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On Thursday this week, if leaked reports are to be believed, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will speak at the Bush Library to explain his religion to the public.

The occasion is being compared to John Kennedy's 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association that helped defuse anti-Catholic sentiment in that campaign. (To read the JFK speech, go to www.beliefnet.com/story/40/story_4080_1.html).

There has been an ongoing debate in the campaign about whether Romney's membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a legitimate issue. In Nevada, whose caucuses are likely to be the third or fourth event of the 2008 presidential campaign, Mormons make up 9 percent of the population--a higher figure than any state except Idaho and Utah.

Most recently, Romney faced an essay written by a Las Vegas man who is planning to run against U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. Mansoor Ijaz, founder and chair of Crescent Investment Management, published an essay in the Christian Science Monitor about an encounter he says he had in Las Vegas with Romney.

"I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that 'jihadism' is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today," Ijaz wrote.

Romney's reply, according to Ijaz, was that "based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

From this exchange, Ijaz concluded that "Romney, whose Mormon faith has become the subject of heated debate in Republican caucuses, wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit instead. Yet he seems to accept excluding Muslims because of their religion, claiming they're too much of a minority for a post in high-level policymaking." (Ijaz's essay is posted at www.csmonitor.com/2007/1127/p09s01-coop.html)

Ijaz has a long history of contributing to Democratic candidates. He gave Al Gore more than a half million dollars and has also donated funds to both Clintons, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee. But he also writes for William F. Buckley's conservative National Review magazine and has contributed to Romney's campaign. He told Las Vegas columnist John Smith that he's an independent.

That similar speeches had to be delivered a half century apart by John Kennedy and Mitt Romney, both to neutralize religious prejudice, might suggest that we have not progressed very far. In fact, things got better for a time after JFK's election. When Romney's father, George Romney, ran for president in 1968, his LDS faith was not an issue, in part because atypical faiths were all the rage in the GOP race that year. (David Broder and Stephen Hess wrote, "Whatever it may prove, the odd fact is that the Republican party, trying to get back into the 'mainstream' of American political life, has presidential contenders in 1968 of anything-but-ordinary religious background. Romney, a Mormon; Richard M. Nixon, a Quaker; and Senator Charles H. Percy, a Christian Scientists, all belong to religious groups that are relatively small in numbers and unusual in doctrine.")

But since evangelicals became an important part of the political process during the Reagan years, scrutinizing candidates' faiths has become a disagreeable part of the process. While Kennedy's 1960s address was devoted principally to satisfying citizens that they need not fear his breaching the separation of church and state, Mitt Romney faces a more delicate task of satisfying evangelicals about doctrinal differences between his Christian church and their Christian churches.

When we decide that Mitt Romney's faith is our business, we are crossing a line. It also says a lot more about us than about the candidate.