On Mitt’s Mormonism, Are Evangelicals Witnessing Christ?

January 4, 2012 By Timothy Dalrymple

Many socially conservative evangelicals in Iowa, concerned about the prospect of a Romney presidency, and encouraged by organizations like The Family Leader and the Iowa Family Policy Center, coalesced at the last possible moment behind Rick Santorum.  Even if it was not the “landslide” for Santorum that the Family Leader’s Bob Vander Plaats had predicted, it was a clear indication of the discomfort many social conservatives feel when it comes to Mitt Romney.  Santorum had, for months, drawn support beneath 5% in Iowa.  After these endorsements, and as social conservatives deserted Gingrich (having crossed Bachmann, Perry, Cain and Gingrich off the list already), Santorum’s support edged sharply upward in late December and he reached roughly 25% of the caucus vote.  Roughly half of caucus-goers decided for whom to vote in the final few days; of that number, 23% chose Mitt and fully 34% chose Santorum.  32 percent of evangelicals, and 48 percent of those who ranked abortion as the most important issue shaping their vote, chose Santorum.

So, I promise that my next post will not be about politics.  But we need to consider: What are our obligations here as believers?  And what kind of witness are we giving the world to the grace and truth of Christ?

To be clear, I do not believe that evangelical distrust of Romney is entirely due to his faith. That’s a caricature.  There are other, understandable reasons why evangelicals question Romney’s social conservatism.  (I’ve addressed the abortion issue here.)  But we need to consider whether we’re responding to his Mormonism in a godly way, because Mitt’s Mormonism is a part of the evangelical response to his candidacy.

Being involved both with Patheos and with Evangelicals For Mitt, I’m in a good position to witness this.  When I published (as a part of a multi-perspective conversation on the issue) Warren Cole Smith’s “A Vote for Romney is a Vote for the LDS Church,” it evoked outrage from Mormons but also support (some of it beneath the table) from some conservative evangelicals.  When Robert Jeffress called Mormonism a “cult” and warned that evangelicals should prefer someone of their own faith, there was a fair amount of support (again, some in the open and some beneath the surface) in conservative evangelical circles.  And over the weekend I received a submission from a respected professor at a respected Christian university arguing that Evangelicals should not support a candidate whose religion is “openly hostile” to theirs, and that electing a Mormon would legitimate Mormonism in the public eye and put the salvation of many souls at stake.  I also, as a member of Evangelicals for Mitt, receive love letters like this one (edited for length), entitled “You’re NOT Evangelical!”:

I certainly don’t want someone who sees himself as “a god” who will one day rule his own universe, ruling this nation.
It’s ABOUT BETRAYING the One who DIED to save us, AND ROSE FROM THE DEAD.
It’s about having AN INSTRUMENT OF SATAN in the White House.
Evangelical, my foot…
I wonder how much Mitt is paying you to be his shill.
You, like Judas, have betrayed your alleged Master FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY.

Letters like this are, at most, mildly disturbing (if EFM received money from Mitt Romney, I wouldn’t be driving a beat-up car from 1996!), but the founders of EFM (David and Nancy French) have also received anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night threatening violence upon their family.  Letters and phone calls like these, of course, do not represent evangelicalism as a whole.  But there is an ugly side to this, and it presents a horrible witness to the world.

Put yourself in Mormon shoes for a moment.  Imagine that you have been raised to see Mormonism as thoroughly Christian, indeed a uniquely faithful recovery of original Christianity.  You’ve fought alongside evangelicals and Catholics against abortion and same-sex marriage.  And now you find evangelicals arguing that Mormonism is a cult and no Mormon can be considered for the presidency, and going to extraordinary lengths to organize against a candidate of your religion partly because of his religion.

I’ve done my best to address the arguments.  In “Is it bigotry to oppose a candidate on religious grounds?“, I actually come down in defense of the view that it’s not necessarily bigotry.  I would not be willing to vote for a Satanist, and I would have an awful hard time voting for a New Atheist.  I don’t think it’s necessarily bigoted to consider a candidate’s religious beliefs, because those religious beliefs tell us something about a person and about his values and thought processes.  There are some bigots who oppose Romney simply because they intensely dislike Mormons.  There are others who are honestly misled by the likes of Walter Martin’s The Kingdom of the Cults and various anti-cult websites that provide ridiculously caricatured pictures of Mormon beliefs and practices.  And there are others who oppose Romney because they fear that his election would fuel the growth of the LDS Church, or because they fear his Mormon beliefs would make him unsuitable or unreliable in the White House.  So the question is: Are those persuasive concerns?

So I asked, ”Would a Romney Presidency fuel the growth of Mormonism?”  Some evangelicals are genuinely convinced of this; I don’t question their sincerity.  They say: electing a Mormon would legitimate what has been, until now, a marginal religious group in American life.  People who never took Mormonism seriously will investigate it.  Some will be deceived — and this places their eternal souls in jeopardy.  My view is: there’s no evidence that the election of any President has swayed the American people in favor of his religious affiliation; there’s hard evidence that Romney’s first candidacy did nothing to change public opinion about Mormonism; theologically, I believe the Election of God is infinitely more powerful than the public relations efforts of men; I believe that Mormons as such can be saved, even though I feel that official Mormon theology is deeply mistaken on some deeply important matters; and I think evangelicals should not fear people learning more about other religions.  In the current world, it’s inevitable.  And how people respond to other religions is between them and God.

Finally, I asked, ”Would Romney’s Mormon beliefs make him a bad President?”  Some have argued that Romney’s commitment to Mormonism (1) shows that he is something less than fully rational, especially when it comes to matters of history, and (2) would make him subject to the authority (and the “continuing revelation”) of LDS leadership.  I don’t really know Romney’s views on the historical claims of the Mormon religion.  I find some of those historical claims incredible.  But even if he believes them wholeheartedly, it’s not hard for me to understand how an entirely rational person can be raised within a particular belief system, and even investigate its beliefs and read its apologists, and find that belief system coherent and convincing.  And Mitt has been clear that he will act in the interests of the nation and according to his political philosophy, not at the beck and call of the Mormon leadership — and his record supports him on this point.

It should also be stated that many evangelical leaders — from Chuck Colson of BreakPoint to Jim Daly of Focus on the Family to Franklin Graham — have opposed the idea that evangelicals should disqualify Romney on the basis of his Mormonism.  And I believe evangelicals will ultimately support Mitt Romney against Barack Obama.  But there remains a portion of evangelicalism that disagrees with Colson, Daly and Graham, and that is deeply uncomfortable with candidate Romney — at least in part — because of his Mormonism.

So let me issue a plea.  I am an evangelical.  I believe in sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ; I believe that the grace of God in Christ is the only basis for the salvation of the world; I believe that each of us should cultivate a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who is God made manifest in the flesh and the redeemer of those who take refuge in him; I am committed to the authority of scripture.  But I am deeply concerned that evangelical opposition to Romney, on the basis of his faith, has presented a poor witness to the world.

I don’t mind it when the world criticizes evangelicals for believing what they ought to believe and doing what they ought to do.  But I do grow concerned when my fellow evangelicals present a caricatured view of Mormonism, when they nastily criticize evangelicals who support a Mormon for the presidency, and when they show something less than the extraordinary charity and grace that Jesus showed to those whose beliefs differed from his own.  Right now, many Mormons are showing in their actions that they are moral, loving, hard-working, patriotic people.  And right now, unfortunately, some evangelicals are showing in their actions that they are uninformed, ungracious, and more “us against them” than “let us reason together.”  Again, some of my friends raised legitimate concerns, and legitimately are concerned about them.  For others, I fear the arguments are cover for their personal dislike of Mormonism and Mormons.

So please, if you must oppose a Mormon because he is a Mormon, do better.  Do it with a massive, meticulous commitment to the truth.  Do it with an equally extravagant grace, love and humility.  And don’t simply assume that because you believe Mormonism is wrong or weird, that you must oppose a Mormon candidate for the presidency.

Show that you’ve done your homework — not proof-texting Mormon beliefs on the basis of obscure nineteenth century Mormon figures, or even pulling together non-canonical comments from the likes of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, but really looking at the current, modern, official teachings of the Mormon church.  Moreover, show that you understand how those comments — and how the Mormon scriptures — are interpreted by the present-day LDS church.  And show in your words and deeds that you’re speaking out of concern for the truth and concern for souls, not out of prejudice and suspicion of those who are different.

The world is watching — and rightly or not, it will judge the evangelical proclamation on the basis of the actions of public evangelicals.  Again, consider these questions: What are my actions witnessing to the world?  And what are they witnessing to Mormons?  If you don’t like the answers to those questions, then perhaps you should reconsider what you’re saying and doing.

Filed Under: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Mormonism Tagged With: , , , , ,

Are Mormon and Evangelical Views of God Really That Different?

September 16, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

Because of a certain person who shall go nameless — let’s call him M. Romney or Mitt R. — the question of Mormon differences from historical Christianity has been very much in the air.  Not too long ago, for instance, we published an article (part of a broader discussion on the topic) in which Warren Cole Smith explained why he, as an evangelical, could not vote for a Mormon.  This became a very controversial piece, eliciting no fewer than three responses in the Washington Post.  I have staked out the opposite position: as an evangelical, I’m very comfortable voting for a Mormon.  But Warren and I agree on a more fundamentally theologically question: we both believe there are clear and important theological differences between Mormonism and historical Christianity.  Those differences worry Warren when he assesses a presidential candidate, while I don’t believe those differences would lead a Mormon to make different policy decisions than a Christian.

Now, along comes a study that purports to show that Americans in general are more Mormon in their theology than they might be prepared to admit.  The study comes from Gary Lawrence, a Ph.D. from Stanford (which earns him plaudits in my book, being a Stanford man myself) and a Latter-Day Saint.

You can read about it in this piece from the Deseret News’ excellent religion reporter, Michael DeGroote.  As you’ll discover if you read the article, DeGroote asked for my perspective on a couple questions in the study — and I’ll flesh it out in detail here.  The two questions under discussion are these:

QUESTION A: Half of those polled were asked: Do you believe that God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are:

  1. “three separate beings” — 27%
  2. “three Beings in one body or substance” — 66%

QUESTION B: The other half were asked: The New Testament says that God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are one.  Do you believe that means they are:

  1. “one in purpose” — 58%
  2. “one in body” — 31%

When Michael read the questions aloud to me, I started chuckling before he had finished.  Do you see the slipperiness in the questions?  From the article:

Lawrence said that Mormons say the oneness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the New Testament is an oneness of purpose. The positive response of Christians to this concept in the second question surprised Lawrence. “I was wondering if there was a difference. I wasn’t expecting a flip-flop. But it was. It just shifts from two-to-one one way and almost two-to-one the other way,” Lawrence said.

In other words, the first question gets more or less the results you would expect.  Traditional Christians know they cannot say that God is “three separate beings” (the Mormon view, roughly speaking) so they choose the other option: God is “three beings in one body or substance.”  When they do not choose to say that the Triune God is “one in body” in the next question (only 31% say that), then Dr. Lawrence calls this a “flip-flop.”  When you focus on the differentiation in the Trinity, he says, Christians by and large do not accept the Mormon view.  When you focus on the manner of their unity, however, orthodox Christians show that they really agree with Mormonism.  But is this really a flip-flop?

Of course not — and anyone should be able to see why.  The first question asks whether the Triune God is “three Beings in one body or substance,” whereas the second question just says “one in body” (i.e., no “substance” option is given here).

QUESTION A puts together two very, very different options into a single answer.  As shown by the low percentage who answer “one in body” in Question B, Christians know they should not say that the Triune God is “one in body” (because God is immaterial).  But they also know they cannot say that God is three separate beings.  So they say “one in body or substance,” but they really mean “one in substance.”  The orthodox language is that God is three Persons (hypostases – “Beings” here is not good language) in one substance (ousia).  But this is like asking: “Do you believe that Jesus is (1) a vegetable, or (2) a devil or the Son of God?”  You would have to choose B, right?  But that hardly implies you believe that Jesus is the devil.

QUESTION B then reduces the options in order to get an opposite result.  If I went on to ask, “Do you believe Jesus is the devil?”, then I could not accuse people who answered in the negative of flip-flopping, because I really wasn’t asking equivalent questions.  But Question B is deceptive in another way.  My understanding is that the people polled were encouraged to answer one of the two options (although some apparently wriggled out).  Now, given a choice between “one in body” and “one in purpose,” I too would have to choose “one in purpose” because “one in body” is repugnant to historical theology.  So, yes, it’s true enough that they are united in purpose, but I also believe they are united in other ways that are profoundly important (such as being one in substance).  This is one way in which these kinds of “which one is closer” questions can be misleading.

Lawrence, however, defended his wording of the questions, “The average American is not a trained theologian in any denomination. And so you have to phrase the question to capture the variable you want in words that the respondent can readily relate to and understand.”…To Lawrence, the difference in wording between “one in body” and “one in substance” is “theological minutia” and wouldn’t have made a difference.

But this is absurd.  First, the problem is not one of theological wording.  It’s a logical problem.  You cannot claim that “X is A or B” conflicts with “X is not B.”  There is simply no justification for altering the wording in the two questions and then being surprised when you receive different results.  Also, neither Mormons nor orthodox Christians will agree that it’s a trivial matter whether the Triune God is one “in substance” or one “in body.”  These are very different things!  The possession of bodies is precisely one of the distinguishing factors between Mormon and traditional Christian conceptions of God.  No orthodox Christian who knows the slightest bit of theology — and, granted, many don’t — will refer to the three Persons as united “in body,” whereas every Christian who genuinely knows her theology will affirm that they are united in substance.

I’m all for improving relationships between Mormons and evangelicals.  Many evangelicals have a crude and unfair understanding of Mormon beliefs and practices.  I’m also all for encouraging evangelicals to understand that they can vote for a Mormon in good conscience.  But there are two principles to bear in mind:

First, we do not improve understanding between two communities by blurring the differences between them.  We cannot articulate the reasons why we believe the things we believe, and we cannot properly understand why another community believes what it believes, until we know exactly the differences between us.  When we blur the distinctions between two religious groups, we alienate the true believers in those groups (who will see that we’re watering down their beliefs), we create the conditions for explosive misunderstandings later, and — most importantly — we do an injustice to the traditions we represent.

Second, differences of belief between Mormons and evangelicals can be important theologically and even soteriologically (in regards to salvation) without being important politically. Your personal view on whether the Triune God is “one in substance” or “one in purpose” will not shape your view on the New START Treaty, and it will not shape the way in which you’re likely to respond to an economic crisis.  Some fundamental theological questions — questions like the existence of a God, or the sanctity of life, or the importance of family — will clearly have policy consequences and predictive value for a politician’s behavior, but those happen to be the areas where Mormons and evangelicals are substantially united.  When it comes to the finer theological distinctions, important though they are, the best guide to what a politician will do or promote in office is what the politician has actually done and promoted in office before.

Filed Under: Election 2012 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mormon Irrationality? A Case in Point

June 18, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

I’m presently trapped in travel purgatory — my attempts to return to Atlanta last night were thwarted by thunderstorms around New York City — and unable to post the usual content.  But I thought I would share an article I came across.

In my recent post on Mitt Romney’s Mormon beliefs and whether they ought to concern voters (to which I answered in the negative), I mentioned the argument that Mormon beliefs are simply so irrational and so plainly divorced from reality that anyone who believes in them cannot be trusted (not as a matter of character, but as a matter of rationality).  In case you doubted whether this argument was being made, I thought I’d offer this example.  This comes from M. Joseph Sheppard, who is apparently a Christian and a conservative.  Here is the core of it:

Thus for Romney to hold, as I am sure he sincerely does, to the purported historic roots of the Mormon faith shows that, to me at least, he has thought processes that are a significant aspect of his personality that are questionable in respect of wider views he might hold now or in the future. These include concepts which, again to me, are totally divorced from reality. I would not look to a candidate for president to have, again as a major aspect of his very being, this sort of mindset. Simply put, if non-rationality at this core level can be accepted and acted on then what other non-rationality can also be accepted and acted on?

This is the kind of argument to which I responded — briefly — in the second part of my most recent post.  I didn’t want you to think I was inventing a straw-man.

I am opposed to this.  One of the things I most value about the academic experience is the attempt to enter imaginatively into a different way of viewing the world.  Academics do not practice this evenly; they’re much more interested in sympathetically understanding Tibetan Buddhists than conservative Christians, for instance.  But the practice is important.

To a person raised Atheist, for instance, it must seem very peculiar that I take my cues on moral and metaphysical matters from a collection of texts that are thousands of years old.  But if one accepts the suppositions that (1) there is a Creator who (2) revealed himself and entered into a covenant relationship with a particular people whom he had chosen to be his vessels to the world, and who (3) most perfectly and completely revealed himself to the world by (the Second Person) becoming incarnate in the man Jesus of Nazareth, then it makes sense that I should look to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

When Christians look at Mormons and find certain of their beliefs implausible in the extreme, and move from that implausibility to mockery or a dismissal of the rationality of those who believe, I fear that we’re doing the same thing as the Atheist who mocks us for caring what the story of Lot in Sodom might reveal about the morality of homosexuality.  It may be the case that Mormon beliefs are wrong, and it may be the case that they’re irrational (which are two very different things), but that judgment can only be made after studying those beliefs thoroughly and attempting to understand the thought-world in which those beliefs make sense to millions of Mormons around the world.  And, further, even if some of those beliefs are irrational, this does not necessarily mean that Mormons as a whole, much less any one Mormon in particular, is irrational.  Let me tell you, as someone who has known a lot of purportedly rational people on faculty at prestigious universities: rational people believe irrational things all the time.

If we’re going to ask people who reject our beliefs to acknowledge nonetheless our rationality, then I think we ought to extend the same courtesy to Mormons.

Filed Under: Christian Approach to Politics, Christians in Government, Election 2012, Mormonism Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Would His Mormon Beliefs Make Romney a Bad President? – Mitt Romney and Evangelicals, Part 3

June 16, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

Are Mormon beliefs a legitimate cause for concern for those who might otherwise vote for Mitt Romney? Are there particular beliefs that might hinder a Mormon President in the execution of his duties? Or are Mormon beliefs in general so bizarre, so irrational, that they indicate a kind of untrustworthiness in the individual who believes them?

This is the third in a three-part series responding to Warren Cole Smith’s “A Vote for Romney is a Vote for the LDS Church.” The first part argued that – in the abstract – it is not necessarily bigoted or even unreasonable to vote against a candidate on the basis of his or her faith. Yet I do believe that voting against Mitt Romney on the basis of his Mormonism is mistaken. So the second part made the case that Christians need not reject the Romney candidacy out of fear that a Mormon Presidency would provide a public relations victory to the LDS Church and thus a boost to its efforts at evangelization. This was one of Smith’s major arguments, that electing a Mormon to the White House would have consequences that should be unacceptable to all Christians. The second major argument was that a Mormon, due to the beliefs Mormons hold, is likely to make a poor President, or at least an unreliable representative of conservative values. It’s this second argument we’ll address now.

As the questions posed at the beginning of this entry imply, there are (at least) two ways in which religious beliefs might cast doubt on a candidate for the Presidency. On the one hand, specific beliefs could interfere with the tasks and the processes that make for good Presidents. On the other hand, the beliefs in general or as a whole might cast doubt on the candidates’ rationality. That is, the beliefs themselves might be faulty, and the faulty beliefs might point to a faulty belief-making capacity.

To give an example of the first: if a candidate believed that the world was predestined to come to an end in a nuclear Armageddon in 2014, or that the best way to halt the spread of AIDS was to pray the evil spirit out, or that black-skinned people are inferior to those of other colors, then one could plausibly argue that those beliefs would interfere with the candidate’s ability to execute the duties of the office of the Presidency. To give an example of the second: if a Presidential candidate believed that Elmo were God’s representative on earth, or that the world was supported on the back of a cosmic turtle, then we might reasonably question whether this candidate were rational enough to be a successful President.

So, to begin with the first: Would the teachings of the LDS Church make a Mormon a poor President?

In Smith’s view, a good President will, among other things, faithfully represent conservative values. He mentions two specific beliefs that ought to give us pause: belief in a historical narrative that is “in many particulars completely unsubstantiated and in others demonstrably false,” and belief in the doctrine of continuous revelation.

I too find the historical narratives of Mormonism – both the ancient narratives in which some Israelites make their way to the New World and Jesus Christ appears to them there, and the more modern narratives of Joseph Smith’s discovery of the golden tablets – highly implausible. This is not to insult Mormons. Many people find my own beliefs implausible, and I freely confess that I am not an expert in Mormonism and have not thoroughly investigated these claims. Yet the point is: even for someone like myself, who finds these beliefs implausible, it’s hard to imagine that they would actually interfere with Romney’s ability to manage our affairs foreign and domestic.

Why should they? Would Romney bungle the Middle East peace process because he believes the descendants of the ancient Israelites did battle with a tribe of Native Americans? Is he going to invade Missouri because he believes it was the site of the Garden of Eden? The notion strains credulity.

What Smith actually claims is that these beliefs demonstrate an insufficient concern for historical factuality. Because he believes in a historical narrative that is manifestly false, Smith believes, Romney (and other Mormons like him) must believe that history is not bound to facts and evidence but is susceptible to reinvention. I found this to be the least persuasive of all Smith’s claims. Mormons do not believe we’re free to fabricate history. Some Mormons may not believe in these historical narratives at all, in the same way that some Christians do not consider some of the New Testament stories historical. But when Mormons do believe those narratives, they believe they’re actually true, they actually happened – and it’s because they feel themselves accountable to facts and evidence that they engage in apologetics and look for archeological verification. Mormon apologetics are more sophisticated than the common evangelical caricature gives them credit for, because Mormons – like evangelicals – believe that there are metaphysical and historical facts of the matter. We do not disagree that there are facts; we just disagree on what those facts are.

What about the second belief Smith cites, the belief in continuous revelation? The LDS Church teaches that God reveals the Truth not only in the scriptures but through the prophets of the church. It was through the teachings of the prophets that Mormons recast their views on polygamy (that it was only intended by God for a certain time) and on race (that blacks should be capable of ordination). The concern here, according to Smith, is that the LDS Church might change its mind on, say, the sacredness of life in the womb. As a Mormon, wouldn’t Romney be compelled to change his views as well.

Of course not. For one thing, all Mormons do not all fall in line with the teachings of their authorities any more than all Catholics do. A President who was elected on one platform could hardly abandon his promises and principles just because the LDS Church changed its teaching on something. For another, it would be something like ecclesial suicide for the LDS Church to reverse itself in this way. The LDS Church for the most part, in its own self-interest, keeps out of partisan political issues. If it suddenly reversed its position on something like abortion or gay marriage (issues that transcend the political, where the church has taken definite stances), it would lose all credibility and would take a massive PR hit with those most likely to be receptive to their message: values conservatives. Finally, the ways in which the LDS Church has reshaped its teachings over the years have been, to my knowledge, uniformly in one direction – toward and not away from orthodox Christian beliefs. In other words, it’s highly unlikely the LDS Church would change its teachings on one of these matters, any change is far more likely to one Christian conservatives would welcome than one they would reject, and a Mormon President would not be bound to honor such a change even if it were not.

Now to the second question: Do their beliefs cast such doubt on the very rationality of Mormons that a conscientious voter should reject a Mormon candidate?

Smith comes closest to this claim when he says that Mormon historical teachings are so obviously false that they represent an abandonment of historical method, and when he suggests that there are “many other” peculiar beliefs that should cause concern for voters. To be clear, Smith never says that Mormons are foolish, or dishonest, or unethical. He, Smith, only says that they may not care enough for historical fact. And others might have this concern over rationality in mind when they say (what Warren does not say) that Mormonism is a cult or etc.

In my view, some Mormon beliefs are false, but not so obviously or outrageously false that I cannot respect the rationality of a person who believes them. I’ve known many Mormons who are not only good and decent people, but abundantly rational people. The ways in which religious beliefs take shape are complex. The influences of experience and upbringing, of relationship and desire, are profound and pervasive.

Evangelicals are to some extent the victims of — and of course to some extent responsible for — years and years of Mormon caricatures. It’s easy for evangelicals to joke about the special underwear or the planet Kolob. Yet many Christian beliefs also sound silly when they’re presented in caricature, and much more reasonable when they’re presented by a skilled teacher or theologian. The same goes for Mormon beliefs.

To be clear, I think that historic, orthodox Christianity has the better of the argument. But I’ll give a couple examples, in a post next week, of Mormon beliefs that seem outrageous to non-Mormon Christians but are less outrageous when understood in context. I think this is important. We need to be able to disagree with one another without falling into caricature. We need to be able to say that a certain belief is false, even that a certain belief system as a whole is fatally flawed, without saying that everyone who ascribes to those beliefs is irrational.  If we can’t do so with Mormons, how can we ask atheists to treat us with the same consideration?

Filed Under: Election 2012 Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Would a Romney Presidency Fuel the Growth of Mormonism? — Romney and Evangelicals, Pt 2

June 13, 2011 By Timothy Dalrymple

Should Christians reject a Mormon Presidential candidate for fear that a Mormon presidency would help Mormons evangelize?

When I received Warren Cole Smith’s contribution to our discussion on Faith and the Future of Social Conservatism, I gave it the title, “A Vote for Romney is a Vote for the LDS Church.”  (Believe it or not, I had no idea that this was an echo to a much more incendiary essay that made the rounds in 2007, “A Vote for Romney is a Vote For Satan.”)  The title seemed like a fair summation of what appeared to be Warren’s main concern: that electing a Mormon would strengthen the LDS Church and fuel its further growth.

I already addressed the fundamental question: Is it bigoted or unreasonable to oppose a candidate on the basis of his or her religious beliefs? My answer was: Not necessarily.  Religious beliefs speak profoundly to the character, the values, and the worldview that would shape the decisions a candidate would make were he or she elected to the White House.  Yet there are right and wrong, reasonable and unreasonable ways of taking those religious beliefs into account.  In this second part, I’ll ask whether Christians (and I’ll use “Christian” here to refer to adherents of the three great streams of historic Christianity: Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism) should be concerned that electing Mitt Romney could put “souls at stake.”

First let’s reconstruct Warren’s argument as charitably as possible.  Warren is not the only evangelical who feels this way, and it’s a powerful argument if you grant its premises.  There are several presuppositions here, but presuppositions which most Christians will grant.  (1) There are true religions (or there is at least one) and false religions, true religious beliefs and false religious beliefs (how many false beliefs add up to a “false religion” is a question for another time).  (2) False religions and false religious beliefs are spiritually dangerous, and detrimental to a person’s present spiritual life and eternal destiny.  (3) Voters should consider not only the political, but even the spiritual, consequences of their votes.

In certain quarters, the belief that some religions and religious beliefs are false already amounts to bigotry.  While I was a doctoral student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, I frequently confronted this attitude at the Divinity School: believing that you are right and others are wrong is arrogant, intolerant, possibly imperialistic and and quite probably hateful.  If you are male and white, it’s misogynist and racist to boot.  Yet this only worked one way.  The reigning presumption was that religious liberalism was right, and religious conservatives were wrong, both morally and metaphysically.  Some of the most negative commenters on Warren’s article were responding to the “arrogance” of believing that his beliefs about God and salvation are true while Mormon beliefs are false.

Yet Christians historically have attested that their beliefs are not merely therapeutic, but true in the old-fashioned sense of the word, and Christians have wrestled and argued and sometimes fought over the finer points of their doctrine because they believe it’s so utterly important to understand aright who God is and how God has made provision for reconciliation.  Humbled though we ought to be in the face of our ignorance, our sin, our limitation, there are nonetheless metaphysical facts of the matter, and it is terribly, terribly important that we understand those facts.  While salvation is not a product of intellectual assent to the right propositions, true beliefs are exceedingly helpful, and in some cases necessary, to a right relationship with God.  This does not (or should not) make Christians arrogant, because the truth in which they believe is an unmerited gift of God, not an achievement of the believer but a gracious self-revelation of the One in whom the believer believes.  ”Our beliefs are true” is neither a boast in ourselves nor a denigration of others; it is spoken with the earnestness of a rescued man, with the gratitude of someone who received the undeserved but absolutely inestimable gift of Truth in the form of a person, a life, and with the compassion of someone who wants to share the bounty of Truth with others.

The third presupposition seems straightforward.  Shouldn’t Christians care about the spiritual consequences of their actions?  Isn’t the spiritual health of the nation even more important than its political or economic health?  I can imagine some possible objections to the third presupposition, but let’s leave those for the comments, if anyone wants to challenge it.

With these presuppositions, then, the argument looks like this.  (1) Christians should not fuel the growth of a false religion.  (2) Mormonism is a false religion.  (3) Electing a Mormon to the Presidency would fuel the growth of Mormonism.  (4) Therefore (2 and 3): Electing a Mormon to the Presidency would fuel the growth of a false religion. (5) Therefore (1 and 4): Christians should not elect a Mormon to the Presidency.

The logic appears valid.  If you grant the premises 1, 2 and 3, then 4 and 5 do seem to follow.  It’s always possible to undermine the logic by questioning definitions of terms, but I think it’s most important to question the premises rather than the logic.  I’ll assume that most Christians would grant the premise 1, and I’ll address premise 2 at greater length in the next part in this series.  Many Christians do view Mormonism as a false religion, so: Is there some way to convince people like my friend Warren Cole Smith that electing a Mormon to the presidency would not fuel the growth of Mormonism (i.e., a false religion)?

Here are four reasons why I think not:

  1. The historical argument is perhaps the weakest, but it’s nonetheless important.  Looking back at American Presidents, at least in recent memory, there’s no evidence that Presidents have served to advance the public relations interests of the faiths to which they belong.  Did Carter and Bush make more people look kindly at evangelicalism?  Did JFK swell the ranks of the Catholic church?  Has Barack Obama made more people want to be a liberal, liberation-theology Protestant?  It doesn’t seem so — but there are two reasons why this is a weak part of the argument.  First, we don’t know, and there’s really no way we could know, the answer to that question.  Barack Obama might actually have led more people to explore liberal Protestantism, but it would be almost impossible to ferret out that one influence (a positive impression of liberal Protestantism coming from Barack Obama) from the million-and-one other influences that cause people to attend or to leave churches.  Second, a person like Warren Cole Smith could easily retort that evangelicalism, Catholicism and liberal Protestantism are not marginal traditions in the same way that Mormonism presently is — so placing a Mormon in the presidency could serve (in his words) to “legitimate” Mormonism, moving it from the margin to the center, in a way that would cause many more people here and abroad to give Mormonism a serious hearing.  We could also point to the elections of Orrin Hatch and Harry Reid, and question whether they were PR coups for the Mormon Church, but Warren could respond that electing a Senator has nothing like the legitimating power of electing a President.  So I consider this the weakest of the arguments, but it does not have a certain tacit plausibility.  It may well be the case that Carter’s and Bush’s elections did more harm than good to the general public perception of evangelicalism.
  2. The theological argument would state, as David French does in a column published today at the Evangelical Portal, that God is in control over the salvation of souls and God’s purposes will not be frustrated by a vote for a Mormon candidate.  To Christians of a particular theological stripe, this is a pretty powerful response.  To others, less so.  Some will point to free will.  Others will say that even though God is sovereign over the spread of faith, it is our responsibility to profess the gospel and to consider the spiritual consequences of our actions.  I think the theological argument is more powerful when it’s tied to the historical argument.  We cannot know in advance whether the election of Mitt Romney to the Presidency would help or hinder the cause of the LDS Church, but ultimately many Christians will believe that God is in control.
  3. The sociological argument overlaps with the historical argument by giving actual data.  Studies have shown, for instance, that Romney’s first run for the White House did not change the public perception of Mormonism.  The obvious retort here is that the consequences of a campaign with a Mormon candidate and a Mormon presidency could be quite different.  Yet we don’t really have any evidence to suggest that it would be different.  While Mormons are the most conservative of American religious groups, the LDS Church is meticulously non-political except in basic moral matters like abortion and family — areas where their commitments are the same as those of most evangelicals.  And Romney would not be speaking out as a representative of the Mormon faith.  Recently, for instance, he refused to spell out the LDS stance on homosexuality.  Americans are getting beyond thinking of Mitt as “the Mormon candidate,” and presumably it would not take long before Americans look at President Mitt without thinking of Mormonism.  This makes sense, because the Presidency is not a position of religious leadership.  People will assess Mormonism on the basis of its beliefs and its deeds, not on whether or not a Mormon sits in the White House.
  4. Finally, there is a psychological argument to be made.  A Romney presidency could make some slice of Americans more likely to want to learn more about Mormonism.  It could also make some Americans (particularly those who opposed Romney, or who come to believe that he’s a terrible President) more likely to disdain Mormonism.  But evangelicals should not be afraid of people learning more about Mormonism.  They should also not be afraid, I think, of the “mainstreaming” of what has been, to now, a mostly marginal religious group.  If fewer people think that Mormons are kooks, that’s perfectly fine with me, because I don’t think that Mormons are kooks.  Their beliefs are certainly different from mine, and those differences are important, but Mormons by and large are loving, good and reasonable people.  Given the ways in which Mormonism has evolved over the past century, I don’t think that Mormonism deserves to be marginalized.  Also, Mormonism has brought some beneficent influences into American culture.  Mormonism supplies evangelicals with co-belligerents on important matters of morality, law and culture.  And faith is such a momentous movement of the soul that it will not be made, in my view, or even slightly influenced, by the fact that a Mormon achieved the Presidency.

When Warren argues that electing a Mormon would strengthen the hand of the LDS Church — well, I don’t find that to be an unreasonable point of view.  I just don’t think it’s correct.  Perhaps the most important distinction is this: Would the election of a Mormon candidate to the Presidency lead more people to educate themselves about Mormonism?  Yes.  Would it lead to more people converting to Mormonism?  I think the answer is no.  I’m not afraid that more people should better understand Mormonism.  In fact, I think that would be a good thing.  Then the task falls to evangelicals to represent their faith well in word and deed, and to explain — if they feel this way — why Mormonism is wrong on significant matters.  It’s not their task to exclude Mormons from the Presidency for fear that this would lead Americans to take Mormonism more seriously.  Conversion is between the Spirit of God and the most inward heart of the individual, and it’s hard to imagine the faith of the President will be a significant influence.  God is ultimately the author of salvation history.

Rather than basing my vote on something that seems, to me, so highly speculative, I prefer to base my vote on the merits of the candidate.  So in the final installment of this series, I’ll turn to Mormon beliefs themselves.  Are Mormon beliefs likely to make a Mormon a poor President, or do they point to faults that should concern the American voter?  I’ll answer NO, and you can tune in tomorrow to find out why.

Filed Under: Christian Approach to Politics, Christians in Government, Election 2012, Mormonism, Peace Between Religions Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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