Ask the Question

Stephen Mansfield

Description

For most of American history, the conventional wisdom was that religion was too private a matter to ask a political candidate about. But in a political landscape in which we will see Muslims, atheists, Mormons, Buddhists, and Christians of all stripes running for high office, we cannot afford to avoid religious questions. It's within American voters' rights to know what their candidates believe about God and religion, because those beliefs shape policy and thus action. In both small and significant ways, a candidate's religious views (or lack thereof) define political leadership. And the time for skirting the question or giving vague answers is over.In this rousing call to action, Stephen Mansfield shows readers- what religion will mean in the 2016 presidential race- how the media, both left and right, get religion wrong- the reasons the faith of candidates such as JFK, Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama caused issues with both the electorate and even their own advisors- how to ask the right questions to get honest answers- what giving candidates a "religious pass" can cost the country- how religion in American politics impacts America's role in the world- and moreFrustrated and confused voters across the country and on both sides of the aisle will find here a balanced and essential guidebook to actively and intelligently participating in America's political system.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 02 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493403271
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2016 by Stephen Mansfield
Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-0327-1
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Endorsements
“I’m a huge Stephen Mansfield fan. His latest book, Ask the Question , stresses our need to better understand what our candidates believe about religion. We need a more sophisticated level of discussion about the faith of our candidates. You need to read this book now!”
Pat Williams , Senior Vice President, Orlando Magic
“Stephen Mansfield’s latest book, Ask the Question , takes on one of the most common points of contention in the news today: religion. He’s demanding that candidates come clean on their beliefs before they get to the Oval Office. He’s right, and he makes his case in a unique, fascinating manner that is rich in American history.”
Brian Kilmeade , FOX News
“There’s no such thing as private religion, and Stephen Mansfield understands as few others do that all real faith is public. So shouldn’t we know what our prospective leaders believe? As Mansfield demonstrates, we cannot afford not to.”
Joel J. Miller , author, The Revolutionary Paul Revere
“Stephen Mansfield has done it again! Ask the Question will challenge you, make you think, and provide incredible insights. You may have been afraid to ‘ask the question’ before. No more. You’ll ask it and with the purpose of understanding, voting properly, and acting responsibly!”
Steve Brown, professor/broadcaster
“In Ask the Question , Stephen Mansfield helps us understand the role of faith in the lives of our presidents. His approach is neither partisan nor partial to a particular aspect of religion. This book helps us educate ourselves about how religion shapes the decision-making of our leaders. Stephen Mansfield challenges both voters and the media to ask the right questions.”
Dr. Joel C . Hunter , Senior Pastor, Northland Church
“Both Republican and Democrat presidential candidates have hoodwinked people of faith for years. The truth is that all candidates, whether secular or religious, hold certain beliefs, certain values, that will shape what they do when they get into office. Stephen Mansfield is right. We need to ask candidates what those beliefs are. This need is more urgent now than ever.”
J. C. Watts Jr. , former US congressman, Oklahoma
“Nothing has impacted my personal value system more than my faith, and that’s the way it should be. So much of who we are is wrapped up in what we believe. That’s why it blows my mind that we aren’t ‘allowed’ to dig in and have a good discussion about our political candidates’ core spiritual beliefs. In Ask the Question, my friend Stephen Mansfield has the courage to hit this issue head-on and call for a higher level of discussion around faith and politics. Every voter in the country should read this book!”
Dave Ramsey , New York Times bestselling author;nationally syndicated radio show host
“There is a reason Stephen Mansfield’s books— The Faith of George W. Bush , The Faith of Barack Obama , and Lincoln’s Battle with God —are so wildly popular. We know that what our politicians believe affects how they will govern. This book gives us a chance to see the impact of faith on those who hold the highest office in the land.”
Todd Lake , Vice President for Spiritual Development,Belmont University
“In Ask the Question , Stephen Mansfield makes a persuasive case for why it’s both important and appropriate to expect candidates for president of the United States to be open and detailed about their personal religious journeys and beliefs. This is especially important in an era when religious beliefs are becoming more and more personalized and eclectic and it’s not very clear how those personal expressions of faith would impact or shape a political leader’s worldview and decision-making process. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the intersection of personal faith and public service, faith and politics.”
Jim Wallis , President, Sojourners;Editor in Chief, Sojourners magazine
Dedication
T O
J OHN S EIGENTHALER S R ., friend and inspiration
Contents
Cover 1
Title Page 3
Copyright Page 4
Endorsements 5
Dedication 7
Foreword by David Aikman 13
Prologue 19
Introduction 27
Profile: Forty-Nine Truths about Religion in America 41
1. Kennedy at Houston 45
2. Test of the Fathers 65
3. Noah’s Wife Was Joan of Arc 83
Profile: Religion, Politics, and the Media 101
4. Three Words 105
5. Thomas Jefferson Was a None 125
Profile: Milestones in American Religion and Politics 145
6. A Faith to Shape Her Politics 151
7. The Narrative of Faith 173
Epilogue 201
Three Speeches 205
John F. Kennedy’s Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
Ronald Reagan’s “Remarks at a Dallas Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast”
Barack Obama’s “Call to Renewal” Speech
Acknowledgments 233
Select Bibliography 237
Notes 241
Books by Stephen Mansfield 255
Back Ads 257
Back Cover 259
Epigraph
In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
Mark Twain
Foreword
by David Aikman
The year was 1976, and Newsweek magazine had declared it “The Year of the Evangelical.” Pollster George Gallup had estimated that the number of Americans who considered themselves “evangelical” might be as high as fifty million. The greatest political event of that year was the emergence of former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter as the Democratic presidential candidate. Carter had declared himself a Christian early in his political campaign, and he had made it clear that he was of the “born-again” variety.
As one of the only two born-again Christian reporters at the news organization where I worked, I was tickled with amusement at the groans both in print and in ordinary conversation from seasoned Washington journalists who simply hadn’t a clue what Jimmy Carter was talking about. The phone lines between Washington, DC, and parts of rural Kansas or the Bible Belt were soon buzzing, with reporters asking their back-home “religious” relatives what being “born again” meant. It was a classic example of journalistic ignorance generated by a lack of education and a lack even of interest in a phenomenon that was at the time ricocheting through the United States. You really had to be intentionally neglectful of the American cultural scene to miss the fact that the United States was going through a surging evangelical revival in the late 1970s.
Unfortunately, the same provincialism about religious faith sprung up in a much more dangerous environment when the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini returned in triumph to Iran in early 1979. He was welcomed by crowds in the hundreds of thousands and quickly established a hard-line Shiite Islamic regime that overcame all democratic and secular resistance. Americans learned painfully how new and unexpected the environment of Iran had become when in November 1979 the United States Embassy in Tehran was taken over by radical protesters and fifty-two American diplomats were held hostage for 444 days.
Anyone who had taken seriously the pronouncements of the Iranian leader Khomeini when he was still in exile in Iraq and France would not have been surprised at all that he was going to establish a tyrannical dictatorship. Nevertheless, that did not prevent senior American diplomats and experienced journalists from uttering the idiotic comment that Khomeini was some sort of “saint.” I recall a strenuous argument with a fellow writer at the magazine where I worked. She insisted—purely on the basis that, as an opponent of the Shah, who had made some serious Islamic religious pronouncements—he was a sort of Gandhi-like figure. That, in my view, was tantamount to how out of touch an American would have been in the 1930s if he had declared Adolf Hitler to be a European mystic because he talked a lot about “Providence” and had not officially renounced his birth religion of Roman Catholicism.
Stephen Mansfield is certainly correct that most Americans today, particularly in the political arena, subscribe to a smorgasbord of beliefs that together constitute their personal worldview. The actual word worldview is not one generally used by most journalists or academics, probably because they don’t acknowledge that their own perception of the reality on which they are reporting was acquired during their education and subsequent journalistic experience. A failure to acknowledge that you yourself have a worldview makes it extremely difficult to assess what the worldview might be of campaigning political leaders. Indeed, ignorance of one’s own galaxy of perceptions makes it all but impossible even to pose sensible and astute questions to any person or political figure about what that person believes.
One of the most interesting examples in my experience of the lack of awareness of a worldview and therefore the lack of ability to perceive the worldview of others occurred duri