Can Religious People Occupy Public Office?
Fundamentalists object that this view of the political process would exclude them from holding any public office. It would attempt to silence their First Amendment right to speak out on issues that concern themselves. Secularists, they assert, make it sound like a person is unfit to run for office by the very fact that the person is a member in good standing of a church.
This is not so, of course. The difference lies in the attitude the religious person holds toward his or her political duties. As John F. Kennedy said, when this question was raised about his Catholic faith and his duties if elected President:
"As a religious person, I am influenced in my moral attitudes by my religion, and this will affect my behavior as president. But I will in no way seek to use the powers of the state to force my religious and moral convictions upon people who do not share them."
And therein lies the essential difference. Of course! We would hope that every person we elect to public office would act under the influence of their moral attitudes and beliefs. One of the more important elements that enter into this choice is the public character and performance of the candidate. But this does not mean that an elected official should attempt to force his or her private religious convictions on others. When we see persons of a particular religious faith seeking public office on a certain platform couched in general moral terms, and then, upon being elected, trying to push through measures that promote religious practices because they believe those practices will produce the moral results, we are compelled to believe that those persons have a hidden agenda and have not been honest and forthright with the voting public. And this is the only thing that is really needed, the thing we have every right to demand: an honesty in a candidate's approach with a full disclosure of their intent, so that voters know what they are getting, and get what they voted for.
"The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774.