The God Blog

Email | Print | Text - Text +

September 18, 2007 | 7:37 am

The president’s own personal Jesus

I’ve kvetched quite a bit about the insincerity of presidential candidates playing the God card. I don’t want to hear about it, I said. But in this week’s Time magazine, Michael Kinsley writes that he wants to know more.

These days presidential candidates are required to wear their religion on their sleeve. God is a personal adviser and inspiration to all of them. They all pray relentlessly. Or so they say. If that’s not true, I want to know it. And if it is true, I want to know more about it. I want to know what God is telling them--just as I would want to know what Karl Rove was telling them if they claimed him for an adviser. If religion is central to their lives and moral systems, then it cannot be the candidates’ “own private affair.” To evaluate them, we need to know in some detail the doctrines of their faith and the extent to which they accept these doctrines. “Worry about whether I’m going to reform health care, not whether I’m going to hell” is not sufficient.

What exactly should we worry about? Most important, we need to know what forms of conduct a candidate’s religion forbids or requires and how the candidate interprets that injunction. Is it a universal moral imperative or just a personal lifestyle choice? Every religion has its list of no-nos. Mormonism’s is very long and includes alcohol, coffee, tea and such forms of sexual behavior as “passionate kissing” outside wedlock. If Romney‘s church doctrines require efforts to impose these restrictions on others, Romney has a Cuomo problem: he cannot be a good Mormon and a good President. ...

It will be amusing if Romney is done in by a fear of his religious values because, as near as we can tell, he has no values of any sort that he wouldn’t happily abandon if they became a burden. But in politics, you are who you pretend to be.

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg in 0 Comments — Leave your comment

Tags: america, christianity, god, mitt romney, mormonism, politics, president ‘08

Share this post: del.icio.us Favicondel.icio.us Digg FaviconDigg Facebook FaviconFacebook Google Bookmarks FaviconGoogle Bookmarks Reddit FaviconReddit StumbleUpon FaviconStumbleUpon Technorati FaviconTechnorati YahooMyWeb FaviconYahooMyWeb

COMMENTS

We welcome your feedback.

Privacy Policy

Your information will not be shared or sold without your consent. Get all the details.

Post a Comment

Name:  
Email:  
URL:  

Type the word you see below:

Comment:

About this Blog

Blog Home
About the Blogger(s)
Contact

RSS


Blog Archive

Blogs

Jewish Journal Blogs


Featured Stories

Arts
Deferred dream comes true for actress Nan Tepper

"I had been a student, wife, mother, news executive and caregiver, but I had always promised myself that one day I would be an actor."

Food
Eating Bambi (recipe included)

Most of the anti-Semitic mail I get these days doesn't concern Israel, Hollywood or even the threat of a nuclear war in the Middle East -- it's about meat.

Israel
Final aliyah flight leaves Ethiopia for Israel, U.S. revokes Fulbright winners’ visas

The last official airlift of Ethiopian Jews was scheduled to land in Tel Aviv tonight, bringing to an end a state-organized campaign that began nearly 30 years ago and brought in some 120,000 immigrants from the east African nation

U.S.
McCain campaign checks out sole Jewish Republican Congressman as possible VP

As recently as May, the only Jewish Republican in the House discounted suggestions that he would place on the ticket, giggling as he told JTA that such speculation was "ridiculous."

Los Angeles
Southland Olympians go for the gold

Perhaps the most famous Jewish competitor with ties to the Southland this year is swimmer Dara Torres, who is competing in an unprecedented fifth Olympiad at age 41

World
Allosemitism (noun)—Jews as the perpetual ‘other’

How to define what is "Jewish" provides endless fodder for debate in post-Holocaust, post-communist Europe. Is there, as the concept of allosemitism implies, a "certain Jewish something" that sets Jews apart?

Education
VIDEO: Bar Mitzvah the Tradition

This video, an open source release of Mercer County Community College in New Jersey, gives a good, factual overview of the meaning and tradition of the Jewish coming-of-age ritual, the Bar Mitzvah.

Calendar
Calendar Girls Picks and Clicks August 9-15: Tisha B’Av, music, opera, comedy and Brad

There's nothing like a heated, intelligent political debate to get Jews' social synapses firing. Jewish Journal staff writer, Brad Greenberg, a.k.a. The God Blogger, will be holding the reins of "The Young Jewish Vote," where Republican Jewish Coalition Director Larry Greenfield

Sports
Laker Jordan Farmar shoots for Middle East coexistence

Even though he was not at the Staples Center, the NBA's only Jewish player looked like he was on his home court in Jerusalem, where he led 25 Jewish and Arab children aged 10 to 14 in shooting, passing and ball-handling drills.

Torah Portion
Back to School

Parshat Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22) Both the story of Bilaam and Targum Jonathan instruct us to see beyond the grand, deep, transformative moments of speech, and realize that each and every time we speak, we are taking advantage of a Divine gift.

Opinion
Lebhar’s Dream

Our Moroccan ancestors, the rabbi explained, were Torah romantics. They were so in love with Shabbat that they didn't want it to end