Does Romney’s Mormonism matter? If so, why?

It is constantly repeated in news articles that a large number of voters reject Mitt Romney for president because he’s a Mormon. This datum is presented as a fact of the universe, requiring no further explanation. I have not seen a single journalist tell why Romney’s opponents find his being a Mormon objectionable, or tell what his opponents think would be the negative effect on the country of having a Mormon in the White House. I’m not saying that a Mormon presidency would not be harmful,—and personally I am bemused that any intelligent person could believe the charlatan Joseph Smith’s tale of finding gold plates buried in Elmira, New York containing the story of a family from the Kingdom of Judah in 600 B.C.who crossed the Arabian desert and sailed to America—but I’ve heard no one say what exactly the harm would be. Further, Romney in his political career has not touted his religion in any visible way and would probably continue in that mode as president. Also, Mormons seem a moral, industrious lot.

When people objected to John F. Kennedy over his Catholicism, an objective reason was given: as a Catholic he would be under the authority of the pope. This was not an eccentric or irrational concern. Protestant countries had fought religious wars for centuries to avoid coming under what they saw as the foreign authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Kennedy answered his critics, not be calling them bigoted, but by essentially declaring that his Catholic faith was not that important to him and that as president he would be guided by the U.S. Constitution, not by the Church. So the discussion about Kennedy’s Catholicism had specific, rational content, which has not been the case with Romney. He himself has remained silent on the subject, except to complain occasionally about the bigotry against him. Is it too much to expect to hear intelligent pro and con statements on whether having Mormon president would be bad for America?

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Jeremy G. writes:

I’ve talked recently with my traditionalist Christian friends about this very subject. For them, voting for Romney would be a legitimization of Mormonism, a faith which, unlike Catholocism, is not a Christian faith. They fear their stamp/vote of approval would allow Mormonism to spread and push many wayward Christians further away from the true faith.

LA replies:

Ok, there at last is an argument. It’s true that every U.S. president has been at least a nominal Christian, and the few whose Christianity was questionable, e.g. Jefferson and Lincoln, did not belong to any other religion. All our presidents have been at least culturally Christians. So the election of a Mormon would definitely represent a departure.

David B. writes:

I followed politics during the 1960s, and Mitt Romney’s father was a major figure in national politics for several years. The fact that George Romney was a Mormon was often mentioned, but I don’t remember it being said that a large number of voters would reject him because of this. Michigan Governor Romney was even the front-runner for the 1968 Republican nomination for a time. He had even been mentioned for the 1964 nomination as soon as he was elected Governor of Michigan in 1962.

Why is his son Mitt’s Mormonism seemingly a bigger issue in our modern “Tolerant” age than it was for George Romney 40 years earlier? My view is that the press brings it up because they don’t want ANY “conservative” Republican to win.

By the way, in some books about John F. Kennedy, it is said that JFK saw George Romney in 1963 as a stronger opponent more than any other Republican. He felt that Romney could get both the Rockefeller vote and the Goldwater vote in the South and West.

LA replies:

But it seems to me that George Romney’s 1968 candidacy was derailed by his “brainwashed” comment before it really got started. I assume that if he had become a serious candidate in the primaries leading up to the GOP convention his Mormonism would have become an issue. Or maybe not. Maybe the greater entry of active Christians into politics in recent decades has created an opposition to a Mormon president that would not have existed before.

George Romney got in trouble with the “brainwashed” remark in August ‘67, and that controversy overshadowed any possible controversy over his Mormonism. And he withdrew from the contest for the nomination in February ‘68, still early in the primary process. From Wikipedia:

On 31 August 1967, Governor Romney made a statement that ruined his chances for getting the nomination.[3] In a taped interview with Lou Gordon of WKBD-TV in Detroit, Romney stated, “When I came back from Viet Nam [in November 1965], I’d just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get.” He then shifted to opposing the war: “I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop Communist aggression in Southeast Asia,” he declared. Decrying the “tragic” conflict, he urged “a sound peace in South Vietnam at an early time.” Thus Romney disavowed the war and reversed himself from his earlier stated belief that the war was “morally right and necessary.” The connotations of brainwashing following the experiences of the American prisoners of war (highlighted by the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate) made Romney’s comments devastating to his status as the GOP front-runner. The topic of brainwashing quickly became newspaper editorial and television talk show fodder, with Romney bearing the brunt of the topical humor. Republican Congressman Robert Stafford of Vermont sounded a common concern: “If you’re running for the presidency,” he asserted, “you are supposed to have too much on the ball to be brainwashed.”[3] Romney announced on 18 November 1967, that he had “decided to fight for and win the Republican nomination and election to the Presidency of the United States.” He announced his withdrawal as a presidential candidate on 28 February 1968. At his party’s national convention in Miami Beach, Romney finished a weak sixth with only fifty votes on the first ballot (44 of Michigan’s 48, plus six from Utah).

A reader writes:

Romney has made substantive remarks, but no one listened. He tried to say that his faith has many points of agreement with the faith of many Americans, that it is about family and loyalty and trust and faith in God, and so forth. Pretty general, but you don’t expect him to go into the gold plates and the crossing of the Atlantic of some of the ancient Hebrews and the appearance of Christ to the New World and all that, do you?

We’re told many evangelicals can tolerate Giuliani’s pro-abortion, pro-gay rights stance, as well as his neglect of his children, public disrespect of his second wife Donna Hanover, the parading of his then-mistress Judith Nathan all over New York, trying to drive his wife and children from Gracie Mansion so that Judith could enjoy the perks of being first lady of the city, having his divorce lawyer publicly humilate Donna so as to force her out of Gracie Mansion, together with the children before the school year was even over, that all that’s all right with the evangelicals. But they draw the line at a Mormon???!!! Please. I am losing all respect for them.

LA replies:

But you don’t know that the same Christians who support Giuliani despite his bad personal and public record on religious/moral issues oppose Romney over his Mormonism. The question here is not the possible hypocrisy of some people, but the objective merits of the case. This conversation is occurring at VFR. I oppose Giuliani and most VFR readers oppose Giuliani. So Giuliani is not the issue. The issue is, does Romney’s Mormonism matter?

N. writes:

Here is a remarkably well thought out comment by Jonah Goldberg on this topic, “Their Religion Problem—and Ours”

Excerpt:

Since it seems we’re wading deep into the vortex of religion and politics, let me just throw one quick thought out: It depends. I think Hitchens’ point about Romney and the official racism of the Mormon Church has some merit, even if I don’t share his acidic attitude toward Mormonism or religion. I see nothing wrong with politely asking him about that.

But more to the point, it doesn’t matter nearly as much as it would if Romney was running as a “Mormon president.” Religion is relevant if politicians claim or telegraph that they will rely on their religion as a guide to their public policies. I don’t think we—meaning voters, journalists, political chatterers generally—need to be wild-eyed about this. People understand that your basic religious upbringing will inform your values and instincts toward certain policy questions. We live in a religiously informed culture and we know that you can be “religious” in outlook without being programmitcally doctrinal.

Then Goldberg writes this very interesting text later on:

As someone who subscribes to the view that liberalism is a secular religion, it is very frustrating that liberal politicians do not offer up a paper trail for people to scrutinize the way conservatives do. Liberalism has a dogma as rich and serious as conservatism, but you can’t go to a liberal politician and ask: Are you loyal to John Dewey? Richard Rorty? John Rawls? You can’t ask what their bible is because they are acolytes of the bookless faith of good deeds, the cult of do-goodery. So when they argue for keeping “religion” out of politics they are saying “keep your religion out of politics.”

LA replies:

N. was evidently being ironic about Jonah G.’s “remarkably well thought out” comments.

Mark N. writes:

I agree with you that many people feel they cannot vote for Mitt Romney because of his Mormonism. In fact, if it were not for his religion, I believe Romney would be, by far, the front runner in the Republican pack. However, the objection to Romney’s religion is not because he would be a bad President, or that a Mormon presidency would be a politically dangerous thing. The answer lies elsewhere.

Evangelical Christians have a hatred of Mormonism because they consider it to be at best a heresy, at worst a cult. What especially drives many of these Evangelicals crazy is the fact that the Mormons present themselves as a Christian religion, while holding to a theology that lacks many of the basic tenets of Christian orthodoxy. As a Catholic I agree with the Evangelicals that Mormonism is not a Christian religion, because Mormon beliefs clearly violate the ancient creeds held by orthodox Christians. This begs the question: “So what?”

The answer lies in the fact that if Romney were to become President, the status and power of his office would automatically give Mormonism a level of recognition, power and acceptance that it heretofore didn’t possess. Instead of being a marginalized religion centered in Utah, it would become mainstream. With this new found status the public would take a new and intensive interest in Mormonism, which would give it the power to draw more members from the unchurched, or even Christians from other denominations. This is what enrages, nay, scares the hell out of these Evangelicals.

Does that make “Bible believing” fundamentalist types bigots? Perhaps. As a Catholic I have been on the receiving end of Evangelical religious prejudice more than once. Speaking for myself, I believe many Mormon beliefs to be absurd or bizarre, but I love their hotels, and personally own three time shares with the Marriott Corporation. But I have my own prejudices, because there’s no way in hell I would vote for a Muslim. Now that’s a dangerous religion!

David B. continues:

Yes, George Romney sank in the polls after the “brainwashing” remark got wide attention. My point was that Romney received a lot of attention in the press after his election as Governor of Michigan in 1962. He was regularly written of as a potential President from that time. I just don’t remember his religion being stressed as a problem for him. Theodore H. White’s The Making of The President book for the 1964 election had Romney as a major player. White wrote that Romney was a Mormon in passing as I remember. He wrote that Romney was a man “who got things done.”

I am working from memory on White’s 1968 book, but I remember him writing that the some reporters liked Romney, but others were put off by the “moralism” of his speeches. White felt that George Romney was out of his depth in Presidential politics. Would George Romney’s being a Mormon have become a major issue if he had been an adept Presidential candidate and actually won the GOP nomination in 1968? I don’t believe it would have if Romney had appeared capable of handling the situation that existed in 1968.

Sage McLaughlin writes:

This is a good discussion, and it’s not one I’ve seen elsewhere—most of the commentary has been of the inside baseball, electoral astrology sort that tries to decide whether his Mormonism matters as a primary campaign issue. The reliably dim Kathryn Jean Lopez insists that Romney should deal with the issue by declaring that his religion doesn’t matter because no candidate’s religion matters—this is America, after all, and we all know that it’s a bedrock principle that a candidate’s religion isn’t supposed to matter in America, right?

Back here on Earth, though, it seems to me obvious that a candidate’s religion does matter, inasmuch as it tells you what he believes and what principles guide him morally. That’s why Giuliani’s defiant, cynical contempt for his own nominal Catholicism is important. It tells us what importance he attaches to any moral authority other than his own, and the seriousness with which he treats such loyalties as faith and family, which cannot but condition his view of the obligations incumbent on a public office holder.

As far as Romney in particular, the key point for me is not so much the doctrinal and historical issue of whether Mormonism ought to be considered a genuinely Christian faith. I don’t think it is one. But Mormonism is an interesting case, maybe even a unique one, in that most any Mormon will at least self-identify as Christian. This is not an insignificant point. You can argue with Romney about whether the claims of Mormonism are at all consistent with a genuinely Christian eschatology and a genuinely Christian view of scriptural exegesis. Again, I don’t think they are. But if Mormons want to make the claim that they are practicing Christians, even of an especially odd sort, this seems to me to be more important than the question of whether their doctrines are particularly sound. It isn’t as though we’re talking about an occultist or a Muslim here.

So while I accept the premise that religion as a general concern should matter when choosing candidates for the most senior elected office of a Christian country—and I do think that a man should be a Christian if he is to lead a Christian people—I don’t think it makes sense to reject a Mormon because we find their founder’s claims unconvincing. I happen to believe Calvinism to be a peculiarly dangerous heresy, but if a Presbyterian presents himself for public office I won’t reject him out of hand because of it. If Romney were to emphasize the “Christian” element of his faith—rather than grumbling about bigotry and depending on his partisans to make the pernicious case that religious faith shouldn’t matter as an electoral issue at all—then I think we could put this debate to rest.

(The Catholic case you bring up is also a discreet one for the reasons you mention, but as you say, there’s an actually argument there that matters politically. I guess I just don’t think the silliness of Joseph Smith’s fantastical, self-serving tales matter politically.)

LA replies:

That is an excellent, helpful statement from Mr. M.

Also, he writes:

“The reliably dim Kathryn Jean Lopez insists that Romney should deal with the issue by declaring that his religion doesn’t matter because no candidate’s religion matters—this is America, after all, and we all know that it’s a bedrock principle that a candidate’s religion isn’t supposed to matter in America, right?”

To the reliably dim K-Lo I would reply that that was NOT the core of JFK’s dealing with this issue in 1960. He at least implicitly acknowledged that there were rational reasons for people to be concerned about a Catholic president and he responded to those concerns. In effect, his response was that his religion did not matter that much to him, and therefore there was no reason to worry. His implicit argument was that if his Catholicism DID matter to him, his Catholicism WOULD matter politically. This is a historical reality ungraspable by today’s “conservatives.”

In fact, if I remember correctly (though I may be wrong), Kennedy even said in his speech on his Catholicism that if there were a conflict between his duties as a Catholic and his duties as president he would resign the office. So he was most emphatically stating that a president’s religion does matter.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 28, 2007 09:16 AM | Send