Posted by
Deadpan on Friday, February 15, 2008 2:09:04 PM
Rebecca Hagelin has a terrific column about the effect religious prejudice has played in the Republican Primaries this year. One of the comments made the point that Romney got 90% of the primary votes in Utah as proof that Mormons voted for him and against his opponents based on his religion. That's a fair point. I'm sure that Obama has gotten a lot of black votes because he's black, too. There's nothing wrong with supporting your own, but there is when you vote against somebody merely because of his race, sex or religion,
Utah is only about 70% LDS, so a lot of Non-Mormons voted for him here too to give him that big a win. It's indicative of how impressed Utahns were and are by his rescue of the Winter Olympics which had been mired in scandal and greed, before he took the helm. Then 9/11 happened, and we found ourselves hosting the world, but having to make things secure from terrorism. Of course, the people of Utah who volunteered and cooperated to make it a success deserve credit, but Romney lead the way. It's impossible to have seen all that up close without being impressed by Mitt's abilities.
Back to the original issue here. I'm not sure, but I only know of two religions that teach that religious tolerance is a commandment from God. One of these is Islam, although radical clerics and revolutionaries ignore the Koran's statement, "Let there be no compulsion in religion." The other is Mormonism: "Now there was no law against a man’s belief; for it was strictly contrary to the commands of God that there should be a law which should bring men on to unequal grounds." The Book of Mormon, Alma 30:7
Apparently, a lot of evangelicals have been taught that Mormonism is evil and a threat to their faith. The main reason I think that evangelicals have been assailed with so much anti-Mormon propaganda is that they have a paid ministry, who lose income when congregants convert to other churches, and they have lost a lot of members to Mormonism. I imagine that it's pretty tough when a small congregation starts losing its members to some megachurch down the road, but the minister can't propagandize against another minister of the same sect, the way he can against Mormons.
I find these attacks rather sad, because this is not a good time for social conservatives to be polarized against each other. I think that everyone who believes in God has to confront mysteries for himself, and it does no good to argue about the minutiae of doctrine, especially when the sole purpose is to throw hammers from one glass house at another. Faith is not something provable except through spiritual means. Spiritual experience is real, but it can't be replicated by doubters and skeptics.
Joseph Smith says that in his first vision of the angel Moroni, "He called me by name, and said unto me that he was a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and that his name was Moroni; that God had a work for me to do; and that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people." In that point he was a true prophet. I remember as a teen visiting the Illinois State Historical Library and being told that behind books about Abraham Lincoln, the largest number of books in the collection were about Mormons, mostly against. Do I believe that every word that dropped from Joseph's lips came directly from God? No. Do I believe that he was a prophet and received many true revelations? Yes. Can I prove it? Not any more than anybody can prove that Jesus rose from the dead and is in heaven.
It's fruitless and pointless to bring up factoids about a religion and then use them to discredit a member of that religion, most of all in the setting of politics. To me, Mitt Romney's religion was a starting point, a reason to consider him, just as Harry Reid's religion was. But I reached opposite conclusions about the two with respect to their political attractiveness. I think Harry Reid is a political hack, while I view Romney as a leader of great intelligence backed up by achievements that make me view him as someone who could help this nation through severe crises. If he were Catholic or Presbyterian or Pentecostal, I'd feel the same, given the same achievements.