My guess is that people will say “that’s ridiculous; I’m talking about whether it’s appropriate not to vote for a candidate because of a normal religion with normal religious views.” But the point is that the whole question is based on a continuum and I hope I’ve established that at one end of the continuum there are personally held spiritual beliefs that a voter is justified in considering and saying “really? You believe that . . . (edging away from the candidate a little) . . . I didn’t know.”
Because once you’ve established that a candidate is extremely gullible, or unquestioningly follows the directions of others, or ignores objective history, in a major part of his or her persona life, I think it’s cognitive dissonance to believe that he or she can throw up a Chinese Wall to keep that gullibility, follower-mentality, I-can’t-handle-the-truth mentality from creeping into decisions that are infinitely less personal than his or her eternal soul.
Once you know the makings of a person’s eternal plan, you know a lot. You’ve established something in a version of the punch line attributed to Churchill: "Madam, we've already established that. Now we are haggling about the price”
And when I talk about vetting a candidate based on his or her religious beliefs, I don’t mean somebody who simply carries around a membership card in the The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a joke. I mean somebody who is a Temple Worthy Pastafarian. Who believes in it seriously enough that he has served a mission to convert other people to feel the Blessings of his Noodly Appendages. Somebody who served for years in leadership positions in the religion, teaching until 1978 that it was God’s decision that blacks could not be exalted and enter the Celestial Kingdom because they were fence-sitters in the pre-existence, sort of like the Creativity Movement (World Church of the Creator). And saying today that it wasn’t a mistake for which an apology is owed, because it was God’s idea.
Someone devoted enough to The Grey School of Wizardry to have received a Second Annointing, guaranteeing him a direct ticket to godhood over his own planet which he will populate by having actual physical celestial sex with his polygamous goddesses (fitting in with the Robert A. Heinlein science fiction). Someone who believes intensely enough that he takes the steps not just to be a member, but to swear the oath first to the church and its earthly leader (not even to God), sort of like a billion-year SeaOrg contract.
All of which Mitt has done.
A Mormon is a person, an individual, who should be judged as a good or bad person as an individual. There are great ones, good ones, mediocre ones, and very, very bad ones.
Mormonism is a broad set of religious beliefs. Generally, they are premised on the idea that all Christianity ceased to exist on earth shortly after the death of Christ, and was only restored to earth by a prophet, Joseph Smith, in 1830, based another gospel translated from gold plates that restored the “One True Church” and the only priesthood not teaching for Satan.
Mitt's not just a Mormon, where we can just him as an individual. Mitt is Mormonism, the gleeful hand-clapping Salt Lake City fulfillment of the "we've been touting it at every General Conference" White Horse Prophecy. He's Mormon royalty and he kneels to take the crown. Were he Jewish, he wouldn't even need to buy his tickets for the High Holy Days. Baptist? They would empty the baptismal pool, bleach it, and refill it with tepid water from the River Jordan each time one of his family member or friend was to be baptized (and play Free Bird during the service if requested). Lutheran? He'd get extra marshmallows in his pot-luck Jello-o gelatin dessert. Every single time. And he would never get stuck with the lime. Hindu? They would let him select the cows to outfit his Bain softball team with Rawlings gloves. He's not the Mormon you work with.
What does Mitt Romney believe? Many things that would make most people edge away and leave him with the Flying Spaghetti Monster candidates, because he's taken the extra steps to be a leader in the religion, to accept the special straight-to-your-own-planet blessings, to convert others to the "God said blacks were punished, not us." However, you’re simply going to be told through the normal sources. As LDS Apostale Boyd K. Packer instructed a gathering of LDS historians when he formalized the doctrine of the LDS Church only publishing “faith-promoting history” (upon threat of excommunication, disenfellowshipment, or loss of Temple Recommend):
“There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful. “
And some things that Mitt knows we may know later if we wait for the normal sources:
And a lot of things you aren’t ready to know
That, too, was Apostle Boyd K. Packer, in the same speech (which is still on the www.lds.org website). Talking about you and me. Which perhaps is why the website that contains the LDS educational materials used to teach its 'seminary" (ages 14-18) youth and college students about LDS history and the teachings of Jesus Christ is locked behind a password-protected portal. So is the one for the resources of teachers. I don't know of many other churches that hide their teachings quite this way.
