Religion and the Political Power of Insinuation

Publisher Steve Forbes came to Des Moines last week to promote his latest book, appear at events for the Iowa Christian Alliance and to raise a little money for Republicans. When asked if he would be running for president in 2012, Forbes said, “No, I’m an agitator.” I’m not sure we need another one of those. The television news-tainment channels are chock-full of talking heads screaming the provocative. There are too many people engaged in agitation these days.

Kim Lehman is one of three people representing Iowa on the Republican National Committee. She is also an agitator. Lehman stirred up controversy with comments that President Obama isn’t a Christian, but secretly a practicing Muslim. It does not matter that Lehman’s comments were unfounded. They were inflammatory and blew in a firestorm of words and accusations – a masterwork of an agitator.

Republicans here and nationally found themselves having to respond to questions about Lehman’s remarks. The most irritating of the responses came from Terry Branstad, Chuck Grassley and others who said they would “take the president at his word that he was a Christian.”

When asked to respond to questions about her comments, Lehman said the media should not focus on her, but should instead call the White House and ask the president about his faith. In turn, Branstad and Grassley did not address the appropriateness of one of their party officials making faith a condition of public service, but said all they could do was take Obama’s word about his Christianity.

Of all the great things written by Thomas Jefferson, he chose the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom as his epitaph. It says, in part, that “proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right…”

Jefferson was right. It is not whether we take a president’s word on his faith, but whether his fellow Americans have the right to make him profess or renounce a religious doctrine before we allow him to do his job.

An agitator may incite uproar by making crass insinuations about the president’s faith and suggesting being a Muslim makes one somehow less American. However, the greatness of our country rests on our vigilant defense of freedom. Patriots come in every faith. It is the commitment to our country that matters.

Agitation has its time and place, but we will only prevail by focusing on what unites us, our freedom.

This entry was first published as a guest column in the Sunday Des Moines Register.