http://origin.sltrib.com/ci_7840906
Over several mornings in late 1996, the group delved into the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants, exploring the lessons from Mormon scripture and how they apply to modern government...
In the transcripts, Leavitt said he felt an obligation, looking ahead to an easy 1996 re-election win, to use the "blessing" of his popularity to convey a message strong on values.
"I mean, I think that the opportunity I have in January the 6th is to get up and to say something in a form that's big enough and appropriate enough for me to lay down a marker. I think that's going to be done in a little way and a big way, really, with this values campaign. I think that's going to be a big marker, because it's using all the tools of communication and it's going to draw on this trust that's been created by whatever combination of circumstances and personality and just blessing."
The point seems to be that Mike Leavitt's meetings were too much mingling of church-state. The discussion of Clinton as Satan is disturbing, but Leavitt et al could have had that discussion in ANY context and it would have been disturbing. More and more in the Internet era, I favor openness and information accountability to any attempts to regulate speech and language.
I don't get too bothered by these type of meetings. I would rather have a public record of them. The key questions for me are: is he using government to proselytize? Is he coordinating with LDS leaders? Is he discriminating against other faiths? The key questions to me have to with flows of resources and faith tests for employment or government services.
If I were governor and I wanted to have six advisors come in and discuss how the key documents of the enlightenment would affect my policies, would it be any different? I think the separation of church state is about the government not favoring a religion, but not about the banishment of religion from public arenas. I passionately disagree with many religious conservatives, but I want government to model tolerance and transparency. Sometime church-state arguments look to me like a slippery slope towards policing thought and language.
Like, I want MORE atheists in office, talking about how their values effect policy, not more closeted Christians using code language.
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I tend to agree with the sentiment that it's better to have an open discussion than to have a kind of coded language that is not open to questioning.
I agreed with this sentiment in the article:
"When someone becomes a politician, they don't stop being a human being and don't suddenly erase all of those memories or precepts or values. And acknowledging and talking about those doesn't violate the separation of church and state," said Barnard.
I DO think it's a problem if these were like the Ashcroft morning prayer meetings at the AG office, where there is subtle or not-so-subtle coercian.
A famous article, Robert Bellah's "Civil Religion in America" uses JFK's inaugural speech to explain the American comfort zone on this. Since GWB identified Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher (in a primary debate in 2000) that article is completely out of date. Although Reagan's "God bless America" seemed like a new development, it was still within Bellah's idea of civil religion (generic reference to a deity, but not to Jesus Christ or other specific doctrines). I think it would be good to go back to the pre-Bush II era on this and so many things.
A related issue is the context of Mormonism and some circulating attitudes which Leavitt may have hoped to address. I heard a truly disturbing morning radio show of a religious nature yesterday that basically urged Christians never to vote to put a Mormon in charge of the US and said that people who are in the LDS are going to be consigned to damnation by the millions because they are not of the true Christian church. There was also discussion of how wealthy a church the Mormons are and how they already have 6 members of congress. It all began to sound like Jewish conspiracy talk with a few substitutions for Mormons.
We obviously have more thinking to do about how religion functions within and with government, but I think your key questions are the right ones: are people being denied resources or opportunities because of religious tests? Is public money supporting private religious choices?
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