{"id":112,"date":"2010-11-15T10:26:21","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T10:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/linkers-test.html"},"modified":"2010-11-15T10:26:21","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T10:26:21","slug":"linkers-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/linkers-test.html","title":{"rendered":"Linker’s Test"},"content":{"rendered":"

If we take seriously Damon Linker’s call for giving political candidates
\na religious test, what should the test look like? Unfortunately, this
\nwhole testing thing seems to have been a bit of a marketing afterthought
\nto his new book, The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Religious Beliefs of Our Leaders<\/a><\/i>.
\nAs a result, the book’s very useful rehearsals of the various
\nfaith-based contentions of our time do not segue into a discussion of
\nwhat The Religious Test should look like and how it might be
\nadministered. <\/p>\n

For such, the reader is better advised to read the essay<\/a> Linker wrote for the Washington Post <\/i>a
\ncouple of months ago–the basis, one might hope, of a concluding
\nchapter in his book’s second edition. There, the test consists of four
\nquestions:<\/p>\n

How might the doctrines and practices of your religion conflict with the fulfillment of your official duties?<\/i><\/p>\n

How would you respond if your church issued an edict that clashed with the duties of your office?<\/i><\/p>\n

What do you believe human beings can know about nature and history?<\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Do you believe the law should be used to impose and enforce religious views of sexual morality?<\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I’m not particularly sanguine about getting much useful out of
\ncandidates by way of answers, it does seem to me worth accustoming the
\ncitizenry to thinking that such questions are not out of order. <\/p>\n

For some years now, it’s become almost common wisdom that JFK went too
\nfar in enunciating a separation of religion and politics in his 1960 speech to the Houston ministers<\/a>.
\nWell, if it’s important to bring one’s religious values to the table as
\na candidate for office, then it’s got to be OK for those values–and
\nthe doctrinal authority that may lie behind them–to be interrogated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If we take seriously Damon Linker’s call for giving political candidates a religious test, what should the test look like? Unfortunately, this whole testing thing seems to have been a bit of a marketing afterthought to his new book, The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Religious Beliefs of Our Leaders. As a result,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nLinker's Test - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/linkers-test.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Linker's Test - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If we take seriously Damon Linker’s call for giving political candidates a religious test, what should the test look like? Unfortunately, this whole testing thing seems to have been a bit of a marketing afterthought to his new book, The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Religious Beliefs of Our Leaders. As a result,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/linkers-test.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-15T10:26:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Linker's Test - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/linkers-test.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Linker's Test - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"If we take seriously Damon Linker’s call for giving political candidates a religious test, what should the test look like? 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}