Roxanne Helmey does not mind spending time with Mormons. She welcomes an opportunity to talk to them about her Christian faith and on occasion, she prays for them. But one thing she will not do, she said, is vote for a Mormon as president of the United States.
“I feel like they’re lost,” said Helmey, 37, an insurance agent from Guyton, a small town about 30 miles northwest of Savannah. “I love them, but my heart breaks for them.”
For Helmey and many other evangelical Christians, particularly in the Bible Belt South, religion and politics go hand in hand. So no matter what Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has to say about key conservative issues such as abortion, immigration and same-sex marriage, his Mormon faith stands in the way of getting their vote.
“For me, his faith matters. A lot of Christians believe Mormons are a cult,” said Mario Bertoluzzi, a 39-year-old elementary school teacher from Savannah and a member of an evangelical church. “Romney puts a clean face on it, but it has a dubious beginning and a history of bigamy. Lots of Christians have questions about that.”
Pat Robertson and half of the hypocritical American right would rather vote in a twice-divorced pro-abortion politician (Giuliani) than a pro-life Christian obstetrician (Paul) or a Mormon, both of whom are married to their first wives.
Smells like hypocrisy to me.
From my Catholic perspective Mormons seem just one of 20 or 30,000 Protestant denominations. To declare them as “Non-Christian” strikes me as dragging religious doctrinal issues into the public square–a place where such disputes normally do not belong. It is interesting that here in Catholic Mass. his Mormonism never really came up as a problem–or even of any interest. But now that he is running among large numbers of fellow Protestants, it becomes a big issue. Or is the media helping (on purpose) to give the story legs???
Deacon – I’m sort of puzzled by your comments. Certainly the RCC’s teaching in V2 provides some guidance on differentiating Christian from non-Christian creeds, and for differentiating within various branches of Protestantism. Or, for a slightly different angle, would a Lutheran convert to your church be rebaptized? Would Mitt Romney? Romney (to his credit) is making an argument with strong religious content and doctrinal implications – claims about the nature of God and Christ – so he as much as his detractors or skeptics is dragging these matters into the public square.
I do thank you for the quite ironic humor, though, commending to T19 readers how Cathlolic Mass. choses to view politicians’ religious beliefs with such disinterest when your two most well-known politicians are Catholics who openly ignore church teachings on core issues.
deaconjohn, I thought we (Catholics) didn’t recognize the validity of Mormon baptisms and any Mormons coming into the Church had to be baptized. I know the same isn’t true of protestants (whose baptisms we do recognize as valid). Am I misinformed?
Since Mormons are not Trinitarians how could their baptisms be valid? Indeed is not the Mormom baptism of the TEC Bishop of Utah an issue with many of us continuing Anglicans?
Mormon, schmormon! Who cares? We’ve had Unitarian presidents for God’s sake! We are not electing a bishop, not a marriage counselor, nor a birthing coach, nor a pastor, but a president! The primary criterion for that election should be whether they can and will uphold the constitution of the United States of America and defend this nation against all enemies foreign and domestic, not how many times they’ve been married; not how many misstresses they have or have had; nor where they go to Church. Maybe this point of view will cause those terribly righteous among us to rend their garments but personally I do not think North Korea or Iran will be any less inclined to want to kill all of us if our president is a born again, Bible believing, regular attending and tithing Evangelical than a Mormon, or a fingers crossed Catholic, or a Presbyterian who consults his horoscope (the great Reagan).
Chris and TW and Adam—what part of the U.S. Constitution that says there shall be no religious test for public office don’t you understand? In all the courses I took on the way to becoming a Catholic deacon I don’t ever remember the issue of whether Mormons are orthodox Christians came up. And to quote Rhett Butler–“Madam, I don’t give a d—n ” as far as the public square goes. How on God’s green earth is the issue of whether a Mormon baptism is “Trinitarian,” or recognized by the Catholic Church (or other churches) relevant in the public square—except for constitutional ignoramuses or bigot to the core haters.
As far as, if a voter considers a candidate’s stand on a public issue immoral, (like how the Kennedy’s and Kerry –and most liberal Catholic politicians–trash Christian morality)-then the voter has every right to exact retribution in the privacy of the voting booth.
Unfortunately, here in Mass. the powerful Boston Globe and other oppressive liberal interests here have convinced many Catholics that it is somehow “Un-American” to vote their Christian conscience on public issues brought up in the public square as defined by political hacks and their allies in the judicial dictatorship.