Was Mitt Romney a “Pastor”?

Last night, in the final question of the town hall-style debate, the candidates were asked how they’ve been misunderstood as men, and how they’d like to correct that misperception. In his response, Mitt Romney said that he’d served as a “pastor” of a church:

My — my passion probably flows from the fact that I believe in God. And I believe we’re all children of the same God. I believe we have a responsibility to care for one another. I — I served as a missionary for my church. I served as a pastor in my congregation for about 10 years. I’ve sat across the table from people who were out of work and worked with them to try and find new work or to help them through tough times. [transcript]

I hadn’t heard of a Mormon man being called a “pastor” before, so I tweeted my misgivings. It seemed to me that Romney was attempting the normalize one of the oddities of Mormon church life — that there are no pastor, just bishops. An interesting and illuminating round of tweets with Mormons and ex-Mormons ensued (click on the images to be taken to the actual tweets):