Mitt’s Mormon Faith
Will Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith be a liability for him if he runs for President in 2008?
I think if I decided to go national that there will probably be a time when people will ask questions, and it will be about my faith, and I’ll have the opportunity to talk about the role of religion in our society and in the leadership of our nation,” Romney said after attending a charter school event in Boston.Kennedy, then a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, took the same approach in September 1960 when he was attempting to become the first Catholic president. He told the Houston Ministerial Association, “I do not speak for my church on public matters and my church does not speak for me.”
The answer to whether or not Romney’s faith will negatively affect his chances in 2008 will come from conservative Christians, whom columnist Robert Novak claims would not vote for Romney “solely because he is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
The way I see it, if Tom Cruise is still making movies in 2008, and making a fool out of himself talking about Scientology, Mitt Romney being a Mormon won’t be much of an issue.
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Matt Margolis is co-author (with Mark Noonan) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at The Buffalo Bean. Follow Matt on Twitter.
If Americans are looking for a moral president Romney’s religious background is a plus.
Robert Novak’s comments about Gov. Mitt Romney are just the latest. Day after day some newspaper somewhere decides to run the same old tired story about unannounced Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, declaring that a Mormon could never be elected president because the evangelical Christians would never support him.
The first thing to remember is that some reporters have nothing original to report, so they regurgitate the same story many others have already written. It’s easy to pick on the Mormons, so why not jump on the band wagon?
There’s just one problem. The vast majority of Americans do not believe such reports for one simple reason – they are not true and we all know it.
Mormons are everywhere, and most people have encountered them enough to know the claims that Mormons are not Christian and are actually quite evil cannot possibly be true. But it is no surprise that rival church leaders complain about a church that actively proselytes new members, which is a threat to the offering plates of the churches who lose members as a result.
Actually, they are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Those who claim they are not Christians apparently missed the name of the church.
Perhaps that is because the press frequently ignores the official name and uses the term “Mormon” as if that is the actual name when it is not. They should read the Associated Press Stylebook which says: “…the official name is preferred in first reference in a story dealing primarily with church activities.”
Many LDS teens get up before the sun and gather in groups to study the scriptures together. It’s called early morning seminary. Those same kids in recent studies were found to be doing a better job of living the clean values taught by their church leaders and parents than kids of other faiths.
The interesting thing about LDS kids is that their behavior is not based on fear or compulsion of any kind. These kids are good because they want to be good.
LDS families live their religion. They not only go to church on Sunday, they set aside one night a week as “Family Home Evening.” They sing, have a brief lesson that is often given by one of the kids, play games, eat junk food, and pray.
LDS families send their kids to church one night during the week, not for religious services, but instead they send their boys to Boy Scouts and their girls to “Young Women.” The LDS Church sees those activities as tools for shaping the values of their future leaders.
Mormons pray a lot. They pray each and every day individually, as married couples, and with their families. Their children learn to kneel by their bed and say their prayers, saying a prayer that comes from their heart because they use their own words rather than something memorized.
The adult men team up with a teenage boy as a partner and visit other members of the local congregation once a month or more. “Home Teaching” is one of the ways the LDS Church stays in close contact with each member and offers more than just preaching to help people live a better life.
No one is paid. Not a dime goes to the local church leaders, teachers, organists, or minister known as a bishop. All the members have an opportunity to volunteer to serve one another. Members are able to serve as missionaries, and they do so at their own expense and without pay.
Do they believe in Jesus Christ? Are they Christians? They certainly seem to be living as Christ taught. They not only go to church, they actually go out into the world and live what they are taught in church. They read and study from the Bible, and they also study The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.
Their message as they knock on door after door is that the Church of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth. They claim to represent Jesus Christ and say that they want to bring people to Christ. Sounds Christian to me.
Like millions of others, I am a Latter-day Saint convert. I have known Mitt Romney personally. We do not always agree on every issue, but I can honestly say that he is a very good, moral, honest man who is also the best qualified candidate I have seen for president. He has a track record as governor that should be used to evaluate his potential as president, and his Mormon beliefs and values have made him a better governor. The same will be true if he becomes president.
In reality the typical evangelical Christian is not much different than a Mormon.
They both want the best for their families, and they both do their best to live according to the beliefs of their religion. Some of their doctrines are different, but their values are not. As more and more people focus on values instead of doctrines they will recognize that having a Mormon as president is just what this country needs.
Obviously David Bresnahan’s Mormon bias creates a HUGE blindspot for him. Unfortunately for Mitt Romney there are only 5 million Mormons in the US, like Breshnahan, most of whom live in Utah, the vast majority of whom are, either not active members of the Mormon church, or like me, have requested their names be removed from the records of the church in protest to the elitism, bigotry and censorship of LDS scholars.
Those 5 million Mormons are far outnumbered by the evangelical christians running this country who don’t share David M. Bresnahan’s bias favoring Mormons.
Yeah they’re both so-called Christians, but so were the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland. That didn’t prevent them from killing each other.
The Sheites and Sunnis are both Muslim, but that doesn’t prevent them from killing each other.
Mr. Bresnahan,
Your comments are thoughful, sincere and rational; our country would be a better place if everyone were as reasonable as you.
But let’s remember who we’re talking about here.
The hard-core evangelicals, Dominionists, fundamentalists and right-wing televangelist crowd are not rational people. Recall Bob Jones Univerity’s justification for their campus ban on interracial dating:
Unsurprisingly, Bob Jones teaches that the Catholic and LDS churches are “cults.”
Such right-wing religious extremists espouse Jewish conspiracy theories of world domination. They protest funerals of American troops with “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” signs. They say America deserved what it got on 9/11. They say God allowed 9/11 to punish America for its policy toward Israel.
They claim God sends hurricanes to punish people for immoral behavior. They advocate banning Halloween and Harry Potter. They fake faith healings on TV to get money from desperate pensioners. They preside over mass weddings and declare themselves the Messiah. They advocate religious courts, criminalizing homosexuality, government-sponsored prayer and religious indoctrination in pubic schools –just like the Taliban. They advocate murdering democratically-elected foreign leaders, and will not hesitate to use the US Congress and Presidency to force compliance with their religious views on a single individual like Terri Schiavo.
People who ascribe to such beliefs and engage in such behavior are immune to the reasonable, evidence-based arguments you cited. They are fanatics who believe that there are only two kinds of worshippers: those who are members of their sectarian fiath, and those who worship false gods. In their world, if you’re LDS, you’re just another infidel destined to the fires of hell (unless converted to the “correct” faith).
According to Rev. Pat Robertson, such people comprise 2 out of 3 likely Repubican voters in presidential elections. That’s why since Ronald Reagan no Republican has won the nomination without the endorsement of the Religious Right. It explains Dubya’s willingness to speak at the racist Bob Jones University during the 2000 campaign and John McCain’s decision to be upcoming commencement speaker at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
Unfair as it is, these fanatics will never look beyond religious tribalism and religious bigotry to consider Romney’s actual qualifications and views. The way we got here, of course, is that Republicans –ever the moral relativists– failed to openly condemn these people and instead partnered with them to build a Republican majority. Now, however, the lunatics are running the Republican asylum and what Bob Novak reported is exactly how most right-wing evangelicals think.
And you explain Mitt’s second place finish in Tennessee, after a weekend of talking with evangelicals, in the Southern Republican Leadership Conference…how?
It’ll get interesting when somebody asks Mitt if he swore a suicidal oath in the Mormon temple to devote his life to the building up of ZION (the Mormon church) in order to usher in the millenium (& the 2nd coming of JC) when Mormons believe JC will come and burn everyone who’s not a temple worthy Mormon and all forms of government will be abolished and JC will lead the Mormon church and rule over the entire earth for 1,000 years.
Or when they ask him if he believes the church’s standing doctrine, which has yet to be repudiated, that black skin is a curse on Negroes because they were “less valiant” in the pre-existence and therefore were born into the lineage of Cain, who’s posterity were cursed because of his sins.
Or when they ask him if he really believes he will become a God and practice polygamy in the CK.
Or when they ask him if he really believes the founder of his church did more for mankind than any other man in history, save Jesus Christ, even though he committed adultery with at least 11 wives of other men, 11 teenagers and 11 other women.
Or when they ask him if he really believes the racial claims of the Book of Mormon, that Native Americans are really “Lamanites”, descended from an evil race of Jews, despite the fact that current DNA evidence has conclusively disproven those racial claims.