The following is a guest post from Rob Taber, who describes himself as…
“A proud native Delawarean, now a history grad student at the University of Florida. I spend most of my time researching seventeenth-century pirates, but I have an addiction to politics that expresses itself strongly in my attachment to The West Wing.”
By: Ron Taber
In the fall of 1637, a long-brewing storm of theological controversy unleashed itself upon the Massachusetts Bay Colony. For a multitude of reasons, some political, some religious, the Colony banished Anne Hutchinson and two others. Four months later, the Boston congregation excommunicated her. Her ideas had proved too dangerous, too heretical to the hardline religious establishment, too threatening to the fragile government. A mother of fifteen, she had devoted herself to her family and her religion, only to be cast out. For reasons only known to her and to God, she refused to bend to authority.
In the centuries since her banishment and death in 1643, Hutchinson has become a symbol for dissent, for heterodoxy, for religious toleration, and for the separation between church and state. Her willingness to hold to her convictions no matter the cost has inspired people of all faith traditions and of no tradition at all.
Now, three hundred and seventy years later, one of Anne Hutchinson’s grandsons is running for the presidency of these United States. Faced with an onslaught of religious bigotry, opposed by hardliners threatened by his influence, he must make the case that . . .
What? That he’s just as Christian as the fundamentalists who pay for pamphlets and movies that attack his faith? That he won’t let that weird cult of his influence his decisions when he’s the president? That he’ll demolish the wall between church and state so fast the Taliban will cringe? That his opponent should come out and say whether or not he considers him a Christian?
That his faith and his tradition is part of who he is. That his Christianity means that when he is President of the United States, he will prayerfully make the decisions that he believes will be the best for this country. And that since he “claims the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of [his] own conscience” he will defend allowing “all men, the same privilege [letting] them worship how, where, or what they may.” And that any questions about magic underwear and the location of the Garden of Eden will go unanswered.
He makes the case on Thursday, at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. It’ll be interesting to see what he says.