Former governor of Massachusetts and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has more than his fair share of good looks and personal charm, not to mention oodles of cash stashed away in the Cayman Islands, far from the prying eyes of the Internal Revenue Service.
Criticised for being too elitist to connect with blue collar workers, this Harvard-educated smooth-talker is doing his best to come off like the boy next door in the southern states, telling folks in Mississippi that he’s learning to say ‘y’all’ and assuring them he has a penchant for grits. For Romney, the Deep South, an evangelical Christian heartland, is a hard sell given his lifelong affiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) whose breakaway offshoots still adhere to the concept of plural marriage. Religiously conservative Evangelicals tend to be suspicious of the LDS Church. The Rev Robert Jeffress, a pastor from Texas, described Mormonism as a cult while Dr Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention insists Mormonism is not a Christian faith.
Some years ago, Romney announced that he would not allow his church to influence his politics but, lately, he’s done his utmost to keep his religious beliefs off the stump. According to polls, the majority of American voters say his religion won’t be a factor if he’s chosen to battle President Barack Obama. That’s what they’re saying now, but I would guess that when it comes to ticking their ballots the LDS church might well be the elephant in the booth.
There’s no doubt that Romney, like most of his co-religionists, is sincerely committed to his faith. In 1966, he spent 30 months as a Mormon missionary in France proselytising but failed to win over many converts. He attended Brigham Young University and married his wife Ann at the Salt Lake Temple in Utah. A percentage of the couple’s income is tithed to the church, amounting to an estimated $2 million annually, and there have been other million dollar donations.
Romney has also donated his time. From the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, he was a church leader giving up 30 hours a week to guiding his congregation without remuneration. It sounds like a stretch too far to imagine that if he and when he moves to Pennsylvania Avenue, he’ll be able to separate his duties to the church from those of the state. Certainly, Born Again George W. Bush who believed God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq wasn’t able to.
Romney isn’t exactly flavour of the year within the Bible Belt but he is garnering a hefty tranche of the Republican Jewish vote that he’s been carefully nurturing by slamming Obama for “throwing Israel under a bus” over the latter’s urging of a Palestinian state around 1967 borders (with land swaps) and by insisting the Palestinian leadership must acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state. Romney, Santorum and Gingrich are currently competing as to who can display more slavishness towards Israel’s interests. However, Romney could ultimately be handicapped by his church’s practice of posthumously baptising Jewish dead, including victims of the Holocaust that has caused a furor in Israel and within America’s pro-Israel lobby.
Proxy baptisms
Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Abraham Foxman published a statement that read “Church members should understand why proxy baptisms are so offensive to the Jewish people, who faced near annihilation during the Holocaust simply because they were Jewish, and who throughout history were often victims of forced conversions.” Professor Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, has asked Mitt Romney to denounce such proxy baptisms. The Romney campaign has refused to comment, referring Wiesel to the LDS Church.
In truth, LDS practitioners of such baptisms involving the diarist Anne Frank and the American reporter Daniel Pearl slain by terrorists, no doubt think they are doing the deceased a favour. In many respects LDS beliefs differ from those held by Evangelicals. However, they do share similar ‘end times’ convictions whereby Jews will ultimately be saved by embracing Christianity.
Romney would like Americans to forget his immense wealth and his history of buying up companies and factories to lay off workers or close them down when he owned Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Most of all, he hopes they will respect his religious privacy and believe in his ability to compartmentalise his faith so that it doesn’t impinge on his decision-making. Three-and-a-half years ago, Americans voted for their first black president whose middle name is Hussein, so, who knows, they just might.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
