That being said, does that disqualify Mitt Romney from the POTUS? Hardly.
It's not like he cuts the heads off chickens or does blood sacrifice by slicing open his child head !
I find it much more troubling that a POS like Bill Clinton who used his religious pandering as a front to fool his sycophants that he is a Christian.
I don't think I would call it a cult. Any religion is a cult until it grows old enough and numerous enough, and then it becomes an institution. Nor can you judge whether a faith is a cult by how devoted its followers are--as Christians have been pretty devoted at times, and you would not consider the 12th Century church a cult.
Mormonism is to Christianity what Christianity is to Judaism. Jesus would not have liked it if people told him he was not a Jew, and Mormons don't like it when they are told they are not Christian. It's a purely definitional matter. Substantively, they are a religion that sprang from a belief in the revelations allegedly received by one man, whose words were written down into a new book that supposedly improved, or expanded upon, the old book. The old book for Mormons was the New Testament, which must be accepted by Christians. What you call what the Mormons have done is irrelevant, fact is, they accept the New Testament, just as we accept the Old Testament.
For the record, I am not a Romney fan, quite the opposite. I think he is way, way too clever with his positions, and I don't believe that he has converted to conservatism in his middle age. I think he will be an old-style northeastern liberal if he gets in, of the Rockefeller/Ford variety, with a few nods here and there to the conservatives.
I am, however, a big fan of Mormon values, even though I believe that Joseph Smith made the whole thing up, and it is utter nonsense. I stay away from that when dealing with Mormon friends, it's not relevant to daily life.
Are you saying that any religion that is not “mainstream Christian” is a cult?