Rick Santorum: 100% Social Conservative, 0% Latter Day Saint

"Like" the Patheos Progressive Christian Page on Facebook to receive today's best commentary on Progressive Christian issues. This past weekend, a cabal of conservative Christian leaders met down the road from me in Brenham, Texas. Brenham is a town best known as the home of Blue Bell Ice Cream, not as a location for political intrigue, but at the ranch of Paul Pressler (a former Texas judge who masterminded the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention some years ago), over one hundred movers and shakers—including leaders from the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and other high-profile Christian organizations—met to discuss the Republican candidates.

They did this because, as the New York Times noted in early January, many evangelical Christians are "dismayed by the prospect of Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee." The meeting bore fruit. According to the Times , a "supermajority" of leaders chose to rally behind former Senator Rick Santorum as their favored candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

While some attendees later reaffirmed their support for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the vast majority of those present at the Brenham event did throw their support behind Santorum. Santorum has been reliable in his approach to the two great social conservative litmus tests, abortion and homosexual marriage, both of which he resolutely opposes. In response to the first issue, he demonstrated, at least, personal integrity: when he and his wife were told that the baby his wife was carrying was afflicted with what would be fatal birth defects, they chose to carry it to term rather than abort it. Santorum has also never wavered in his opposition to gay marriage, and is famous for making what Sean Cotter calls "wacky analogies comparing gay marriage to animals and inanimate objects." Santorum asks, If marriage between two men becomes the law of the land, then won't polygamy , marriages between adults and children, between live humans and dead ones, between human beings and animals necessarily follow?

(I hope so. There is a sexy toaster I have had my eye on for some time now, and I am tired of these laws saying we can never live together in wedded bliss.)

Santorum fits the bill for social conservatives in lots of ways, although what was not reported about this weekend in Brenham—nor mentioned often in the news media—is that the front-running Romney dismays many conservative Christians not simply because he may not be reliably conservative on their issues, but because he is Mormon. Gail Russell Chaddock told the truth in the Christian Science Monitor when she wrote that these "evangelical leaders want to use whatever clout they have to help a strong conservative advance in South Carolina's Jan. 21 primary, upsetting frontrunner Mitt Romney, who is viewed as too moderate—or too Mormon."

Does it matter to me that Mitt Romney is Mormon? No. Not one whit. I have never met a mean Mormon. My experience (not to mention the great Mormon episode of South Park ) suggests that Mormons are generally nice, family-oriented people, hard workers with solid values. Would Mitt Romney (or the recently-departed Jon Huntsman, also a Mormon) make a decent president?

While he won't get my vote, I think we could do far worse.

South Park ridiculed Mormon beliefs that Joseph Smith was a prophet given a new revelation from God as "dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb," but Mormons come out okay in the episode, which concedes that the net results of their faith are positive. In the show's ending "what have we learned?" moment, the Mormon kid, Gary, tells the South Park boys,

Maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up. But I have a great life and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don't care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the Church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. And even though people in this town might think that's stupid, I still choose to believe in it.

It's a stirring rebuttal to "dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb," but nowhere near good enough for many social conservatives. It's clear to me both anecdotally and statistically that a large number of American evangelical Christians are uncomfortable with the Mormon faith, and that this Texas attempt to jump-start the candidacy of Santorum (who, while a Catholic, is still to most evangelicals identifiably Christian) is at least partially dictated by bias or fear of electing a "non-Christian."

The Washington Post suggests that South Carolina voters are less concerned about Romney's faith now than they were in 2008, but some remain troubled, and the campaign and national church are trying to defuse the issue in this primary by ignoring it: "Unlike last time, when Romney made a historic speech about his faith, this time he's halting all talk of religion, and church officials are halting all talk of him." If South Carolina primary voters aren't thinking about Romney as a Mormon, his election prospects improve.

That seems to be borne out across the board. Southern Baptist spokesperson Richard Land told The Times last fall that while Republicans might eventually hold their noses and vote for one of them to defeat President Barack Obama, "Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney will face a very difficult time convincing a quarter of the electorate to vote for them in the G.O.P. primaries" because of their Mormon faith. Last summer, the Pew Research Center found that almost a third of white evangelical Republicans would be less likely to vote for a Mormon, and said that almost two-thirds of white evangelicals did not consider Mormons to be Christian. And last fall, a poll of 1000 Protestant pastors taken by Lifeway (an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention) suggested that three-fourths of these pastors rejected the claim that Mormons are Christian, which may represent a serious problem for Romney.

Because, bottom line: the Brenham Bunch were not just looking for someone that shared their social conservatism.

They were also looking for someone whom, they believed, shared their faith.

They may, in fact, have a point here, if one cares about such a thing. As The Times argued Saturday in a fine theological study of the Mormon faith, there are major differences between orthodox Christianity and Mormon belief. Mormons believe that the Book of Mormon and other revelations to Joseph Smith constitute a newer, more perfect revelation of faith than is found in the Bible alone (as Muslims believe that the Qur'an given to Muhammad represents God's final revelation). While Christians vary in their own understandings of the Bible, they generally reject The Book of Mormon as divinely inspired, and, as reflected in the Book of Common Prayer and other denominational documents, understand the Bible to, in some sense, contain all things necessary to salvation.

Mormon ideas about the nature of God also seem to differ radically from Christian orthodoxy. The historic Christian creeds affirm a Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; over a billion Christians around the world reaffirm these beliefs every week in prayer or corporate worship. As The Times notes, however, "Mormons reject [The Trinity] as a non-biblical creed that emerged in the fourth and fifth centuries. They believe that God the Father and Jesus are separate physical beings, and that God has a wife whom they call Heavenly Mother."

Any bald statement of a religion's beliefs sounds strange (try explaining your core Christian beliefs to a Maasai tribesman, as I once did, and watch the skeptical expression on his face), but it is no wonder that Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary, responds to Mormon teachings on the Trinity by saying, simply, "That's just not Christian." Christians believe in a God who is experienced in three persons, in the divinity of Christ, and in the ontological difference between the Creator and the Created.

These are substantial differences; if Latter Day Saints and Christians are related, our theologies suggest that we may be more cousins than brothers and sisters. Yet polls show that many Mainstream Protestants accept Mormons as a branch of Christianity, while many Mormons (including Romney) say that their faith in Jesus is at the heart of who they are. Perhaps the faith question matters less to some than how that faith is lived out. Again, as Gary put it on South Park , "what the Church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people."

But for the Brenham power brokers, the bottom line is this: Christian identity (as they perceive it) and consistent stands on social issues make Rick Santorum their man--and make Mitt Romney an anathema.

And I wonder, readers, where do you stand on these questions? Is the Church of Latter Day Saints a branch of Christianity? Does it matter to you whether or not a candidate for office is Christian?

Until next week: Love your family. Be nice. Help people.

I pray the blessing of God upon you, and upon all of God's children.