New York Daily Opinion Piece on Mitt Romney's Faith

Enough cliches about faith. Mitt's Mormonism matters

By Errol Lewis

Sunday, November 25th 2007, 4:00 AM

Let's quit tiptoeing around the question of whether Republican Mitt Romney's Mormon religion will be an issue in his bid to become President of the United States.

Of course it will matter. And it should.

Voters have every right to be curious and concerned about a candidate's beliefs - especially a candidate like Romney, who keeps talking about the importance of faith in his life.

Romney's not a run-of-the-mill believer. Before entering politics, he served as a Mormon bishop, presiding over several congregations in Massachusetts.

There's little chance that a devout follower of Rastafarianism, the Unification Church or the Nation of Islam - not just a believer, but a leader - could expect to run for high political office and not get a couple of questions about what they believe and what public actions they took as a church leader.

Romney has gotten a few. He told CBS News he is a "true-blue through-and-through" believer, but also said, "My church wouldn't endeavor to tell me what to do on an issue, and I wouldn't listen to them on an issue that related to our nation."

Those contradictory statements won't cut it. And they don't sidestep the plain fact that Mormonism, like the other faiths I mentioned, is not a Christian religion.

This is a sore point with Romney and other Mormons, who emphasize their reverence for Jesus, belief in His divinity, and the fact that the religion's official name is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Those protests hold little water with leaders of most Christian denominations. In 2001, the Catholic doctrinal office (then headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who is now the Pope) decreed [that] Mormons must be re-baptized to join the Catholic Church. Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists have similar official disclaimers.

The reasons are clear to anyone who stayed awake through Sunday School and takes a look at the Mormon holy books, including the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price.

Mormons, it turns out, believe human souls have existed for all eternity, temporarily inhabit physical bodies and can eventually evolve into gods. They also believe the Garden of Eden was in Missouri and that tribes from Israel traveled to what is now America, built ancient cities and fought epic battles.

Needless to say, there's no physical evidence of the cities or the thousands killed in the ancient wars of the Mormon holy books, and DNA evidence rules out American Indians as descendants of ancient Israel. It will take time for Mormon supernatural claims to attain the respect given those of older religions.

But forget the historical and theological disputes. I have no quarrel with the nearly 6 million Americans who practice this religion - but I do have questions for the one among them who wants me to vote him into the White House.

In particular, I want to know more about Bishop Romney's beliefs and actions related to the Mormon religion's odious and longstanding practices of racial segregation.

Brigham Young, an early father of the Mormon Church, preached, "If the White man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain [those with dark skin], the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so."

In addition to this death penalty for race-mixing, Mormons barred blacks from becoming priests or taking part in the religion's holiest rituals. This went on until 1978.Romney, who was 31 when Mormon elders officially scrapped the church's racist doctrines, says he broke down and cried when the change was announced.

I really hope he did more than wait till the end and weep: I'd like to know what Bishop Romney grew up believing on this subject, exactly what he taught to others - and what steps, if any, he took to battle discrimination when doing so was at odds with his religion.

A clear explanation is the least we should expect from a candidate who wears his faith on his sleeve.


****My Thoughts****

Brigham Young's statement is contained in the Journal of Discourses and can be read here.

Most Christian denominations never learn that Mormonism teaches that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, that God started out as a mortal man on another Earth and became exhalted after his death, creating his own Earth to populate with his own spirit children, (us), and that we will have those same opportunities for exhaltation and Godhood if we:

1. Become Mormon
2. Participate in Temple rites and rituals
3. Perform the same acts of temple ritual for our dead ancestors
4. Enter into polygamy

That last one is still a major belief of Mormonism, even though it is condemned in practice. It is NOT condemned in theory, and is still believed to be necessary to obtain exhaltation (that is, the highest level within the Celestial Kingdom). Many covert temple sealings have been done without government knowledge or approval. Among these is the "second anointing" ordinance, which even many mainstream Mormons themselves know little to nothing about.

Mormonism used to focus most of their conversion efforts on the American Indians and the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands because the Book of Mormon speaks of Lamanites as the principle ancestors of these people. DNA evidence has know proven that these people are of Asiatic origin, and not of Jewish descent after all. The Book of Mormon has now been reworded to state that Lamanites are among the ancestors of these people. That runs counter to over a hundred years of belief and the conversion efforts of thousands of members to redeem the remnants of the lost tribes of Israel, with a book of scripture that was supposedly about their own people.


IF People like me shut up and go away....

The church can go on subtly changing doctrines, denying the past, obfuscating the present, and controlling the future. George Orwell's 1984.

The only way to limit the church's ability to rewrite history in a favorable light is to remain vigilant and informed. There is no such thing as "accepting it on faith" , because faith only comes into play when certain plausible ideas cannot be proven or disproved. That is not the case with many doctrines of Mormonism, they can and have been proven false, scientifically and scripturally. The only tool the church has left is to create enough fear within the organization, so that knowledge is limited. "We will tell you all that you need to know, and if you desire to know more, you will be accused of loosing your faith, becoming full of pride, trusting in the intellect of man and not of God, and all sorts of evil will befall you if you question your anointed leaders."

Sounds like something Warren Jeffs might say...