Why Mitt Romney's Mormonism ain't like Kennedy's Catholicism

Posted by Jan Frel at 3:21 PM on January 7, 2007.

I hadn't heard of Damon Linker until I came across this book, "Theocons" (excerpted on AlterNet), his insider account of how a bunch of Catholic theologans have blended with Bush's authoritarian project . He was a former editor of the magazine, First Things, and he's a damn good writer and lucid expert on the intersection of Christian theology and American government. His cover story on the problems posed by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormonism for The New Republic is an excellent read. I recommend it very much. Problem is of course that you need a subscription... so I've excerpted some bits of it for you to peruse.

Snip:

Within days of stepping down as governor of Massachusetts on January 4, Mitt Romney is expected to announce his candidacy for president. Shortly after that, Romney will almost certainly need to deliver a major speech about his Mormon faith--a speech in the mold of John F. Kennedy's 1960 address to the Baptist ministers of Houston, Texas, in which the candidate attempted to reassure voters that they had no reason to fear his Catholicism. Yet Romney's task will be much more complicated. Whereas Kennedy set voters' minds at ease by declaring in unambiguous terms that he considered the separation of church and state to be "absolute," Romney intends to run for president as the candidate of the religious right, which believes in blurring the distinction between politics and religion.

Romney thus needs to convince voters that they have nothing to fear from his Mormonism while simultaneously placing that faith at the core of his identity and his quest for the White House. This is a task that may very well prove impossible. Romney's strategy relies on the assumption that public suspicion of his Mormonism--a recent poll showed that 43 percent of Americans would never vote for a Mormon--is rooted in ignorance and that this suspicion will therefore diminish as voters learn more about his faith. It is far more likely, however, that as citizens educate themselves about the political implications of Mormon theology, concerns about the possibility of a Mormon president will actually increase. And these apprehensions will be extremely difficult to dispel--because they will be thoroughly justified.The religious right has been enormously successful at convincing journalists not to raise questions about the political implications of a candidate's religious beliefs. Analyzing the dangers of generic "religion" to the nation's political life is considered perfectly acceptable--indeed, it has become a cottage industry in recent years--but exploring the complicated interactions between politics and the theological outlooks of specific religious traditions supposedly smacks of bigotry.

Snip 2:

The Mormon "Articles of Faith" teach that, when Christ returns, he will reign "personally upon the earth" for 1,000 years, and LDS interpretations of a passage in Isaiah have led some to conclude that this rule will be directed from two locations--one in Jerusalem and the other in "Zion" (the United States). This belief has caused Mormons to view U.S. politics as a stage on which the ultimate divine drama is likely to play itself out, with a Mormon in the leading role. [Mormon church founder] Joseph Smith certainly thought so, which at least partially explains why he spent the final months of his life -- he was gunned down by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, 1844-- running for president of the United States.

Snip 3:

In the case of Mitt Romney, citizens have every reason to seek clarification about the character of his Mormonism. Does he believe, for example, that we are living through the "latter days" of human history, just prior to the second coming of Christ? And does he think that, when the Lord returns, he will rule over the world from the territory of the United States? Does Romney believe that the president of the Mormon Church is a genuine prophet of God? If so, how would he respond to a command from this prophet on matters of public policy? And, if his faith would require him to follow this hypothetical command, would it not be accurate to say that, under a President Romney, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints would truly be in charge of the country--with its leadership having final say on matters of right and wrong?One suspects that, if pressed in this way, Romney would seek to assure voters that he would never follow such a command if it conflicted in any way with his oath of office. How such a statement would square with his professed Mormon faith is far from clear, however. Under modern conditions, some religions--Protestantism, post-Vatican II Catholicism, Judaism--have spawned liberal traditions that treat faith primarily as a repository of moral wisdom instead of as a source of absolute truth. Other religions, by contrast, have tended to require believers to accept everything or nothing at all. Mormonism (like Islam, another faith founded in prophecy) is one of the latter, binary religions. When a Mormon stops accepting the binding truth of prophetic revelation, he effectively becomes a lapsed Mormon. At the beginning of his political career, that description seemed to fit Romney pretty well. In his failed bid to unseat Senator Edward Kennedy in 1994, Romney responded to questions about his faith by stating that he was not running "to be a spokesman for my church." In the same campaign, Romney also asserted that states should be free to decide whether to allow same-sex marriage, and he demonized Republican "extremists" for seeking to "force their beliefs on others." These remarks would be unusual for any devout Mormon, but they are especially noteworthy because Romney made them at a time when the LDS Church was actively working to ensure that Hawaii would not become the first state in the nation to--in the words of a church statement issued in February 1994--"give legal authorization or other official approval or support to marriages between persons of the same gender." Even on abortion--the issue that, more than any other, unites conservative Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons--Romney portrayed himself as a moderate as recently as 2002, claiming in his run for Massachusetts governor that he "would protect the current pro-choice status quo" in the state because "women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's."But the Mitt Romney currently contemplating a run for the White House is a very different candidate.

Seeking to serve as the standard-bearer for the religious right, he now staunchly opposes abortion and supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He claims, in short, to be a man of deep piety who wishes to increase the role of conservative religion in the nation's public life. Far from soft-pedaling his faith, as he once did, he now embraces it as central to his political strategy.A cynic would say that Romney has changed his positions in order to win the Republican nomination and that, in his heart, he's most likely a lukewarm believer in the doctrines of his church. In that case, non-Mormons may have nothing to fear from a Romney candidacy (though religious conservatives may have grounds for concern about how well he will represent their cause). But there is another possibility: Romney may have undergone an authentic religious rebirth during the last few years--a rebirth that has led him to embrace the fundamental tenets of his church more fully than ever before in his political career.

Tagged as: mormonism