As I mentioned in last week’s post, I recently saw a news segment wherein A Texan religious leader was warning his congregation against the dangers of voting for current Republican candidate Mitt Romney on the grounds that he is a Mormon, and Mormonism is a cult that if given the chance would take over the United States via the White House. This immediately made me think of the fears that preceded Kennedy’s election as the first Catholic president. I wanted to see what similarities and differences could be found by comparing the two. Before continuing, I will mention that I am an atheist, and have no particular preference between Mormonism or Catholicism, so I think I can be somewhat objective in my discussion.
Both Kenned and Romney have addressed their religions publicly, and have both said that they would not allow that aspect of their lives to interfere with their political actions. In theory, at least, trepidation regarding the two men’s religion is not entirely invalid: according to Catholic tradition, the pope does have authority over other believers, and passages within the Book of Mormon that encourage believers to spread as widely and rapidly as possible.
The two cases differ in that while citizens feared external influence by the Vatican, Mormonism is very much an American religion. This makes the fears about Romney seem almost counter-intuitive: why do we not champion him as more of a ‘true American?’ This also suggests that much of the opposition facing Romney is derived from doctrinal conflicts with other forms of Christianity, whereas Kennedy’s opposition was concerned with the sovereignty of the United States. Could we conclude, then, that religious bigotry has increased within the past few decades? Within Romney’s own party, almost 20% of citizens polled last June said that his Mormonism was a “deal-breaker.” There is also some difference in the groups that were opposed to the candidates’ religions. JFK, a democrat, primarily had to convince the opposing party that he was a valid option, while Romney has to convince extremists in his own party of his validity. According to Jon Krakaur, an author of a book about the Mormon faith, “JFK’s speech was to reassure Americans that he wasn’t a religious fanatic. Mitt’s was to tell evangelical Christians, ‘I’m a religious fanatic just like you.’”
I’m sorry this investigation hasn’t yielded anything particularly useful–because the content is so contemporary, I have had to rely on internet sources for my information, and I haven’t been able to get much good information from the non-scholarly articles I found detailing Romney’s side of the situation. So yeah, basically I don’t think this is a great avenue to pursue in our discussion, except maybe as an interesting sidenote. Hopefully next week I can find stuff that will better help the project!
Sources:
http://catholicism.about.com/b/2011/08/09/mitt-romney-youre-no-john-kennedy.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/why-mitt-romneys-mormon-question-doesnt-matter-as-much-in-2012/2011/10/10/gIQAvgIeaL_blog.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/opinion/09dowd.html
Interesting contemporary comparison, Laura! If you’d like to bring in some scholarly resources on Kennedy’s Catholicism and the role it played in his political career, you might try looking at a good book on Catholics in the United States like this one by John McGreevey, who is a noted expert on the subject.