Catching Up…
Lowell and I have sort of shifted into a lower gear with Governor Romney’s withdrawal from the race, but there has been much written in the wake. We have addressed in individual posts what we consider to be the most important things, but it is time for a post just to catch up on the breadth of what has been written.
The Consensus Post-Mortem?
…is that Romney’s faith was a factor in his withdrawal, but not necessarily determinative. Such is the opinion of:
- K-Lo
- E.J. Dionne (on Religion and Ethics Weekly)
Orange County’s Frank Mickadeit wonders if was not more important than the conventional wisdom would hold out. As does a SLTrib columnist, and one of their writers.
EFM’s Nancy French, with her southern perspective, expresses her frustration at the “silent, but perhaps deadly” nature of the anti-Mormon sentiment.
But Peter Keeting, writing in the New Republic, writes the story that is going to be drummed throughout the left, and likely will be for a long time to some:
For the conservative pundits backing Romney who missed this story, ideology trumps theology. But for many evangelicals, it’s the other way around. Southern Baptists and Mormons are not only two of the four largest religious denominations in the country, they are the most aggressive of American missionary faiths, and have been on a collision course for generations.
And so it begins with the left using Romney’s withdrawal as a cudgel with which they will beat Evangelicals over and over and over again. As I have said over and over and over again, if you oppose Romney you need to make it entirely clear that it was not on the basis of religion, or else we will be pilloried if he does not succeed. But, of course, as the last conservative alternative standing, with his asides and unofficial allies and plausibly deniable religious attacks Huck has made that almost impossible.
It is so bad in fact, that those unofficial Huck allies are still Romney bashing, even though he is out. Classless, simply classless.
We have a lot of work in front of us.
The Mormon Reaction!?!?!?
Lowell has written about it already on Saturday and Sunday, but if sheer word count matters, the Mormon perspective on Romney’s withdrawal matters much more than the Evangelical one - something I find completely fascinating. Now, that does not mean I am insensitive to the pain I know my Mormon friends are feeling, but I really did thought the MSM would pounce if it happened to attempt to beat Evangelical out of existence. Of course, they may be working on it…
I will leave commentary on the Mormon reaction to those far more qualified than I, I simply link:
The Future
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution looks at the meetings Romney has had in the wake of his withdrawal and concludes that his current journey appears to be Reaganesque as he seeks to become the “face of conservatism.” No deeply religious individual, Reagan was adored by the Religious Right, but Reagan’s lack of faith made him a religious neutral, while Romney is a religious competitor. This will be interesting.
Lowell adds: I continue to believe that if Mitt Romney were a deeply religious Evangelical Presbyterian, with the same resume, he’d be the presumptive Republican nominee right now, way ahead of McCain, with Huckabee not even in the race. Why? Because Huck would not have been the “values voter” (meaning Evangelical) alternative to Romney. He never would have taken off in Iowa, conservatives would have flocked to Romney, and the entire narrative of this race would be different. So I disagree with everyone who seems so eager to say Romney’s Mormonism was only one of many factors, but not determinative. Yes, his faith was one of many factors, but it was by far the largest and most significant factor. Change that factor, and everything else changes as well.
That’s my story, folks, and I’m stickin’ to it!
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4 Responses to “Catching Up…”
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coltakashi on 12 Feb 2008 at 7:09 pm #
Keeting’s article in The New Republic is almost the only one anywhere in the professional media that has publicized the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention was feeding anti-Mormon propaganda to its members all through 2007, and included personal attacks on MItt Romney because of the fear that he would legitimize Mormonism if elected. How does the SBC maintain its 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization status after financing an attack on a candidate in a current election?
Basically, the SBC was apparently collaborating with Huckabee, however informally, because it got its members wound up like a crossbow, and all Huckabee had to do was point and shoot.
Now, Keeting, being a liberal, tries to depict the situation as a war between these two “most aggressive” denominations, but the only thing he can point to on the Mormon side is that the LDS Church built temples in Atlanta and Dallas, down in the Bible Belt, where the SBC is the Established Church, which constitutes serious dissing of the Baptists, according to the standards of the Crips and the Bloods. Keeting apparently thinks these were intial forays into the South by Mormons, rather than understanding that temples are the mark of a mature Mormon population that can devote the volunteer time to sustain and operate temples for the performance of eternla marriages and baptisms on behalf of dead ancestors. The Mormons were already in Dallas and Atlanta before the temples. And temples are not proselyting tools, since they are only open to Mormons in good standing. No non-Mormon, after the initial open house, would ever step foot inside, so how could they be used to proselyte or otherwise advance conversions?
What did the Mormons do while the Baptists were calling Mormons in general and Mitt Romney in particular “not Christian” and a lot worse things?
Not a thing. No official Mormon speech or publication attacked Baptists. No Mormon apostle called Baptists “non-Christian”. No Mormon Sunday School class was told in the official curriculum that Baptists are stupid or charlatans, or that Baptists don’t understand their own doctrines. No Mormons were picketing Baptist churches, and yelling obscenities at couples just married inside. No Mormon organization was attacking Mike Huckabee. Nada. Zilch. Nani-mo nai. Nothing.
It is left as an exercise for the reader as to which of the two churches mentioned here has, in the context of the current election process, demonstrated its devotion to the Second Great Commandment, to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
CarlH on 12 Feb 2008 at 10:29 pm #
Some historical perspective on “No Man’s Land”: The Place of Latter-day Saints in the Culture Wars. Being from 1999, this seems a little dated, but Prof. Gedicks’ analysis today seems prescient of LDS feelings in the face of “The Question” in 2008. The link is to an article archive webpage from which the entire article (6.83MB) may be downloaded in .pdf format.
A summarizing introduction sounds almost if it could have been written as a 2008 Mitt post mortem:
“Of course on cultural issues there is little question that Latter-Day Saints are closer to the ‘orthodox’ right than the ‘progressive’ left. Latter-Day Saint beliefs and practices include a traditional allocation of gender roles within a two-parent family, a moral code that forbids all extramarital-marital sexual relations, a law of health that prohibits consumption of coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs, and doctrinal declarations that oppose abortion rights and same sex marriage, virtually all of these Latter-Day Saint attitudes and practices are shared with other conservative Christians. ‘A moralism that rejects social and individual permissiveness,’ concludes one study, ‘is where Mormons and conservative Christians stand on common ground.’
“Nevertheless Hunter’s interpretation of the sources of cultural conflict oversimplifies the political relationship of Latter-day Saints to other conservative Christians, especially conservative Protestants. Notwithstanding their similar cultural attitudes, Latter-day Saints and conservative Christians are divided on at least three important issues. First, Latter-day Saints have a historically shaped consciousness of the precariousness of minority religious status, a consciousness that is not generally shared by conservative Christians in the United States. Second, their radically different understanding of Christianity makes Latter-day Saints a target of criticism and attacks by more ‘orthodox’ Christians, especially fundamentalist and Evangelical
Protestants. Finally, in contrast to the resurgence of conservative Christian activism in the last two decades, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an institution has remained largely apolitical since the 1960s. The first two of these differences actually place Latter-day Saints as close to the cultural left as to the cultural right, if not closer, while the last
places Latter-day Saints outside of the culture war paradigm altogether. All of them suggest that Latter-day Saints should not be uncritically grouped with conservative Christians on cultural issues.”
In my own view, Prof. Gedicks attempts to make more of his final point than the evidence–and particularly the voting patterns of the LDS in comparison to conservative “orthodox” Christians–than the evidence warrants, but the perspective is worth considering as we all look back on a season in which the view of the LDS as “the other” has been pretty much the story line, if not entirely the whole story.
4thnephite on 13 Feb 2008 at 5:23 am #
What did was Christ last words on the cross, “Forgive them Father for they no not want they do”
Who are the Romans or non-believers in this picture.
As for me I am commanded to forgive, but I will never forget.
Winghunter on 13 Feb 2008 at 12:17 pm #
For me, any of the candidates religion was irrelevant.
If and when in the last considerations I do look at it, it is only a small measure to gauge whether the candidate fully understands right from wrong. Obviously, this can be a misleading measure as all one has to do is look at the Huckster’s record and past behavior to know he has no idea…but, neither does Willard nor McCain for varying reasons.
Instruct and uphold the principles and values our founding father’s bothered to write out in their design of our government in maintaining our freedom.
Anything else is wrongheaded and an exercise towards our own demise.