It's always fun to watch WaPo bewildered:
Now that Mitt Romney has sewn up the Republican nomination, the GOP can move beyond a tumultuous primary season. But for some of Romney’s fellow Mormons, there’s still some anxiety in the air.
“For Mormons, this is a potentially volatile moment. They are deeply proud that their faith’s most prominent adherent, Mitt Romney, is steps away from a presidential nomination and could push the faith further into the mainstream,” Matt Viser wrote in The Boston Globe.
With these feelings, though, comes a nagging fear that their beliefs, often misunderstood, will again be subjected to scrutiny, even ridicule, on a national scale.”
If the past is any indicator, their fears may be founded. In 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention held its annual meeting in Salt Lake City, the symbolic and organizational heartland of Mormonism. Some 3,000 Southern Baptist volunteers went door to door with the intent to evangelize Mormons; and the denomination even produced a book called “Mormonism Unmasked,” which promised to “lift the veil from one of the greatest deceptions in the history of religion.”
When Romney delivered his “Faith in America” speech in 2007, the Southern Baptist response was to label Mormonism a “theological cult” and “false religion.”
What’s surprising in 2012 is the relative lack of anxiety on the other side, among evangelicals who for years considered Mormonism a “cult” that was to be feared, not embraced.In fact, the relative ambivalence among prominent evangelicals about this new “Mormon moment” — and the fact that Romney’s campaign could mainstream Mormonism right into the Oval Office — could radically shift the dynamics on America’s political and religious landscape.
“You can already see the change in thinking among many evangelicals who see Mitt Romney more as the Republican candidate for president and less as a Mormon,” said Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who declined, when asked, to label Mormonism a “cult.”
Maybe they've all had enough of Obama. Maybe they realize the Mormon Romney won't be forcing them to betray their religious beliefs as Obama does. Maybe a vote for Romney is a vote for freedom of religion.
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The WaPo is always interested in stirring the GOP pot. This is a “newspaper” that has yet to vet the POTUS. But watch as they dig deep, back to ’65 to find dirt on Romney.
Meanwhile the information the NATIONAL REVIEW has uncovered showing Obama as a member of THE NEW PARTY (socialist) since the 90s remains unreported in that “newspaper”. They have become a joke.
Obama:
1. no LFBC (hard copy); the one released is a poor photo shop job.
2. draft registration a forgery.
3. no college grades; they remain sealed.
4. for 16 years his literary agent presented him in an official biography as having been born in Kenya.
6. no college applications; sealed.
7. rumors continue that at Occi he lived in the “foreign dorm”.
8. in high school he spent, by his own omission his last two years stoned and drunk; how did he get into top schools?
9. his paternal grandmother claimed to reporters that he was born in Kenya
10. on his “birth certificate” his father’s race is listed as “African”…that’s a continent not a race. Sounds like the WH guy who created this document on the net was subjecting himself to today’s political correctness. It should say “black” or “negro” if it was created in 1961.
Does the American media have no interest in any of this? Four years ago they spent lots of time and money investigating Palin’s family. Why is Obama different? What is the Washington Post afraid of? Why will the msm not investigate the basics of this man’s life?
If Romney’s religion holds weird beliefs, they relate to his hereafter.
But Obama’s religions has weird beliefs and they relate to the here and now!
And Obama is inserting those weird beliefs into his policies, his end-runs around the Constitution, especially his racist DOJ’s interpretation of our law.
It is an easy call for Evangelicals to make.
In fact, the relative ambivalence among prominent evangelicals about this new “Mormon moment” — and the fact that Romney’s campaign could mainstream Mormonism right into the Oval Office — could radically shift the dynamics on America’s political and religious landscape.
The GOP doesn’t grasp the importance bible-based Christianity has to America’s evangelicals. They’ll vote for Romney only if they don’t learn the details of what he believes.
I think most “Evangelicals” will put aside their parochial concerns to vote against a president who has violated the separation of church in order to force down the Catholic religion’s throat a secular socialist agenda that is irreconcilable with their beliefs. His administration’s imperialistic methodology should deeply concern all other religious organizations as well as everyone who values personal freedom over governmental oppression. The current President has also taken a decidedly inhospitable attitude towards Israel and most of our allies, all the while barely noticing the oppressiveness of rogue nation-state sponsors of terrorism, whom are even waging war in the streets on their own subject’s children. This Socialist in Chief is the antithesis of everything our Founding Fathers intended to create in this nation of freedom, freewill and faithfulness.
Evangelicals won’t put aside “parochial concerns” for worldly politics. They don’t compartmentalize their religion for the sake of convenience. It’s present and central in every part of their lives.
Sort of like dollars are with the people who pull the GOP’s strings.
I was too young to remember, but my parents and grandparents have both told me about similar attitudes towards JFK when he was running for President. Protestants were worried that he would put the Pope in charge of the country.
JFK didn’t believe that Jesus had three wives, was Satan’s brother, and that faithful males can become the Gods of their own planets in the afterlife.
@Jason:
There is no religious test for the office of president.
Your display of bigotry is not impressive.
Jason, I’d wager that Independents and even some Democrats didn’t know the details of what Obama’s Black Liberation Theology believed, so they voted for him…..once.
But they have been getting that education and will NOT vote for that again.
It is a shame for Dems that Hillary didn’t get the nomination.
She could have easily gotten re-elected.
It’s not bigotry to state what Mormons believe. Bigotry might describe how some people will react to it.
@Jason: Anything or anyone is better than 0-bama so enough with your garbage!!
What I keep hearing is the same bigoted anti-Mormon propaganda from Jason, Greg and their far-left fellows, which in this case they presume themselves qualified to speak out on behalf of “Evangelicals”. Which just happens to be another religious group that the far-left happen to despise. Then again, I’ve heard trash-talking of nearly all religious groups by their leftist ilk, with the only exception being how they (since 9/11) have opined only positively on followers of Islam.
This anti-Mormon propaganda campaign on Romney by the left, ignores the fact that Evangelicals (as of this last March) have a 68% favorable opinion of Romney, while they only have a 19% favorable view of Obama. So far I haven’t come across a similar poll of evangelicals or religious groups in general now that Romney has nailed down the GOP nomination, nor since Obama came out in favor of gay marriage and made his campaign-oriented decision not to deport certain groups of young illegal immigrants.
Continuing to beat the drum with this trollish anti-Mormon mantra only solidifies our opinion: That both Greg and Jason are following in the historic DNC tradition of supporting KKK style bigotry against religious organizations they so much hate. The majority of opinions at FA do not consider Romney’s being a Mormon as at all relevant to his ability or eligibility to serve as a president.
I love the hypocrisy of the left. “Romney is one of those horrible Mormons! (shhh… Harry Reid is one of the GOOD Mormons.)”
@GWell:
And how far down the line of succession is Reid to the Presidency?
@Aye: Particularly interesting are what Americans believe—in line with the Constitution—and what polls tell us about what they actually believe when it comes to action. Although there is no test for political office, it is interesting how people respond to the likelihood of voting for a Muslim, a Buddhist, and a Atheist for president. http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistbigotryprejudice/a/AtheistSurveys.htm
These percentages a even more exaggerated for ‘born-again-Christian’.
@Ditto: There seems to be an error in the common conservative talking point: Democrats were responsible for the KKK.
It’s true Democrats were the predominant southern political party during this era of ‘Dixie-crats’; but they felt there ideas were best served during the Reagan administration, by becoming Republicans—leaving the Democrats a much more liberal party.
The same may be said in relation to Lincoln and the Republican Party. Although the party was founded by Lincoln supporters—a fact which is extolled be conservatives of today—their values did not represent many of those of modern day Republicans.
@<a href="http://floppingaces.net/2012/06/16/wapo-upset-that-evangelicals-not-bu, #12:
Anything or anyone is better that o-bama explains a lot. It means that some people are willing to give anyone the GOP chooses a free and unconditional pass to the White House.
Scary, isn’t it?
@Greg:
Not as scary as another four years with a card carrying secret-socialist grifter in “hope & change” clothing, who no longer has to hide his past or despotic power hungry ambitions from hoodwinked voters.