The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 4 of 9)

Regarding the rebuttal letters to my opinion regarding Mr. Romney and Mormonism. Words, in English, mean what they mean. I didn't assign the meaning, and neither I, nor anyone else is justified in reinventing their meaning. First let me take up the most serious of the disagreements, whether Mr. Romney is a Christian.

The dictionary defines a Christian as one who believes that Jesus is the Christ, or believes in the religion based on the teachings of Jesus. It also includes those having the qualities taught by Jesus, as love, kindness, etc. Mr. Romney, and other Mormons do, in fact, believe that Jesus is the Christ.

There is nothing in the definition about having to believe in the Trinity or any of the three most popular creeds found in the other Christian sects. There is nothing in the definition that precludes a belief that God specifically instructed a later day American as to what was required of him by God.

Virtually every one of the different Christian sects will argue with the others on some point or other, but they do not insist that the others are not Christians. If you are a strict Evangelical, you will, and likely have, proclaimed that Roman Catholics are corrupt unbelievers. Don't bother denying that, I do of my own knowledge know that to be true. I have also personally heard Baptists loudly proclaim that Roman Catholics CAN NOT go to Heaven. I have personally heard Knights of Columbus officials say the same thing about non Catholics. Then we have the Eastern Orthodox or Russian Orthodox that various sects, including the Papal authorities in Rome, have tried mightily to read out of the group of believers known as Christians in times past.

I could go on with citations, but it would simply be redundant. The fact is that Mr. Romney, and his family, believe that Jesus is the Christ and that He is the savior of mankind. That makes him a Christian, and anyone denying that is taking a supremely uneducated and un-Christian attitude on the subject. Heck, it wasn't many weeks ago that Dr. Dobson publicly questioned whether Fred Thompson was a Christian. This charge of not being a Christian is being thrown around entirely too freely and indiscriminately.

Now let us take up the word "bigot." The dictionary tells me that a bigot is one who holds blindly and intolerantly to a particular creed, opinion, etc. When someone proclaims that others are not Christians, when the simple reference to any decent dictionary would inform that person of the error of their ways, they are making such proclamations blindly. When someone then uses that blind interpretive error to deny a person a job or an elective office, then it is being done intolerantly. When someone deliberately refuses to inform oneself of ones error, one is doing it intolerantly. When someone takes a politician's claim about his/her opponent on faith alone, and makes no effort to ascertain the validity of the claim, then one is doing it blindly.

If you deny a black American or a brown American a job or an elective office based on the color of his/her skin, we all know that it is bigotry. If you deny a person a job or an elective office based on their sex, it is bigotry. Now I am being taken to task because I say that some people are displaying similar discrimination toward Mr. Romney because of his religion, and that it is bigotry.

This in a country where for we have prided ourselves on religious freedom for soon to be 250 years. These battles were fought out and decided before we approved our Constitution, back when different colonies were established as havens for different religions. And there was a time when Baptists were persona non grata in most of the settled areas of the colonies. For example, Maryland specifically preferred Roman Catholics, and the New England states invited the Quakers to find somewhere else to live, which is why my father's side of the family left Rhode Island and settled in the Burlington Co. area of New Jersey. Oh, and my maternal grandfather's ancestor was Scottish Catholic and a person of some repute in Maryland. In both cases, it was examples of bigotry.

When you argue that Mitt Romney is not a Christian, and that you are not showing bigotry, you simply insult the intelligence of anyone that is honest and even handed enough to either know the definition of those words or to know how to use a dictionary. Those claims are NOT simply opinions or preferences, they are patently wrong on their face.

As I said, I am not particularly a Romney fan. I will not be voting for him in the New Hampshire primary. I can cite a laundry list of things that I think he did wrong as Governor of Massachusetts, and not one item has anything to do with his religion. Joe Lieberman is also not a Christian. Should he have been precluded from running for Veep in 2000 due to that fact?

Debate the relative merits or demerits of candidates for political office in America, including POTUS, but leave out the intolerance and bigotry of a religious test for office. I would personally prefer that an atheist not be elected, I would prefer that the candidate show that he/she has a belief in God, but whether he/she is Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, etc. is not relevant. If, however, I use that atheist's non-belief exclusively as a club to deny him the office, then I am being a bigot. I will therefore have a list of policy differences with him/her and will never bring up his/her atheism. So, no, I don't think that we ought to ask the question of the candidate's religion. I really thought we had put that away during the 1960 POTUS campaign with JFK's speech. We are now two generations removed. I guess that we must try to relearn that lesson.

p>OK, now go ahead and explain how my adherence to a Standard English dictionary is an unacceptable thing in this day and age. br> -- Ken Shreve br> As Rush says, "Words mean things."

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