Opinion: What Mitt Romney will say about faith
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Even as you’re reading this, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is polishing an important speech he’s written himself, likely the most important of his well-organized campaign so far, which has hit some Baptist bumps in recent days.
Although, come to think of it, all the political buzz about the Romney speech this week sure diluted much of the attention that otherwise would have focused on Mike Huckabee’s move into first place in the Des Moines Register Iowa poll Sunday. Huckabee is running a new TV ad there now which flashes the words ‘Christian leader’ on the screen, a not-so-subtle play on the belief of many evangelicals that Mormons are not Christians,
Thursday morning we’ll hear Romney’s carefully-chosen words, titled ‘Faith in America,’ delivered to an invited audience of 300+ at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University in College Station. There, Romney will receive a priceless political cameo in the form of an introduction by the former president himself. It will be one of the more dramatic moments of the fall campaign.
According to Romney insiders, the decision to finally confront the whispers about Mormonism in a formal speech, while a political gamble that risks identifying him even more as a Mormon, was Romney’s alone (there was no staff consensus). It came last week and was driven by the regular religion questions at his 400+ ‘Ask Mitt Anything’ forums and, most recently, the anonymous push-polling in Iowa and New Hampshire seeking to spread rumors about Mormon tenets that can seem strange to non-members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Past polls as well as a new one coming this week show that around 25% of Americans say they would not vote for a Mormon, though typically such polls do not offer the name of any specific Mormon. Romney himself has joked that anti-Mormon feelings among Republicans may come because of confusion over Harry Reid, another Mormon and Democratic Senate majority leader.
Many political strategists believe that since it is not usually socially acceptable to express such religious bias openly, anti-Mormon feelings are what have helped give legs to the safer ‘flip-flop’ criticism of Romney.
Wisely, in his speech Romney will not seek to explain any Mormon doctrine which, for instance, according to some, places the Garden of Eden somewhere in Missouri. Just as in his 1960 speech to Baptist ministers confronting the Roman Catholic issue (also in Texas), John F. Kennedy did not seek to explain how his wife Jackie was descended from a rib of Adam’s and what in the world Noah did with all that manure on the Ark. Kennedy had one advantage going for him: about 28% of the country’s population then was Roman Catholic. Today, about 2% is Mormon.
Instead, with his five strapping sons and wife Ann of 38 years, a convert to Mormonism, as silent witness nearby (and an....
unspoken contrast with other GOP candidates who’ve had up to three wives), Romney will talk more about his personal faith and how it has shaped his values and driven his life.
Romney’s longest campaign discussion of faith, which aides point to as a model for Thursday’s speech, came earlier this fall when the candidate told CBS’s Bob Schieffer:
‘What I can tell you is that the values of my faith are founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and the same kind of philosophy that`s associated with other Christian faiths and the Jewish faith and others is very much consistent with ours. The view that there is a God that created us, that all the children on Earth are of the same, if you will, divine origin, that the loss of one life anywhere is the loss of a fellow son or daughter of God, that liberty is a gift of God. These fundamental principles are the same faith to faith.’
Romney said he wasn’t asking people to vote for his church but to look at the candidate and his conservative values. ‘By and large,’ he said, ‘people will make their decision not based on where you go to church but instead based upon your values, your vision for the country and your ability to actually help the country at a time of great need.’
Romney added:
‘I accept the teachings of our church, and I do my best to live by those teachings. It hasn`t made me perfect. I`m far from that. But I`m probably a better person than I would have been and my kids are better than they would have been without faith. And you know, I don`t try and be critical of other people`s faith. Actually, I`m of the view that religious individuals have an enormous advantage in stability in their life. And I respect the work that`s being done by ministers of all faith. I think it draws people closer to God and makes us better people.’
Schieffer asked Romney how he felt about the endorsement of Bob Jones III, chancellor of South Carolina’s evangelical Bob Jones University, who said he preferred Romney’s values despite his erroneous faith to the lack of faith of Hillary Clinton.
‘I’m not expecting him to endorse my faith’ Romney replied. ‘I’m not asking anyone to do that. I’m asking him to look at me as an American and judge my values, learn about me and my family, my character, and decide whether I could help America at a critical time. And I`m pleased that you have an evangelical Christian leader who says, look, Mitt Romney is a guy who is a social conservative, an economic conservative, a foreign policy conservative.’
Interestingly, Romney’s religion did not play a significant role in his Massachusetts campaigns for the Senate against John Kennedy’s brother Ted, nor Romney’s successful bid for the governor’s office. Nor even in his father George’s unsuccessful campaign for the GOP nomination in 1968. At that time, however, the Southern evangelical vote was Democratic.
(UPDATE: A new Los Angeles Times Poll indicates religion is not Romney’s only problem; authenticity figures in too.)
(Second UPDATE: For a controversial look at the Mormon church, its teachings and tenets, check out this PBS website and documentary. For the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints go here.)
--Andrew Malcolm