GroshLink

Political issues rarely come up on our blog, but my friend Kevin has passed along several pieces which I commend to you.  The first is Joe Loconte: Mitt Romney's Step of Faith and the second is George Weigel's Church and State (Note: for a different angle on the speech see Mitt Romney Is No Jack Kennedy). Here is an excerpt near the beginning of Loconte's piece:

Many have tried to coax Mr. Romney, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, to explain and defend his Mormon beliefs. Yesterday he declined the invitation. “To do so would enable the very religious test the Founders prohibited in the Constitution,” he said. “No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.”

That welcome answer—the American solution to the question of religion and government—goes to heart of the American Creed. The driving aim of the separation of church and state is not to quarantine religion from public life, but to protect religious liberty for people of all faiths, or of no faith. Mr. Romney’s answer is anchored in the concepts of equality and the inalienable rights of conscience. It is established by the original text of the Constitution, in Article VI (“no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust”) and by the lead-off amendment to that text, the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”).