COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, seeking to allay suspicions about his Mormon faith, pledged Thursday to serve the common good rather than a single religion if elected president.
“Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions,” Romney told an audience at the George Bush Presidential Library. “Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.”
The former Massachusetts governor, in a long-awaited speech that could be critical to his hopes of winning the GOP nomination and the White House, went on to say that, as president, he would serve “no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.”
But he was equally emphatic in arguing that religion has a place in public life. Saying that the doctrine of separation of church and state had been carried too far, Romney said some people or institutions have pushed to remove “any acknowledgement of God” from the public domain. “It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism,” he said. “They are wrong.”
Romney’s address, which was widely compared to one John F. Kennedy gave in Houston in 1960 as he was seeking to become the first Roman Catholic president, was the most important of his political career and came at a potential turning point in the wide-open Republican nomination battle. Romney has sought to cast himself a committed conservative, but many polls have shown resistance, particularly among evangelical Christians, to a Mormon candidate.
Romney has counted on victories in Iowa and New Hampshire to launch a candidacy that has sometimes struggled for national recognition. Now in Iowa, he faces growing competition for the votes of Christian conservatives from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister who has made his religious faith central to his candidacy.
As a result, Romney’s challenge here Thursday was different than Kennedy’s in 1960, and so was his speech. Like Kennedy, he sought to neutralize concerns that the Mormon Church would in some way dictate his decisions as president. But unlike Kennedy he needed to assure Christian conservatives that they shared fundamental convictions and a determination not to see religion’s role in political life reduced.
The audience included several prominent religious leaders, including Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics &Religious Liberty Commission, Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, and the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. Their immediate reactions were positive, with Land saying that Romney had done “a magnificent job.”
“His delivery was passionate and his message was inspirational,” Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said. “Whether it will answer all the questions and concerns of Evangelical Christian voters is yet to be determined, but the governor is to be commended for articulating the importance of our religious heritage as it relates to today.”
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