The Religion Question

[Introducing RePosted, an occasional feature in which we publish commentary from The Post archives that sheds light on current issues.]

The presidential candidate, though previously reluctant, decided it was time to speak directly about his faith. There was debate about why religion had arisen as such a prominent issue in the campaign and what, if anything, that said about America.

December 2007? No, September 1960. As former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks today in Texas about his Mormon faith, the debate has a familiar ring. Commentary from The Post's archives about John F. Kennedy's Catholic faith reinforces the impression.

Even in 1960, the Post and several of its columnists found the debate about Kennedy's Catholicism puzzling. On Sept. 19, a week after Kennedy spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, columnist Roscoe Drummond published a column titled, "Why Has It Erupted?" He asked: "Why is everyone proving to have been so wrong in believing that this time the impact of the religious question would be muted and incidental?" It "was almost unanimously accepted," he wrote, that Kennedy's Catholicism "would not create anything like the stir it did against Al Smith in 1928."

Drummond was wrong, but couldn't explain why. Columnist Marquis Childs, writing two days after Kennedy's speech and traveling with the campaign, said Kennedy himself was "puzzled and profoundly disturbed" when the issue was raised. "He sees the question of religion as a kind of smoke screen obscuring any realistic discussion of the issues and the far-reaching problems of America in the world today."

The famous Walter Lippmann, however, disagreed: "Thanks to the initiative of the Protestant ministers all the honest and decent fears and doubts about a Catholic for President have been stated and placed before Sen. Kennedy," Lippmann wrote on Sept. 20. "At least there now exists a respectable and responsible discussion of the issue."

He praised Kennedy for recognizing "that the questions raised by the ministers were real questions, not slanderous fabrication and that an American Catholic running for President must answer them."

In 1960 as now, there were questions about whether a rival candidate was capitalizing on the religion issue. On Sept. 14 Columnist Joseph Alsop wrote: "Vice President [Nixon] and his staff have had nothing to do with organizing the anti-Catholic campaign. But on the other hand Nixon is the campaign's intended beneficiary and he will in fact benefit by it materially in some parts of the country." The Post editorial board, writing the day after Kennedy's speech, was more generous: Calling Nixon's behavior "exemplary," the Post declared. "There is every reason to believe that the Republican nominee means it when he asserts his confidence that as President Mr. Kennedy would put the Constitution above every other consideration."

Kennedy, meanwhile, fared consistently well in the estimation of The Post and its columnists. Drummond wrote that "Sen. Kennedy has dealt responsively and explicitly with everything which makes up the religious issue. Lippmann, called him "a brave and truthful man."

And the Post editorial board, even as it praised Nixon, seemed ready to embrace a Catholic president:

"Mr. Kennedy has stated plainly and unequivocally that he is not governed by the Church in political and other secular affairs. There is no more reason to believe that his course as a public official would be dictated by the tenets of the Church hierarchy on, say, birth control or censorship than there is to impute to a man who worships with the Society of Friends the tenets of that faith on, say disarmament and defense....

"In a country which has said as a part of its fundamental law that 'no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust,' would it not be a good idea to judge candidates for the Presidency exclusively on their past political performance, their political programs and their capacities for leadership?"

That's the kind of 47-year-old question Mitt Romney would probably be happy to answer today.

-- Marisa Katz