A Legitimate Question

Mitt Romney is upset over a question about his Mormon faith posed by rival Mike Huckabee. "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?" Huckabee asks in an upcoming New York Times article. Romney characterizes the question as an "attack" on his religion. Yet he refused to answer it, deferring instead to the home office in Salt Lake City. Huckabee is not the first to bring up this quirky Mormon doctrine. David Frum called Romney to task for obfuscating the issue after Romney's highly touted "religion" speech last week. Unlike Huckabee, however, Frum is neither a Baptist minister nor a rival candidate for president, so Romney apparently let this initial "attack" on his religion go unchallenged.

But whether coming from a political commentator or a political opponent, it is perfectly legitimate to raise the question about the Mormon belief concerning the familial relationship between Jesus and Lucifer. What Romney believes in this area says volumes about the seriousness of his commitment to his faith, and the more serious he is about that faith, the more it is bound to influence the decisions he makes should he ascend to the nation's highest office.

It is not a bad thing, of course, to allow one's faith to influence the way one governs and whether or not one agrees with the tenets of Romney's faith, that factor alone does not disqualify him from seeking or perhaps winning the presidency. Neither does Huckabee's outspoken commitment to evangelical Christianity make him more qualified than, say, Rudy Giuliani who seems not to be influenced at all by his Catholic faith in either his public or private life. One could legitimately ask Huckabee if he subscribes to the popular Southern Baptist belief in dispensational pre-millennialism, not exactly the most orthodox view of the end times. A serious Christian's view on such a subject would undoubtedly influence some very important presidential decisions concerning, for instance, Middle East policy in an age of Islamic terrorism.

Whether it is Romney's beliefs about Jesus and Lucifer or Huckabee's beliefs about eschatology, both are mere snapshots of a larger worldview which cannot be anything but highly influential in the way a candidate for the presidency would conduct business should he be chosen by the people for that responsibility. Questions about a candidate's fundamental beliefs, whether raised by a rival candidate or by the voters themselves, cannot be dismissed as "attacks" on the candidate's religion. When one claims allegiance to a particular religious faith, one should not only be willing but, indeed, eager to answer any and all questions raised about that faith. Ultimately, it is not a question of how committed a candidate is to his or her faith, but how committed the voters are to their faith and what influence it will have, first, on their making an informed decision in the voting booth and, second, after the votes are counted, on their praying God's blessing and favor upon the elected leader of their country, regardless of the faith the winning candidate professes.