Holy wars don’t help anyone in a democracy. They don’t answer religious questions and they don’t offer meaningful political guidance, unfortunate realities that will soon be realized at the conclusion of the current spat between megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress and former Massachusetts governor and Utah Senate candidate Mitt Romney.
The two started feuding when Jeffress disparaged Romney as a presidential candidate because of that Republican’s faith. Mormonism, he declared at the 2011 Values Voter Summit, is “a cult.” Though not entirely disqualifying for office, he continued, membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn’t a preferable quality.
Fast forward seven years. Jeffress is about to deliver the invocation at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Romney is about to be the next senator from Utah. A virtue-signaling crusade is about to commence on cable news as we all grapple with the same political-theological problem that engulfed Europe in war for centuries.
Romney first protested:
Robert Jeffress says “you can’t be saved by being a Jew,“ and “Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell.” He’s said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) May 14, 2018
Jeffress then responded:
Historic Christianity has taught for 2,000 years that salvation is through faith in Christ alone. The fact that I, along with tens of millions of evangelical Christians around the world, continue to espouse that belief, is neither bigoted nor newsworthy.
— Dr. Robert Jeffress (@robertjeffress) May 14, 2018
Without divine revelation, the amoral voter has no idea who to believe as one man’s heresy is just as easily another man’s doctrine. Absent a central authority, there is no way to say who is right or who is wrong on issues of faith. Subjective religious arguments are unending and consequently fail to provide any basis for political decision making.
Lucky for all of us, another Mormon War isn’t required because the founding fathers provided a constitutional solution to a religious problem. They married reason with revelation by making natural and divine law tantamount. Ed Erler, a political science professor at California State University in San Bernardino, points out that those early politicos were as likely to espouse natural law in a treatise as they were from a pulpit.
Jeffress would do himself a favor if he revisited some of those founding-era sermons like one delivered by the Rev. Samuel West on election day in 1776 in Boston:
How does this apply to the candidacy of Mitt Romney? Well, if the revelation of his faith called on him to violate the natural rights of someone else, he wouldn’t have any business being in government. But so long as life, liberty, and property are respected it makes no matter whether a lawmaker is a Christian who celebrates Easter, a Jew who observes Passover, or a Muslim who fasts during Ramadan.
None of this means that all religions are true, of course. None of this means that all politicians should give lip service to all religious truth claims, either. Plenty of evangelicals dismiss Mormonism and vice-versa. All it means is that pluralism allows government to make law by reason and lets the individual answer questions about the meaning of life by revelation.
Jeffress is at danger of up ending all that when he makes political arguments from subjective religious grounds. He doesn’t rely on reason. He uses revelation to place Romney in a box. This is religious identity politics and leads nowhere but to name calling and division. Thank God, any fighting will play out on Twitter and not on any battlefield.
