02/06/12
Why Mitt Romney Needs To Talk Openly About His Mormon Faith Randall Balmer
In the current presidential election campaign, many, if not most, Americans are expecting that Mitt Romney’s quest for the White House will be buffeted by questions about his religion. How to handle Romney’s Mormonism has proved especially vexing, both for the candidate and for the electorate. It’s worth considering exactly why that’s the case.The essential question, from the perspective of many voters, concerns the very nature of Mormonism, an upstart religion born in western New York in 1830 and persecuted for much of the nineteenth century. After Joseph Smith Jr. translated the golden tablets that he had excavated from a hillside near Palmyra, New York, and published the translations as the Book of Mormon, Smith began receiving revelations regarding temple endowment ceremonies, lifestyle (no alcohol or hot beverages, commonly misconstrued as a proscription against caffeine) and, most incendiary of all, polygamy.
Under pressure from the federal government, one of Smith’s successors as president of the church famously rescinded the practice of polygamy in 1890. But “gentiles” (the Mormon term for non-Mormons) have nonetheless continued to harbor suspicions—theological and social—about Mormonism. Many Americans doubt that Mormons, with their belief in the Book of Mormon as scripture and their exclusive baptismal rites, actually qualify as “Christians,” despite the prominence of “Jesus Christ” in the church’s logo. Even more off-putting is the Mormon penchant for secrecy. Many Americans, with their deep distrust of secrecy (witness the public outcry over the secret rites of Masonry in the nineteenth century), bristle at the fact that entry to Mormon temples is limited to Mormons in good standing. (It doesn’t help matters that Joseph Smith apparently modeled his temple endowment ceremonies on Masonic rites.)
There's no doubt that, to some extent, the voting public's interest in Mormonism is informed by prurience. But that's not to say it should be dismissed entirely. What ought to interest us about Romney’s faith are not the vagaries of Mormon theology, fascinating as they are, but how he understands that theology, how his faith informs the way he lives, his sense of responsibility toward others and how that might affect the way he governs.
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