Today’s Reading List – September 11, 2006 | Article VI Blog

David Frum – Romney aces Guliani on the pro-life issue, end of story.

Huckabee sides with Bush over Congress in the political fray of this cycle. Good or bad strategery in Huckabee's presidential aspirations? Only time will tell.

Michigan leaves the blogs and hits the MSM. That it matters I understand, but the tactics, at this point in "the race" are still puzzling.

H.R. 2679 – Guarding Pubic Expression of Religion. Sound like a brilliant idea to me. Creedal Christian blogger comments here and here.

Christian or American? A decidely false dichotomy, but one that many people make. That dichotomy is the likely source of any anti-Mormon bias that may evidence itself in the elections. I choose to be both.

Fascinating… The president of the National Association of Evangelicals says voting for a Mormon not a problem. That's great, but there is a potential problem here. They are starting to lean liberal. They narrowly missed doing something very unwise as relates to global warming earlier this year. Will Haggard's statement in re: "The Mormon question" widen the crack that is beginning to form?

Speaking of that forming crack…here is some excellent commentary on same.

From the Dept. of Weird: How not to mix religion and politics

Question for Lowell: My current reading is "A Different Jesus? The Christ of the Latter-Day Saints" by Mormon Scholar Robert Millet. In the early chapter on basic history, he refers to pre-statehood Utah under Brigham Young as "theocratic." Would you agree with this assessment? Was this approach to church/government abandoned with polygamy purely to gain statehood, or were there deeper, religious changes that brought it about? Such movements died in Protestantism pretty much with the British Civil War, and fizzled out of Catholicism pretty much the same time. So in Christian circles, this would be the most recent example. Does the left have more to fear on this account from a Mormon than a creedal, simply because the history is fresher?

Lowell: One thing I love about this blog is that it causes me to focus on interesting questions that never occurred to me before.

In short, the theocratic government in early Utah was always a temporary situation. The Mormons knew they would re-join the United States. They fled the country primarily because of persecution, and because the federal government would not protect them from the mobs that constantly plagued them. (Martin Van Buren told Joseph Smith personally, "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you.")

That theocratic Utah government is an artifact of history and has nothing to do with modern Mormon attitudes toward government. Our Twelfth Article of Faith states: