The Role of Religion in Presidential Elections

The Role of Religion in Presidential Elections The relationship between faith, reason, and dread sometimes resemblesrock, paper, scissors grip (45). This is the opening sentence in chapter two of Al Gores book, The Assault on Reason. In this chapter Gore talks about how fear takes oer reason, reason challenges faith, and up to nowtually faith defeats fear. This is the way that our society worked when he wrote the book, and it has not changed for the better since then, although it has not needs gotten substantially worse.Today religion is still a wide player in political debate because people atomic number 18 guided, for the most part, by their morals and it is commonly held that morals come mainly from religious teachings. This is a complex subject because that also opens the door to the idea that atheists, agnostics, etc are not moral people because they are not religious. By that logic, only the religious should be allowed to lead our country because they are the only moral people. Do we confide that all religions are good, though? Are some better than others?Ideally, and under our Constitution, no all religions are equal in the eyes of our laws. However, there are stigmas attached to certain religions, and to many non-religious people there is a stigma on religion itself. So why, then, does religion play such a large role in political campaigns? Its simple because we view religion as having a direct correlation with morals, politicians, political parties, and interest groups can use fear to override our reason in order to sway our opinions. Historically, here in the United States, our citizens sire elected white Christian men to the office of the President.To go even further, we demand elected Protestant Christians to office. It is apparent that, political parties aside, we have a preference as to what our President should be, religiously. We have only had one Roman Catholic President, John F. Kennedy during his campaign there were fears that he wo uld follow the wishes of the Bishop sooner than the people. To some degree we still hold these beliefs. If we did not, religion wouldnt be used as a fear tactic. The colonists who came from England were escaping religious repression, and were the inspiration for our freedom of religion.In upstart times, we seem to have lost sight of that. Four divisions ago, Barack Obama was running for office for the first time. Among many other controversies, i. e. whether he was actually born a U. S. citizen, was the gossip that Obama is a Muslim and not a Christian as he has time and time again identified himself to be. In the United States, where we have the freedom of religion outlined in our Constitution, people were worried that someone of a Muslim put upground would be able to become the most coercive man in the world.A large part of that fear sure as shooting stems from the attacks on September 11, 2001 but surely there is no legitimate reason to fear Muslims other than the combinati on of our ignorance of Muslim culture and faith, and the fear that is instilled in us not only by political parties but by non-affiliated extremist groups as well, that say all Muslims are terrorists. Barack Obama went on to win the election, which is not surprising because the public could see right through these shaky scare tactics. However, this has not stop people from trying to use it in the current election.In a ninety second audio clip taken from a call between a Republican volunteer and a constituent, the volunteer calls Obama a Muslim and says that he wants to take away their Medicare (Dixon, 2012). So even though this tactic has not worked in the past, it doesnt do much to stop people from trying to spread these rumors again. Between the 2008 election and the upcoming election not much has changed, although in this years election the religion card will likely play a larger role in who will win the electorate.Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and part the small outcry claiming Obam a to be a Muslim was never on firm ground, there is no question of Romneys religion. This is where we fall back to the long time of Kennedys campaign. People are worried that Romney will repose his religious views before the welfare of our nation. The accusation that people are making is that he is incompetent of leading our country because he is a Mormon. Some of the big issues on his plate currently involve womens rights.As a Mormon, he does not believe in abortion and has made it clear that he would try to pass legislation that sets the beginning of life at conception. While there are certainly non-Mormon people who do not believe in abortion, this is being attributed to his religion. Fifty years ago, or even twenty-five to thirty years ago, this would have been a non-issue. Romneys beliefs would have been more in line with the more conservative nature of the time period. Needless to say Mitt Romney faces an uphill battle on his quest for the White House.Given all of this infor mation, it would seem very apparent that religion plays a huge role in presidential elections. This is true, but not necessarily in the way that one might think. According to an article in the Huffington Post, most Americans say that it is important for the President to have strong religious beliefs, even if the beliefs differ from their own. This information seems to undermine what the media would have us believe. In addition, constituents tend not to know or be confused about the candidates actual religion.Only intravenous feeding in ten citizens could correctly identify Mitt Romneys religion and forty-six percent of Americans said they did not know (Neroulias, 2011). This goes back to the idea of morals those who have religion are moral and good, while those who do not cannot be moral and therefore should not lead our country. In the end, politics have not done much to change for the better. We still fear religions that we have no need to fear, and this is largely because fear t actics are used every day by political parties as well as extremists who have the ability to make it into mainstream media.Absolutely anyone can start a rumor that a candidate is Muslim and cant be trusted, and that could catch like wildfire, or it could be blown off for the most part. It is also exponentially easier to take a candidates religion and a single belief, and then convince the country that he should not be President. Another thing that we see is that citizens place a large emphasis on religion itself, but there is still a large stigma on religions that are not traditionalistic Christian. Until we become collectively more knowledgeable about other religions and debates become more informed, not much could possibly change.References Dixon, M. (2012, September 27). Call from clay county gopobama is a muslim wholl take away medicare. Retrieved from http//m. jacksonville. com/news/metro/2012-09-27/story/call-clay-county-gop-obama-muslim-wholl-take-away-medicare Gore, A. (200 7). The assault on reason. (p. 45). New York, NY Penguin Group. Neroulias, N. (2011, September 24). How religious identity is influencing the presidential election. Retrieved from http//www. huffingtonpost. com/2011/07/25/presidential-candidates-religious-beliefs_n_908858. hypertext mark-up language