The Mormon Thorn

Preface: I like Mormons.

I have Mormon clients, Mormon acquaintances, and I wish LDS missionaries well when they knock on my door and hand me yet another Book of Mormon. I like the Mormons I've met. Why shouldn't I? They're usually nice people.

I mean, the kids on my front steps, in the ties, stammering about Jesus, they're just kids, doing the best they can. And their parents are usually just parents, doing the best they can, usually.

So why do I feel like Mitt Romney's Mormonism is a ticking political time bomb?

whoa

Well, to be perfectly blunt, it's probably because his church has a history of responding to persecution by turning in on itself, looking out too dearly for its financial health, and setting up a cultish-looking hierarchy. It's also probably because his church's theology is very nontraditional... all right, I won't mince words. LDS beliefs are routinely offensive to other Christians. (Not offensive to me, because if someone wants to believe something, they should go ahead and do that. I might disagree, even raise my eyebrows a little, but I do that to Muslims, Calvinists, Jews, Catholics, and witch doctors. Nobody should feel special if I politely scoff at the most preposterous sections of their dogma.)

Tangential Paragraph Alert: I'd like to someday delve into the issues people encounter when they decide to abandon the Mormon faith, but that will have to wait for its own post. Going to invoke the term "someday" here again. In other words, please don't wait up for it. That post requires some responsible wading on my part through various personal horror stories of family bonds irrevocably broken, allegations of brainwashing, and the like, and I'll have to do it with an eye out for veracity and believability. I've started that research already (this website is pretty cool as a jumping off point), but no promises, ok?

What we know for sure right now is that unlike me, many Protestants and Catholics (these are the people who vote!) are intolerant of Mormonism's significant theological quirks. Those quirks include:

a) placement of the Book of Mormon on equal footing with the Bible
b) rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity, replaced with the almost-polytheistic belief that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are three different beings
c) a widespread belief, endorsed by church leaders, that humans can become like gods or actual gods in the afterlife, and that in fact, that's what our God is -- a former man himself
d) posthumous baptism of non-believers to ensure their salvation; the recipient of the baptism is said to possess, beyond the grave, the choice between accepting and rejecting the ceremony.

Those are four big ones. Other idiosyncrasies include:

a) a past embrace of polygamy (officially denounced in 1890)
b) eternal marriage -- i.e., your spouse is your spouse in the afterlife too
c) a racially problematic past. Church founder Joseph Smith admitted African Americans to the priesthood, but then, the church refused to ordain African-Americans from 1852 to 1978, and taught that if blacks so fortunate as to reach heaven, they would function there merely as servants.
d) the so-called "magic underwear" prescriptions (wiki leak here if you're interested)
e) a graduated view of heaven, in which the celestial afterlife is divided into differently attainable levels of bliss
f) a hierarchy that puts one man atop the church, based on seniority, and endows him with the ability to receive revelation directly from God. (Women are not permitted to become priests, bishops, or apostles; ascending to the title of Prophet is not a realistic career goal for a young Mormon girl.)
g) the incontrovertible fact that the church makes a lot of money. A lot. A few Google searches turn up that the Mormon church owns multiple large businesses, with revenue in the billions of dollars, while also taking in at least $5 billion in tithes annually.

"So what do you guys want to hear this election cycle?"

What's fascinating is how much those quirks -- which cause many well-meaning Christians to slap the "cult" label on the LDS branch of the Christian family tree -- will matter on a political level for Mr. Romney this fall. Or how little they'll matter, I guess. They didn't matter much when he successfully ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2003. They didn't matter much in the recently completed primary season, at least not enough to deny him the nomination. And Mormon beliefs didn't prevent Democratic Senator Harry Reid from rising to the post of Senate Majority Leader.

So, to recap, voters seem to agree with me: We like Mormons. They have some unique articles of faith, and most certainly a less-than-perfect history, but hell, Catholics have all that too, and in spades.

And Mitt's political positions can't hurt him with the Republican base. Look, the man is pro-life, anti-gay marriage (anti-civil unions, even!), unapologetically pro-business, and wants us all to be taxed at a minus-38 percent rate while we ramp up for nuclear war with Iran, just for fun. There's a lot for conservatives to like about Romney. The 2012 edition, anyway.

Also, he's not named Barack Obama. I hear these days that's a very endearing trait to Republicans.

Still... is the other stuff, the quirk stuff, is that going to matter? And if it doesn't end up mattering, and by some awful practical joke perpetrated on us by the political gods, Willard Romney becomes our 44th President, does it mean that there really exists no religious test a presidential candidate has to pass? You have to admit that if the LDS church is in the American mainstream, it's at the very fringes. Beyond it lies organizations like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the like. If we elect a biracial secret Muslim named Hussein, then a future god in magic underwear, does that mean we've finally broken the mold, and we can focus more on the person's vision for the country and less on his/her nifty ideas for the afterlife?

So yeah, a Mormon president, I would like that very much. In theory. Anything that leads to a confirmed atheist becoming President, I'm cool with. Or a Muslim, or a Hindu. No religious test, just like it says in Article VI of the Constitution Thingy, right? I'll take a Mormon, sure. As long as it's not Mitt Romney. Or any Republican.