John Rankin, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, and Austin Dacey, a renowned atheist author, debated the proper place of religion in presidential politics in Dartmouth Hall Tuesday night.
Dacey began by stating that he could never run for president, not because of a lack of funds, but because of a lack of religion. He said that 52 percent of Americans refuse to vote for an atheist even if they agree with his platform. According to Dacey, there is no good reason for voters to prefer someone for his religion.
Yet religion seems to be the determining factor for a large percentage of American voters, Dacey said. He suggested that the candidates are trying to make the election a choice of the holier of two holies in addition to making religion a prerequisite for election.
But a candidate's religion is not a good guide to his or her presidential merits, Dacey said.
"Religious qualifications are not a good guide and are contrary to the principals of democracy," Dacey said. "A candidate's religion is often a poor predictor of how he'll behave in office and what policies he'll pursue."
Dacey suggested that Americans' preference for religious candidates is not necessarily a preference for religious politics, but for a candidate with a firm moral compass. Yet, not only is this an unreliable indicator of morality, but it is also wrong for voters to choose someone because the candidate is like them, Dacey said.
The president should be uniquely representative of the entire public and thus must neutral, Dacey said, adding that it is unfair for an individual to act in official capacity as a believer because it is contrary to the constitution.
Dacey called President Bush's Christianity highly idiosyncratic, as Bush relies, Dacey said, on his own intuition and judgment to determine God's will. According to Dacey, Sen. John Kerry is trying to portray himself as a committed Catholic who supports the division of church and state, opposing abortion personally but refusing to legislate his Catholic faith on anyone.
In contrast, Rankin lauded Bush for citing Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher. He emphasized importing Biblical ethics in the political order, with freedoms based on the ideas in Genesis about God, life, choice and sex. Rankin went on to categorize life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as unalienable, god-given rights that transcend human government.
"If we dispense with the god of the Bible we dispense with unalienable rights," Rankin concluded, citing his search for "eternal value in the midst of the idolatry of human politics."