Secularism in Political Speech

Over the years, there have been a number of speeches in which American politicians have dealt with the issue of political secularism. Many are vague or contradictory, some are just confused. Mitt Romney, needing to balance a refutation of the right’s anti-mormonism with the right’s pro-Christian position, has frequently been contradictory . But many haven’t had the option of being vague.

The most famous was John F. Kennedy’s speech on Sept. 12, 1960 before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Kennedy was on the spot, because a number of anti-catholic pamphlets had been circulating and the specter of Al Smith’s loss hung over his campaign. He needed to reassure America’s Protestant majority that electing a Catholic wouldn’t result in a tunnel being dug to the Vatican.




Jump forward to 1984, and we find Mario Cuomo caught in the exact opposite predicament as Kennedy. Kennedy had to reassure America’s Protestant majority that he wouldn’t be the Pope’s loyal foot soldier. Cuomo had to explain to the Catholic minority why he, as a faithful Catholic, could not endorse a constitutional ban on abortion as well as other Catholic moral issues.

Kennedy’s position allowed for no nuance, so he drew a strict line between the institutions between church and state. Cuomo’s position required nuance, so he focused on the distinctions between religion and politics. He spoke of the lack of Catholic political action against slavery, and accepted the argument that this was because such political action would do real political harm to the Church while changing nothing. He draws a lesson from that:



Politics is not religion, and law is not morality. Cuomo pointed to Prohibition as an example of what happens when people forget those differences. Cuomo accepted that Catholic teachings should inform morality, but how that morality should be translated into policy was informed by the political realities. And one of those realities was that public officials swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Probably the best speech on secularism is Barack Obama’s keynote address at the Sojourners/Call to Renewal “Building a Covenant for a New America” conference from 2006.

Kennedy emphasized that the politician must consider the needs of the country and leave the institution of the church outside his office door. Cuomo emphasized that the politician must work within the political realities of the country, including the reality that the country is a religious pluralism. Obama explained what that all means for the religious believer:



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