Opinion: Why stop with Mitt’s Mormonism?
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Last week, atheist Christopher Hitchens succintly (if crudely) told GOP candidate Mitt Romney, a Mormon, that he has some explaining to do about his adherence to Christianity’s exotic cousin:
It ought to be borne in mind that Romney is not a mere rank-and-file Mormon. His family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership of the mad cult invented by the convicted fraud Joseph Smith. It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization. Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one.
Ask and ye shall receive, Chris. Tomorrow, in what almost everyone but the Mormon candidate himself is billing as the next ‘JFK speech,’ Romney will discuss ‘Faith in America’ at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. Romney denies that questions over his faith prompted his address, a contention many people aren’t buying considering the candidate’s values-based conservative platform aimed at evangelical Christians. Unfortunately for Romney, Christianity and Mormonism are different beliefs, and hard-line evangelicals consider the Joseph Smith-inspired religion a freakish cult.
But if Romney’s beliefs are so exotic that they demand an explanation, then each candidate who professes a religious faith — especially Christianity — should justify it. After all, any belief in the supernatural is just as nutty — and, sometimes, downright troubling — as the next, especially if the adherent aspires to become the world’s most powerful person.
Part of what inspires evangelical skepticism of Mormonism is the sect’s sharp differences from Christianity, some of which are beyond loony. Mormons believe that a teenage prophet in upstate New York started receiving divine visions that led him to write of ancient Israelites who inhabited North America — a history for which there is exactly zero evidence. Whenever he decides the time is right, God will re-establish his earthly kingdom of Zion — in Missouri. But a cursory reading of the Bible provides a picture of Christianity as illogical as Mormonism. The central theme of Christianity — Jesus Christ’s crucifixion — is about a blood sacrifice to atone for ‘sins’ as trivial as cussing. Because God’s son was tortured and brutally executed, those (and only those) who worship him get to live in eternal euphoria after they die. Smith’s revelations from the angel Moroni are every bit unlikely as Jesus’ claim to be mankind’s savior.
Mainstream Christians encourage a childlike dismissal of reason when it comes to faith in their own religion, but appeal to logic when debunking other beliefs, such as, say, the completely unreasonable Mormon belief in a three-tiered heaven. If the power of reason demands skepticism of Romney’s Mormonism, it does the same for Pastor Mike Huckabee’s mainstream Baptist beliefs — as it does for Hillary Clinton’s Methodism, Rudy Giuliani’s Roman Catholicism and John McCain’s Anglicanism. If Mormonism doesn’t get a free pass, neither should Christianity.