Entries for December 2007

When reporting about religion, I am often asked about my own beliefs. My response is usually evasive, though at an unspoken level, it runs something like this: "Hey, I'm the neutral observer here; I don't have to account for my religion!"

To which a more truthful inner voice replies: "Baloney! You're no Martian anthropologist. And even if you were, you'd still have beliefs about ultimate matters, and those beliefs would inevitably affect what you thought about those quaint Earthlings."

There's no escaping the fact that where we come from colors what we see. So where do I come from?

The speech that Mitt Romney will deliver in Texas tomorrow is the speech that he has long wanted not to make. But Mike Huckabee's recent gains among Republican voters—and Huckabee's unsubtle ads declaring that he is a "Christian leader"—have all but pushed the former Massachusetts governor to address the delicate issue of his Mormon faith. The question, of course, is whether what Romney says will do for his campaign what John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 Catholic speech did for that other Massachusetts politician.

The different challenges facing these two men have by now been thoroughly analyzed. Kennedy had to convince voters—particularly conservative Protestants—that his Roman Catholic religion would not influence his decisions in the Oval Office, that he would not, to put it crudely, be taking orders from the pope. And the nation, by and large, was reassured.