Over at American Spectator‘s blog, they have been having a lively conversation about the role of anti-Mormonism in Romney’s defeat.  As I have argued for months, it was always going to be a significant factor (resistance to a Mormon presidential candidate is widespread and can be found in every demographic), but I have noted that we can’t possibly know how much of a factor it was in each state given the limited information provided to us by exit polling.  We can know who did and did not vote for Romney, but we cannot discern why unless voters make a point of telling us.  There is nothing, however, in those same exit polls that shows that anti-Mormonism had little or no role–we simply can’t know without more specific surveys being done. 

Today, Christopher Orlet, who wrote the column that started the debate, said:

While we may like to think it was Romney’s flip-flopping that did him in (most conservatives WISH McCain would flip flop on immigration, etc), the emails I’ve been receiving tell a different, more sinister tale.

Now Mr. Orlet is free to regard these sentiments as sinister if he wishes, but I have some difficulty understanding why not voting for Romney because he has a different religion is inherently more sinister than not voting for him because he does not share your policy views (or appears to be unreliable in his defense of your preferred policies).  I think you could make a compelling case that it is much more reasonable to reject a candidate who does not share fundamental assumptions about God and creation than it is to reject him because he fails to match every policy preference you have.  The former are obviously much weightier, more significant beliefs than whether you support a particular kind of legislation.  Someone will object that these other things have no place in political debate, but so long as our political debates involve questions of ethics and morality (as they do) it is hard to say that core assumptions about the universe and its Creator are irrelevant, when these may and often will have consequences for how we understand the moral law.  Moreover, at the core of our civilisation is the understanding that God and creation are radically different (which is why, among other things, the mystery of the Incarnation is so profound and amazing), which means that religions that deny or minimise that radical difference understand neither God nor creation properly.  It seems to me that religious conservatives, if they are taking these things seriously, cannot dismiss disagreements over such fundamental things as irrelevant or outside the realm of appropriate political debate.  

After all, if your faith informs your “values,” it has to matter to you to some degree what your faith teaches, and so it ought to be a legitimate thing for voters to scrutinise and, if they disagree with it, to reject.  It should also be considered legitimate for voters to bear in mind the teachings of a candidate’s religion if that religion deems the voter’s religion to be false or corrupted, or if the candidate’s religion makes claims about sacred figures in your religion that seem blasphemous or insulting.  Pluralism and disestablishment do not require you to be willing to support someone who regards you as an apostate or infidel so long as he has the “right values.”  Rather by definition, someone who necessarily rejects your religion as a distortion of the truth cannot have “the right values” from your perspective.   

Along these lines, it is difficult to see how judging candidates accordingly is “sinister.”  Many religious conservatives, probably including some who are leery of Christians who refused to vote for Romney, likely see no problem in claiming that atheists fundamentally misunderstand reality and that this can have consequences for their judgements in this world, and that regardless of that they prefer candidates who profess belief in God.  Scant few of those who lament the presence of anti-Mormonism in the ’08 election are prepared, I suspect, to declare that the 60-odd percent who would refuse to vote for an atheist are similarly “sinister.”