Mitt Romney Gives Commencement Speech At Liberty University

Today, Mitt Romney gave the commencement speech at Liberty University which is the largest Christian educational institution in America. His speech has made headlines in which he defended marriage as being between one man and one woman. 

However, I believe the best and most important part of his speech is how our Judeo-Christian traditions have shaped American culture:

Today, thanks to what you have gained here, you leave Liberty with conviction and confidence as your armor. You know what you believe.  You know who you are.  And you know Whom you will serve.  Not all colleges instill that kind of confidence, but it will be among the most prized qualities from your education here.  Moral certainty, clear standards, and a commitment to spiritual ideals will set you apart in a world that searches for meaning.

That said, your values will not always be the object of public admiration.  In fact, the more you live by your beliefs, the more you will endure the censure of the world. Christianity is not the faith of the complacent, the comfortable or of the timid. It demands and creates heroic souls like Wesley, Wilberforce, Bonhoeffer, John Paul the Second, and Billy Graham. Each showed, in their own way, the relentless and powerful influence of the message of Jesus Christ.  May that be your guide.

You enter a world with civilizations and economies that are far from equal.  Harvard historian David Landes devoted his lifelong study to understanding why some civilizations rise, and why others falter.  His conclusion:  Culture makes all the difference.  Not natural resources, not geography, but what people believe and value. Central to America’s rise to global leadership is our Judeo-Christian tradition, with its vision of the goodness and possibilities of every life.

The American culture promotes personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the value of education, the merit of service, devotion to a purpose greater than self, and, at the foundation, the pre-eminence of the family.

The power of these values is evidenced by a Brookings Institution study that Senator Rick Santorum brought to my attention.  For those who graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and marry before they have their first child, the probability that they will be poor is 2%.  But, if those things are absent, 76% will be poor.  Culture matters.

As fundamental as these principles are, they may become topics of democratic debate.  So it is today with the enduring institution of marriage.  Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.

The protection of religious freedom has also become a matter of debate.  It strikes me as odd that the free exercise of religious faith is sometimes treated as a problem, something America is stuck with instead of blessed with.  Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government.

But from the beginning, this nation trusted in God, not man.  Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution.  And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and the sick, or mercy for the child waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.

Mitt Romney points out that despite the fact that we are a nation of many faiths, we are bound together as a nation through Christian service

People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology.  Surely the answer is that we can meet in service, in shared moral convictions about our nation stemming from a common worldview. 

Christian service is still alive and well in America but it has been eroded by the growth of government since the 1930s.  I highly recommend two books that deal with the American history of charity prior to the New Deal programs of the 1930s and its decline afterwards. The first book is The Charity Organization Movement in the United States; A Study in America Philanthropy by Frank Dekker Watson. The second book is The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky. 

People complain that our nation is divided because of politics but the solution to that problem is that Americans can form deeper connections with one another in our communities despite that we come from different faiths, economic backgrounds and political beliefs when we freely and willingly without government compulsion to serve one another. 

You can read watch the entire speech here or read the entire transcript of the speech here.