Reasonable Prejudice

At First Things, Father Richard John Neuhaus writes that faith will be a factor in whether we end up with A Mormon in the White House:

It is not an unreasonable prejudice for people who, unlike Alan Wolfe et al., care about true religion to take their concern about Mormonism into account in considering the candidacy of Mr. Romney. The question is not whether, as president, Mr. Romney would take orders from Salt Lake City. I doubt whether many people think he would. The questions are: Would a Mormon as president of the United States give greater credibility and prestige to Mormonism? The answer is almost certainly yes. Would it therefore help advance the missionary goals of what many view as a false religion? The answer is almost certainly yes. Is it legitimate for those Americans to take these questions into account in voting for a presidential nominee or candidate? The answer is certainly yes.

For millions of other Americans, the above questions do not matter. And for those for whom they do matter, they are not the only questions that matter. Mr. Romney is a very attractive candidate in both substance and style. As in most decisions, and not least of all in voting, the question comes down to what or who is the alternative. We will not have an answer to that question for some months. But I can now register a respectful disagreement with John Fund when he writes, "We will be a better country if even people who don't support Mr. Romney for president come to recognize that our country is better off if his candidacy rises or falls on factors that have nothing to do with his faith." On the contrary, we are a better country because many Americans do take their faith, and the faith of others, very seriously indeed. Also when it comes to voting.

Does this line of argument mean that anti-Catholicism should have prevented the election of JFK? No. Anti-Catholicism is, in my judgment, an unreasonable prejudice. Others, of course, will disagree, but not enough others to prevent the election of a Catholic president. Anxiety about the strengthening of Mormonism by virtue of there being a Mormon president is not unreasonable. One may or may not share that anxiety, but it is not unreasonable. Those who think it is unreasonable are, more often than not, people who think it is unreasonable to take religion so very seriously. For the millions of citizens who do take religion so very seriously, the fact that Mr. Romney is a Mormon may not be the determinative factor, but it will be a factor, and, for many, an important factor.

Neuhaus articulates (much better than I ever could) a view that I share on this matter. The notion that voters should never take a candidate's religious faith into account when deciding how they're going to pull the lever is unrealistic and smacks of the sort of relativism that has tried to convince us that all cultures are equally valid and that it's not possible to judge them on their individual merits.

If you can't take Romney's Mormonism into consideration, then what happens when a Scientologist runs for office? How about a Wiccan? I'm not trying to make a direct comparison between the LDS and either of them, but the idea that we can't use a candidate's religion--no matter what it is--as a basis for evaluating whether they are the best choice for office will lead you right down that path to religious relativism.

There is nothing wrong with reasonable people drawing reasonable distinctions between the tenets of various religious faiths and making value judgments based on those distinctions. To do otherwise would be unreasonable.