Frank Rich: "In Romneyland, Mormonism is the religion that dare not speak its name."

[highplainsdem]

http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/mitt-romney-2012-2/index2.html

In the current campaign, Romney makes frequent reference to faith, God, and his fierce loyalty to “the same church.” But whether in debates, or in the acres of official material on his campaign website, or in a flyer pitched at religious voters in South Carolina, he never names what that faith or church is. In Romneyland, Mormonism is the religion that dare not speak its name. Which leaves him unable to talk about the very subject he seems to care about most, a lifelong source of spiritual, familial, and intellectual sustenance. We’re used to politicians who camouflage their real views about issues, or who practice fraud in their backroom financial and political deal-making, but this is something else. Romney’s very public persona feels like a hoax because it has been so elaborately contrived to keep his core identity under wraps.

His campaign is intent on enforcing the redaction of his religion, not least, one imagines, because a Gallup poll found that 22 percent in both parties say they would not vote for a Mormon for president. (Only 5 percent admit feeling that way about an African-American.) A senior adviser explained the strategy of deflecting any discussion of Romney’s Mormon life to Politico: “Someone takes a shot at the governor’s faith, we put a scarlet letter on them, RB, religious bigot.” Good luck with that. Like Romney’s evasions about his private finances, his conspicuous cone of silence about this major pillar of his biography also leaves you wondering what he is trying to hide. That his faith can be as secretive as he is—Ann Romney’s non-Mormon parents were not allowed to attend the religious ceremony consecrating her marriage to Mitt—only whets the curiosity among the 82 percent of Americans who tell pollsters they know little or nothing about Mormonism.

Weeks before his death, Christopher Hitchens, no more a fan of LDS than of any other denomination, wrote that “we are fully entitled” to ask Romney about the role of his religion in influencing his political formation. Of course we are. Romney is not merely a worshipper sitting in the pews but the scion of a family dynasty integral to the progress of an ­American-born faith that has played a large role in the public square. Since his youthful stint as a missionary, he has served LDS in a variety of significant posts. The answers to questions about Romney’s career as a lay church official may tell us more about who he is than his record at Bain, his sparse tenure as governor, or his tax returns.

The questions are not theological. Nor are they about polygamy, the scandalous credo that earlier Romneys practiced even after the church banned it in 1890. Rather, the questions are about the Mormon church’s political actions during Mitt Romney’s lifetime—and about what role Romney, as both a leader and major donor, might have played or is still playing in those actions. To ask these questions is not to be a religious bigot but to vet a candidate for the nation’s highest job. Given how often Romney himself cites his faith as a defining force in his life, voters have a right to know what role he played when his faith intersected with the secular lives of his fellow citizens.

Emphasis added.

[WI_DEM]

1. Is he not proud to be a Mormon? Why try and ignore it?

[highplainsdem]

3. Several reasons:

One is noted by Frank Rich on that page of the 5-page column -- that a significant fraction of American voters have said, when polled, that they wouldn't vote for a Mormon.

Another is noted by him on the next page of the article -- the Mormons' history of discrimination against women, blacks and gays (this is from the middle of the first paragraph there):

http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/mitt-romney-2012-2/index3.html

But the flip side of this hands-on engagement is whether, in his various positions in the church, he countenanced or enforced its discriminatory treatment of blacks and women, practices it only started to end in earnest well after he had entered adulthood. It wasn’t until 1978, when he was in his thirties, that blacks were given full status in his church—an embarrassing fact that Romney tried to finesse in his last campaign by speaking emotionally on Meet the Press of seeing his father join Martin Luther King on a civil-rights march. (The Boston Phoenix would soon report that this was another lie about his past.) In the seventies, Romney’s church also applied its institutional muscle to battling the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment for women. And these days, no major faith puts more money where its mouth is in battling civil rights for gay Americans.

Another is that -- although all religions tend to have some beliefs and rituals that can and sometimes are ridiculed by non-believers -- the Mormons' belief system and secret ceremonies are still unfamiliar enough to most Americans to look particularly strange, and although the LDS church has fairly recently abandoned some of those, like the change in 1990, Romney still spent most of his life in a church that used those rituals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_%28Mormonism%29

In 1990, further changes included the elimination of all blood oaths and penalties. These penalties, representing what the member would rather suffer than reveal the sacred signs given them in the ceremony, were symbolized by gestures for having the throat cut, the breast cut open, and the bowels torn out. Changes also included the elimination of the five points of fellowship, the role of the preacher, and all reference to Lucifer's "popes and priests" were dropped. The ceremony was also changed to lessen the differences in treatment between men and women. Women no longer are required to covenant to obey their husbands, but instead must covenant only to follow their husbands as their husbands follow the Lord. Also, Eve is no longer explicitly blamed for the Fall, and several references to Adam were replaced with references to Adam and Eve. The lecture at the veil was also cut, and some repetition was eliminated.

And yet another is the "White Horse Prophecy" -- which I posted about yesterday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002237275

after seeing the Salon article on it:

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/mitt_and_the_white_horse_prophecy/singleton/

Upon completion of his foreign mission, he immersed himself in the 1970 senatorial campaign of his mother, Lenore Romney, who was running against Phillip Hart in the Michigan general election. That same year, the Cougar Club — the all male, all white social club at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City (blacks were excluded from full membership in the Mormon church until 1978) — was humming with talk that its president, Mitt Romney, would become the first Mormon president of the United States. “If not Mitt, then who?” was the ubiquitous slogan within the elite organization. The pious world of BYU was expected to spawn the man who would lead the Mormons into the White House and fulfill the prophecies of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith Jr., which Romney has avidly sought to realize.

Romney avoids mentioning it, but Smith ran for president in 1844 as an independent commander in chief of an “army of God” advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of a Mormon-ruled theocracy. Challenging Democrat James Polk and Whig Henry Clay, Smith prophesied that if the U.S. Congress did not accede to his demands that “they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them.” Smith viewed capturing the presidency as part of the mission of the church. He had predicted the emergence of “the one Mighty and Strong” — a leader who would “set in order the house of God” — and became the first of many prominent Mormon men to claim the mantle.

Smith’s insertion of religion into politics and his call for a “theodemocracy where God and people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteous matters” created a sensation and drew hostility from the outside world. But his candidacy was cut short when he was shot to death by an anti-Mormon vigilante mob. Out of Smith’s national political ambitions grew what would become known in Mormon circles as the “White Horse Prophecy” — a belief ingrained in Mormon culture and passed down through generations by church leaders that the day would come when the U.S. Constitution would “hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber” and the Mormon priesthood would save it.

Romney is the product of this culture. At BYU, he was idolized by fellow students and referred to, only half jokingly, as the “One Mighty and Strong.”

I'm an ex-Catholic, and I can still remember the anti-Catholic comments about JFK during the 1960 election, comments I heard even from my elementary school classmates, echoing their parents. I thought they were ridiculous, and fortunately Kennedy was elected despite the anti-Catholic sentiment.

But if JFK had held a leadership role in the Catholic Church for years, as Romney held in the Mormon church, and if he'd been a Catholic missionary -- and most especially if there'd been any sort of traditional belief among Catholics that someday a Catholic would become president as the "One Mighty and Strong" who'd save the nation because of his religious beliefs (and more so if there was evidence he'd known that he was the subject of speculation about that prophecy since his college days) -- then I believe JFK would have had a much harder time getting elected.

[libinnyandia]

2. Google: Jan Mickelson Romney

[highplainsdem]

5. Just did, and found this on ABC's website:

Romney Defends His Religion

What I found most interesting was the exchange on page 2 of that article, with Romney becoming more and more irritated when Mickelson questioned him for having held more liberal positions on abortion:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3449308&page=2

Mickelson said Romney was trying to "hermetically seal" his religious views away from his political ones, thus alienating potential evangelical and Catholic supporters.

"And what should I do? And so tell me what I should do," Romney asked, sarcastically. "I should not have been pro-choice? And therefore I'm just finished, right there."

So he keeps quiet about his own religious beliefs and sometimes appears to deviate from them so he won't be politically "finished."

And he'll probably be very careful in the future not to make statements like the one he made in his Massachusetts Senate race against Teddy Kennedy in 1994, when he defended his own discrimination toward women on the basis of his church's teachings.

I saw the link to this 1994 AP article when it was retweeted by Lawrence O'Donnell a couple of nights ago:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/374237/KENNEDY-SAYS-CATHOLIC-CHURCH-SHOULD-ALLOW-WOMEN-PRIESTS.html

Mitt Romney, who was an LDS stake president in the Boston area from 1986 to last March, would not comment on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' policy of barring women from the priesthood. He said it was not his place to tell church leaders how to run the church.

Last year, Romney ordered a woman removed as Sunday school president after church officials in Salt Lake City said only a man should hold the post.

-snip-

In responding to the Globe, Romney said, "Has Sen. Kennedy stood up to the pope and said, `It's just not right. We need women priests'? If he has, I will listen.

"I do not consider it my place as a member of my church to fly out to Salt Lake City and say, `You who are people I believe in and trust are wrong out here. Let me tell you how you should run your church. You should have women in the priesthood,' " Romney said.

[snagglepuss]

4. Bookmarked to read later

[highplainsdem]

6. Reuters UK article today: "Special report -Mormonism besieged by the modern age"

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/uk-mormonchurch-idUKTRE80T1CP20120130


Lots here about the LDS church losing members, and changes in the church:

-snip-

These are tumultuous times for the faith founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, and the rumbling began even before church member Mitt Romney's presidential bid put the Latter-Day Saints in the spotlight.

Jensen, the church's official historian, would not provide any figures on the rate of defections, but he told Reuters that attrition has accelerated in the last five or 10 years, reflecting greater secularization of society. Many religions have been suffering similarly, he noted, arguing that Mormonism has never been more vibrant.

-snip-

The LDS church claims 14 million members worldwide -- optimistically including nearly every person baptized. But census data from some foreign countries targeted by clean-cut young missionaries show that the retention rate for their converts is as low as 25 percent. In the U.S., only about half of Mormons are active members of the church, said Washington State University emeritus sociologist Armand Mauss, a leading researcher on Mormons.

-snip-

With defections rising, the church has launched a program to staunch its losses. The head of the church, President Thomas Monson, who is considered a living prophet, has called the campaign "The Rescue" and made it his signature initiative, according to Jensen. The effort includes a new package of materials for pastors and for teaching Mormon youth that address some of the more sensitive aspects of church doctrine. "If they are not revolutionary, they are at least going to be a breath of fresh air across the church," Jensen told the Utah class.

-snip-

[siligut]

10. Once they have you on the books, it is near impossible to get free.

The LDS church claims 14 million members worldwide -- optimistically including nearly every person baptized. But census data from some foreign countries targeted by clean-cut young missionaries show that the retention rate for their converts is as low as 25 percent. In the U.S., only about half of Mormons are active members of the church, said Washington State University emeritus sociologist Armand Mauss, a leading researcher on Mormons.

The church still counts members who have stated they are leaving and no longer attend church because they remain on the books and members still try to get them to come back. Basically the church hounds anyone who leaves.

[Jester Messiah]

7. I've often mused that mormons have no better friends than atheists like myself.

We view their religion as no nuttier than all the rest.

Edit: I probably ought not to speak for anyone but myself. So change that first "We" to an "I."

[Bruce Wayne]

8. Religion has no place in a campaign.

Romney is manifestly unqualified to be president. Having a religion that became secretive in the light of historical oppression in the 19th century is not part of the equation. I think it behooves us as Dems to quit talking about Romney's religion. Playing footsie with religious intolerance goes against everything we should stand for.

[highplainsdem]

9. Frank Rich was on the Rachel Maddow show just now, talking about this article, and Rachel just

mentioned the fact that the Mormon church's attitudes toward women, blacks and gays lead to what she described as "hard political questions," and Rich agreed.

[NAO]

11. I really wish Hitchens were here to ask those questions