In announcing his decision to convict the president on abuse of power — while simultaneously voting to acquit on obstruction of Congress — Utah’s freshman senator didn’t shy away from invoking his faith.
“I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am,” Republican Sen. Mitt Romney said, pausing with emotion on the Senate floor Wednesday. “I take an oath before God as enormously consequential.”
On Fox News, he quoted a famous hymn from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: “Do what is right; let the consequence follow.” He cited Latter-day Saint scripture to The Atlantic: “Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good.”
His vote, he said, was the result of an “inescapable conviction” dictated by “my oath before God.”
Meanwhile, all of Romney’s Republican colleagues in the Senate voted uniformly to acquit President Donald Trump. Many of them, like Romney, undoubtedly consider themselves “profoundly” religious. And they too, I imagine, believe their votes accord with sacred oaths to uphold the Constitution.
So who then is right? Does a Christian conscience dictate a vote to convict? And what role, ultimately, should personal religious convictions play in politics?
Or, in the words of Tertullian, what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
Preeminent Latter-day Saint thinker Hugh Nibley once made the case that believers must be “beyond politics” — their loyalty to the city of man, he argued, is at best a distraction from the necessary labors for building up the city of God. Others, of course, might respond by pointing to the biblical counsel to the captive Israelites in Babylon: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
“Build houses and live in them,” the scripture continues. “Plant gardens and eat their produce … multiply there and do not decrease.”
In other words, stay awhile. Pitch in. Be a good neighbor and citizen. Make the best of what you might perceive as an imperfect setting to live out your faith.
Doesn’t this imply that good citizens of conscience — and, in particular, those with strong religious convictions — should act as a leavening force, a city on a hill, a promoter of the common good in the communities and countries in which they dwell? Doesn’t this mean that citizens of faith should seek to bring their authentic religious selves into the public square, drawing upon a wellspring of faith and charity to help inform a common hope for flourishing and civic virtue?
Surely it does. And yet, there’s wisdom in Nibley’s caution. Not because believers must retreat from public life and focus their efforts solely on their own backyards, but rather because faith’s highest contributions to the public square may be in how it molds people rather than policy.
More important than the way faith informs specific partisan debates — to impeach or not impeach; to convict or to acquit — is perhaps the way faith alchemizes individuals (including politicians) into more sturdy souls. It is more about assenting to an exacting path of religious devotion that makes the bad good and the good better, rather than a set of ideas to help navigate statecraft.
Disciples aren’t ultimately bestowed that lofty title because they succeed in inserting their favorite scripture into a primetime television spot or find a way to lobby dogmas into an omnibus appropriations bill.
... Faith’s highest contributions to the public square may be in how it molds people rather than policy.
As important as evangelism or legislation aimed at the good continues to be, genuine discipleship comes as human actions conform to high ideals — as we allow, in the wisdom of Hamlet, a divinity to shape our ends.
That process, in turn, permits politicians to render to Caesar what’s due, without neglecting the pressing work of becoming people with a greater sense of duty to the institutions and citizens they serve.
That process creates a conscience more interested in the common good — and the people around them or across from then — than in amassing raw political might.
That process in the end promotes more virtuous legislation, not because the laws are directly based on scripture, but because the laws flow from virtuous legislators as a natural extension of their character and a reflection of their desire to forsake realpolitik’s fleeting victories or passing chest thumps for a more lasting and perfect union.
It may be, in the end, that heaven is less concerned with how each senator votes on impeachment and far more concerned with how we all — as political actors and as citizens — comport ourselves in relation to one another and to what extent we choose to act “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.”
Hal Boyd is an associate professor of family law and policy at Brigham Young University’s School of Family Life and a fellow of the Wheatley Institution. His views are his own.