Goodhue: Romney's Mormon-Christian problem

The Rev. Thomas W. Goodhue is a United Methodist clergyman and Executive Director of the Long Island Council of Churches.

Mitt Romney won in Arizona and Michigan last week, but he's still attracting few evangelical Christian voters, a group that derailed his campaign four years ago. Romney continues to have this problem, even if the leading alternative is Rick Santorum, a Catholic who said that John F. Kennedy's speech on the separation of church and state (which Baptists kind of invented) almost made him throw up.

Our Constitution insists, "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." But before Kennedy's narrow victory in 1960, many doubted a Catholic could become president. Mormons such as Romney have it worse.

A study released Dec. 7 by the Southern Baptist Convention found only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Mormons. That's more than Muslims (28 percent), but far fewer than United Methodists (62 percent), Catholics (59 percent) or Southern Baptists (53 percent). A November Pew poll said 97 percent of Mormons think they are Christians, but only a third of evangelicals agree. Last June, 22 percent of voters told Gallup they would not vote for a Mormon for president.

Mormons hate being labeled non-Christian, but their founder, Joseph Smith, said all other denominations were apostate, and if you claim yours is the one true church, people suspect you belong to another faith. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon church is formally known, reject the divinity of Christ, claim God has a wife and baptize by proxy Jews killed in the Holocaust.

We should be slow to judge what is in the heart and mind of our neighbor. Too often, Christians have slaughtered those we labeled heretics, only to realize later that we were wrong about their beliefs -- and wrong to kill them, regardless of what they believed. It seems weird to me that Mormons think American Indians spoke ancient Egyptian and believe Christ will return to Salt Lake City, but parts of the Book of Revelation seem peculiar to me and nearly everyone else.

Most theologians see the Latter-day Saints as a religious movement that grew out of Christianity, much as Christianity grew out of Judaism into something distinct. Pointing this out does not make you prejudiced. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, suggested that Christians call Mormonism not a heresy but an Abrahamic religion alongside Judaism, Christianity and Islam (and, I would add, Bahais, Unitarian Universalists and others).

Does being non-Christian mean somebody loves Jesus less? Not at all. Many Jews, Muslims, Bahais, Hindus, Jains and Sikhs revere Jesus, if not the way that I do. Some Buddhists and Unitarian Universalists are also Christians, though they tend to be more broad-minded than the rest of us.

Mormons do not teach the same things as orthodox Christianity about Jesus. Just because they departed from mainstream Christianity does not mean that they aren't striving to follow Jesus in their own way. And much the same way, Muslims have different beliefs about him than most Methodists, but they could be right and I could be wrong. A little humility could do us all good.

Should we vote only for those who agree with us theologically? No. As a clergyman I know remarked, someone who says, "as a Christian, I cannot vote for a Mormon" isn't behaving in a very Christian way.

What we should expect of political candidates is that they respect our Constitution, religious liberty and those whose doctrines they reject. And we can ask candidates to say how their beliefs -- and doubts -- affect their leadership.

Romney has said little about his faith in this campaign. To win, Barack Obama had to state clearly his disagreements with his pastor. Romney may need to say how the teaching of the Temple would affect his government. In fact, telling us what he learned as a Mormon leader in Massachusetts while helping members who were unemployed or sick or caught in abusive marriages might even make him seem a little more human.

JFK knew he could not pretend that Protestants had no fears of Catholicism. It will do Romney little good to pretend that Christians have no concerns about Mormonism.