Sometime in the coming weeks I will point out that far from being a speech in the Kennedy mold (as advertised and as spun), Mitt Romney’s Faith and Values address marks a complete and long-coming reversal of JFK’s (and 20th Century America’s) understanding of the proper place of religion in public life. The Golden Age of American Secularism, as I call it in my forthcoming book, is over. But rather than dwell on these troubling verities, permit me to momentarily bask in my own wonkish glow. In a radio interview with the Washington Post’s Emily Freifeld on Wednesday I was asked what I thought Romney might speak about on Thursday. For months now, I have been sort of waiting for a (GOP) presidential candidate to play the secular card. He would, I always imagined, cast all of those decent, hardworking, non-believing Americans and believing ones who advocate separation of Church and State in the role of public enemies. He would charge that they are unraveling the nation’s moral fiber. He would depict them as Willie Hortons with advanced degrees, furloughed by the Democrats and a liberal judiciary. My hesitant response to Ms. Freifeld was to suggest that Romney just might--who knows?--take on the secularists. Think, after all, of how much mileage the old Moral Majority got out of the boogeyman of “secular humanism.” That worked pretty good. Well, yesterday Mitt Romney done went and did it!
It was deplorable undoubtedly. But oh so clever! Why clever? Recall that Romney is locked in a pitched battle with Mike Huckabee for White Evangelical hearts and minds. Many of these voters are concerned about his Mormon beliefs. Speaking euphemistically, many see those beliefs as, you know, different.
By attacking secularism Romney found a way to identify himself as A Protector of Faith (as opposed to A Protector of the Faith). By demonstrating that he shared one of Evangelical America’s most enduring obsessions, he will deflect attention from his difference and portray himself as a fellow traveler. And by tarring all secularists as atheists (when in fact atheists are only a small component of the group) he has created and identified the absolutely perfect enemy. For who wouldn’t throw in their lot with a man who bravely contends with those who “seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God”?
Politically speaking, American nonbelief is the little gimpy Zebra crossing the river full of crocs (though it fancies itself to be a lion). Romney picked on a small, wildly unpopular minority, albeit one that is very, very loud. Outside of the hardworking ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State who will defend them? The Democratic front-runners sure won’t. As I have argued here, the party will do everything in its power to shuck off the “godless” label. By no stretch of the imagination will they be kneeling at the altar of what Romney called “a new religion in America - the religion of secularism.”
In terms of what might happen in the coming weeks Romney’s gambit looks even better. Every GOP candidate will now be asked to address “Mitt’s issue.” But can they go further than him? Mr. Romney actually set secularism in parallel with radical Islamic jihadism! (though he did acknowledge that the latter was “infinitely worse”). That sure is going to be hard to top!
If Romney is especially lucky, nonbelieving secularists will prove my point that they lack political cunning, organization, and most importantly, effective leadership. They will troll Evangelical chatrooms across the web ceaselessly pointing out how much brighter they are than believers--a specialty of contemporary American atheism. They will show up at Romney headquarters chanting:
Hey, Hey,
Ho, Ho
Imbecilic belief in divine beings
Has got to go,
They will trail him on the stump, carrying six-foot graven images of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The former governor of Massachusetts will strike his best Final-Act-of-Madame-Butterfly pose in South Carolina and play the role of a martyr for faith.
Romney has unveiled his Secular Strategy. Like Nixon’s Southern Strategy it isolates and castigates a certain type of American. Secular America has been challenged. Is there a credible secular leader out there, believer or nonbeliever, who can reach an audience as large as the one Romney targeted? Can she or he find an original and persuasive way to defend secularism’s virtues?
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
