What you believe, Mr. Future President (and supporters), matters.

Is anybody else out there tired of the inferred or outright charge of bigotry if we care that Mitt Romney is a Mormon? Afterall, the critics of “the concerned” huff, it matters not what he believes theologically, for we are not electing a “Theologian-in-Chief.”

True, but theology counts.

“Ideas are motor,” started my first theological text in seminary. “They eventuate in acts. Acts, repeated, become habits out of which character evolves. Thus does Holy Writ affirm that out of the heart are the issues of life, and ‘as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is.’”

It is hardly enough that a candidate thus believes in God, and all current candidates apparently do. What do they think about God. Indeed, the complete worldview, according to James Sire, consists in five basis answers to five basic questions.

1 ) What is prime reality – the really real?
2) Who is man?
3) What happens to man at death?
4) What is the basis of morality?
5) What is the meaning of human history?

Islam answers these things differently than does Christianity. Same for Buddhism, Hinduism and Chinese Universists.

Of the major religions of America, Protestants have slightly different answers than Catholics. Mormons, are substantially distinct from the orthodox assumptions of Christianity. Atheists different than Universalists. And on it goes.

We are now told we are not supposed to care about the differences? That these things are not not legitimate concerns for the voting public?

That some people’s favorite candidate is Mormon now makes them terribly defensive, it seems. What if it were Jehovah Witnesses at issue? Or Krishna? Or, Wiccan? Agnostic?

One suspects, at some point, it matters for most of us.

Few desire a strict religious test for political office. But when did it become wrong to investigate what a man thinks about the most important issues of life?

On the other hand, simple statements of theology isn’t what is most important either. Many an important theologian has acknowledged that Satan understands the tenets of orthodox Christianity, and is the devil still.

“You do what you believe and you believe what you do,” said an old professor. The fruits of a man’s life have to be investigated, which should give pause when considering the last popular president’s Southern Baptist theological bent that also marched in lock-step with his full-scale support of aborting a child four-fifths out of the womb, having sex with an intern in the Oval Office and lying under oath among other sordid and, one presumes, anti-Baptist behaviors.

Still, theology is important. And to deny that is to deny the importance of religiosity as a whole. What we believe matters, and for the most important office in the political world, it matters all the more.

I am beginning to think that the real dogmatists are those who vehemently think political ideology trumps doctrine but want to throw around the “B” (bigot!) word to assuage their own lack of theological rumination.