BLT) that Obama imbibed from Wright.\u00a0 Recall, according to BLT, \u201cthe greed\u201d of \u201cwhite folks\u201d rules over \u201ca world in need.\u201d The God of BLT is a deity who allies itself with blacks\u2014or B<\/em>lacks\u2014over whites.<\/p>\n This <\/em>is the theology on which America\u2019s 44th<\/sup> president was reared.\u00a0<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at Romney\u2019s Mormonism.\u00a0 But let us also inspect, for the first time, really, Obama\u2019s Black Liberation Theology.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rest assured, while neither presidential candidate will much look forward to having his religious history examined, the President will be far more averse to such an inquiry than will be his rival.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mitt Romney is now the GOP\u2019s presumptive presidential nominee.\u00a0 Mitt is also a Mormon.\u00a0 There has already been much talk over whether this last fact should be of any relevance to his bid for the presidency.\u00a0 A shocking number of people\u2014it seems like most\u2014think that Romney\u2019s religious commitments should be off limits for discussion. It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n