Religious Divisions in the US

The presidential election battle in the United States is going on. It has narrowed now to only two candidates: President Barack Obama of the Democratic Party and Republican Mitt Romney.

There are many Americans who are challenging the validity of Obama’s declaration of being an evangelical Christian, arguing that his father Hussein* was a Muslim and the president himself spent many years of his childhood in Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country in the world.

His rival Romney belongs to the relatively new Mormon Church, which a majority of Catholics and evangelists claim does not belong to Christianity, and that it is not Christian in its foundation and substance.

In the previous presidential elections taking place in 2008, candidate Obama gained support of 54 percent of Catholic voters. Is he going to lose or win more of their votes this time, after proposing a new compulsory health insurance plan that covers birth control prescriptions and even abortions? Under the compulsory health insurance system, every citizen has to contribute to these payments. The Catholic Church has strongly opposed this measure, explaining that it doesn’t agree with a Christian doctrine, which rejects, in principle, any form of birth control or contraception. The Church claims that forcing American Catholics to pay for the kind of prescriptions included in the compulsory health insurance plan is equivalent to forcing them to take a decision conflicting with their religious faith.

Obama didn’t bring anything new in his new legislation. Twenty-eight American states have been imposing and implementing this system for years. However, it is the first time this system has been proposed on the federal level, so it would become compulsory in all states and to all citizens. This prompted the commotion caused by the Catholic Church, which represents at least 70 million Catholics.

Growing numbers of Catholics in the U.S. have immigrated from Mexico and other Latin American countries. After American evangelical churches had successfully expended their presence in these countries by providing social, economic, health and educational services, Latin immigration to the north changed the U.S. demographic equation, strengthening the Catholic religion and making the use of Spanish language more widespread.

Unfortunately for President Obama, many Catholic voters are those of black or brown color who sympathized with him in previous elections because of their racial background. Now, he is in danger of losing them due to the Church’s stance opposing any measure legislating birth control. Although indirect, it discourages American Catholics from agreeing with the legislation.

This situation confronts the Catholic Church with the choice between two candidates for the president, one worse than the other. The first candidate, Obama, is an evangelical Christian but attempts to pass the plan that the Catholic Church opposes in principle, and the second candidate, Romney, belongs to the Mormon Church, which the Catholic Church is not able to support or even describe as a church. The Vatican, particularly current Pope Benedict XVI, calls non-Catholic churches Christian “movements.” According to it, there is only one Church, and not many churches (in the theological definition of the Church). This unique Church is the Catholic Church.

Mormons, unlike other Christian churches, prohibit, for example, alcoholic beverages and smoking while allowing polygamy. They raise the authority of the movement’s founder, Joseph Smith, to that of a prophet and believe that the revelation came down to him through tablets similar to those of Moses, and so on. That is why they were persecuted, isolated and separated. They developed a culture of internal cooperation and followers’ total trust in their church. This is the first time in the history of the United States that a Mormon has achieved what Mitt Romney has achieved as a candidate running in the presidential election. If he wins it, he is going to be a historical phenomenon, as President Obama certainly has been as the first president of African descent in the White House.

Romney sympathizes with the Catholic Church’s stance on birth control, despite its not which doesn’t acknowledge him being a Christian. This is not because of love for the Church but in line with the Mormon faith, which also opposes birth control on principle. That is why the Catholic Church finds itself, baffling as it may be, leaning toward him. The Church is not with him because of his Mormonism but because of his support for its opposition to President Obama’s plan to pass the birth control legislation through the back door, meaning through the door of the compulsory health insurance.

Moreover, other right-wing evangelical churches, which constitute the electoral base of the Republican Party, sympathize with Romney. They are also in opposition to President Obama’s plan because they are against birth control, abortions and the acceptance of gays into the armed forces.

This is how Romney gathers three great adversaries — Mormons, Catholics and evangelists — and successfully creates a serious threat to President Obama’s comeback to the presidency.

All in all, it appears that the most important aspect of this electoral battle is the role of religion. And while the American constitution talks about separation of religion and state, reality confirms a deep overlap between them, just as it confirms that slogans are one thing and political reality another.

A few months before his death, Samuel Huntington, American thinker and creator of the “Clash of Civilizations” theory, published a book talking about a clash of civilizations inside the United States. He mentioned in the book that this clash is inevitable due to fast-moving change in the balance structure between Catholic and evangelical religions, between whites and blacks, and between the English and Spanish languages.

In Huntington’s opinion, American society is heading for an internal clash with these changes in its background. However, his book about America’s internal issues was not as popular as his first book on the external world, where he put Islam in opposition to the Western civilization. The crime of September 11, 2001 brought together the adversaries and united them. But when smoke cleared after the crime and Muslims distanced themselves from being its authors, elections regained their contentious dynamics again.

Perhaps these opinions of religious background, which oppose Obama’s plan, indicate that Huntington’s theory on challenges facing American society is right.

*Editor’s note: Barack Obama’s father’s name was also Barack Obama. This error was left in to maintain the authenticity of the article.