Huckabee comments on Mormonism

It's amazing! This race has become a fight between Christianity and Mormonism. This is what happens when you bring your religious distinctives into the political arena.

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks in an upcoming article, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?"

The article, to be published in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, says Huckabee asked the question after saying he believes Mormonism is a religion but doesn't know much about it. His rival Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is a member of the Mormon church, which is known officially as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The authoritative Encyclopedia of Mormonism, published in 1992, does not refer to Jesus and Satan as brothers. It speaks of Jesus as the son of God and of Satan as a fallen angel, which is a Biblical account.

A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Huckabee's question is usually raised by those who wish to smear the Mormon faith rather than clarify doctrine.

If I were Huckabee, I wouldn't talk about Mormonism at all because you know anything he says will be twisted into bigotry. Though I think it would be very hard to say, "Let's keep religious beliefs out of this race," with a straight face.

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The Mormon Speech

Looks like Romney is putting off the Mormon speech until maybe the general election (if at all).

And it looks like he's going on the attack after Huckabee:

...the Romney campaign will spend the next few weeks hitting Huckabee on other issues, like immigration and taxes, which it believes are near and dear to most Christian conservatives.

[...]

According to an opposition document leaked to Beliefnet from a Romney advisor, the campaign will also attempt to paint Huckabee as being weak on terror, as pardoning too many violent criminals as Arkansas governor, and as a weak candidate due to lack of fundraising.

Good! Hopefully that will benefit Fred Thompson :-)

Meanwhile, there are calls for Huckabee to give The Speech (or at least a call):

In the near future, the coverage of Huckabee will be an interesting exercise. How will reporters – most of whom cover politics, not faith – cover the theological underpinnings of a Huckabee candidacy? Most reporters can catch ‘inconsistencies’ in a politician’s record, but what are they to make of any religious inconsistencies?

Beyond the homespun charm and the extremely likeable persona, will the media turn this into 1960 all over again, when JFK had to distance himself from the Pope to gain additional credibility?

It’s clear by now that Huckabee would handle such questions smoothly; what is unclear is how the media will handle asking them.

What the heck? Is this guy suggesting Huckabee distance himself from Christianity? Though I know that he's leading himself into charges of wanting to set up a theocracy and trash our constitution, maybe he'll need to assure the general electorate that he doesn't want to take away their freedom (or have the power to do so).

BTW, how many MSMers do you think would even be able to spot a religious inconsistency? (I mean of the theological kind, not the moral kind :-)

Christopher Hitchens: Romney's Mormonism is fair game

He brings up the racism issue (up until 1979 you couldn't be a deacon or an elder in the Mormon church)and the fact that the elders are divinely inspired among other things that Romney should be asked about.

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Evidently, Romney isn't heeding Inglis' wise advice

John Fund asks Romney about giving "the speech" and about what Rep. Bob Inglis is reported to have said to him, "You cannot equate Mormonism with Christianity; you cannot say, 'I am a Christian just like you.'"

"I don't recall the conversation so precisely that I can describe my exact reaction to that."

Recall precisely. My exact reaction. Sometimes one forgets that Romney was trained as a lawyer, but not on that day. I tried one more time. "Well, okay, if you have been told that by other people, what is your reaction to the substance of what they are saying?"

"You know, the term 'Christian' means different things to different people," Romney told me…

I don't think it's such a great idea to relativize the faith of others, especially a group that you are specifically targeting. It tends to make them cranky. Romney really needs to reconsider Inglis' advice, this is an area in which he might want to flip-flop which shouldn't be a big deal given that his flipped on most of his positions already.

BTW, defining Christianity isn't very hard, the church has laid it out in two very handy little creeds, the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed which have been the confession of the church throughout most of its history.

I'm thinking it sounds like Romney

What do you think?

Are Mormons Christians?

As many of you are probably already aware there is a debate on Mormonism going between Dr. R. Albert Mohler and sci-fi author Orson Scott Card over at Beliefnet.

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