I'm old enough to remember JFK, but was not old enough to vote at the time. Perhaps in part because I was raised in a Roman Catholic family, I do remember that his Roman Catholicism was an issue in the 1960 election. Some people were worried a Roman Catholic President would be loyal to the Pope, and not the Constitution, and that was the issue. That seems silly now.
Other then for funerals, I have not been in a church or practiced the faith in which I was raised since my youth. As a young man, I became interested in studying the so-called "inner traditions" of many major faiths, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sufism(the mystical tradition of Islam), and I also studied shamanism. I loved reading the writings of the mystics of these traditions. They wrote of directly experiencing God, and I wanted to know what that was all about. I decided the major faiths were all very similar in their inner traditions. Before that, I had briefly been an atheist, and was proud of being smarter then all the adults who were church goers. That was arrogant and foolish of me, but, that phase was very brief. Now, I just want to adhere to the Golden Rule, and I know I fall short all the time, and I am very sorry to see that religion has been such a divisive force among humans throughout history. That's why I looked into those inner traditions so closely, to find a commonality. There is a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States these days, and it's understandable, but I know I found Love to be at the core of the writings of the Sufi mystics, some of the most beautiful mystical poetry I came across. I have long been baffled by the inner tradition of Love at the heart of the world's major faiths and at the same time a history of intolerance and war between their organized branches. It is one sad fact.
In all the elections in which I voted, I honestly never inquired as to what denomination a candidate practiced. It just never crossed my mind. I honestly could not tell you which denomination any of the Presidents have belonged to, other then Kennedy. I do know candidate Romney was a Mormon, but I guess that was because some had wanted to make that an issue. So, from a personal perspective, a potential President's denomination has never been an issue to me. I do think it might actually be good to see an American Muslim elected President, because it would have to mean we had developed an acceptance and tolerance that is largely missing now. It will be a long time before that happens, though. But I would no more fear an American Muslim would impose Sharia law, I think that's a ludicrous fear, then I would have expected an American Catholic to be first and foremost a Papist.
I am fascinated by the branches of Christianity that have developed here in America. In all honesty, some bother me, because I see a level of intolerance toward others that bothers me. But separation of church and state is a bedrock principle here, even though I know we are experiencing issues in our culture wars that often stem from the combatants religious beliefs, and it's been impossible to keep those out of our politics. That saddens me, but I must accept that we humans are not always wise enough to focus on what we share in common, and the Golden Rule is not always first and foremost in people's minds, and we seem to be a flawed species. Hope I have not strayed too far from the central questions of this thread....
