Last night's Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas sponsored by CNN included a lengthy discussion of the role of religion in choosing a candidate, in light of statements earlier this month by Rev. Robert Jeffress that Christians should not vote for Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon. (See
prior posting.). Last night's debate was moderated by Anderson Cooper. Here is an excerpt from the
full Part 3 transcript:
COOPER: Should voters pay attention to a candidate's religion? SANTORUM: I think they should pay attention to the candidate's values, what the candidate stands for....
SANTORUM: That's what is at play. And the person's faith -- and you look at that faith and what the faith teaches with respect to morals and values that are reflected in that person's belief structure. So that's -- those are important things.
I -- I'm a Catholic. Catholic has social teachings. Catholic has teachings as to what's right and what's wrong. And those are legitimate things for voters to look at, to say if you're a faithful Catholic, which I try to be -- fall short all the time, but I try to be -- and -- and it's a legitimate thing to look at as to what the tenets and teachings of that faith are with respect to how you live your life and -- and how you would govern this country.
With respect to what is the road to salvation, that's a whole different story. That's not applicable to what -- what the role is of being the president or a senator or any other job....
COOPER: Speaker Gingrich, you agree with that?
GINGRICH: Well, I think if the question is, does faith matter? Absolutely. How can you have a country which is founded on truths which begins we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights? How can you have the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 which says religion, morality and knowledge being important, education matters. That's the order: religion, morality and knowledge.
Now, I happen to think that none of us should rush in judgment of others in the way in which they approach God. And I think that all of us up here I believe would agree....
But I think all of us would also agree that there's a very central part of your faith in how you approach public life. And I, frankly, would be really worried if somebody assured me that nothing in their faith would affect their judgments, because then I'd wonder, where's your judgment -- how can you have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trust you with power if you don't pray?...
Who you pray to, how you pray, how you come close to God is between you and God. But the notion that you're endowed by your creator sets a certain boundary on what we mean by America.
COOPER: Governor Perry, Mitt Romney asked you to repudiate the comments of that pastor who introduced you on that stage. He didn't make the comments on the stage; he made them afterward in an interview. Will you repudiate those comments? ROMNEY: Well, our faith -- I can no more remove my faith than I can that I'm the son of a tenant farmer. I mean, the issue, are we going to be individuals who stand by our faith? I have said I didn't agree with that individual's statement. And our founding fathers truly understood and had an understanding of -- of freedom of religion.
And this country is based on, as -- as Newt talked about, these values that are so important as we go forward. And the idea that we should not have our freedom of -- of religion to be taken away by any means, but we also are a country that is free to express our opinions. That individual expressed an opinion. I didn't agree with it, Mitt, and I said so. But the fact is, Americans understand faith. And what they've lost faith in is the current resident of the White House....
ROMNEY: You know, with -- with regards to the disparaging comments about my faith, I've heard worse, so I'm not going to lose sleep over that....
What I actually found was most troubling in what the reverend said in the introduction was he said, in choosing our nominee, we should inspect his religion. And someone who is a good moral person is not someone who we should select; instead, we should choose someone who subscribes to our religious belief.
That -- that idea that we should choose people based upon their religion for public office is what I find to be most troubling, because the founders of this country went to great length to make sure -- and even put it in the Constitution -- that we would not choose people who represent us in government based upon their religion, that this would be a nation that recognized and respected other faiths, where there's a plurality of faiths, where there was tolerance for other people and faiths. That's bedrock principle.
And it was that principle, Governor, that I wanted you to be able to, no, no, that's wrong, Reverend Jeffress. Instead of saying as you did, "Boy, that introduction knocked the ball out of the park," I'd have said, "Reverend Jeffress, you got that wrong. We should select people not based upon their faith." Even though -- and I don't suggest you distance yourself from your faith any more than I would. But the concept that we select people based on the church or the synagogue they go to, I think, is a very dangerous and -- and enormous departure from the principles of our -- of our Constitution.
