A Mormon President? (article)

Mitt Romney is the first Mormon to successfully seek and achieve a major political party’s nomination for the presidency. Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter referred to as the Mormon Church or the Church), declared his candidacy in 1844, and Mormon missionaries were sent out to campaign for him. They encountered an active and hostile opposition, and Smith was never on the ballot. Mitt’s father, George Romney, was briefly a candidate for the Republican nomination in 1968, until he announced he had been “brainwashed” by the generals during a Vietnam tour. Mitt Romney’s 2008 candidacy never got off the ground, so his religious credentials did not then become a major issue. But it is my argument that Mitt Romney’s Mormon religious affiliation could be a significant problem underlying his 2012 campaign efforts.

There were numerous explanations for Romney’s relatively flat support in the polls during the primaries and caucuses, including his inability to identify with the electorate, his verbal gaffes (“I like to fire people”), and continuing questions about his conservatism and flip-flopping on issues. He had undoubtedly the best financial and administrative campaign resources of all the contenders but had to struggle with a succession of “anybody-but-Romney” candidates, creating a long and divisive campaign. Contributing to his problems, especially among conservative, evangelical Protestant denominations, prominent in the South, was a belief that the Mormon Church is basically a non-Christian cult. Various political commentators suggested that upwards of 20% of this Republican constituency are suspicious of Romney’s Mormon heritage and, thus, his candidacy. Robert Jeffress, the Texas evangelical Baptist pastor who introduced Rick Perry at a GOP values conference, used a subsequent interview to make reference to Mormonism as a cult, a statement he never retracted. So, at least among the skeptics, the issue is whether Romney, as a practicing Mormon, is a true Chris-

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tian or is masquerading as one. The persistence of the argument that Obama is secretly a Muslim should indicate that religion is an issue for some voters.

From its inception, the Mormon Church has been perceived by many as “different,” regardless of repeated, modern attempts by Mormon authorities to assert their legitimacy with more traditional Christian denominations. Indeed, the Church is currently conducting an active media program identifying Mormons as everyday folks. The Church has emphasized strong moral values embedded within a traditional family structure and is viewed as politically and economically conservative. Utah, where the Church is based, is a very “red” state. So the question remains as to why the Church, and thus Romney, has not resonated with conservative groups, especially with evangelicals.

Some of the Mormon Church’s earlier doctrinal history is undoubtedly a contributing factor to the cult belief and wariness towards Mormons. Briefly, Mormons believe that Joseph Smith, a farmer’s son in upper New York State, received a visit from an angel directing him to gold plates buried on a nearby hill. Smith translated the writings on these gold plates with the aid of seer stones, producing a canonized work called the Book of Mormon. He organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830 as the “restored” true church of Jesus Christ and assumed the role of “prophet, seer, and revelator.” The Church began with Protestant characteristics, but Smith rapidly began to include the one element from Roman Catholicism that was missing: absolutism. Once he had claimed the “restoration” of the priesthood of God by visiting angels, he could speak as a prophet, and his words were as binding on his believers as ex cathedra statements to Catholics. This certainty brought enough comfort to his followers that they were willing to believe and do whatever he (and his successors) asked.

Doctrinal beliefs within Mormonism, unshared by many traditional Christian church members, have included precepts such as that God evolved from a man, Adam was God in the Garden of Eden, God and Jesus have physical bodies, and polygamy was necessary for eternal progression. Mormon theology has evolved, and the first two tenets I cited have been quietly set aside. But addi-

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tional revelations have led to such beliefs and practices as multiple heavens; the Book of Mormon as companion scripture to the Bible; that Jesus after his resurrection visited and taught the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel in the Western Hemisphere; the building of temples where secret ceremonies are held; baptism for the dead (though current policy restricts such baptisms to family members); eternal marriages; subordination of women and blacks; a lay priesthood of males (though now open to all races, most recently blacks); avoidance of such substances as coffee, tea, alcohol, and tobacco; temple underwear (or garments); and polygamy.

Also causing the anti-Mormon attitude has likely been the proselytizing success of the Mormon Church, which from its very beginning in 1830 established an aggressive missionary effort, resulting today in over five million members in the United States, and 13 million worldwide. Currently there are over 12,000 men and women full-time missionaries. With that kind of effort, the Church has become a threat to other denominations’ membership rolls.

Still today, the Church believes in continuous revelation, not only for the Church president and other general authorities, but also for individual members. (It is true that the individual Mormon is free to accept or reject revelation, but open and strident rejection can have serious consequences, including excommunication.) Revelation leads to the question of Romney’s separation from Church influence. What happens if the president of the Mormon Church states that he has received a revelation from God concerning some government policy? How would Romney deal with a declaration starting with: “Thus saith the Lord,” or, for that matter, even a secular policy statement which carries with it some implication of inspiration? Any arguments to the effect that this would never happen would make Romney appear to either know the mind of God or ignore the fact the Church has already been involved in such significant political matters as the Equal Rights Amendment and Proposition 8 in California.

Although a practicing Catholic, in 1960 candidate John Kennedy defused possibilities of Vatican influence. Given the rather checkered history of Vatican interaction in recent world affairs, that was not a very hard thing to do. Romney may find the interface with God issue difficult to defuse in this current political

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climate, as witness Donald Trump’s success with the “birther” charge. It is worth noting that in Section 134 of Doctrine and Covenants (part of Church scripture), Mormons are enjoined to respect and uphold the laws of their respective governments. But to devout Church members, an instance of divine revelation supersedes existing civil law.

The Church’s position on direct and continuous revelation from God is tied to another problem for Romney: polygamy, or plural wives, which the Church openly preached and practiced in Nauvoo, Illinois, in the early 1840s and then openly in Utah from 1852 until 1890. No mainstream Christian denomination ever countenanced polygamy. Indeed, the 1856 Republican Party platform declared slavery and polygamy to be twin evils of barbarianism. I doubt if anyone believes for a second that Romney espouses a pro-polygamy position or that the Mormon Church would advocate a return to the practice. But polygamy has historical antecedents, which the Church cannot put to rest. There are apparently still significant parts of the electorate who will not accept as Christian a church that once openly espoused the practice.

The question that has to be asked is why polygamy still remains a blemish on the Church in some quarters. First of all, beliefs and practices confined to chapel and temple existed but not as a daily observable occurrence. But in Utah, public display seemed to be a matter of Mormons’ daily flaunting the unacceptable. This clearly was a non-negotiable moral divide.

The Mormon practice of polygamy resulted in a fierce and protracted struggle between the Federal government and the Church throughout the latter half of the 19th century and the very early part of the 20th century. In 1890 the Church renounced the practice in a manifesto, followed by a second manifesto in 1904 reaffirming the end of polygamy, with the threat of excommunication. It is worth noting that these documents condemned such marriages on legal and political grounds, not moral. Moreover, neither declaration has been subsequently canonized. Formal Church policy regarding the abandonment of polygamy led to Utah’s acquiring statehood in 1896 (Richard Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History, 1986, Chapter 12).

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What then keeps the prejudice against Mormons alive, over a century after polygamy was ended, at least among a segment of the voting electorate? There are two sets of factors, one internal and the other external. Internally, even after the 1890 Manifesto, polygamous marriages were being sanctioned. These took place frequently outside the country, especially in Mexico. (Mitt Romney’s great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married two wives in Utah and three more in Mexico, though polygamy has been absent in Romney’s ancestry for two generations.) In Utah today, there are polygamists in every major city. Some more liberal Mormons believe that the polygamists should be left alone (pedophiliacs are an exception), for they are “only trying to follow the original Church teachings.” Also, government authorities usually can identify polygamists but for various reasons steer clear of any crusade against them. A problem is that there is no certainty how a conservative Supreme Court would vote on basically a matter of religious beliefs.

Externally, while the main Mormon Church based in Salt Lake City has adopted an anti-polygamy position, there are fundamentalist Mormon communities, especially along the Arizona-Utah border, which openly and continuously practice their polygamous beliefs. These groups base their polygamous practices on a revelation received by Church president John Taylor in 1886, making polygamy the word of God and not for man to reject (Van Wagoner, p. 190). The 1890 and 1904 manifestos are thus viewed as political statements, and as such they cannot negate the word of God.

Attempts to crush polygamous communities have been political and media disasters. In 1953 the state of Arizona raided the Short Creek settlement, resulting in pictures of children being torn from their parents. The consequences of the raid resulted in an eventual political decision to drop the matter (Van Wagoner, pp. 199-208). More recently, a similar raid on a fundamentalist community near the town of Eldorado, in west Texas, resulted again in a political mess, raising questions of constitutionality. In 2011 a fundamentalist prophet, Warren Jeffs, was sentenced to life in prison, but as a pedophile, not a polygamist.

Moreover, anti-Mormon evangelicals most certainly are aware of such problems as conflicts among fundamentalist sect

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prophets, splintering of communities, and, in some instances, murder. Polygamy, whatever the circumstances, still reaches the attention of the public in a variety of ways, including the HBO series “Big Love” and the television reality show “Sister Wives.” The Mormon Church has tried to remain above these problems, staunchly maintaining its anti-polygamy position. It is likely, though, that among members of conservative, evangelical groups, little or no distinction is still made between the Church and the fundamentalists.

It is my contention that polygamy in particular as well as proselytizing and possibly other non-mainstream beliefs and practices underlies the conservative, evangelical Christian wariness of Mormons in general and Mitt Romney in particular. These fears may subsequently make these voters hesitant to cast a ballot for Romney. For the GOP’s “Southern Strategy,” this could be a disaster.

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