Heard the one about the Mormon President?

Heard the one about the Mormon President? The shaky prospects of Mitt RomneyGerard Baker There are so many minorities now in the crowded field for the 2008 US presidential election that daily news coverage of the race is starting to sound like one of those politically incorrect jokes from the 1970s. You’ll recall the kind: A woman, a black man, an Italian and a Mormon are in a plane over the ocean . . .

We have Hillary Clinton, credibly promising to be the first female to be President, Barack Obama, the first African-American in the White House, Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York Mayor, the first Italian-American (and occasional transvestite) to be President, and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts Governor, who launched his bid this week to be the first Mormon to get to the top.

Most of these potential firsts are lauded by commentators as representing great social and political progress. The exception is Mr Romney, whose potential breach of the infamous glass ceiling for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is regarded with considerable misgivings.

In fact, while the consensus seems to be that Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama can overcome sexism and racism, it is considered more or less axiomatic that Mr Romney is in for a very hard time on account of his religion. On the face of it, this seems odd. If you’ve been brought up on a diet of the usual liberal media stereotype of America as a nation of woman and black-hating religious maniacs, you have a right to be puzzled when you hear that a devout God-fearing white man faces bigger hurdles than either a feminist or a liberal African-American. But as with everything in the US, it’s more complicated than that.

Mr Romney should be a highly appealing candidate. He has just finished his term as Governor of Massachusetts, where in the most Democratic state in the nation, he was an effective and quite popular Republican chief executive. He is clever and good-looking, and has made a ton of money for himself. He is completely untainted by any attachment to the awful foreign policy mistakes of the Bush Administration for the past six years.

But his religious problem is that to win the presidency he must first win the Republican nomination, a contest in which evangelical Protestants, especially in southern states, have a disproportionate influence. Evangelicals are deeply suspicious of Mormonism, which they regard as a heretical sect, and not even Christian in any proper sense of the term. They find the whole story of how Joseph Smith is supposed to have received a new set of scriptures and refounded the Christian church in America, how his followers drove westward, with their many wives and their curious underwear, all a bit strange (this, by the way from some of the same people who want it taught as a scientific fact that God created the world in precisely six days, Adam’s rib and all).

Popular conceptions about the Mormons do not help Mr Romney or his fellow believers either. Though the church officially forbids polygamy, it will never be able to dissociate itself from past practice. Some of its rituals also invite a nervous scepticism.

Mr Romney is battling to shake off the religious doubts. He insists that Americans care less about which brand of faith you practise than that you are a good and decent person who lives according to religious principles.

He tackles some of the concerns with good, self-deprecating humour. He once said in a debate over gay marriage that he believes that “marriage should only ever be between a man and a woman . . . and a woman . . . and a woman . . .” Privately, he has enjoyed pointing out that he, the supposed polygamy-loving Mormon, has been married to the same woman for 37 years, while his principal rivals for the Republican nomination have — so far — been married an average of 2.7 times each — the Catholic Mr Giuliani (three times), the Episcopalian Senator John McCain (twice) and the Baptist Newt Gingrich (three times).

What is especially odd about the Romney problem is that it is only recently that Mormonism seems to have become a political burden.

There have been Mormon candidates for the presidency in the past and it hardly came up as an issue. Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah — a bishop of the Mormon Church — ran for president in 2000. Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat of Nevada, and the Majority Leader of the Senate, is a Mormon. Mr Romney’s father, George, a Governor of Michigan, was for a time the leading contender for the Republican nomination in the 1968 election. It was not his religion that felled him then, but an infamous remark in a radio interview that he thought he had been “brainwashed” during a trip to Vietnam in 1967: a comment that, given what some deemed to be his slightly vacuous intellectual qualities, caused one commentator to note that his experience could not have amounted to more than a light rinse.

Religious-political prejudices have been overcome before, of course. Many Americans were once much more suspicious of Catholics. But John F. Kennedy proved that it’s perfectly all right to have papists govern, less I think because of his declaration that he would not take orders from the Pope, and more because in his frenetic extramarital activity he was able to demonstrate that he was really, deep down, reliably indistinguishable from any other politician.

In the end, I suspect the Mormon issue will not be the largest impediment to a Romney presidency. He has suspiciously changed his position on critical social issues, for example — when he was running for governor of heavily Democratic Massachusetts, he was pro-abortion; now he is running for the Republican presidential nomination, he says he is anti-abortion.

Iraq, too, could hurt him. So far his approach seems to be the Basil Fawlty strategy — “Don’t mention the war!” He gives long campaign speeches without a reference to Iraq. But in what looks likely to be a foreign-policy dominated election, he will surely not be able to get away with that, and his inexperience in the national security field will not help either.

In the meantime, expect to hear a lot more about Mormonism in the next year or so than you will ever learn from those nice, smart young men who come and knock on your door.

Once again, and finally, Mormons are lying when they call themselves Christians. Their doctrine is contrary to Christian belief and to Biblical teaching. Even the Devil can quote Scripture and speak the name of Jesus.

The a devil may talk of Jesus, but will never TESTIFY of Jesus!

That will never happen so you are distoting what I said see how clear and orderly My post #92 was and no attacks on you sir!

I just state my position and your reply were just mean and thoughtless in your reply, Jesus has a very tender heart and if you have the Lord in you where is your tender heart?

So as a profess Christ You claim to be where does that nature come from?

Let me clarify a bit. Our salvation does not depend ENTIRELY on us, yet we are called to trust, be faithful and to obey the Lord and follow him. It's been said the Christian life is almost, but not quite, beyond human capacity.

There are some liberal 'Christian' pastors who preach that obedience is no longer necessary, which is not true and definitely not what I meant.

If Romney can't make up his mind as to where he stands on certain issues, then he's a flip-flopper just like the rest of them.

"Let me clarify a bit. Our salvation does not depend ENTIRELY on us, yet we are called to trust, be faithful and to obey the Lord and follow him. It's been said the Christian life is almost, but not quite, beyond human capacity.
There are some liberal 'Christian' pastors who preach that obedience is no longer necessary, which is not true and definitely not what I meant.

If Romney can't make up his mind as to where he stands on certain issues, then he's a flip-flopper just like the rest of them."

Agreed. We do what we can, and depend on mercy Jesus bought for us with his suffering, death, and resurrection. If we had to face God's justice without that mercy, there would be nothing but damnation for us, as we've all sinned, and fallen (far, far, far!!!) short of the glory of God.

Obedience is necessary. It helps to know what rules to obey. I'd not care to speculate too much on the thief's disposition; perhaps he did some works in his life that Jesus knew of, or perhaps he had no training in proper behavior, and simply followed what he was taught by his elders, and found himself in the company of someone even he could see was something very different from the people he had known, and that knowing was enough. We teach that we much teach, as best we can, correctly, because we will be judged harshly for leading others astray.

I must also state that I did not join the Church lightly; I spent more than three decades trying to find out which church I should belong to, if any.In addition to Christian churches, I also investigated Islam, Buddhism, and several forms of Hinduism, Wicca, and several other forms of neopaganism. When I finally followed my Baptist-minister-stepfather's advice to pray about it, I knew that the Book of Mormon was truly God's Word, as much as the Bible is. I learned that Joseph Smith was a prophet, called of God to do what he did.

If what I got in answer to my prayer wasn't an answer from God, I would have to wonder why he allowed me to be led astray. My guess, and that is all it is, is that he really doesn't care which church we belong to, as long as we follow, as best we can, his word. People who spend all their time arguing that someone can't be a "real" Christian because they don't follow the Nicene Creed should probably remember that the earliest Christian churches didn't, either, IIRC.

As far as Romney goes, it's possible he's seen the error of his ways, and is going back to fundamentals because they are the right thing to do. It's also possible he's going back to fundamentals because he thinks that can get him elected. I don't know which it is, and I'm hesitant to vote for him myself, because I see him as a flip-flopping Kerry-type politician. I could be wrong, I could be right, and I could be totally clueless...

"Mormons believe that God is a physical being. "

True.

"They believe that he was once a man like us. "

True. Although that was before this universe existed.

"They believe that the true Gospel was lost and that the Book of Mormon fills in what was lost."

True, if you change it to read "...and that the Book of Mormon fills in PART of what was lost." We also believe that prophecy still continues.

"They believe that Satan and Jesus are coequal in substance."

Wrong. We believe that Lucifer and Jesus are spirit children of God just like you and I. That both of those individuals were very exceptional. That both suggested plans of salvation for mankind, and that Lucifer rebelled, and became Satan, because he would not accept the plan that Jesus suggested, and that God adopted. Satan is a spirit, still, with no corporeal existance. Jesus was born, lived, died, and was resurrected as part of his plan to win salvation for all of us.

"They have an adoptionist Christology."

I'm not a theologian, so I'll need that explained before I can answer it.

"Their theology is Manichean, Pelagian, and Monophysist. "

I believe you're lumping too many different heresies in there. We are not Manichean, at least as I understand it. IIRC, they believed that Satan was powerful enough that he could win. We don't believe that. I don't remember the definitions of the other two well enough to argue with you about them right now, and don't have time to look them up just yet. I'll take a raincheck on those, OK?

"Their theology is non Trinitarian."

We disagree on details of the Trinity, so possibly you're right, but also possibly you're wrong.

"They believe in baptising the dead and that Mormons achieve a higher level in Heaven."

I find in 1 Corinthians 15:29 "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?" This despite my stepfather saying there was no mention of baptism for the dead in the Bible. As for us getting to a higher level in Heaven, that is only for those who obey ALL the law. God is just, and I can't see him setting up an unjust system. Can you?

"These things have been written both in the Book of Mormon and by their theologians. Many Mormons don't even know what they believe."

That is a problem with people of all faiths, including yours, whatever it is. We don't have a corner on that market.

"We as a nation need to pray for God's Will to be done about this election and the candidates who are running. HE in his infinite wisdom, is fully capable of separating the wheat from tares. By their fruit (i.e. voting records, personal life, etc.) ye shall know them.

FReepers, when you read this, please send up a sincere prayer for our Nation, our Freedom and that God's will be done, in the Name of Jesus, Amen!"

You've got an "AMEN, BROTHER!!!" here from me, at least.

The only thing that scares me is that this is quite possibly the last days, and if so, things are going according to God's plan. If not, maybe we can, working together in spite of our difference, shift things more towards the light...

"So, you are not Christian. Quit calling yourself that. Your religion is blatantly, unapologetically non-Trinitarian, unbelief. It is nothing more than the schizophrenic ravings of Joseph Smith. Complete nonsense."

You claim that you are, but I'm seeing little in the way of what I was taught (by non-Mormons) to be a Christian attitude. I guess we'll just have to disagree on the definition of Christian. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for you, I don't have to accept your definition as authoritative. Go with God, brother, even if you don't see him the way I do. We can let him sort it out later.

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