Today’s Reading List – July 6, 2007 | Article VI Blog

NPR GOES WILD

Two pieces in one day on The Question, both of them awful. The first is an attempt to understand Mormonism. I will leave it to Lowell to critique the specifics, but I must comment that the ebb and flow of the piece, essentially a Q&A with Richard Bushman, is of the interviewer digging up misconceptions and Bushman knocking them down. In other words, the interviewer is a bit disrespectful, having apparently done no research other than rumor-mongering prior to the interview, and just trying to make trouble and play to stereotypes.

Lowell: Prof. Bushman is an outstanding academic and a de facto unofficial spokesman for the Church. (He always makes it clear that the views he expresses are his own.) I suspect that if the truth were known, he would be revealed as a moderate Democrat. But Bushman is very clear, honest and effective in explaining and clarifying Mormon doctrine, history and culture. On top of which, he's an eminent historian.

The second piece more directly relates to Romney and The Question and it is entirely and utterly anecdotal. It cites a few "on-the-streets" and Al Mohler. Mohler is showing up increasingly in pieces that seem to want to demonstrate that Romney has an Evangelical problem. But to anybody that tries to tap into all of it, as we do here, it is apparent that Mohler is the ONLY one so showing up. That should tell people something. And where is the counterbalance, where is Richard Land, or Mark DeMoss, or any of the other, and far more numerous Evangelical leadership that does not see Romney's faith as an issue?

MSM devotion to this narrative, in the face of extraordinary and mounting evidence to the contrary, is both shameful and makes myth, as if it already was not so, the idea of press objectivity.

Echoing my sentiment comes Jim Geraghty at NRO:

And this isn’t even getting into the already infamous Mormon factor. Have you noticed the sudden interest in Mormonism in the mainstream media, and the less-than-flattering portrait, emerging just as Romney appears on the national stage? It’s easily forgotten that the protagonists of HBO’s Big Love are part of a breakaway sect, not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (The Boston Globe’s Alex Beam did his part to blur the distinction.)

PBS’s special on Mormonism made sure to mention “celestial marriage,” and the AP has already helpfully pointed out that one of Romney’s ancestors was a polygamist, as if we regularly took the character of a candidate’s great-great-grandfathers into account when selecting a president. In August, September Dawn comes to theaters, telling of the Mountain Meadows massacre, when Mormon militiamen attacked and murdered a wagon train of emigrants of more than 120 men, women and children on (COUGH) September 11, 1857.

After eight months of covering a Romney campaign, the mainstream media will make the Mormon church resemble Wahhabism without the melanin.

Speaking of Al Mohler…

…he was all over the Christian press yesterday because of a direct statement that he has been making that Mormonism is not Christian. What I find most fascinating is that in the piece, which was syndicated, there is this little gem:

“We are not talking here about the postmodern conception of Christianity that minimizes truth,” Mohler wrote. “We are not talking about Christianity as a mood or as a sociological movement. We are not talking about liberal Christianity that minimizes doctrine nor about sectarian Christianity which defines the faith in terms of eccentric doctrines.

“We are talking about historic, traditional, Christian orthodoxy,” the theologian stated.

The fact that Mohler has to work so hard to identify "which" Christianity he is talking about is extremely informative. In his statements, Mohler is defending something quite specific and something much narrower than the common societal understanding of Christianity. When he makes his statements they are ecclesiastical in nature, purely, by his own admissions. He does the nation no service in placing his personal boundaries out there in this fashion.

We have discussed before that the very definition of "church" in America makes religious authority an entirely separate, and in the course of American legal history, subordinate, source of political authority to the civil government. Asserting ecclesiastical definitions in this fashion, Mohler comes dangerously close to crossing that line.

Lowell adds: Amen and amen! As long-time readers here know, this definitional argument drives me absolutely nuts. The biggest problem: Someone like Mohler says, "Mormons are not Christian," and most listeners (especially the religiously illiterate members of the news media) hear, "Mormons do not believe in Christ." Then that idea gets disseminated widely among the public, and Romney is unfairly tarred with a brush that really doesn't exist.

What Mohler is really saying is, "Mormons are not part of historic, traditional, Christian orthodoxy." There is a huge difference there. Mormons happily and readily agree that they are not part of traditional orthodox Christianity– that's actually fundamental to our faith, which we believe is restored Christianity. But to suggest we do not believe in Christ is offensive in the extreme, simply dishonest at worst and terribly sloppy rhetoric at best. Mohler is a smart man and really owes everyone a more intellectually honest presentation of his views.

Writing at The Corner, John Derbyshire had some interesting points to make along those lines, discussing, "the distance between the doctrines of religions, and the understandings of ordinary believers."

Back to Geraghty for a moment…

His piece is essentially a warning to the Republican field in general, but Romney in specific, to be careful with the "quirkiness" – that the media is clearly aimed to derail any Republican and will turn quirky molehills into mountain ranges. That tendency, when combined with The Question could be deadly.

My personal observation is that most primary voters don't listen to the media anyway (staunch Republicans long ago learned of the MSM bias) so this stuff won't amount to a hill of beans now, and by the time the general rolls around all this coverage will be inoculation.

Additionally, I think the "quirks" defuse The Question. For people unfamiliar with Mormons, there is an air of "otherness" until you get to know them. These episodes that Geraghty makes so much of also paint Romney as just another guy, not "the other."

Late update from Lowell: Hugh Hewitt has thoughts on Geraghty's piece.

Elsewhere…

The Economist profiles Romney and in a unique twist leaves The Question for the end of the piece. Otherwise, no news here.

Gratefully, this Fortune profile makes precious little of his faith. Ah, reason does exist somewhere in the press.

Looking at "bogus bigotry." It is a crying shame when sadly the real stuff still exists.

Everybody was talking about the Religious Right going to Thompson yesterday. Maybe, maybe not. One thing is for sure, the current state of the Religious Right is such that it's not going anywhere as a bloc, and secondly, it's questionable if it can dictate the outcome of the primary. Some candidates have coalesced the Religious Right into a deciding factor in some elections, but that's not happening this cycle, and trying to follow it like it will is more wishful thinking than political reality. Finally, there is a whole lot of between-the-lines-presumptive-deduction going on here. I've seen more definitive information in tea leaves.

Lowell: My view of the tea leaves is that the comparatively small segment of the Evangelical community that is really bothered by Romney's Mormonism will head to Thompson's camp. Those folks never would have voted for Romney anyway, for the most part. For them, a real attraction of Thompson, a not-very-active member of the Church of Christ, is that he seems conservative and he doesn't belong to a church that makes them nervous. I am sure those folks have a lot more ideas (true and false) in their heads about Mormonism than they have even considered about the Church of Christ, which, like Mormonism, is non-creedal, but is considered mainstream.

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