Freedom, if you have the right religion:
My problem on Romney’s talk on the issue of religion is not that he’s a Mormon and wants to avoid people calling him ‘ungodly’ and therefore unfit to be President because his belief-structure is not theirs.
I have no problem with a Mormon President as such. My own religious beliefs are not the ‘conventional’ sort; I don’t maintain them for the sake of convention, and I have a mild distaste for people who base their religious adherence on public convention rather than personal conviction. (“Marge, everyone is doing it…”)
My family is all over the map in religious belief – Unitarian, Christian Science, Methodist, Episcopalian, Theosophist, strained agnostic, Catholic, Unity, and even Jehovah’s Witnesses. My sister and I vary greatly in our faith, but it’s never really been a reason for me to attack her for it. Hell, I was even married to a Pagan who masqueraded as a Catholic to please her family….and I’m no Pagan.
What bothers me is when people start saying that you *have* to have a proper religion to be a proper citizen, or that non-Christians are actually Satanists, or that the separation of church and state is a bad idea.
My forefathers came over to the New World for religious freedom. The first Rittenhouse was the first Mennonite leader in America, in 1688. And to connect up religion with freedom (can’t have one without the other) means, to me, that the irreligious do not deserve freedom. And what is irreligion? Well, it means you aren’t a *proper* believer in a *proper* religion. Then we quickly get to the question of that that *proper* part is defined as….
If you start down that path, you are playing with fire. You quickly get to the Martin Niemoller point where you’re not one of the *right* believers, and get hauled off. No frickin’ thank you.
George HW Bush: No, I don’t know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God.
Mitt Romney: Freedom requires religion just like religion requires freedom.
Thomas Jefferson: History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
Atrios: In Mitt Romney’s America, you’re free to worship anyone you want as long as it’s Jesus Christ, or maybe his Dad.
Chris Kelly: Because here’s the thing that Mitt Romney can’t say: The Mormon Jesus has about as much in common with Jesus of Nazareth as the Los Angeles Kings have with King Tut. They have the same name, kind of, and that’s it.
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