Michael Cromartie, an expert on evangelicals at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, said Romney may have succeeded with those who are not hard-core fundamentalists. “He was trying to assure them that he was not some sort of Mormon theocrat,” Cromartie said.
But Shaun Casey, an assistant professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, said Romney may have lost some evangelicals when he admitted his church has distinct beliefs about Jesus.
“I really don’t think it does get at kind of the more red-meat specific doctrinal issues that some of those folks in Iowa — and frankly, the Republican Party — are looking for,” said Casey, who’s working on a book about similar religion dynamics in John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign.
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RNS: Romney Speech May Quiet Some Critics, But Not All
Michael Cromartie, an expert on evangelicals at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, said Romney may have succeeded with those who are not hard-core fundamentalists. “He was trying to assure them that he was not some sort of Mormon theocrat,” Cromartie said.
But Shaun Casey, an assistant professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, said Romney may have lost some evangelicals when he admitted his church has distinct beliefs about Jesus.
“I really don’t think it does get at kind of the more red-meat specific doctrinal issues that some of those folks in Iowa — and frankly, the Republican Party — are looking for,” said Casey, who’s working on a book about similar religion dynamics in John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign.
Read it all.