free variable

In Slate, Jacob Weisberg claims that it’s not “religious bigotry” to refuse to support a Mormon candidate for public office solely because he or she is a Mormon. Weisberg’s justification for this claim is that he believes the foundational doctrines of Mormonism to be transparently goofy, and that anyone who believes X or Y is clearly unfit for office. Fair enough, I guess, as long as that’s the only claim we’re making. I’d probably be more polite than Weisberg, but I am certainly on record as saying uncharitable things about various American cults, so perhaps I shouldn’t throw stones.

However, Weisberg is really making a much stronger claim, which I think disqualifies almost all committed believers in any creed from his endorsement. Here’s the crux of his claim:

One may object that all religious beliefs are irrational—what’s the difference between Smith’s “seer stone” and the virgin birth or the parting of the Red Sea? But Mormonism is different because it is based on such a transparent and recent fraud. It’s Scientology plus 125 years. Perhaps Christianity and Judaism are merely more venerable and poetic versions of the same. But a few eons makes a big difference. The world’s greater religions have had time to splinter, moderate, and turn their myths into metaphor. The Church of Latter-day Saints is expanding rapidly and liberalizing in various ways, but it remains fundamentally an orthodox creed with no visible reform wing.

I see. So “Christianity” and “Judaism” (wait, both of these aren’t wholly monolithic?) are only acceptable because they’ve mellowed out enough so that sensible people don’t really believe their truth-claims anymore? Would Christianity have survived if the apostles hadn’t been so convinced of its truth-claims that they risked death to spread its message to the entire known world? Would Judaism have had a chance to “splinter, moderate, and turn [its] myths into metaphor” if the Israelite people had decided en masse, in the face of one of many historical persecutions, that it was better to regard that covenant with God as more of a helpful metaphor than as a binding contract that created wedges between the Hebrews and a variety of oppressive pagan and secular cultures? Note also the way that “orthodox creed” is used as a synonym for “ludicrous creed” — and how “reform” is, apparently, the process of pulling the teeth out of faith and bringing that foolhardy God-talk in line with the Enlightenment.¹

So Weisberg finds the idea that Joseph Smith’s special glasses enabled him to read dictation out of a magic hat to be ridiculous. For the sake of argument, I’ll allow that. However, it’s not as ridiculous as the idea that people of faith must subjugate their truth-claims to an acceptability standard as established by Jacob Weisberg or any other secular observer. I am not saying that the veracity and reasonableness of religious claims and doctrines cannot be evaluated outside of that faith. However, the criterion that Weisberg seems to be using for evaluating such reasonableness is: “does this religious person reject — in public — the aspects of his or her faith that I find most unacceptable?” See, for example:

It may be that Mitt Romney doesn’t take Mormon theology at face value…. But Romney has never publicly indicated any distance from church doctrine.

This is outrageous. According to Weisberg, a candidate who is nominally affiliated with a ridiculous religion (broadly construed to include belief in anything from magic glasses or aliens exploding DC-10s to bodily resurrection) but doesn’t really believe in it is more palatable than one who is actually committed to a ridiculous religion. Apparently, it’s only reasonable to belong to a religion that still believes, you know, stuff, if you are only doing so in order to publicly disavow said stuff.

We should, I suppose, expect that opinionmakers would privilege hypocrisy over credulity in our elected officials (after all, it goes with the territory). However, I am troubled that credulity appears to be the only justification Weisberg can offer for religious faith. Superstition and credulity should be considered irreparable strikes against a politician’s fitness for office; habitually ascribing belief in the supernatural to these, though, should likewise disqualify a writer from treating religion. Religious beliefs may be true or false and they may be justifiable or unjustifiable, but they are not a priori irrational.

¹ As a confessional (a.k.a. “orthodox”) Lutheran, I am both familiar with this common and erroneous interpretation of what it should mean to reform faith (and, by extension, what “the” Reformation meant) and offended by it.

I’m currently listening to Canzon on “O Nachbar Roland” from the album “Instrumental Music of 1600” by Concentus Musicus Wien & Nikolaus Harnoncourt