Daniel Larison on Ben Carson's recent comments about Muslim unfitness for office.

[randomness]

Daniel Larison points out the strangeness of Ben Carson's statements on Muslims' fitness for public office:

Ben Carson said some objectionable things yesterday about Muslims, but I thought this defense of his position was by far the strangest one he could offer:

Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.

I say this is the strangest defense he could offer because it is extremely easy to imagine this same argument being deployed against Carson–or any religious conservative–in exactly the same way. A significant part of Carson’s support comes from evangelicals, his public rhetoric is full of expressions of his religious faith, he invokes Scripture when talking about policy, and I suspect he would be among the first to condemn attempts to drive Christian teachings out of the public square. More than most of his competitors, Carson would presumably affirm that Christianity ought to be “very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official” and he would object to the idea that it be kept strictly separate from political life. Indeed, many Christian conservatives are rallying behind him because of this.

One of his commenters followed up by asking:

Did Carson just throw Kim Davis under a bus?

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

The same allegation was also leveled against John F. Kennedy, who was Catholic, when he was running. Some supporters of his opponents made comments about the White House being run from the Vatican and so forth, claiming that JFK's Catholic faith would inform his public-policy decisions to an unacceptable extent.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I'm sure many of Carson's evangelical supporters distrust Catholics as well.

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

This....

o.O

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.

wow.

and how does Carson feel about saying "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? and that money thing, the whole "In God We Trust"?

his public rhetoric is full of expressions of his religious faith, he invokes Scripture when talking about policy, and I suspect he would be among the first to condemn attempts to drive Christian teachings out of the public square.

oh...

well, that clears that up. he's just a hypocrite. ok...

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Well, you know how it is. There's the True Faith, and then there's everything else.

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

i think i was supposed to, but i failed that class at Sunday school...

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It's okay. I suspect as far as they're concerned that was the wrong Sunday school anyway. :)

[dpolicar]

One of the things that it took me a long time to learn about mainstream Protestants in the U.S., and I still often forget, is that they genuinely don't think in terms of a superordinate category "religion" of which their religion and other people's religions are all instances.

This ought not surprise me, really... I mean, that's how unmarked cases work. White people don't have a race, straight people don't have a sexual orientation, men don't have a gender, USians don't have an ethnicity, middle-class folk don't have an economic class, and so forth.

Still, I find myself expecting U.S. Protestants to support religious freedom out of self-interest, and surprised when they don't.

[drwex]

Well-said. When people like Carson say "religion" they mean what we would mean by "religion other than mine." Or sometimes "religion other than my interpretation of conservative Protestant Christianity".

[pamur777.livejournal.com]

Не знаю, мне такое не особо интересно.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Did Carson just throw Kim Davis under a bus?

Probably not...

Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.

I'd hazard that correctly interpreted, he means "Islam being very much a part of someone's public life is inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution." which does not imply that Christianity being part of someone's public life is inconsistent with our principles and Constitution. As someone says above, the majority group isn't an alternative value of some property. Actually, it's stronger than that: Christianity isn't even in the same category as other faiths, and it's not part of Carson's principles that other religions are to be expressed in public life.

[bezpalov.livejournal.com]

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