Romney Won't Spill the Beans on His Mormon Faith

By Lawrence O'Donnell, AlterNet. Posted December 17, 2007.

After the Today Show used video clips of me talking (ranting, to some) about the racist history of the Church of Latter Day Saints as a lead-in to Matt Lauer's interview of Mitt Romney, I feel compelled to clarify the obvious: religious affiliation is not a good reason to vote for or against a candidate for president. I mean any religious affiliation, including Scientology (if that's a religion). I know at least one Scientologist who would be a better president than many of the current candidates. I might know more, but they tend to be a bit secretive about being Scientologists, so ...

I don't hate Mormons. Some of my best friends are Mormons. Well, okay, one of my best friends is Mormon. Or used to be. He's not sure anymore. He's glad he grew up Mormon, likes the values he learned, the respect for family, etc. He's just not sure about some of the crazy beliefs of the religion. He would like to distance himself from some of that stuff and still be a Mormon -- the way Rudy Giuliani can be pro-abortion and very fond of divorce and sequential marriage and still be, or at least call himself, a Catholic. But Mormonism isn't as flexible as Catholicism. It's a hook, line and sinker deal. You buy it all -- every word of the Book of Mormon and its supplement, the Book of Abraham -- or you're not a Mormon. My friend is a surgeon. He says the Mormon doctors he knows are like him. They have doubts about some things in the books and there are some things in the books that they simply can no longer believe. He can't imagine any Mormon who graduates from medical school or Harvard Business School like Mitt Romney thinking any other way. But if Romney were to admit to such doubts and reservations, the Church of Latter Day Saints would be forced to say he is no longer a Mormon. And a candidate for president without a religion ... well, that could only happen on The West Wing.

When I created the West Wing's Republican candidate for president played brilliantly by Alan Alda, I wanted for dramatic purposes to give him the worst problem I could think of. Sex with the interns being a bit dated, I chose to make him a closet atheist. When the press started to close in on him with questions about when he last went to church, he refused to answer. He said he would answer any question about government, "but if you have questions about religion, please, go to church." Mitt Romney has chosen a different course. He said: "Some question whether there are any questions regarding an aspiring candidate's religion that are appropriate. I believe there are. And I will answer them today." And then he left the podium without taking any questions.

The media thought this was a perfectly sensible approach. TV pundits of all stripes fell all over themselves to praise the speech. They gushed at how admirable it was for Romney to stand up for what he called "the faith of my fathers." The cable news networks seemed ready to cut straight to Romney inauguration coverage. No one thought to ask what is or was the faith of his fathers?

Romney felt politically forced to give the speech specifically because evangelical Christians seem to know a little too much about the faith of his fathers. Many evangelicals believe and have said publicly that Mormonism -- contrary to Romney's assertions -- is not a Christian religion but an abomination of Christianity. Here's a sampling of why: Mormons believe that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri; that Jews were the first people in America; that Indians descended from Jews and are a lost tribe of Israel; that Jesus came to America; that after the next coming of Christ (which will be the second or third, depending on how you count his trip to America), the world will be ruled for a thousand years from Jerusalem and Missouri; and to answer Mike Huckabee's now famous question, yes, they believe "Jesus and Lucifer were brothers, in the sense of both being spiritually begotten by the Father."

When Matt Lauer asked Romney the Huckabee question about Jesus and the devil being brothers, Romney refused to answer and handed the question off to the Church of Latter Day Saints. The Church issued a deceptively worded statement that most reporters incorrectly read as a denial of the brotherhood of Jesus and Satan. In fact, the Church could not and did not deny it. The Church did correctly point out that attackers (meaning critics) of Mormonism often use the brother bit. Critics also use the Church's 70 year delight in polygamy and sex with very young girls, which also happens to be true. Critics of Mormonism have plenty to work with without inventing anything.

See more stories tagged with: mitt romney, mormonism

Lawrence O'Donnell is executive producer of the "The West Wing," a frequent panelist on the "The McLaughlin Group" and

former Chief of Staff for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »