I opened the latest New York Review of Books looking forward to the great Garry Wills on “Romney & Religion,” then got distracted Colin Thubron’s wonderfuly untimely essay on the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor’s short book on his monastic sojourns. Leigh Fermor on the death of a monk:

A monk on the point of death is removed from his infirmary bed and laid across a bed of straw which is scattered over a cross of ashes. There, after the last ghostly comforts in the presence of the assembled monks, he expires. His body is exposed for awhile in the church. No coffin is used at his burial; his face is covered by his hood, and he is lowered into his grave with his habit folded about him.

Unfortunately, Thubron’s essay is not online. Wills’ is. Unfortunately, too, though, because it adds little to our understanding of Romney’s uninspired attempt at reassuring voters uneasy about his Mormonism. Romney, Wills tells us, “failed to state a fundamental democratic premise: that religious freedom should by definition include the freedom not to believe in religion.” Romney, Wills tells us, is no JFK.

No, he’s not. And he’s not seeking the same voters JFK was. JFK wanted to assure Protestant Democrats — many of them Southern evangelicals — that his Roman Catholicism wouldn’t interfere with his politics. Romney wanted to assure Protestant Republicans, especially evangelicals, that his Mormonism wouldn’t interfere with his politics, but that his faith would do so, indeed. JFK spoke at a time when the old mainline Protestant establishment was still so secure in its power that secular politics were by default infused with Protestant values. Romney speaks at a time when the relationship of religion to politics is in flux. JFK promised not to upset the status quo. Now, there is no status quo. Instead, there’s a fight between several different philosophies of church and state. Romney’s speech was meant to make clear which side he was on. The particulars of his Mormonism, which he largely avoided, are beside the point to the ongoing argument about politics and a religion — defined by the Right to which he appealed as a more aggressive version of the old Protestant establishment beliefs JFK promised not to challenge, a resurrection of Protestant political power centered in evangelicalism rather than Episcopalianism.

To put it in terms of monastic life: JFK pledged to leave certain silences undisturbed. Romney joined a choir.

–Jeff Sharlet