Posted on 11/20/2007 4:44:55 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
DALLAS - When a pair of Mormon missionaries knocked at the door of Jerry Pierce's home in a north Dallas suburb last month, he marshaled his arguments and stood his ground.
"I look forward to encounters like that. I like to talk to them about the nature of Christ and who Jesus is," said Pierce, a staunch Southern Baptist, the biggest Protestant denomination in the United States.
Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is running into similar resistance as he tries to win over Southern Baptists and other evangelical Protestants in the race for the Republican Party's nomination for the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
Romney will need the support of this traditional Republican base if he is to take on former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is running strongly in opinion polls despite his three marriages and a pro-abortion position that is anathema to many Republicans.
The reason Romney faces difficulties with Southern Baptists, according to many experts, is his Mormon faith. Not only do many Southern Baptists regard the Mormon church as a cult, they also regard it as a competitor that is winning -- or poaching -- converts from among the evangelical flock.
"There are now more Mormons that used to be Southern Baptist than any other denomination," said Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a 16-million strong group.
"As a consequence, Southern Baptists and other evangelicals have taught their people what Mormons believe and why it's beyond the boundaries of the Christian faith, to inoculate them against those Mormon missionaries," he told Reuters.
This is no small matter for people who take their faith as seriously as Southern Baptists do, and to counter the perceived threat they teach their members in Sunday School to be ready for that knock at the door and be wary of Mormon missionaries.
Romney himself did missionary work overseas.
Some say a Mormon in the White House would help the faith -- founded in 1830 in New York state by Joseph Smith and still struggling with the legacy of polygamy -- become more accepted. This is a dim prospect for evangelical leaders, who see themselves competing with the religion, literally, for souls.
"Many evangelicals do not want to see Mormonism mainstreamed," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
For Romney, the stakes are high. He is casting himself as a social conservative family man opposed to abortion and gay marriage, in a bid to win over white evangelical Protestants, who account for about a third of the Republican electorate by some estimates.
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found he only had the support of about 10 percent of white Republican and Republican-leaning evangelicals.
"There are a lot of conservative Christians who are going to look at the Mormon thing and say, 'Wait a minute, he may be conservative but he's a Mormon,' and they're not going to go there," said Steve Swofford, a pastor in the city of Rockwall, near Dallas, and former president of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.
Romney has managed to make some headway with evangelicals who have yet to unite around a single Republican candidate.
He has received support from politically active evangelical leaders such as Paul Weyrich and there is a small group of bloggers called "Evangelicals for Mitt."
On the other hand, there is no group called "Mormons for Mitt" and Romney plays down his faith.
Many Americans associate Mormonism with polygamy, once a central tenet but now practiced by only about 40,000 renegades. One of those renegades, polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, was sentenced to 10 years to life on November 20 for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin.
Evangelical Protestants tend to be more aware than most that the Mormon church now opposes polygamy, but they have other bones of contention, such as Mormon efforts to recruit their members.
NUMBERS AND GROWTH
There is no hard data -- the Mormon church does not crunch numbers on the previous faiths of its converts -- but there is evidence pointing to Mormon inroads among Southern Baptists.
The Mormon faith is growing faster than almost any other. In 1963, its membership stood at two million but now is close to 13 million with over half outside of the United States.
"The church of course is growing everywhere, now somewhat faster overseas than in America. But we do not as a matter of policy attack other churches," said Mike Otterson, a spokesman for the Mormon church in Salt Lake City.
In America some of its fastest growth has been in Southern Baptist strongholds, notably the South, according to data provided by the Mormon church.
In the United States overall its membership grew by 3.2 percent from 2004 to 2006. But in 13 states of the South its numbers grew over the same period by 5.3 percent.
Evangelical soil can be fertile ground for Mormon growth.
Mormons and Southern Baptists take similar conservative stances on social issues and tend to vote Republican, so their cultural and political outlooks are not really in conflict.
"Some Southern Baptists will live near Mormon communities functioning at their best, where they will see in practice the kind of family-oriented, sober, diligent, and disciplined lives that Southern Baptists preach but do not always display," said Mark Noll of the University of Notre Dame.
Noll, a leading evangelical historian, also said the theological underpinnings of the faiths had some similarities.
"Southern Baptists maintain a vigorous doctrine of divine revelation. That latter belief is not too far from the Mormon belief that God spoke to and through Joseph Smith," he said.
That’s why I won’t vote for a baptist. They give you morons like Jimmah Kahtah.
Beware the politician who wears his religion on his sleeve.
Why wouldn't they be?
I have known very few Mormons, but the ones I have known have been decent, fine, honorable, admirable, good people—a little strange (no Cokes, no wine—I don’t know; just a little strange)—but then who isn’t a little strange? The Episcopalians? The Catholics? The Jews? The Baptists? (My mother was raised Baptist, and WAS SHE STRANGE!) Frankly, I think the Episcopalians are the least strange of them all. (I’m an Episcopalian.)
“What was Christianity in Rome when it was starting out?”
Christianity. Never existed before, though it had Jewish
roots.
If Baptists don’t believe in modern revelation, how do they know they are saved?
I’ll never vote for a Mormon or a Moslem.
Both believe that women are not equal before god.
I can’t vote for that.
I am a Christian who believes that Mormonism is a cult. Not only does it violate the holy bible in many, many ways, it is also absurd on its face. When you read the history of the Mormon church as all Mormons must do, it is hard to believe that anyone could believe any of it. Now we have a Presidential candidate who says he believes it. This fact alone reflects on the Presidential candidate we are talking about.
I will not vote for Hillary or any other democrat, but at present, I’m not sure I could vote for Romney. This is going to be a real problem for him. This election is going to be razor close. Even if I and others like me only sit out the election, not even vote for the RAT candidate, it is obvious to me that the RAT wins. Romney should not get the Republican nod so that we can simply avoid this obvious gaffe.
I believe a large number of us think this way.
When more conservatives find out what he did to the republican party of arkansas as governor he will tank.JMO
If US Christians vote on this basis then they are a pretty stupid bunch. I would rather have a believing Mormon than a Christian in name only who just uses their religion as a sound bite at election time but doesn’t otherwise take it seriously.
It’s unfortunate that Romney’s faith happens to be one that is, to say the least, controversial within the Christian community, and if he becomes the Republican nominee, the way it will “play out” is that the media will beat this subject to death until we’re all ready to puke. They will attempt to create division where there is none, and exploit what little real divisions there are. I don’t go all psycho at the mention of the word “Mormon”, but if he ends up being the nominee, I will avoid newspapers, TV and internet until election day, at which time I will vote for Romney.
He isn’t a tough sell to this Christian, and I am as discerning as any. I haven’t guaranteed him my vote, but he is under serious consideration.
[That pig wont fly.It is not his religion, its his rino hide.]
It will fly, and will be even worse because he is ALSO a rino. Romney can win the nomination, but cannot win the election because all you need is 3% of evangelicals to stay home and Mitt is toast.
“There are a lot of conservative Christians who are going to look at the Mormon thing and say, ‘Wait a minute, he may be conservative but he’s a Mormon,’ and they’re not going to go there,” said Steve Swofford, a pastor in the city of Rockwall, near Dallas, and former president of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.
The above is a statement of fact, a good chunk of us will simply not pull the lever because of religious objections. To turn a blind eye to this is to say Hello Hillary.
The huckster is against smoking so you need to get off of that left hand bacckie!
My reason for not voting for him has nothing to do with his religion.I cant speak for anyone else.If he cant win the election then we should not vote for him in the primary.Duncan Hunter is my guy all the way.
“The Mormon church is not a cult as in being of the “occult”. It’s not devil worship, it’s not evil. In my opinion it is wrong headed and incorrect in important Christian teachings but it’s not harmful to America, our way of life or our freedoms. It is not harmful to me or mine.”
Then why can I provide you with a whole website filled with ex-Mormons, most with despairing tales of shunning and wasted lives (some admitting suicidal thoughts), while you cannot provide me with a similar ex-Christian denomination site??
http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon457.htm
Read the whole thread at the link, then come back and say they are not harmful.
More of a wish dream by the liberals who are trying to make it so by writing these trashy articles every week. Romney is the one they are worried about.
Isn’t iy amazing that the media parlays the Muslim religion as the religion of peace and now Mormons are the religion of evil.
I have had no trouble meeting Mitt or his family, I don’t think you will either. I have found them all to be frank and personable, given the awkwardness of the campaign trail.
Now I have come to understand, with the valuable insights of politicalmom, that my verbosity and good looks may have given me a backstage pass. The crafty Mormons could have played to my vanities and tricked me into not seeing their evil schemes. They have hidden their stealthy liberalism and nascent socialist tendencies every time I walked into the room. Now this is where you guys come in.
Understandably, Mitt has concentrated on the early primary states, where Americans of good will have the same legitimate concerns as those you have voiced. He apparently has won those doubters over. New Hampshire and Iowa voters take particular pride in personal contact and assessment. Are you saying that they are dishonest and easily fooled? If these fellow Americans are so naive, and easily fooled, should you not go to these states personally and shine the light of day on this MittScam?
I know that the Occam’s Razor for you all is the pragmatic truth of the conservative movement in America, and that you will do the heavy lifting necessary to reveal the facts about Mitt Romney in person.
Let us divide up the labor, who will follow him on the campaign trail, and which of you will shadow Mitt in the Temple?
I know that I can trust you all to refrain from speculative gossip, character assassination and Main-Stream-Media fed disinformation until we have a corpus of first hand accounts by which to scientifically judge.
This coming election is too important to rely on youtube snippets, chat room tantrums or spinmeisters. That is why I am trusting you solid Americans to take the field and separate the wheat from the chaff. Go ahead, ask Mitt anything. Together, we will expose this Mormon plot for what it really is. Whatever it is.
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