You expect to hear cringe-worthy stuff on “Fox & Friends.” Well, Sunday’s edition didn’t disappoint. A Catholic priest who has long been one of Fox News’ favorite men of the cloth declared that we shouldn’t consider an atheist presidential candidate because atheists don’t believe that God will judge us.
Father Jonathan Morris, the host of SirusXM’s Catholic Channel and a frequent commentator on religious issues for Fox News Channel, dropped by the curvy couch on Sunday during a discussion of the previous night’s Faith and Freedom Coalition-sponsored gathering of Republican presidential hopefuls. Raw Story got a clip.
When Tucker Carlson wondered how a politician’s faith should inform his or her life, Morris gave a reply that is arguably one of the loudest dog whistles that has ever been blown on a network known for blowing a lot of them.
“Well, if it doesn’t inform your life, then it’s not faith, because faith is a set of beliefs. Right? It’s a belief in God, it’s a belief that there are eternal consequences for your actions. And I think a leader that doesn’t have that, a set of core beliefs that help him to make justice an important part of his life and his decisions because he knows that there are eternal consequences–well, it’s somebody that’s hard to trust.”
Just in case Morris didn’t make himself entirely clear, Peter Johnson, Jr. gave him a chance to do so. Johnson wondered if voters should judge the faith of presidential candidates. He then asked directly, “For example, if someone running for president is an atheist–are they qualified to be the president?” Morris replied that while wisdom was more important than faith, “it certainly makes a difference who that person is.”
Let’s see if we’ve got this right. An atheist would be “hard to trust” with the keys to the White House because he doesn’t believe that he will have to answer to God for his actions. And an atheist somehow doesn’t have the wisdom to be president. Two of the ugliest stereotypes about atheists and other non-religious people crammed into about a minute of airtime. Did Morris really have to be that blatant? I have to wonder what part of the Constitution’s unambiguous declaration in Article Six that “no religious test” can be used to exclude anyone from running for office Morris doesn’t understand. Apparently even Fox News is embarrassed by this–this interview isn’t archived at the Fox News site.
What makes this even more insulting is that most of Fox News’ audience has had it drilled into their heads for the last 35 years that those evil, God-hating libruls are persecuting them just because they’re good, Bible-believing Christians with traditional values. And yet they’re telling us we shouldn’t trust an atheist president? After hearing this, I have to wonder–who’s trying to persecute whom?