Romney promises to serve common good, not church

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 decision 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 setting of the Bush library on the campus of Texas A&M conveyed a presidential aura to an event that was long debated inside the Romney campaign. Signifying the speech’s significance, Romney was accompanied by his wife Ann and four of their sons.

Former President George H.W. Bush introduced Romney and while he said he was not endorsing any candidate in the GOP race, he nonetheless spoke warmly about Romney and his family.

Romney will not know whether he succeeded in addressing those concerns until the first results come in from Iowa on Jan. 3, where religious conservatives play a substantial role in that state’s GOP caucuses. A more critical test for Romney will come in South Carolina, as southern evangelicals have been seen as most resistant to Romney’s Mormon beliefs.

To those Christians, Romney offered a statement of his own beliefs: “I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the Savior of mankind,” he said. But Romney declined, as some had suggested he might have to do, to attempt to demystify the teachings of the Mormon church.

“There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines,” he said. “To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.”

Romney, like Kennedy, said there should be no religious test for the presidency.

“A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith,” he said.

But he also explicitly declined to distance himself from his church. “I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it,” he said. Should he lose because of that, “so be it,” he said, while adding that he believed the American people prefer politicians who are true to their faith rather than “believers of convenience.”