Let us suppose that Mrs. Sanjay Gupta is delivered of sextuplets by a Doctor Gandhi at the world-famous clinic he runs in the city of Peculiar, Missouri. All of the newborns are girls, which beats Mrs. Dionne by at least one baby. As soon as Dr. Gandhi has finished washing the children in the sacred waters of the Ganges River, he announces that, under the American Constitution, neither their Hindu religion nor their sex will ever prevent them from becoming president of this country or achieving any other high office. Dr. Gandhi always carries a copy of the American Constitution in his hospital scrubs. The famed obstetrician is absolutely right because the Constitution states in Article 6 that no religious test shall ever be applied to candidates for high office in this country. But beyond that, the famed obstetrician is misleading Mrs. Gupta and the little girls when he tells them that they can rely upon the American Constitution as they begin to enjoy life in the “show me” state.
The American Constitution was crafted largely by people such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Biographers have noted that Jefferson was not a religious person in any sense of the word and that Benjamin Franklin was basically an atheist. What they intended to accomplish in Article 6 was to distinguish Americans from British subjects who were required to give fealty to the Anglican faith, the official religion of the British Empire of which the reigning monarch is the titular head. But in the ensuing 232 years that this country has been in existence, the fact is that there is indeed a religious test for those who seek the presidency. And there are other tests such as gender and ethnicity. In November 2008, the American electorate will vote for the 44th president of this great country. In all of that time only one Catholic, for example, has ever succeeded to the presidency. In less than three years he was assassinated by a little runt with visions of grandeur. And so it was that for all of these years, with the exception of the short presidency of John Kennedy, the American presidency has gone to males of the Protestant faith. In the case of Mrs. Gupta, her children are the wrong gender as well as of the wrong faith, regardless of what our Constitution says.
The fact of the matter is that we do indeed demand a religious test imposed by the American electorate. It makes no difference whatsoever if the candidate is a genius who professes a non-Protestant faith, or no religion at all; he will be defeated. For example, we have never had a Jewish president. If Albert Einstein were to have run for the presidency, my guess is that he would have been roundly defeated simply because he was a Jew. His competence to run this country is of no consequence. The sole test is religion.
In the 2008 Republican primary, Mitt Romney, whose faith is that of a Mormon, ran for the presidency. The people in the Bible Belt contend that Mormonism is not a branch of Christian faith. They contend that it is a make-believe faith produced by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. And so, regardless of Mitt Romney’s qualifications to be president, he was defeated largely because he is not a male Protestant of acceptable faith.
We honor the bar on tests of religious faith only in the breach. Beyond the religious tests, there is the matter of gender. If a female candidate came along who was qualified on every count, there are members of the American electorate who would say that they could not imagine a female as Commander-in-Chief running our military services. And so the female would be defeated, regardless of her qualifications, simply because of her gender.
In the current contest between Barack Obama and John McCain, we are told that aside from racial tests there is a test for whiteness. In one survey recently concluded, there were 17% of those polled who said that they would not vote for a black candidate regardless of his qualifications. My guess is that that 17% could be as great as 25%. The fact of the matter is that Barack Obama is only half black. He has been thoroughly criticized because he is not black enough. On top of all that, the whispering campaign among Republican circles is that Mr. Obama is a Muslim. At the same instant that they are calling him a Muslim, they are also criticizing him for attending for 20 years a black Christian church run by Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Presumably, Obama has maintained his Muslim faith while he sits in the pews of the church listening to Christian theology. This just doesn’t compute.
The Reverend Al Sharpton is a man who qualifies as fully black and who strikes others as particularly meddlesome. Sharpton has run for president on at least one other occasion but his candidacy never got more than an inch off the ground before it was shot down. Reverend Al is a bright person but his sin in life is not having been born white. And so the American electorate rejects him forthwith.
My memory always goes back to the election of 1928, when Herbert Hoover defeated Al Smith. Al Smith was infinitely more qualified to run the United States than Herbert Hoover, an engineer from California. Under Hoover’s leadership, America descended into its Great Depression of 13 years. But Al Smith was never considered a legitimate contender because he embraced the Catholic faith, and everyone knows that all American Catholics take their orders straight from the Vatican.
To the best of my knowledge, the only candidate who refused to identify his religion was Bill Bradley, the former senator from New Jersey. Bradley contended that his faith, even if it was a lack of faith, was his own business. Bill Bradley was an eminently qualified man who served in the American Senate and who had the good grace to be born in Crystal City, Missouri. But because Bradley failed to identify himself as a Christian, his candidacy went nowhere. As a result, we had the likes of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and the two George Bushes. It makes no difference that Bradley was a Rhodes Scholar; he was not acceptable to the electorate for not identifying himself as a Christian.
All of that now brings me to those of us who are affiliated with no church whatsoever. Those of us who profess no affiliation with organized religion are often called infidels. But all of us rely upon the American Constitution which says that there shall be no religious test for any office in this great country. Because I am an American, it is assumed that I am a Christian, which will cause many Muslims to brand us as infidels. Even my mother suggested on more than one occasion that she would hate to be known as the person having an infidel son. But she assured me that she loved me just as much as she loved the rest of the family, some of whom were Bible thumpers. The sum and substance is that there is a Constitutional bar to imposing a religious test for high office.
There is no similar bar for imposing a gender or ethnicity test. But in fact the American electorate has imposed those tests just the same. I hope I live long enough for a female Jew to ascend to the presidency, as well as the candidate, male or female, who takes the Constitutional bar seriously and refuses to discuss religious qualifications with any interviewer. When a politician tells you that there is no bar on matters of religion, I hope you will recall the words of the famous lyricist, Ira Gershwin, who said, “It ain’t necessarily so.” The fact that there is a bar must be well known to every thinking member of the American electorate. And I suspect the daughters of Mrs. Gupta will find out about it soon enough.
PS: The title of this piece is an adaptation of the signs outside employment offices during the days of discrimination against the Irish, when they were told that they need not apply for an opening. It seemed appropriate for this essay, which has to do with no openings for large segments of our population.
E. E. CARR
September 1, 2008
Kevin’s commentary: a lot of states don’t even pretend to respect the first amendment. Shockingly the states who do so are almost unequivocally Southern, poor, and backwards. For instance:
North Carolina: http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/legislation/constitution/ncconstitution.html
Sec. 8. Disqualifications for office.
The following persons shall be disqualified for office:
First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.
Missippi: http://www.sos.state.ms.us/ed_pubs/constitution/constitution.asp
SECTION 265.
No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.
Arkansas:
Article 19 Section 1, titled “Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness,” states: “No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court.”
Disgusting. As a bonus, Texas puts its no-atheist clause as the 4th thing in our constitution. We just couldn’t wait any longer. So, so aggrevating. How these types of provisions still exist is beyond me. It’s already clear that (open) atheists aren’t getting elected any time soon — why even bother overtly shutting them out? http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/CN/htm/CN.1.htm