Rev. Norman Peale once shouted that, faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture was at stake.
The year was 1960, and Rev. Peale was referring to John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s Catholicism was a major issue during his presidential campaign. Peale stoked the flames of anti-Catholic sentiment into an inferno, but his hate couldn’t compete with a man like Kennedy.
Kennedy was a bridge builder. He toured militantly Protestant West Virginia to show he had nothing to fear, and he even got Martin Luther King Jr. sprung from a Georgia jail when black folks were still being taken down by Dobermans and water cannons. Kennedy knew how to forge a coalition and to reach beyond peoples’ prejudices.
Reverend Peale, on the other hand, would probably be right at home in today’s rhetorical wasteland. Men like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich could probably learn a thing or two from a demagogue like Peale.
Peale probably wouldn’t want to teach them, though, considering both those guys are Catholic.
Despite the fact that this is perhaps one of the most diverse bevies of presidential candidates our country has ever seen — two Catholics, a Mormon, and a crazy person trying to unseat the first black commander in chief — the spirit of Norman Peale lives on. It’s in that vein that all of our Republicans, save Paul, have found some common ground.
They don’t particularly care for Muslims.
Mitt Romney said he wouldn’t appoint a Muslim to his cabinet, Santorum is all for profiling and Gingrich basically declared that if a Muslim were to run for president, he ought not be too Muslim.
Way to go, Mr. Speaker. President Kennedy would be proud.
You would think a group of people who are all coming from previously persecuted religious minorities would have a little more sympathy for Muslim-Americans.
Not so.
The enigmatic Gingrich balanced his earlier, stunningly tolerant comments with the assertion that Palestinians are an “imagined people.” He suggested they aren’t even a group at all and therefore not worth considering when formulating foreign policy.
If they’re imaginary, Gingrich, then we ought to have this whole Middle East peace thing sewn up pretty quickly.
There’s something ironic about the fact that a group of people who have benefited from religious tolerance to the point that they can make a legitimate run on the highest office in the land would turn slandering another religious minority into their bread and butter.
A sort of hypocrisy is on display when a man like Gingrich asks Muslims to abandon parts of their religious identity for the sake of assimilation. It’s kind of like calling for the impeachment of a president for adultery while you yourself are getting a little extra-marital action  — the exact thing Speaker Gingrich did. Twice.
But if you asked Gingrich about that, he’d probably point at the darkest guy in the room and declare him a Jihadist.
There is some solace in the fact that Rev. Peale was wrong. Electing our first Catholic didn’t enslave our country to the pope or undo our culture.
It did, for better or worse, pave the way for men like Santorum, Gingrich and Romney to step into the ring. Maybe 50 years from now a Muslim-American presidential candidate will be demanding Buddhists take an oath of loyalty. Who knows?
A parting thought: Considering the results of their recent primary, the next time South Carolina wants to secede for whatever reason — I say we let ‘em.
Nicholas Pierce is a 22-year old history junior from Baton Rouge, you can follow him on twitter @TDR_nabdulpierc
 
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Contact Nicholas Pierce at [email protected].