Mormon Story Triggers Atheist Response

Our story this morning on how Mitt Romney's presidential bid affected the image of the Mormon faith prompted some atheists to ask, "Hey, what about us?"

In fact, some of the same public opinion polls that show resistance to a Mormon in the White House show even more distaste for a godless president.

A national Gallup survey in December of 1,027 adults asked whether respondents would vote for a generally well-qualified candidate nominated by their party if that person happened to be Mormon. Seventeen percent said no. But close to half said they wouldn't support an atheist.

The worst showing for Mormons came in an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey last month of 1,008 adults nationwide. Fifty percent of the respondents were either very uncomfortable or had some reservations about supporting a Mormon candidate for president. Atheists weren't on the pollsters' radar screen for that one.

But nonbelievers show up in other surveys and, well, they best be advised to keep their day jobs. A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll in October (900 registered voters) found that 76 percent of the respondents did not think most Americans would be comfortable with an atheist in the White House. Newsweek tried a more specific question in March (1,004 adults). "Would you vote for a political candidate who says he or she is an atheist?" the pollsters asked. Sixty-two percent said no.

There are real people behind these numbers, of course, and we heard from some of them in response to our focus on the Mormon image.

Julie Gosting wrote, "I sympathize with Mr. Romney and his fellow Mormons in the face of this intolerance. I am amazed, however, that they are not aware of their own biases." Gosting then recounts Romney's speech about faith in December and his claim that Jesus Christ is the savior of man. "He is showing little or no respect for those Americans of other or no religions."

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5:34 PM ET | 02-12-2008 | permalink | comments (21) | e-mail post

Romney Speaks to Americans About Faith

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney grabbed the bull by the horns today and gave a speech at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library about "Faith in America." His advisers said he was giving the speech to answer questions that people have about his Mormon faith.

Whether or not he actually accomplished that goal seems to be a matter of some conjecture.

On CNN, former Secretary of Education William Bennett said that while he liked Romney's speech and thought that it was a good one, it was too generic — "It could have been given by any Republican candidate, or any of the Democratic candidates for that matter." Bennett also said he wasn't sure if the speech would answer the questions about Romney's connection to Mormonism or create more.

National Review Online's Mona Charen wrote that the speech was "brilliant" and "perhaps the best political speech of the year."

Ed Morrisey of the Captain's Quarters and Heading Right, who live blogged the speech, summed it up by saying "Interesting, and somewhat better than I thought. I still think that he won't have convinced people disinclined to vote for Mormons to support him, but at least he may have made some evangelicals more comfortable with his candidacy."

Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish called the speech "stirring in its defense of religious liberty," but said it had two "deep flaws": the absence of any notion that religious liberty includes the freedom not to have any religion; and "[Romney] simply cannot elide the profound theological differences between the LDS church and mainstream Christianity."

Sullivan also points out a potential Romney flip-flop on saying whether or not a person should be elected president because of his faith.

We'll have some more reaction later today.

Update: Michael Paulson, religion reporter for The Boston Globe, tells Day by Day that along with asking Americans to remember the importance of religious diversity, there was also a critique of church and state, and that maybe it's gone too far in the country. His colleague at the Globe, Washington Bureau chief Peter Canellos called the speech a "tour de force" and thinks it will help Romney allay people's concerns about his religion.

Chris Cizzilla of The Fix at the Washington Post goes through the list of what did work (optics, delivery, straight talk, common ground) and what didn't (Mormon, short on specifics, timing).

11:49 AM ET | 12- 6-2007 | permalink | comments (16) | e-mail post

Religious Scholars to Discuss Flying Spaghetti Monster

This is not a joke. I don't think.

The Associated Press reports that when some of the world's leading religious scholars get together this weekend for the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting, one phenomenon they will discuss is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

As you may know, the monster first appeared in 2005, during the debate about the teaching of intelligent design in public schools in Kansas.

Bobby Henderson, an Oregon State physics graduate, sent a letter to the Kansas School Board, saying he spoke for the 10 million followers of a being called the Flying Spaghetti Monster and demanding equal time for their views. The tongue-in-cheek letter concluded, "I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; one third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence."

What Henderson was trying to convey was his belief that there is no more scientific basis for intelligent design than there is for a spaghetti monster who flies creating the universe, so the only good solution is to teach nothing in science class but science. But the cult of the monster took off on college campuses, and three graduate students studying religion in popular culture, who were fascinated by the satiric religion, managed to get a panel on FSM-ism at the academy's annual meeting.

Its title: "Evolutionary Controversy and a Side of Pasta: The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Subversive Function of Religious Parody."

12:50 PM ET | 11-16-2007 | permalink | comments (11) | e-mail post

Bishops: Catholic Teachings Should Guide Voters

Catholic bishops are telling voters of their faith that they have to consider the church's teachings on abortion and other issues when casting ballots for the White House and other offices or they will be judged by God for their actions. The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued instructions Wednesday warning voters that "their eternal salvation could be at stake."

The bishops have drafted similar statements since 1976, but the Tribune writes that this is the first time they have "spelled out possible consequences."

Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston offered a more blunt assessment after the bishops' vote when he told The Boston Globe that support among Catholics for Democrats who favor abortion rights "borders on scandal." He said the Democratic Party has been "extremely insensitive to the church's position, on the gospel of life in particular, and on other moral issues."

O'Malley said he thinks "there's a need for people to very actively dissociate themselves from those unacceptable positions, and I think if they did that, then the party would have to change." Catholics make up about one-fifth of the American electorate.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera defended his party, pointing out that there are 104 Catholic Democrats currently serving in Congress, including two who vocally oppose abortion rights.

10:37 AM ET | 11-15-2007 | permalink | comments (27) | e-mail post

GOP Campaign Workers Target Romney's Religion

It seems that more than a few people working on GOP presidential campaign teams are taking every chance they can to diss Mitt Romney's Mormon religion, despite the actual candidates' opposition to such efforts.

The Boston Globe reports today that a member of John McCain's team in Iowa, attending a meeting of Republican activists in April, questioned whether Mormons were Christians, brought up an article that "alleges the Mormon Church helps fund Hamas, and likened the Mormons' treatment of women to the Taliban's," according to sources at the meeting. The worker didn't return The Globe's phone calls.

Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported that a field operative for Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback sent an e-mail to Iowa Republicans that contained numerous criticisms of Mormonism, including the familiar charge that it's not a real Christian religion.

Rudy Giuliani's campaign issued an apology earlier this month after the Latest Politics Blog reported that the director of Giuliani's e-campaign had sent another blogger a story from The Salt Lake Tribune that talked about Romney's campaign in light of a disavowed Mormon prophecy that a Mormon would one day save the Constitution.

McCain, Brownback and Giuliani have all denounced the actions by their workers and maintain that attacking personal faith has no place in American politics.

If it were only so. But as Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, says in the Globe story: "In some ways, [Romney's candidacy] is the best test of whether Americans have really put some of the old religious differences aside. And my guess is that they haven't."

11:20 AM ET | 06-21-2007 | permalink | comments (9) | e-mail post

Navy Vet Alleges Chaplains Tried to Convert Him

There have been a lot of stories written in the past couple of years about the influence of fundamentalist Christianity within the U.S. military. Allegations of improper religious activities at the U.S. Air Force Academy and other incidents have highlighted these tensions.

Now the Des Moines Register reports that a Jewish Navy veteran claims that hospital chaplains at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City repeatedly tried to convert him to Christianity during several visits over a two-year period.

David Miller, who spent four years in the Navy, outlined his complaints recently at a news conference in Des Moines, where he described the VA facility as "an institution permeated by government sponsorship of fundamentalist Christianity and unconstitutional discrimination against Jews."

Over the past two years, Miller said, he has been asked over and over by the Iowa City VA medical center's staff within its offices, clinics and wards, "You mean you don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah?" and "Is it just Orthodox Jews who deny Jesus?" He said one staffer told him, "I don't understand; how can you not believe in Jesus; he's the Messiah of the Jews, too, you know."

The hospital's administration said that it's standard practice nationwide to conduct a spiritual assessment when patients are admitted to the hospital. They also said they would look into Miller's complaints. But Michael Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and an attorney who worked in the White House under President Ronald Reagan, said he is preparing to sue the Department of Veterans Affairs over Miller's treatment.

12:27 PM ET | 05-18-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

Atheists Resurgent

In all the brouhaha that developed over the Rev. Al Sharpton's questionable comments about Mormons during his debate Monday with atheist and author Christopher Hitchens at the New York Public Library, the media and the public glossed over the actual topic of the debate: God Is Not Great (also the name of Hitchens' book).

It was one more example of how atheism has reentered the public discourse. While there have always been atheists (and some pretty famous ones at that), in the late 20th century it became a rather impolite subject to discuss when guests dropped by or when standing around the water cooler at work. ("Why no, Joe, I don't believe in a monotheistic deity. But how about them Red Sox, eh?")

But atheists have been coming out of the woodwork so fast recently it's hard to beat them off with a stick. And in a rather aggressive way, largely, they say, as a response to the rise of religious extremism around the world. British scientist Richard Dawkins led this latest charge. His book, The God Delusion, is a bestseller. He made a TV series about it for Channel Four in Britain. He's been on almost every TV and radio network in the U.S. as well, including NPR, calling belief in God silly.

Sam Harris has been the other big engine. His books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, called belief in a god extremely destructive. Newsweek recently featured a debate between Harris and well-known evangelist pastor Rick Warren about the existence of God.

Web sites and blogs like The Panda's Thumb (which challenges claims made by the intelligent design community), Positive Atheism and videos posted on YouTube have carried the argument to the Internet.

So just how many atheists are there in the U.S.? The number seems fluid at best. A church-based survey last year said the number of atheists had fallen by 10 million since 1990, but some bloggers argue the number of atheists is regularly undercounted because people are reluctant to say they are atheists because of the stigma against them in the U.S. (A March 2006 survey by the University of Minnesota of 2,000 U.S. adults rated atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society.")

11:18 AM ET | 05-11-2007 | permalink | comments (16) | e-mail post

No religion with your stamps

This story sort of sneaked into the news, then out again last week, but I wanted to bring it back because of the church-state issues it raises.

Last week in Hartford, Conn., U.S. District Judge Dominic J. Squatrito ruled that God and stamps do not mix in a case that involved a church-run post office. Squatrito also told the Postal Service that the 5,200 facilities run by contractors "cannot promote religion through pamphlets, displays or any other materials." And he wants the Postal Service to monitor these contractors to make sure they play by the rules.

The Associated Press reports that the suit was originally brought by Bertram Cooper, a Jewish Navy veteran of World War II and the Korean War. In 2003, he sued the Postal Service and the Full Gospel Interdenominational Church, which operates the Sincerely Yours Inc. post office on Main Street in downtown Manchester.

As the Hartford Courant reports:

The religious displays "put the church's beliefs front and center, out for the public to see, endorsing the church's form of Christianity and seeking outsiders to join the church in its mission," U.S. District Court Judge Dominic J. Squatrito wrote in a decision handed down last week. The displays "violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment," [he] wrote.

Squatrito said there was nothing wrong with the store exhibiting religious displays -- but that it can't do that while it is carrying out its duties under contract with the Postal Service. While the Postal Service deal allows contractors to conduct their own businesses along with postal offerings, they have to be clearly separated from each other. Squatrito said the two were too intertwined at Sincerely Yours.

The Postal Service has argued that it was obvious from signs in Sincerely Yours that the store wasn't an official post office and that no postal employees worked there, so the church running the store wasn't doing anything wrong. Officials at the Postal Service and with the church said they are considering an appeal.

Hmm. I talked with some reporters who cover church-state issues and they tell me that this will be a tough one for the Postal Service to win. That could mean a bit of an upheaval for those 5,200 contractors, depending on how closely they mash up their stamps with their regular businesses. We'll keep an eye on this one to see where it goes.

10:43 AM ET | 05- 3-2007 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post