How Tolerant Are We?

America is supposed to be a country of religious tolerance. Just ask anybody — except, maybe, Mitt Romney. Almost 50 years after John F. Kennedy addressed the Greater Houston Ministerial Association — an act seen as tabling the issue of religion in presidential politics — the campaign of the former governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney, is still being dogged by religious prejudices.

Kennedy's famous words in 1960 established the norm for presidential candidates. "I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source," he said, adding, "and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all."

So far, Mr. Romney, the third presidential candidate to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, following his father, George Romney, and Senator Hatch of Utah, can't seem to get away from religious questions.

At a Harvard forum named for Kennedy's son, John F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Romney's "media strategist," Alex Castellanos, faced issues about his candidate's faith. One student stated, "most Christians consider the Mormon Church a cult."

The student also asked about the racial history of the Church, which first allowed black priests in 1978. Mr. Castellanos replied that "both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party" have had problematic racial histories and "as I understand it, the Mormon faith has changed."

It's not true that Mr. Romney's father, who previously served as governor of Michigan, was never spoken of in religious terms, as some remember today. He was the subject of a 1968 biography, "George Romney: Mormon in Politics." Nevertheless, he was a secular man in a less overtly religious time. The elder Romney sought higher office at a time just before evangelical Christians became an important part of American presidential politics, writ large, and the GOP coalition, specifically. With the election of President Carter, an outspoken Southern Baptist in the general election of 1976, and the coalescence of support for President Reagan in 1980, that secular age of Republican primary politics ended.

Winning the South Carolina primary, in which evangelical Christians are the most important voting block, is a key step to winning the Republican nomination. Students of presidential politics still obsess over the beating Senator McCain took there in 2000.

Back then, Mr. McCain was the victim of a variety of political dirty tricks including so-called push polls — telephone calls made under the guise of information gathering intended to spread negative information about a candidate.

What if an electoral opponent attempted, even covertly, to use Mr. Romney's religion against him in that context? Would the religious community, as President Kennedy suggested in 1960, treat an assault on the Latter-day Saints as an attack on their own?

For the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, there is already concern about the way the faith is being discussed. "I think it is disturbing and distressing the way Mormon religion is being written and talked about in the context of the election," Mr. Foxman said. "There is a looseness to it and almost a disrespect of it that if it were applied to Catholicism or to Judaism, we would find it offensive."

And if electoral politics treat religion in an ugly fashion, it will be important for religious and interfaith leaders to follow Kennedy's tenet on religion. "It will be incumbent on people of good will to stand up and say this is unacceptable," Mr. Foxman said.

A group of young Christian conservatives have founded a Web site, Evangelicals for Mitt, evangelicalsformitt.org, aimed at promoting their candidate "as the best choice for people of faith." They argue that the political implications of differences between Mormons and evangelicals are the product of the "liberal media." "They [the liberal press] root their error (as usual) in a fundamental misunderstanding about American evangelicals — seeing us as ignorant and intolerant simpletons who are incapable of making sophisticated political value judgments," the Web site states.

Ultimately, Mr. Romney will have to address the issue of his faith in more expansive terms, just as Kennedy did in 1960. This reality reflects the way American politics have become so personal in recent times. When a candidate runs for president today, everything about them is open to scrutiny and discussion — far more so than in a gubernatorial run, such as Mr. Romney's 2002 election when religious questions were largely off the table.

A speech by Mr. Romney on his religious views would likely have to involve an educational effort by members of the Mormon church, who would have to explain religious teachings to the public at large. Some of that took place in 2000, when Senator Lieberman ran for vice president as the first Sabbath-observant Jew.

A Mormon and a first year student at Harvard, Rachel Esplin, says she welcomes the attention the Romney Campaign might bring to her faith. "It will allow us to dispel myths about the church," she says.

Ms. Esplin's optimism is the hope of the young. If Mr. Romney's campaign can take hold, the way members of other religious and secular groups treat him will be a good test of whether America meets the standard of religious tolerance that Kennedy set so long ago.

Mr. Gitell (gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.