From religious liberty to faith in America: JFK, Mitt Romney, and the rise of the religious right

In 1960, John Kennedy, the Democratic nominee for president, appeared before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to address concerns about what the election of a Catholic would mean for Protestant America. His speech was a classic defense of the separation of church and state and the right to privacy in matters of religion. In 2007, in his first, unsuccessful run for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, Mitt Romney gave a similar speech trying to explain how his Mormon faith would inform his term in office. The speeches had similar purposes, with each candidate trying to calm fears about his faith, but the differences between them are striking and reveal much about the changing role of religion in presidential politics over those forty-seven years. The most consequential change in the intersection of American religion and politics between these two speeches was the emergence of the religious right and its place as a part of the Republican Party's base. Where Kennedy faced a more generalized Protestant resistance to his candidacy, Romney had to deal with a conservative faction within the Republican Party that had embraced a specific policy agenda. Kennedy was thus able to appeal to broader American values such as religious liberty and church/state separation, while Romney, to win the nomination, had to support policies that weakened his appeal in the general election.