Commentary

It’s time to end the religious test for elective office in America

It’s time to end the religious test for elective office in America

A collection of more than 19,000 emails from Democratic Party leaders lifted and posted by the document exposé website Wikileaks discloses apparent opposition research conducted against Bernie Sanders: one of their own presidential candidates. A May 5, 2016 message from DNC CFO Brad Marshall, in particular, questions Sanders’ religious beliefs.


From:[email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Date: 2016-05-05 03:31
Subject: No shit

It might may (sic) no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.


Marshall sent the email to DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda and Deputy Communications Director Mark Paustenbach. Though the message does not specifically mention Sanders, he was the only person running in either party who had previously identified as Jewish.

Republicans have also interrogated Bernie’s religious background. According to Kevin Williamson, in his article for the conservative National Review, “Bernie’s Strange Brew of Nationalism and Socialism”:

In the Bernieverse, there’s a whole lot of nationalism mixed up in the socialism. He is, in fact, leading a national-socialist movement, which is a queasy and uncomfortable thing to write about a man who is the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and whose family was murdered in the Holocaust. But there is no other way to characterize his views and his politics.”

Though careful not to call Bernie Sanders “a Nazi” outright because of his Jewish heritage and past, Williamson more than implies that Sanders’ brand of protectionism favoring U.S.-American workers’ rights and jobs, when linked to this self-described socialist political philosophy and his “leading a national-socialist movement,” is a clear and obvious reference to the Nazi party.

Sanders has fought tirelessly for U.S. workers of all backgrounds against their corporate overlords throughout his political life. Williamson, however, not-so-subtly attempts to instill in the reader’s mind Sanders’ own brand of racist National Socialism by stating that Sanders has always been critical of trade policies “with brown people – Asians, Latin Americans,” but has remained virtually silent regarding U.S. trade deficits with countries like Sweden and Canada, demographically whiter countries further along the socialism scale. Williamson continues his accusations of Sanders’ racism, and by so doing, falsely positions conservatives as the true defenders of racial equality.

To imply that Bernie Sanders’ style of Democratic Socialism even stands on the same side of the political spectrum as the National Socialism of the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler shows not only a total misunderstanding of history and political theory, but more importantly, it underscores yet again the dog whistle politics of neo-conservatism.

By acknowledging Sanders’ Jewish background, and in deploying McCarthy-style propaganda scare tactics, Williamson taps into a longstanding anti-Semitic trope. According to Ellen Willis in her book titled The Myth of the Powerful Jew:

The classic constituency for fascism is the conservative lower middle class, oppressed by the rich, threatened by the rebellious poor (particularly if the poor are foreign or another race); for this group Jews are a perfect target, since they represent the top and the bottom at once. Oppressed classes like the peasants in czarist Russia have traditionally directed their anger at the Jews just above them in the social hierarchy.”

Even before the Cold War and the so-called “McCarthy Period” (named after Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy), individuals and groups on the political and theocratic Right have flung the term “Socialist” – which in the public imagination was once synonymous with “Jews” – from their metaphoric sling shots into the faces of their political opponents to discredit their character and dismiss their political ideas and policies, and to sway the electorate toward a conservative agenda. This continues to this very day.

Not so very long ago, a Democratic candidate for the presidency came under attack for his Catholic background, with declarations from his detractors that the Vatican would control the White House if John F. Kennedy was elected. Before his election, a group of Protestant leaders strategized ways to derail his campaign.

Similarly, people often accused Mitt Romney of not being a “real Christian” for subscribing to the Mormon faith. Protestant leaders met in Texas in January 2012 during the Republican primaries to defeat frontrunner Romney whom they asserted did not take conservative enough stands on the issues.

Of course, they did not attempt to prevent Catholic candidates, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, from winning. But I ask, is this real progress, especially since candidate’s religious beliefs very often determine, to a large extent, their eventual chances for government service?

Keith Ellison (D-MN), elected as first the African American Muslim to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006, has come under continual fire for his Muslim faith. In particular, some Republican leaders, like Representative Steve King from Iowa, have questioned Ellison’s patriotism and his ability to follow the U.S. Constitution. They have roundly criticized his decision to place his hand on the Qur’an at his swearing-in ceremony.

Our founders intended the First Amendment of the Constitution to emphasize that a religious litmus test must not color the electoral process or other aspects of life that were not specifically religious in function.

In addition, the assertion that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation is contradicted by the very fact that leaders like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and many others, while they believed in a God and could be described as “Deists,” did not advocate for or attempt to advance Protestant Christianity or another other faith or denomination.

Unfortunately, since the inception of the new nation, the religious backgrounds and beliefs of candidates have indeed determined their chances in the political arena, and have been used in their favor or against them. Though very unfortunate, it would be very difficult to even imagine a Muslim or atheist having any chance of ascending to the Oval Office in the current political climate.  

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