Mitt Romney is now the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee.  Mitt is also a Mormon.  There has already been much talk over whether this last fact should be of any relevance to his bid for the presidency.  A shocking number of people—it seems like most—think that Romney’s religious commitments should be off limits for discussion.

It shocks that so many Americans think this; it does not surprise. 

In fact, we should expect that the children of the Age of “Judeo-Christian values,” “American Exceptionalism,” and the like should speak as though all faiths were at once interchangeable as well as immaterial to politics.

The concept of “Judeo-Christian values” is a useful fiction that, in conflating Judaism with Christianity, essentially denies both.  “American Exceptionalism” is no less a fiction, but a particularly invidious one, for on its behalf, countless numbers of human beings around the world have lost their lives in America’s quest to promote Democracy and Human Rights.

Religion, if it is real, should make every difference vis-à-vis every aspect of a person’s life. 

This, of course, doesn’t mean that any given politician’s religious commitments will necessarily conflict with his commitment to the Constitution.  His faith may even require that, either as an American citizen or an office holder, he uphold it.

Or it may be silent on the question of politics.

In any case, a genuinely religious person can’t but be offended at the suggestion that his religiosity (or anyone’s, for that matter) can or should be bracketed off to one side when he enters the political (or any) arena. 

This brings us back to Mitt Romney.

If Romney takes his Mormon faith seriously, then it is only upon pain of lying that he could deny his faith a central role in making him the person—and the candidate—who he is. 

Yet consistency calls on Romney’s critics to acknowledge that if Romney’s faith is fair game, then so is that of Barack Obama. 

The linchpin to discovering what makes Obama tick is Jeremiah Wright, his pastor and “spiritual adviser” and “mentor” of over twenty years. 

Obama had donated thousands and thousands of dollars to Wright’s church.  He arranged for Wright to officiate at his wedding service and to baptize his children. Such was Wright’s influence over Obama’s thought that our President entitled his second memoir after one of Wright’s sermons, a sermon within which the pixilated parson waxed indignant over his belief that “white folks’ greed runs a world in need.” 

There are only two kinds of people who think that Obama’s worldview is not essentially that of Wrights: those who won’t think or those who can’t think. 

To elaborate, either those who know nothing of either religion or politics or those who know nothing of religion could sincerely believe that twenty-plus years under Wright’s tutelage didn’t exert a tremendous influence over Obama. 

So, yes, the faiths of Romney and Obama should be placed under a microscope this election season. 

If Americans can transcend their racial fears and irrationalities, they will discover in no time that for all of its problems, it isn’t Romney’s Mormonism that threatens our secular government, but the Black Liberation Theology (BLT) that Obama imbibed from Wright.  Recall, according to BLT, “the greed” of “white folks” rules over “a world in need.” The God of BLT is a deity who allies itself with blacks—or Blacks—over whites.

This is the theology on which America’s 44^th president was reared. 

Let’s look at Romney’s Mormonism.  But let us also inspect, for the first time, really, Obama’s Black Liberation Theology. 

Rest assured, while neither presidential candidate will much look forward to having his religious history examined, the President will be far more averse to such an inquiry than will be his rival.