NEW YORK—Monday’s New York Times reported that Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, will give a speech on Thursday addressing the issue of his religion. Romney is a Mormon, a point long thought to be a theoretical concern for his electability. But as the Times points out, the recent burst in support for fellow Republican presidential candidate (and Baptist minister) Mike Huckabee, driven largely by Christian conservatives, has turned Romney’s religious beliefs into a very real concern for his campaign.

The debate around Romney’s Mormonism raises an interesting, if delicate question: should the religious beliefs of politicians be a legitimate topic for public scrutiny?

You can tell a lot about a person by how they answer. Most Canadians, I think, would object to the question itself, finding the answer obvious. Few topics are as far off-limits to Canadian political debate as a politician’s religious beliefs. Ask yourself: what denomination does our prime minister belong to? If you know — and you’re in the minority if you do — ask yourself the last time this point was raised in public, either by the media or a rival politician.

The same goes for other party leaders: their religious beliefs are not so much proscribed from public debate as immaterial to it. John Tory learned this to his detriment when he tried to suggest, during the last Ontario election, that Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Catholicism played a role in his objection to funding religious schools beyond the Catholic system. Voters weren’t interested, and Tory made a losing cause worse by bringing it up.

The exception to this rule, you may already be thinking, is Stockwell Day. During the 2000 federal election, Liberals managed to discredit Day, then the leader of the Canadian Alliance, by pointing to previous statements he had made supporting what are arguably marginal views on creationism. The ploy worked, but largely because it reinforced questions about Day’s credibility and seriousness — an effective tactic for a man introduced to Canadians on a jet ski. If Day had been an adherent of a mainstream interpretation of any religion, the Liberals would have been forced to stay away from the topic.

Americans can be more direct. In 2006, Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to Congress. A week later, CNN anchor Glenn Beck celebrated Ellison’s achievement with these words, which he put to the new Congressman in an on-air interview: “I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.’ ” Beck added: “I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.” (Thanks to mediamatters.org for posting about the exchange.)

It’s tempting to attribute views like Beck’s to the anti-Muslim bias stemming from 9/11. But religion was already part of the public debate; Beck was walking through a door that others had opened . In 1960, Kennedy, recognizing this, famously contested the notion that his Catholicism would prevent him from serving as president, with a speech in which he famously proclaimed, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”

We’re not there yet, and part of the responsibility for that lies with the current president. In June 2003, George Bush demolished the wall Kennedy had been trying to build, saying: “I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’, and I did.”

In a sense, Bush’s comments then have exacerbated Romney’s problem today. By stating openly that religion influences his decisions, Bush made it natural for people to ask whether the next president would act the same way. And once religion becomes a legitimate topic of debate, suspicion of religious minorities sheds some of the stigma it rightly deserves.

Kennedy gave his speech in Houston, not far from where Romney is scheduled to speak Thursday. This can be no accident: the Romney campaign wants to encourage reporters to draw the connection, as the Times did. But the parallel is ultimately a sad one. This country is stuck in a debate that should have ended fifty years ago. If Romney convinces Americans that a Mormon can be president just as well as anyone else, if he can push religion out of the spotlight, Romney’s campaign will be a success, whomever Republicans choose to be their candidate. Here’s hoping.

Bonus Walrus link: Belly Dancing for Mitt

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Posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 2:24 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.