Should We Elect a Muslim President?

Ben Carson stirred up the latest Republican primary tempest this weekend when he volunteered the opinion that he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.” What should we make of this statement?

First, it speaks to a pervasive religious ignorance in our political culture, of which Carson is hardly the only example. If we assume that the world’s billion or so Muslims are all the same – all of them jihadists and Sharia-imposers – then perhaps Carson would have a point. But even America’s Muslims are not uniform in their knowledge, views, and practice of Islam. They’re as diverse as so-called American “Christians,” who range from the liberalism of President Obama’s United Church of Christ, to Mike Huckabee’s Southern Baptist faith, to the millions who profess to be Christians – even “evangelicals” – but who never darken a church door.