Republican Mitt Romney retorted to questions about his faith by surging rival Mike Huckabee on Wednesday, declaring that “attacking someone’s religion is really going too far.”
In an article to be published Sunday in The New York Times, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”
Romney, vying to become the first Mormon elected president, declined to answer that question during an interview Wednesday, saying church leaders in Salt Lake City had already addressed the topic.
“But I think attacking someone’s religion is really going too far. It’s just not the American way, and I think people will reject that,” Romney told NBC’s “Today” show.
Mormons believe that (1) Jesus was the first spirit child of Heavenly Father, the god of our universe, and his wife, Heavenly Mother; (2) Satan, who was originally called Lucifer, was among the other first spirit children of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother; (3) all humans are spirit children of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.
Thus, in that sense, Huckabee was right: Lucifer and Jesus are brothers; so are all of us brothers with him.
Governor Huckabee’s point was true, but it was tacky. He has apologized for the remark on CNN, and though it will be used as a good cannon fodder, it still does not change the fact that Huckabee is the best Republican candidate for President.
I teach religion at the college level and I get this question about Jesus and Lucifer often. #1 is right: it’s technically true, though it’s more nuanced than Huckabee’s question makes it sound. That’s not his fault, though: he’s not a Mormon.
I would liken it to saying of Catholics, “They believe the pope is infallible, right?” Well, yes … but it’s more nuanced than the question makes it sound.
Let us remember that Governor Huckabee is an ordained minister in the Southern Baptist Convention and cut him some theological slack.
Huckabee’s comment was not only “tacky” but it betrays an ignorance of what does and does not belong in the “public square.” It also gave Diezba (and many others who support Huckabee)the excuse to prattle on the internet and elsewhere about what seems to most mainstream Christians as bizarre Mormon
doctrine and hope that disqualifies Romney somehow.
Maybe it is because I am Catholic and old enough to remember the cute, sleazy, no-bigots-here, tricks of the anti-Catholic bigots used against JFK that makes me think a comment as made by #1 is nothing but Part II of Huckabee’s Part I strategy to play on anti-Mormon bigotry. After all, Diezba needn’t have given a theology exposition to say that Huckabee was very wrong to comment on the theology of another religion which is not his own.
I really like Mike Huckabee as a person, and do not think that this was intended in any way to hurt. He himself admitted that he knows nothing about the LDS theology. It is clear that the LDS preaching is not orthodox Christianity. I think that it is time to move away from this in toto (I think that the media have been significantly fanning the flames here!), and focus on their qualifications for the Presidency. Disclaimer: I likely will not vote for either man.
So the correct answer is that the mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers, right? When the “church leaders in Salt Lake City had already addressed the topic,” what did they say? I don’t see anything tacky about asking that question. It is telling that Romney would not answer it, the same as a “yes.” I am sorry, but I think that mormon theology is strange. If that puts Romney in a bad light, I hope the republicans nominate him. We’d all be better off. Disclaimer: I’m not voting for either man.
Saying that Jesus and Satan are brothers would hardly be a theologically shocking thing in a political arena where we have had a Unitarian as President. If Unitarians believed in the Devil they would classify him as a creature, as they would Jesus. And calling two creatures brothers is nothing odd. Look at Saint Francis.
The statement only seems the more shocking because we know that Jesus is not just a creature, as the devil is, He is also God incarnate.
Mormonism has much wackier beliefs than this.
We have two issues here: theological belief and religious practice, on the one hand, and American political structure and leadership on the other. Our Constitution specifically rules theology out of bounds in public service, EXCEPT in cases where someone’s religious beliefs make him unable to support the American governmental system. I do not see where Southern Baptists, Roman Catholics, Mormons, Unitarians, or atheists are required by their religious beliefs to reject the American system of public governance. I [i]do[/i] see a problem with Muslims, unless a “moderate” form of Islam evolves which rejects the medieval law currently inherent to Islam.