Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, now that he is slipping in early voting state polls and after months of speculation, plans to address his Mormon faith directly to try to ease any concerns among conservative voters.
Much like John F. Kennedy during his 1960 presidential bid, Romney will head to Texas to give what will likely be the speech of his campaign. Kennedy spoke to religious leaders in Houston about his Catholicism while the former Massachusetts governor will speak Thursday at the presidential library of George H.W. Bush in College Station, Texas about 94 miles to the northwest.
Romney passed up the opportunity to give such a speech earlier this year when he had a captive audience — Christian evangelical Pat Robertson’s Regent University graduation ceremony where he was the keynote speaker. Robertson went on to endorse rival Rudy Giuliani.
Will Romney’s speech have a significant impact on the all-important voters of Iowa who go to the polls in exactly one month?
– Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria
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8 comments so far
Just who exactly is demanding this? What religious qualifications does a President have to have? Oh, if you’re Clinton and Obama you are Christian but belong to no readily recognizable Christian entity. Some qualification.
- Posted by JimThis speech will do no good, nobody will be happy. They never are. You can’t satisfy everyone.
Not needed.
And when do the other candidates give their religion speech. Oh, only required of Mormons. Strange, that sounds like bigotry.
- Posted by Oren[...] Faith in a miracle December 3, 2007, Filed under: Nation, Politics, Religion | Tags: Mormon, news, Romney, Speech “Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, now that he is slipping in early voting state po… [...]
- Posted by Faith in a miracle « the newsbitesMy thinking is that Mitt Romney could help the American people work through their discomfort with the Mormon Faith if Mitt would admit that the Mormons are not Christians, but rather they are a fourth religion of the Abrahamic Faith. Religions of the Abrahamic Faith are: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism. Christians will continue to suspect that the Mormon Faith is a cult because Mormons insist upon referring to themselves as being Christian.
- Posted by TimJTim J: Why would the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day-saints stop referring themselves as being Christian??? How would calling themselves a fourth religion of the Abrahamic Faith calm the bigotry of the Southern Baptist Convention?
Did you know that in 1845, the Southern Baptists were considered a cult by the Northern Baptists?
By the 1830’s tension began to mount between the Northern and Southern Baptists. Baptists in the South were embracing slavery because it was the core of their social and economic order.
Baptists of the North were saying that God would not condone treating one race as superior to another while Southerners said that God intended for races to be separate. In around 1835, the Southern states began complaining that they weren’t receiving money for mission work.
Let’s put things into perspective. In 1865 over 620,000 Americans died over the slavery issue. Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians all fought for the right to own black people. The LDS Church has always been against slavery. Can the Southern Baptist Convention claim the same?
The LDS Church believes in Jesus Christ, the Jesus Christ of the New Testament. Period.
- Posted by Joe S.Joe S:
Thank you for your response to my post. Let me say that I am not a member of any Baptist Church, nor have I ever been Baptist. Somewhere in your brief history of Northern & Southern Baptists, you left out Independent Baptists. I keep coming across them from time to time.
This may surprise you but I read an article written by a Southern Baptist minister a few months ago who first proposed the idea that the Mormons are not Christian, but that they would better described as the fourth Abrahamic Religion. There was nothing negative in his tone or presentation. In fact, I felt that he was sympathetic to Mitt Romney’s struggle in trying to explain his Mormon Faith to the American people.
Help me with this problem. Why do all the mainline Christian Churches say that the Mormons are not Christian? Yes, the Mormons say that they are Christian. Could it be that their interpretation of the New Testament on the Divine and Human natures of Jesus Christ is different from what mainline Christian Churchs believe and teach?
I know that you and I are not arguing, but merely discussing the Mormon Faith.
- Posted by TimJJim:
I don’t think that anyone is demanding that Mitt Romney explain his Mormon Faith to the American people. My impression is that Mitt senses the same discomfort among many Americans over his Mormon Faith that John F. Kennedy experienced when he was running for president in the 1960’s as a Catholic. Only after Kennedy addressed the issue of his Catholic Faith to a group of questioning Protestants was he able to put their concerns to rest.
According to a news report on TV today, Mitt Romney won’t be explaining his Mormon Faith to the American people in his talk on Thursday, but rather, he wants to speak about the role of religion in America.
- Posted by TimJMitt Romney is the first serious candidate for President who is not a Christian; arguably he is not even from the Judeo-Christian religion. This should not be an automatic disqualification from holding high office, but some further explanation of his faith would help calm distrust and fear of the unknown.
For instance, it would be helpful to know that Mr. Romney rejects polygamy and all who ever practicsed it; that he does not hold women as subordinate to men; that he renounces the Mountain Meadows masssacre and other crimes committed by early Mormons; and that he does not place too great a stock in those claims of Mormonism which are non-historical (for instance, the claim that there is some connection between native American peoples and the lost tribes of Israel, something disproved by modern genetics).
Why is this important? I would want to know that Mr. Romney is not an idiot, not a bigot, and has the intellectual and moral capacity to lead the country. Mormons will never be mainstream in America. But they can be honest about their past; they can renounce the sins of their forefathers; and they can commit to govern in a way which is not dependent on or connected to their religion.
- Posted by Perplexed