A Mormon Reporter On The Romney Bus

How America got used to his religion, and mine.

On the night of the South Carolina Republican primary in January, I sat near the front of a dark campaign press bus and listened to reporters talk about Mitt Romney's underwear.

Earlier in the day, one of them had happened upon the candidate and his wife doing laundry in the basement of our Columbia, South Carolina, hotel, and a small cluster of colleagues had now gathered to listen to him relate the anecdote, lapping up every mundane detail of this rare interaction with the closed-off couple.

Finally, another reporter interrupted.

"Did you see their underwear?" she asked, grinning mischievously as though she had just said something naughty.

"What do you think it looks like?" inquired another.

"I think you can see pictures online," someone chimed in.

The exchange prompted giggles from the group — some nervous, others indulgent — as I slid down in my seat and pretended to look at my phone, hoping it wouldn't occur to any of them I might be wearing the strange, exotic garment they were all gossiping about. It wasn't that their tone was antagonistic or insensitive; just uncontrollably curious — like virginal adolescents talking about sex during a sleepover. And as a lifelong Mormon, I had grown fairly used to hearing my religion talked about that way.

This was how much of the political class was treating Romney's religion at the start of 2012: too awkward to discuss in an open forum, yet too tantalizing to ignore altogether. Questions permeated hushed conversations and private e-mail chains: Does Romney really believe he will get his own planet when he dies? Does he baptize dead Jews in his temples?

And as one prominent journalist at Newsweek quietly asked a colleague in the run-up to the Republican primaries, "Would he actually wear that Mormon underwear in the White House?"

If Mitt Romney has one lasting political legacy, I think it will be that next time a Mormon runs for president, that question likely won't be asked.

As Romney's expansive campaign headquarters collapses into a pile of cardboard boxes in Boston, his aides and supporters are beginning to mull what place their failed campaign will have in the history books. And many have determined that Romney's political career may be remembered most for the role it played in mainstreaming a large minority religion, despite a concerted, strategic effort to avoid the topic altogether — something I witnessed with a front-row seat.

A couple days after the election, I spoke to Robert O'Brien, a campaign foreign policy advisor and avowed Romney loyalist. We'd spoken several times over the course of the campaign, and his surrogacy had always been marked by a sort of religious devotion to the candidate, and an undying faith that he was the man meant to save America from ruin.

Suffice it to say, he was crushed by the loss.

"I couldn't sleep on Tuesday night, which is unusual because usually I can sleep through anything," he told me from his office in Los Angeles. "I stayed up late and made a to-do list with like 80 things. I figured that was the best therapy."

He also began considering his friend's legacy, and as a Mormon who converted from Catholicism in his early twenties, O'Brien saw historical parallels between his current and former churches.

"I always thought Mitt Romney would be Al Smith," O'Brien said, referring to the first Catholic presidential nominee, who lost in a landslide to Herbert Hoover. "Now I think he's going to be Al Smith and JFK rolled into one person. Even though we didn't win the way JFK did, to come within a couple points of the presidency, I think makes a lasting impact on the faith... It's going to be a non-event next time a Mormon runs."

For a Mormon journalist who'd spent much of the past year examining the religious life of a candidate and coreligionist, his assessment was vaguely troubling. Was he saying editors won't be knocking down my door when Mia Love throws her hat in the ring in 2024?

But after a year of crisscrossing the country with Romney — pestering his campaign for answers about his faith, and writing countless Mormonism-for-dummies primers along the way — I couldn't deny that Romney's career had provided a national education on his young, American-born faith.

And if my experience was any guide, it's an education the country won't be unlearning anytime soon.

Even as his campaign turned him into the world's most famous member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Romney spent much of 2012 publicly evading the subject of his faith.

In speeches, he conducted all manner of rhetorical gymnastics to avoid uttering the word "Mormon." In interviews, he quickly changed the subject every time the topic came up. And to his staff, his instruction was to dodge and deflect all questions regarding his religious beliefs.

He regularly employed variations of the declaration, "I'm not running for pastor-in-chief."

His reluctance to engage the Mormon question was rooted, his aides privately told me, in a bitter 2008 Republican primary. Back then, Romney was trying to outflank John McCain and Rudy Giuliani on the right by presenting himself as a sort of culture warrior — hoping his staunch, conservative values would attract the party's religious base.

But as his staff and family fanned out across Iowa to win over Evangelical voters in the fall of 2007, they were met with rank anti-Mormonism. Local ministers preached sermons against "the Mormon cult" on Sundays, Christian voters routinely confronted the Romneys with Bible verses during retail politics stops, and some people even refused to shake hands with Romney's former Lt. Governor Kerry Healey because they thought she was Mormon.

Romney's first instinct was to try to persuade the religious right that Mormonism was just another Christian sect. He answered complicated theological questions on local talk radio, and delivered a major address at the George Bush Presidential Library titled "Faith in America," designed to emphasize the "common creeds" his church shared with Protestants.

But the more he tried to educate conservative Christians about his religion, the more intense the pushback became. And for the candidate's family, the rejection was deeply disheartening.

On the day after Thanksgiving in 2007, Tagg Romney phoned a longtime family friend, who asked how the effort was going in Iowa.

"It's brutal," the friend recalled a dispirited Tagg responding. "It's just brutal."

When Romney eventually lost Iowa in 2008, many in the Romney clan took it as a repudiation of their religion. And when he gathered the family together in the living room a few years later to discuss the possibility of another run, the wound was still too fresh for some of them, according to a family friend. More than one of his sons raised the concern that another candidacy would result in their faith being dragged through the mud again.

Mitt took their worries seriously, but the team of political strategists he had assembled insisted they could pull off a win without talking religion. The 2012 battle plan would be to present Romney as a stalwart — if one-dimensional — figure who understood business and could fix the economy by sheer force of will. No culture war, no big religion speeches, and certainly no engaging the press as they pursued the inevitable "Mormon angle."

That's where I came in. I joined the campaign's traveling press corps for BuzzFeed just before the New Hampshire primary in January, and I quickly found that my expertise in Romney's religion posed a distinct advantage — not in access or sourcing, necessarily, but in understanding the elusive candidate as an actual person.

When the "mommy wars" of the early spring shone a spotlight on Ann Romney's decision to stay home and raise her kids, I saw classic Mormon gender roles at play. And when critics raised questions about Mitt's participation in a church that barred black men from the priesthood until 1978, I innately understood the conflicted, sometimes tortured, position many devout Mormons found themselves in at that time. As a lifelong Latter-day Saint who grew up in the relatively close-knit Massachusetts Mormon community that Romney once led, I felt I had a unique window into the beliefs and experiences that defined an almost undefinable man.

And that, apparently, left the campaign deeply unsettled.

Multiple people in Romney's orbit — both inside the campaign and out — would later tell me that Boston tried to keep me at arm's length for a long time because they worried my knowledge of the candidate's faith would bait them into a conversation they were dead set against having.

"The campaign really doesn't like the religion stuff being out there, so that's always a concern in dealing with you," one adviser told me, bluntly.

At some level, I could understand their paranoia. I was fluent in a language that their candidate spoke without meaning to, and one that they would never understand. In their view, every seemingly innocuous question I asked had a "gotcha" lurking behind it, and even their most mundane answers might inadvertently signal, to me, greater meaning.

There was little effort to mask this concern as they dealt with me.

Whenever I managed to work the subject of Mormonism into the conversation while chatting with senior strategist Stuart Stevens, the operative's philosophizing and movie-quoting would abruptly give way to a virtual stupor, as he stared at the ground for several seconds in silence before finally shrugging his shoulders. Meanwhile, my Mormon-themed email inquiries to campaign headquarters were almost universally met with the same curt reply, "Ask the church."

(Interestingly enough, whenever I did ask the church — which spent the year working feverishly to assert political neutrality — I noticed a similar discomfort on their part in discussing Romney. The church's public affairs department, I eventually learned, had a policy of never mentioning Romney by name while talking to reporters, referring only to an ambiguous "presidential candidate.")

It was a credit, perhaps, to the campaign's message discipline that in my entire year of covering the election, I never got a single on-the-record answer to a question about Romney's faith.

But the push and pull often left me feeling conflicted. As a Mormon, I intuitively understood Romney's desire to paper over our religion's eccentricities, and disappear the darker chapters of our church's history. The Latter-day Saint longing to feel normal is practically genetic, and I sympathized with the candidate's practiced avoidance of uncomfortable questions. It was a habit I'd formed as an insecure adolescent — squirming in my cafeteria chair as friends asked me about polygamy — and a reflex I'd worked to get over when I was a Mormon missionary.

But as a journalist, I was now the one asking those uncomfortable questions. And as much as I wanted to believe Romney's aides when they insisted religion should have "no part in this election," I knew that couldn't be true. My entire worldview had been colored by my faith; was I really supposed to believe the same wasn't true of Romney?

Besides, there was plenty of evidence that Mormonism remained a very real part of his candidacy.

While Romney's senior staff was composed largely of secular east coast strategists, his campaign offices in Boston were stocked with young, Mormon mini-Mitts, sporting impeccably ironed dress shirts and eager smiles as they filled various junior positions and internships. Some were taking time off from BYU to work for the campaign, others had recently returned from missions, and they quickly gained a reputation among the rest of the staff for bringing an almost baffling level of earnestness to the often cynical work of presidential politics.

The candidate himself also went to extraordinary lengths to observe the practices of his faith while on the campaign trail. Aides said he prayed daily, and was often spotted in moments of privacy — sitting alone on his campaign charter jet, for instance — with his head bowed, and his hands clenched in supplication. He would often take free moments to read the Book of Mormon or Bible on his iPad, and even on the longest, most grueling days, he never took a sip of coffee, which is forbidden by the church.

Reporters in his traveling press corps often wondered why, even as the general election kicked into full gear, Romney insisted on dropping off the campaign trail on Sundays, opting to spend the day with family in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire or La Jolla, California. Some speculated that it was a symptom of his distaste for campaigning, but one aide told me his motives were mostly religious. Even when he was obligated to travel, he made efforts to find a Mormon Sacrament meeting nearby. He also abided by the other Sabbath-related bylaws, abstaining from dining out and and shopping on Sundays.

"He actually follows all those rules," the aide told me. "It's hard to explain to [press] that, no, he's not going to eat out on Sunday, or anything else."

Of course, reporters likely would have respected a simple explanation of the candidate's Sabbath-day observance. But if the Romney campaign had its own set of political commandments by which it lived, one of the most important was, "Thou shalt not discuss the boss's religion."

I often found myself watching Romney bound up the steps of his campaign plane on some midwestern tarmac, marveling at his religious stamina. My spirituality had, regrettably, faded amid the frenetic schedule of the campaign trail. My prayers had become shorter and more utilitarian — Please help me to stay awake during this stump speech — and while I'd managed to successfully eschew coffee, I became reliant on 5-Hour Energy capsules, an only slightly-less-sinful substitute.

But even as I allowed Romney's righteousness to inflict a measure of religious guilt on me, I remained uncertain of whether he even knew that a fellow Mormon was lurking in the back of his plane. Romney wasn't the kind of candidate to hang out with his traveling press corps, and his distance often gave him a sort of televised quality. Even from 50 feet away, he seemed more pixels-and-plasma than flesh-and-blood.

I sometimes thought about how I might bring up our shared religion if I had the chance. Name-drop our alma matter, perhaps? (We both went to Brigham Young University.) Mention a mutual acquaintance in Belmont?

The opportunity never arrived — BuzzFeed, alas, was not among the outlets to score a rare sit-down interview with the candidate — but I did once get the chance to mention it to his wife, Ann.

It was during the Republican primary in Puerto Rico, and Romney had just wrapped up a campaign stop in a suburban plaza. Afterward, a small number of reporters gathered around Mrs. Romney at the rope line, and listened as she praised the raucous mega-rally we had attended the night before.

"It was amazing!" she exclaimed. "Though I couldn't understand anything they were saying. Do any of you speak Spanish?"

A few of the reporters shook their heads, before one of them volunteered, "McKay does."

It was true; I'd become fluent while serving as a Mormon missionary in the Latino neighborhoods of Dallas a few years earlier. It would have been so easy to tell her that as she turned to face me, to let her know that at least one member of her husband's traveling press corps understood this crucial chunk of their lives. But for some reason, I couldn't.

Instead, I lamely muttered something to the effect of, "Yeah, I speak," and let the conversation roll on without me.

Maybe it was because I didn't want my colleagues in the press to think I was using my religion to curry favor. Or maybe I was worried that establishing that link would muddy the waters of the adversarial relationship I was supposed to have with the candidate.

But I think the real reason I hesitated was more simple: I didn't want to feel different.

Around August, something began to change in the way the campaign dealt with the Mormon issue. Romney's press pool was invited to start attending church with him on Sundays. Surrogates were instructed to cooperate with cable-news segments about the candidate's faith. And in a move that initially shocked much of the political class — myself included — an entire block of programming on the final night of the Republican National Convention was devoted to testimonials from Romney's fellow Mormons.

Yes, the stories that were shared dealt more with Mitt's personal compassion than any specific tenets of his religion. But for a faith that had spent the better part of 180 years fighting to gain acceptance into mainstream American society, that night — which also featured an invocational prayer by a longtime Mormon church leader in Massachusetts — will be remembered as an historic one.

At one point, as a Belmont Mormon stood on stage recounting stories of Bishop Romney, I received a text message from my dad, who I think spoke for a lot of Latter-day Saints: "This is surreal."

According to aides, Romney had recognized the historic nature of his nomination as they planned the convention, and it was he who'd insisted that Mormonism be made part of the biographical story the campaign was trying to tell.

Romney never became fully comfortable talking about his Mormonism in public, but the convention seemed to relieve a sort of tension — shrinking his faith from an elephant in the room down to a bite-sized bit of campaign trivia.

As the campaign moved into the general election stage, Republicans remained on guard, as some worried that a desperate Obama campaign might sic its surrogates on the Republican's faith. (I heard the same concern from a number of Mormons.)

One RNC official told me they were prepared to release opposition research dealing with polygamy in Obama's family tree — including passages from a little-noticed memoir by the president's half-sister Auma — if the left tried to make hay of historical Mormon polygamy. But Chicago held its fire, and the issue never surfaced.

On the right, the long-feared Evangelical backlash to Romney's faith never materialized, and there were signs that the religious right was finally accepting conservative Mormons into the fold. In one particularly potent gesture, Billy Graham removed Mormonism from a list of "cults" on his website. That may seem like a low bar to clear, but on election day, Romney ended up winning a larger portion of white evangelicals than John McCain did in 2008.

"This showed that having a common faith was not a litmus test," Mark Demoss, an evangelical adviser to Romney, told the Washington Post after the election. He added that it was "something to feel good about, and there's not a lot to feel good about."

Meanwhile, as grassroots Mormon voters mobilized, some in the conservative movement began to see a real upside to keeping them engaged. The disastrous meltdown of the Romney campaign's get-out-the-vote effort may have masked the fact that the Republican Party reported a substantial uptick in voter contacts over other recent presidential campaigns. Skeptics have claimed the numbers were juiced by counting messages left on answering machines.

But within elite GOP circles, speculation abounded that it was the Mormons, with their missionary zeal, who were driving the numbers upward.

"Bush had his evangelicals, McCain had the veterans who would do anything for him," said one strategist involved in the party's GOTV efforts. "In terms of a base constituency who goes and makes phone call for eight hours for Mitt Romney? It's Mormons."

The strategist added that, based on anecdotal evidence, Mitt's Mormon army was exceptionally good at canvassing.

"If you're someone who's willing to walk around Temple Square and try to talk to people in Estonian, your level of skill in cold calls is probably above average," the strategist told me.

As we neared election day, it became increasingly clear to me that Mormonism was being woven into the social fabric of the political class. Pool reporters began to see trips to church with Romney less as a tantalizing peek into the candidate's strange religion, and more in the way Mormons sometimes view it: a dull chore to be fulfilled out of obligation.

And even some Republican donors — who had long viewed Romney's religion as little more than a line to factor into the balance sheet as they determined how much to give to his campaign — were now becoming fiercely defensive of the faith.

One Romney friend told me about flying cross country on a private jet with a group of wealthy conservatives after an east coast fundraiser, and listening as the candidate's religion came up.

"Mitt's a good guy, a smart guy, but I can't believe how he believes this Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon stuff," one of the donors said, offhandedly.

The jet's owner, a Catholic businessman with no ties to the Mormon Church beyond Romney, became indignant.

"There's no difference between Joseph Smith receiving the Book of Mormon, and Moses going up to Mount Sinai and talking to a burning bush," the jet owner argued.

When the first man half-heartedly disagreed, the owner proceeded.

"What's the difference?" he demanded. "Mitt Romney's a smarter guy than you are, maybe he knows something we don't."

Romney's friend was amazed.

"This was the elite of America, and that conversation was taking place. It was almost surreal," he said. "I mean, that guy was not converting to Mormonism. But what it tells you is that Mitt Romney, because of his example and who he is, has given people a different appreciation for Mormons."

Of course, the rising relevance that Mormonism has enjoyed in 2012 cuts both ways for the church, which now faces the task of disentangling its public image from polarizing Republican politics.

I'm not sufficiently well-acquainted with presidential history to judge the validity of the Al Smith comparisons Romney's supporters are now tossing around. But to determine whether his candidacy got the country more comfortable with the idea of a Mormon president, there's one clear bellwether.

Toward the end of the election, I was sitting on another dark campaign press bus in another battleground state, when a correspondent flopped into the seat behind me and began making casual conversation. His topic of choice: Mormon underwear.

"So, do you wear them?" he asked at one point.

"What do they look like?" he inquired at another.

The questions were generally similar to the ones that had been naughtily whispered among the press corps nine months earlier, but this time the tone was entirely different. The reporter was speaking in full voice, gliding through the conversation with the same nonchalance he exhibited in his assessment of the pulled pork sandwiches we had just eaten for dinner. Romney's underwear — and the faith it symbolized — was no longer considered taboo.

As the bus started up, and began rolling away from the site of the rally, the correspondent remarked, "I saw some pictures of the underwear online. They didn't seem very weird to me."

The poster of this thread started off the bat whining about Mormoms.

What did Greyfoxx actually say in the first post?

1. The Romney candidacy was the mormon church's most ambitious bid for legitimacy with Christian America.

Nothing objectionable there. An accurate statement.

2. This article by a temple mormon attempts to whitewash the sect and its anti-Christian doctrines and history as "just another Christian" religion while portraying Romney as a paragon of religious virtue who couldn't possibly have been the driving force of the vicious primary campaigns in '08 and '12. Rewriting history is a much-used tool of mormonism. Rewriting Romney as a hero doesn't wash for those of us who watched him destroy good men in his quest for power.

Yes, McKay Coppins, a temple Mormon, tried to portray Mormons as just another "version" of Christianity -- without even bothering to say that Mormons deem Christians as apostates, "corrupt," false, part of a dead church, and ones who embrace 100% "abominable creeds."

"Whining" has to do with tone issues...and Greyfoxx' claims to Lds leadership being PR-ambitious & historically revisionistic, and to Coppins as an author as engagine in the same whitewashing is spot-on...no whining detected.

Of course, if simply stating something "negative" = whining, then you're negative comment about greyfoxx39 would be "whining" -- by your own definition. If that's case, stop whining.

Here's something you can REALLY whine about, fledermaus:

Thursday, November 15, 2012 3:29:00 PM · 225 of 226
Jim Robinson to KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle

Any of the other Republicans running in the primaries would have defeated the corrupt Marxist usurper Obama in a landslide while Romney was a sure loser (well, anyone but Ron Paul). How did I know this? Because Romney was the only one of the Republicans running who had a solid history and record of ALL of the below:

Pushed for and installed and still brags today about his very own socialist healthcare system, just like Obama.
Bragged about loving mandates against the people, just like Obama.
Bragged about being pro-~~choice~~ abortion for at least three decades of his adult life, just like Obama.
Stated that abortion should be legal and safe in America, just like Obama.
Stated that Roe v Wade is settled law and should preserved and sustained as the law of the land, just like Obama.
Managed to bring about taxpayer funded abortion within his jurisdiction, even Obama couldn't get that done--until he copied RomneyCare.
Bragged about being better for "gay rights" than Ted Kennedy. Even Obama didn't go that far.
Stated that homosexuals should be allowed in the Scouts, just like Obama.
Stated that homosexuals should be allowed in the military, just like Obama.
Managed to bring about same sex marriage within his jurisdiction, even Obama and the Democrats couldn't get that done--until other states started following suit to Romney's Massachusetts.
Bragged about being for gun control, just like Obama.
Stated that the planet is warming and that man is the cause and the government will eventually have to control it, just like Obama.
Agreed with Obama that the nearly trillion dollar stimulus package was good, was necessary, and more will be probably needed.
Stated that timelines for ending wars should be developed and telegraphed to our enemies, just like Obama.
Was the only Republican running for whom "conservatism" was not his first or natural language. Never did get competently versed in nor was he able to believably articulate the conservative message.
Flip flopped on ALL major issues from his natural liberal positions to obviously false conservative once he decided to run for the presidency as a Republican.
Had absolutely zero record of actual conservative accomplishments to his name while in government, just like Obama.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2959638/posts?page=225#225

The first 50 posts are full of invective bigotry

I just reviewed the first 50 posts...

On one Svcw reference (#47) the Mormonism not being Christianity...as if that was some surprising comment; since Mormons regard Christians as "apostates" -- will you be consistent & start complaining how Salt Lake City insults worldwide Christianity?

AMPU (post #24) said Romney's faith alienated some voters. Nothing controversial there.

Syncro (post #23) said Joseph Smith hated Christians & that God wasn't involved in the Book of Mormon. What? That didn't comport to your "all 'sacred' books are to be 'sacred" standard?

There were some references to Mormonism being a "cult," to Mormonism being "weird" (with documented links), and secretive (with documented links)...to Romney and other temple Lds thinking of themselves as a "god in embryo"

And then I posted (#29) documented official statements -- insulting "invective" statements made by Mormon leadership vs. Christians.

If anything, the Lds leadership jumpstarted its "invective bigotry" vs. worldwide Christianity...and hasn't let up...

And you? You haven't made your case of accusatory "bigotry"...other than you are apparently intolerant of anybody who critiques Mormonism.

So how do you escape the "bigotry" charge? Aren't you intolerant of a LOT of religious expressions on this thread?

There is critique and there is hateful bigotry.

Speaking of "hateful bigotry", have a helping of the bigotry of mormon leaders all the way up to 1958.

----------------------------------------------

"Christians— those poor, miserable priests brother Brigham was speaking about—some of them are the biggest whoremasters there are on the earth, and at the same time preaching righteousness to the children of men. The poor devils, they could not get up here and preach an oral discourse, to save themselves from hell; they are preaching their fathers' sermons —preaching sermons that were written a hundred years before they were born. ...You may get a Methodist priest to pour water on you, or sprinkle it on you, and baptize you face foremost, or lay you down the other way, and whatever mode you please, and you will be damned with your priest.

- Apostle Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, v. 5, p. 89

Prophet John Taylor (1808 - 1887):

"Christianity...is a perfect pack of nonsense...the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the Christianity of the nineteenth century."

- Prophet John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, v. 6, p. 167

"Where shall we look for the true order or authority of God? It cannot be found in any nation of Christendom."

- Prophet John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, v. 10, p. 127

"What! Are Christians ignorant? Yes, as ignorant of the things of God as the brute beast."

- Prophet John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, v. 13, p. 225

"What does the Christian world know about God? Nothing... Why so far as the things of God are concerned, they are the veriest fools; they know neither God nor the things of God."

- Prophet John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, v. 13, p. 225

Apostle Orson Pratt (1811 - 1881):

"Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the ‘whore of Babylon' whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. Any person who shall be so corrupt as to receive a holy ordinance of the Gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent."

- Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, p. 255

"But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of Christian Churches ... But there has been a long apostasy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance"

- Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, v. 18, p. 172

“This class of men, calling themselves Christian, uniting with the various forms of the pagan religion, adopting many of their ceremonies and institutions, became very popular, and finally some of the pagans embraced Christianity and were placed, as it were, upon the throne, and what they termed Christianity became very popular indeed. How long has this order of things existed, this dreadful apostacy, this class of people that pronounced themselves Zion, or Christians, without any of the characteristics of Zion? It has existed for some sixteen or seventeen centuries. It has spread itself and grown and gone into the four quarters of the earth. It is the great ecclesiastical power that is spoken of by the revelator John, and called by him the most corrupt and most wicked of all the powers of the earth, under the name of spiritual Babylon, or in other words Babel, which signifies confusion. This great and corrupt power is also represented by John as presenting a golden cup to the nations, full of all manner of filthiness and abominations.”

- Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, v. 14, p. 346

“But as there has been no Christian Church on the earth for a great many centuries past, until the present century, the people have lost sight of the pattern that God has given according to which the Christian Church should be established, and they have denominated a great variety of people Christian Churches, because they profess to be. They say, "We have built chapels unto the name of the Lord; we call our Churches Christian Churches, they are called the Church of Christ, St. John's Church, St. Paul's Church, St. Peter's Church, and after others of the ancient Apostles;" and one who had never studied the pattern which God has given of the Christian Church would almost really believe that they are Christian Churches. But there has been a long apostacy, during which the nations have been cursed with apostate churches in great abundance, and they are represented in the revelations of St. John as a woman sitting upon a scarlet colored beast, having a golden cup in her hand, full of filthiness and abominations, full of the wine of the wrath of her fornication; that in her forehead there was a name written—"Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots." This kind of a church has existed in great abundance, for as John the Revelator says, she was to have her dominion upon many waters, and she was to make all nations drunken with the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”

- Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, v. 18, p. 172

“Q. After the Church of Christ fled from earth to heaven, what was left? A. A set of wicked Apostates, murderers, and idolaters, who, after having made war with the saints, and overcome them, and destroyed them out of the earth, were left to follow the wicked imaginations of their own corrupt hearts, and to build up churches by human authority, and to follow after the cunning craftiness of uninspired men; having no Apostle, Prophet, or Revelator to inquire of God for them: and thus, because of wickedness, the Church, and Priesthood, and gifts, and ordinances and blessings of the everlasting Gospel, were taken from the earth, and reserved in heaven until the fulness of times, when it was predicted that they should again be restored among men to continue until the end should come.”

- Apostle Orson Pratt, The Seer, Chapter 16, p. 205

Prophet Wilford Woodruff (1807 - 1898):

"The Gospel of modern Christendom shuts up the Lord, and stops all communication with Him. I want nothing to do with such a Gospel, I would rather prefer the Gospel of the dark ages, so called"

- Prophet Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses, v. 2, p. 196

Apostle George Q. Cannon (1827 - 1901):

"After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christendom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common origin. They all belong to Babylon."

- Apostle George Q. Cannon, Gospel Truth, p. 324

Believers in the doctrines of modern Christendom will reap damnation to their souls.”

- Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, see pp. 45-46
--------------

"...the Book of Mormon remains secure, unchanged and unchangeable, ...But with the Bible it was not and is not so....it was once in the sole and exclusive care and custody of an abominable organization [Christianity], founded by the devil himself, likened prophetically unto a great whore, whose great aim and purpose was to destroy the souls of men in the name of religion. In these hands it ceased to be the book it once was."

- Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, The Joseph Smith Translation, pp. 12, 13
---------------

Brother Taylor has just said that the religions of the day were hatched in hell. The eggs were laid in hell, hatched on its borders, and then kicked on to the earth."

- Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 6, p. 176
---------------

"With a regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world."

- Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 8, p. 199
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"The Christian world, so-called, are heathens as to the knowledge of the salvation of God"

- Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 8, p. 171

What the heck do any of those facts have to do with Mormons

Ya wanna know the linkages?

How does his Mormonism relate to who Mitt is?

If people want to understand how Mormonism's approach to the socio-political realm, they may want to read these two articles (the first written by a Mormon; the second by an ex-Mormon):

* Mitt Romney mirrors his Mormon church [Lds writer says Romney flip-flops 'cause Lds church has/does]
* Who is Mitt Romney? [Ex-Lds author reveals why Mitt's wishy-washy culture waffles & flip-flops]

In the first linked article above, Mormon Neal Chandler highlights how in the 19th century...
* Mormons forced communism upon its people -- and then not (United Order)
* Adhered to theocracies under its first two "prophets" -- and then slowly drew back
* Said polygamy was a condition of the highest degree of glory -- and then not
* Encourage its Utah Territory voters to be Democrats -- and then told whole groups of people wholesale to "balance it out" as Republicans as statehood approached
* Excluded blacks -- and then late in the 20th century not

From the second article linked above: What makes Mitt the kind of person he is — ruthlessly opportunistic, dishonest, insincere, willing to say anything for advantage, lacking in conscience, preoccupied with appearance, etc., on the one hand, yet squeaky clean, family-oriented, disciplined, boring, and predictable, on the other? My new e-book, A Mormon Story, sheds light on the culture that produced Mitt Romney.

Good question. (It's one I've raised -- and answered numerous times on various FR threads)

The answer, says this ex-Mormon in the book referenced above is: (From the article): The book reveals a value system that ultimately has no absolutes, other than the need to conform to deep-seated, highly-controlling authoritarianism that pervades LDS culture. That culture emphasizes a Mormon tradition known as "eternal progression" — undoctrinal spiritual evolution in which even God is changing. It also emphasizes the notion that the latest words of governing church leaders trump the Word of God found in the scriptures (including LDS scripture).

IOW, EVERYTHING in Mormonism -- from its theology to its social practices -- is up for potential change at the whim of the Mormon god. Bottom-line: There is no bottom-line in Mormonism! There is no bedrock doctrine that cannot be replaced!

So there's not even any Ultimate Authority in Mormonism!

Expect then this same lack of constancy in a Romney White House. Wishy washy. Flip flopper. Waffler. Gumby.

Take the plank out of your eye dear. You are like the pharisees that Jesus preached about.

Holly, I made a chart one time of 10 disparaging things that we commonly see on these Mormon threads. Your comment relates to the second item I put on that chart:

THOU SHALT & THOU SHALT NOT RULES OF DISPARAGERS & DISRUPTORS [What Poster is Really Saying]	Repackaged Framing by DPs to Hide REAL message...	Basic problem, approach, and/or sin that disparaging posters need to address/reprent of...	Basic problem, approach, and/or sin that disparaging posters need to address/reprent of...	If disparaging posters were consistent, we would see them...
RULE #2: THOU SHALT FOLLOW MY PERFECT SPIRITUAL VISION & REMOVE THINE BEAMS & LOGS IN THINE OWN EYE	Tries to come across as Pseudo-'Biblical': Thou shalt take thy beam/log out from thine own eye. [The 'Thou Shalt Not' version of this is: "Thou shalt not judge."]	(a) Assumes, any "beams" in their own eyes have been removed, allowing them to have the perfect spiritual vision to castigate other posters. Having supposedly assessed the situation with this perfect spiritual vision, "obviously" the ones being disparaged need to join their "perfect vision club" so that all posters can be on the same "page"; (b) This is self-refuting: If a person cannot 'judge' someone else, then what business is it for a DP to come in and 'judge' another poster?	(c) Epic failure re: lack of Biblical understanding re: how we as Christians can righteously judge, having the "mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2) -- and that this is simply called "discernment"...(d) This also becomes quite "rich" if the message is NOT to "judge" -- all as they engage in #3...judging others' inward motives, temperaments and dispositions!	Well, under (c) above -- if such discernment ("judgment") wasn't exercised, EVERYTHING in the world would be tolerated and even parents would have no basis for passing on moral direction to their children! Even commenting negatively on a couple living together as counsel for their own kids would be dismissed as "judgmental"

You see...2(a) above -- Assumes, any "beams" in their own eyes have been removed, allowing them to have the perfect spiritual vision to castigate other posters becomes cyclically problematic.

How so...You tell Elz to remove his eye-plank, which assumes you have the perfect vision to see some "plank" there. Then I come along & ask how your vision is...

Then another comes along and asks, "Well, what's so perfect about your vision to question Holly's vision?"

And then it just recycles from there, with no end in "sight" (pun not intended)

What most refuse to acknowledge is that it was unlikely that ANYBODY could have beaten the voter fraud planned and perpetrated by the Obama machine. They seem to prefer pointing fingers, blaming Romney and blathering on about Patraeus' sex life.

Col Allen West; "I don't want to see America become like Zimbabwe where people don’t trust their electoral process. If we cannot trust the integrity of the voting system then we are no longer a free republic".

Col West has opened the door.

We must fight election fraud.

It falls on ‘We the People’.

Silence is consent

There’s overwhelming evidence of fraud.- Here

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MITT ROMNEY TWEETS ABOUT ELECTION FRAUD:

>MITT ROMNEY in 2012! ‏@PlanetRomney #tcot The Competent Conservative: Elections Have Not Yet Been Certified. Here’s What You Can Do: - Here

Excerpt from Mitt Romney's reference:

These elections are NOT certified yet. The only way to get this investigated, much less recounted or overturned, is through the Secretary of State of each of the five key states: Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. EVEN IF YOU ARE IN ANOTHER STATE you can help. But it won’t do any good to dilute our effort to challenge California or Michigan or other states. Until a major group gets involved to do more, here is the plan: Contact the Secretary of State of the state in question. See contact information below...

Read the rest- Here

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SARAH PALIN speaks out on Twitter about massive Obama machine voter fraud:

>Sarah Palin News ‏@SarahPalinLinks Between suppression of the military vote and voter fraud, Obama stole another election. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/46302 …DEMAND A RECOUNT! #VoterFraud

>Sarah Palin News ‏@SarahPalinLinks People need to stop pointing fingers within the GOP and investigate the Dems' massive voter fraud and suppression of the military vote.

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The website,'Barack Obama Vote Fraud 2012' is keeping a running account of cases of voter fraud and what to do about it:

(Astonishing!) > Visit the site- Here
Obama Voter Fraud on FaceBook- Here

Sign this petition- Here

WND List of voter fraud reports Here
ATLAS SHRUGS voter fraud list. Atlas Shrugs has a list but cannot copy link. Contains video of eyewitness pollwatcher who verifies busload of Somalians. Google 'Atlas Shrugs voter fraud list'

Is There Enough Evidence of Voter Fraud To Merit a Recount? If you wish to add your voice, click here and sign the petition for a recount Here -

< Hannity and Col Allan West slam voter fraud Nov 12- Here

Photo of SOMALIANS brought to Ohio voting stations by the busload, 95% of whom did not speak English, and told to vote for Obama, straight Dem ticket- Here

'Human Events', report pollwatcher eyewitness to busload of Somalians at Ohio poll, spoke no English, told to vote Obama Here

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Must watch videos!

VIDEO-- Programmer Testifies About Rigging Elections With Vote Counting- Here

VIDEO- Illegal Aliens Caught Voting and Stealing Elections In Florida In Vast Numbers- Here

VIDEO- MICHAEL SAVAGE: How Obama fixed the 2012 election- Here

VIDEO- Massive voter fraud discovered in April- Here

VIDEO- Whistle blower speaks out about voter fraud- Here

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We can not wait for 2014 and 2016 to regroup and figure out new strategies. By then it will be too late. The Marxist/Muslim usurper will have completed his planned distruction of America. That's what people fail to understand.

We must act NOW.

Start with the election. If we let the Rats get away with this massive voter fraud, we're no better than a bananna republic.

We must keep digging and pounding him every day, in every way we can- phony birth certificate, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, his hidden life, records....

We are FReepers. We must fight!

Those who shrug and accept this atrocity without a fight are not worthy to be called Freepers!

Join us!! See thread, 'BARACK OBAMA FRAUD 2012- (MUST READ- MUST GO VIRAL!)' thread- Here

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