Romney’s high-wire act on religion at the Republican convention

On Thursday night, Mitt Romney will step out at the Republican National Convention to accept the nomination as the presidential candidate. The question, ahead of this important moment, is not whether but how he will talk about religion.

Certain theistic tropes are often part of political rhetoric: for example, Romney will almost certainly evoke some form of God-ordained American exceptionalism, whether general or via a biblical metaphor (such as America as a “city set on a hill”). This kind of language evokes the vocabulary and metaphors of shared beliefs, while sidestepping sectarian squabbles over contentious points of theology.

What Romney needs, in other words, is to craft a message around what has been called “civil religion.” However, Romney faces some unique challenges, both because of the minority status of his Mormon faith and because of the expectations of white evangelical Protestants, who promise, if things go well, to constitute more than one-third of his voter base in November.
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