Majority Of Catholics Believe Employers Should Cover Birth Control
More than 150 Catholic bishops have criticized President Barack Obama’s approval of a law that will require religious organizations to provide contraception coverage in employees’ insurance offerings.
But a new study by the Public Religion Research Institute shows that Catholics overwhelmingly support the new rules. The poll reveals that six out of ten Catholics believe employers should be required to provide their employees with healthcare plans that cover contraception, while 55 percent of Americans at large supported the new requirement.
White evangelicals opposed the new regulation more than any other religious group, with 56 percent saying it imposed on religious freedom.
Nearly 75 percent of Democrats approve of the new reform while only 36 percent of Republicans support it.
The new law is part of the president’s healthcare overhaul, and will make it mandatory for religious colleges, non-profits and hospitals to offer employees insurance packages that include contraception coverage. While some organizations will be granted an adjustment period, eventual failure to provide coverage to employees could result in penalties
A large proportion of Catholics polled did say, however, that the government should not require churches to provide their employees with insurance covering birth control.
Nearly three quarters of white evangelicals also agreed that churches should remain exempt from the new law.
By: Lauren Fox, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, February 7, 2012
Mormons, Mitt and Conservative Evangelicals
At Rolling Stone, the distinguished political historian Rick Perlstein provides some history about the regular trumping of theology by politics in the process of making his case that fear or hostility towards the LDS faith won’t keep conservative evangelicals from pulling the lever for Mitt Romney in November (or earlier than that in the primaries, once he is the putative nominee). Evangelicals used to say the same things or worse about Catholics, Perlstein notes, until they found a common cause—and common enemies—in the culture wars.
I definitely agree that Christian Right types will support Mitt against Obama, though I do not necessarily share Rick’s belief that the main factor at play here is unreflexive obedience of the rank-and-file to their political and religious leaders. So long as Gingrich and Santorum are still in the race, a few of their theocratic backers will use anti-Mormon prejudice as a tactical weapon. And some (though not many) low-information evangelical voters may refuse to go along in the general election.
The key factor here is the common-enemy issue. Conservative evangelicals may not like Mormonism, but they tend to like “Mormon values” a lot. And more importantly, the LDS and its believers are a lot less threatening to Christian Right foot soldiers than the “secular-socialists” they believe are hell-bent on eventually wiping out Christianity as we know it—less threatening, in fact, than the mainline Protestants that many evangelicals don’t consider actual Christians (e.g., the President of the United States) insofar as they deny biblical inerrancy and don’t understand that legalized abortion is the Second Holocaust.
As the old proverb says, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Whether politically active conservative evangelicals are entirely comfortable with Mormons or with Mitt, they qualify on those grounds.
By: Ed Kilgore, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 31, 2012
Why Evangelicals Don’t Like Mormons
According to a CNN exit poll of South Carolina Republican primary voters, Newt Gingrich, a thrice-married Catholic, won twice as much support from evangelical Protestants as Mitt Romney, a Protestant. And among voters for whom religion meant “a great deal,” 46 percent voted for Mr. Gingrich and only 10 percent for Mr. Romney.
This is the second evangelical-heavy state Mr. Romney has lost. With a third, Florida, next on the list, it’s important to consider the often antagonistic skepticism that many evangelicals have of Mr. Romney’s brand of Protestantism: Mormonism.
For many evangelicals, that faith — a “false religion,” as the Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress called it — raises serious doubts about Mr. Romney’s suitability for office. But such concerns ultimately say more about the insecurities of the establishment denominations than about Mormonism itself.
Many evangelicals assert that Mormonism denies the divinity of Christ and is therefore not a branch of Christianity. But the Mormon belief is that Jesus was the first-born child of God and a woman, and that humans can aspire to share his spiritual essence in the afterlife.
What’s more, if a belief in Christ’s divinity were used as a test of our politicians, many past American leaders would fail abysmally. Most of the founding fathers — including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine — endorsed deism, which sees Jesus as a very good human being, not part of the godhead.
It was precisely the founders’ religious tolerance that, over the years, has given rise to many new denominations and sects — particularly during the so-called Second Great Awakening, the 19th-century period of religious revivals that energized existing churches (including the Baptist and Methodist churches, bulwarks of today’s Bible Belt) and yielded new ones, including the Mormons.
In that era, it was a short step from feeling that one was possessed by God, as often happened at revivals, to feeling that one was appointed by God for a special mission. Joseph Smith Jr., who founded Mormonism after experiencing a vision of an angel, was among them.
But Smith wasn’t alone; many religious groups sprouted during the period. Like Mormonism, some were founded by people considered divinely inspired by their followers — for instance, Ellen G. White by Seventh-day Adventists and Mary Baker Eddy by Christian Scientists — while others, like Charles Taze Russell of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, were admired for their charisma.
There’s plenty about these and other surviving Protestant groups that’s out of sync with mainstream religion. Christian Scientists, for instance, eschew doctors and medicine. Seventh-day Adventists have often set dates for the end of the world that have come and gone, while Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the doctrines of the Trinity and eternal punishment.
But neither those nor other American-bred religions arouse nearly the degree of anxiety that Mormonism does. Why?
For one thing, many people associate Mormonism with polygamy; according to a recent poll, 86 percent of Americans aren’t sure whether Mormons practice polygamy, despite the fact that the church banned the practice in 1890.
Then there’s the issue of race. In 1852 the church banished blacks from the priesthood and did not allow them back in until 1978. But while this is undoubtedly a stain on the church’s history, it was also a reflection of the country’s racial attitudes at the time.
Still, the church’s doctrines and practices, past and present, don’t fully account for evangelical uneasiness. After all, there are hundreds of religious groups in America today, some of whose tenets or practices are far more distant from the mainstream.
The real issue for many evangelicals is Mormonism’s remarkable success and rapid expansion. It is estimated to have missionaries in 162 countries and a global membership of some 14 million; it is also, from its base in the American West, making inroads into Hispanic communities. Put simply, the Baptists and Methodists, while still ahead of the Mormons numerically, are feeling the heat of competition from Joseph Smith’s tireless progeny.
Some evangelical leaders take this a step further to accuse Mr. Romney of vaguely conspiratorial motives. The Baptist minister R. Philip Roberts, author of “Mormonism Unmasked,” recently said that evangelicals are concerned not about Mr. Romney promoting his faith as president, but about the great boost a Mormon presidency would give to the church’s proselytizing efforts.
There is particular worry that Mr. Romney, a wealthy, prominent figure in the church, is too close to his faith. How else to explain the concern among evangelicals when it became public that Mr. Romney had tithed some $4 million to the church over the last two years?
Interdenominational competition may also explain why the faith of Mr. Romney’s father, George Romney, went unchallenged when he ran for president in 1968. Back then Mormonism was a much smaller, and therefore less controversial, part of the religious landscape.
Amid the passions of this election season, it’s time to revive the tolerant spirit of the founding fathers. Religious competition of any kind, they believed, can breed bigotry, repression and hatred. The founders made an earnest effort to keep religion out of politics. Let’s do the same as we carry out the important work of choosing our next president.
By: David Reynolds, The New York Times Opinion Pages, January 25, 2012
Mitt Romney’s Mormon And Evangelical Divide
In the Republican nomination contest, where evangelicals represent a broader segment of the voting population than the general election, it’s widely accepted that Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith could cost him. Romney’s tax returns brought his faith back into the limelight when it was revealed that he does in fact tithe around 10 percent of his earnings to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as dictated by church rules.
Yet, in the weeks preceding the Iowa caucuses, I didn’t run across a single Republican who had ruled out Romney on the basis of his religion—or at least no voters willing to admit as such to a reporter. The worst I would get from the Iowans was concern that other people in the general election would be hesitant to cast their ballot for a Mormon, though they themselves were of course not influenced by that factor.
I arrived in Florida this week to cover the last few days of the Sunshine State’s primary, and at the very first event I attended, one voter made no qualms about why she wouldn’t be supporting Romney. “Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and therefore I have some issues with that,” said Peggy Bennett, a nurse from Cocoa. We were speaking in a crowded ballroom before Newt Gingrich’s big speech on space policy. When I asked her what specifically concerned her about the Mormon faith, Bennett said, “anything that adds to or takes away from what the bible says is not of God.” She said she was torn between Gingrich and Rick Santorum in the primary, but did clarify that she would support Romney in the general election if he wins the nomination.
I don’t want to extrapolate too much from one random voter, but many voters in the room noted that Gingrich’s tone matched evangelical interests. “From his moral standards, he pretty much thinks in the Christian and the evangelical side of things,” said Pete Bell. The central Florida corridor that might decide next Tuesday’s election is dotted with mega-churches featuring congregations with thousands of members who all share common convictions. In fact, the overflow parking for the Gingrich event was across the street from a small evangelical church.
This is the land of exurbs and subdivisions; despite high statewide unemployment and foreclosures there are still plenty of gaudy displays of wealth. When Romney campaigns in central Florida perhaps he can finally let loose among his fellow rich Americans. But while few voters may be as direct as Bennett on classifying their exact reason to oppose Romney, he’ll need to assure many that being a Mormon doesn’t threaten their evangelical faith.
By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, January 26, 2012
Greater Of Two Evils: Gingrich Vs Santorum
Why did South Carolina’s evangelical voters go for Newt Gingrich rather than Rick Santorum?
What have we learned from the fact that it was Newt Gingrich, not Rick Santorum, who surged past Mitt Romney in Saturday’s South Carolina Republican primary? The voters who turned out, after all, sure fit the profile of Santorum supporters. Fully 65 percent described themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, and Santorum was the candidate who most stressed the cultural and religious values in which these voters believe, even as Newt’s private life made a mockery of them. Fifty-three percent of the GOP voters had no college degree, and, again, it was Santorum who explicitly defended both the economic interests and cultural importance of blue-collar workers.
But Gingrich won the votes of 44 percent of the born-agains and evangelicals, while Santorum won just 21 percent. And Gingrich got 43 percent of the non-college grads, while Santorum ended up with just 18 percent.
The appeals that Gingrich made mattered far more to these voters than the religious and economic appeals that Santorum offered. What Newt appealed to was these voters’ racism, which he also deliberately wrapped in the belief that the nation’s media elites favor liberal racial policies and look down on people like them. The two incidents that propelled Newt to his victory (other than Romney’s inability to deal with the issue of his taxes) were his assaults on Juan Williams and John King in last week’s debates. When Williams dared to suggest that Gingrich’s labeling of Barack Obama as a “food-stamp president” had racist overtones, Gingrich slapped Williams down almost as though he were a surrogate for Obama—an uppity black in a privileged position complaining of injustices to his own minority group. The impact of this moment on many South Carolina Republicans was little less than cathartic; it was a triumphal outburst of pent-up resentments clearly screaming for release. A few nights later, Gingrich augmented his image as the man who whacks the liberal media with his assault on King.
It’s all straight out of the playbook of George Wallace, who not only slandered and threatened African Americans in his speeches but also took out after the national news media (“Huntley and Chinkley and Walter Contrite,” as he termed them in a burst of almost surreal folk poetry).
The Republican voters of South Carolina may think of themselves as religiously devout and economically embattled, but what they were really looking for in a candidate was a champion who’d slap down pretentious blacks and promise a restoration of white normality. Abnormal as Gingrich may actually be, this was what he offered up in South Carolina, and it went down mighty smooth.
By: Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect, January 23, 2012
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