didn\u2019t <\/em>try to sweep all those differences away into some \u201cleast common denominator\u201d civil religion to play identity politics with the evangelicals. He was clear that he believed in the teachings of his church and gladly served as a missionary and as a stake leader. But he was also clear that his oath would be to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, not any pronouncement from Salt Lake City.<\/p>\nI can believe a person to be wrong on his or her religious convictions and still believe him or her to have the character and competency requisite to lead in a civil office. That didn\u2019t\u2014and doesn\u2019t\u2014seem contradictory to me at all.<\/p>\n
Campaigning for public office in a democratic republic can be compared to a job interview. A citizen is delegating someone to \u201cbear the sword\u201d of public justice (Rom. 13:4), as the apostle Paul put it.<\/p>\n
Imagine if you were a shift supervisor of a grocery store in your town, working to hire a new manager. Imagine that you also served on the pastor search committee of your church at the same time. You are interviewing candidates during the day\u2014to work in the meat or produce or frozen food departments of your business. And you are interviewing candidates at night who might preach to and shepherd your congregation.<\/p>\n
A candidate comes forward who believes Jesus was a good man, but probably not God. He says the idea of a Trinity doesn\u2019t make sense to him, and when someone quotes the Nicene Creed, he says it\u2019s all incomprehensible to him.<\/p>\n
When asked what he would say if he were asked at the Judgment why he should be admitted to heaven, the candidate says, \u201cWell, I worked hard, paid my taxes, and went to church every Christmas Eve; if that\u2019s not good enough for you, I don\u2019t know what to tell you.\u201d Does that disqualify the candidate? Well, in this case, it depends on whether the interview is in the daytime or at night.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re looking for someone to manage products and people and to make a profit in the produce department, personal regeneration, much less theological consensus, is not a necessary qualification. As a matter of fact, you might well be mistreating your employers if you hire a born-again produce manager who ends up throwing away boxes of spoiled fruit at the end of a week because he didn\u2019t know how to anticipate inventory.<\/p>\n
At night, though, those interviews would include a different set of criteria. You might well end up hiring a pastor who has to ask Alexa to do basic multiplication (people have, after all, hired me before) but who meets the biblical qualifications for the pastorate and who shares the doctrinal convictions of the church.<\/p>\n
You would never in that context say, \u201cThis candidate thinks Habakkuk is a kind of cannabis, and when asked about the Holy Spirit, shrugged and said \u2018I can teach it whatever way you want.\u2019 But he knows how to invest our building fund in a way that will pay off our debt in half the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, let\u2019s suppose you go back to the daytime interviews. A candidate comes to you, and you know him from your church. He posts Christian memes to social media all the time and is heavy into \u201cdiscernment\u201d against bad doctrine. He also has a record of sexually harassing his fellow workers at the last three grocery stores for which he worked. His references say, consistently, \u201cDon\u2019t trust him, because he lies all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
When you ask the prospective employee why he called in sick so often to his last workplace, he says to you, \u201cProbably because of how much cocaine I was doing, but I\u2019m only selling it now, not using.\u201d When you ask him about why so much money went missing at his last workplace, he says, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of my peers,\u201d and winks at you.<\/p>\n
Right after that, you interview a woman who has a record of honesty, straightforwardness, and integrity in all of her previous workplaces. Every employee who has worked for her testifies that she\u2019s truthful and fair. She knows exactly how to keep the shelves in her area stocked, to reduce waste, and to bring in a profit. And, from everything you can tell from her past background, she can be trusted with the bank receipts. She\u2019s also active in the Mormon Women\u2019s Relief Society in her neighborhood, where she works with at-risk youth and single mothers.<\/p>\n
Of the two options, you are obviously going to hire her over the church guy. In fact, if you did the reverse, you would be violating your duty to your business obligations.<\/p>\n
Might you be wrong? Sure. Maybe the woman is just playing the long game. She\u2019s been waiting to embezzle funds until she got to a grocery store without so many security cameras. Or maybe she\u2019d never thought about how much more work she could get done with cocaine until she talked to the other candidate, while they waited to be interviewed. You might be surprised, but generally, someone\u2019s past record of integrity will show you how that person will operate in the future.<\/p>\n
A boring preacher might still manage a business well. A skilled marketer might teach the Bible poorly. But character and competency matter for both the grocer and the pastor, just in different areas.<\/p>\n
Whatever one thinks of Mitt Romney\u2019s perspective, no reasonable person doubts that what he is saying publicly lines up with what he\u2019s saying privately. To think one thing internally and to say the opposite externally, Jesus tells us, reveals something twisted in the human heart (Matt. 22:18; Mark 7:14\u201323). At its most literal level, that\u2019s what integrity means: a holding together, an alignment of mind, mouth, and conscience.<\/p>\n
We live in a time, though, in which leaders\u2014whether in the civil or in the spiritual spheres\u2014often say things they know to be not true, because they are afraid of the loudest and angriest among their own people. Sometimes the fear is a lost primary election or being booed at a convention.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the fear is what former congressman Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) called \u201cthe assassin\u2019s veto\u201d\u2014the threat of physical violence against oneself or one\u2019s family (the Coppins profile reveals that Romney was spending $5,000 a day <\/em>on security for his family).<\/p>\nThe pull of the tribe over one\u2019s conscience is strong. You start to wonder if you\u2019re crazy. You start to know that when you walk in the room and everyone stops talking and looks down, they were probably talking about you. You start to be embarrassed that your friends don\u2019t want to be seen with you.<\/p>\n
Political theorist Yascha Mounk writes in his forthcoming book The Identity Trap<\/em> about the problem of internalized shame and the \u201creluctant heretic\u201d (meaning heresy against one\u2019s group identity, not against one\u2019s religious conviction). Such a person is \u201cso nervous about disagreeing with prevailing sentiments that they practically seem to apologize for their own ideas.\u201d<\/p>\nThese dissenters think they are being charitable or shielding themselves from criticism, but instead, Mounk argues, they signal \u201cthat they themselves seem to regard their views as somehow illicit,\u201d and thereby \u201cencourage the enforcers of orthodoxy to use moral shaming or rank intimidation to shut them down.\u201d<\/p>\n
In such a context, it is very hard to let one\u2019s \u201cyes\u201d be \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno\u201d be \u201cno.\u201d In such a context, it is all the more necessary that someone\u2014at least someone with a conscience, even with fear and trembling\u2014will do it anyway.<\/p>\n
Mitt Romney is leaving Washington. He will never sit in the Oval Office. He\u2019s remained faithful, though, to the vows he made and to the oaths he swore. How many are left who will be willing to feel the sting of exile when they believe they have to choose between the truth and their tribe?<\/p>\n
As long as we keep acting as though personal character is irrelevant for\u2014or maybe even worse, a detriment to\u2014leadership, we will find that there are very few. Once you learn to justify the breaking of one vow, the breaking of the others gets easier and easier. If history has taught us nothing else, hasn\u2019t it taught us that?<\/p>\n
Character matters, all the time. Character matters, everywhere.<\/p>\n
Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today<\/span> and leads its Public Theology Project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n