I’m not planning to vote for Mitt Romney. He’s smart, competent and has a great jawline, but he is a shameful flip-flopper, a man so eager to get elected that he is ready to abandon whatever principles he may have had.

My opposition has nothing to do with his religion though and, if you oppose Romney, I hope your opposition is not on religious grounds either.

In fact, I’d like to stick up for Romney’s religion, or anyway its secular aspects.

Romney is a Mormon. Mormonism – more properly known as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, or LDS – is a purebred American religion that emerged during the 1830s when a young man in upstate New York, Joseph Smith, claimed to have discovered buried golden tablets inscribed with new religious instructions from heaven. Smith’s followers ultimately migrated to Utah. There, they created their heaven on earth centered in Salt Lake City, and there it remains, though plenty of Mormons reside elsewhere too.

I met my first Mormon in high school, a kid named David Bedwell. He was not unusual in any discernible way. I don’t even know how or why I knew he was a Mormon. I assumed Mormons were Christians like everyone else (except us Jews).

Then I started going out West to ski and met lots more Mormons. Seventy per cent of Utahns are Mormons, and Utahns are nice. Unusually nice – polite, solicitous, well-mannered beyond what you’d expect in, say, New York City. (No, let’s be realistic and compare Utahns to, say, Chicagoans. Nicer than most Chicagoans. WAY nicer than most New Yorkers.)

Mormons are more than nice; they are unusually successful in American society. They are relatively affluent (Utah median income is $45,726 vs. $41,994 nationwide); relatively generous (22% of Mormons give $5,000 a year or more to church-related causes, vs. 9% of Southern Baptists and 2% of Catholics, according to J. Quin Monson of BYU and David Campbell of Notre Dame, quoted in the Boston Phoenix); and relatively self-sacrificing. At any moment there are about 50,000 young Mormons giving a year or so of their lives as missionaries – proselytizing, to be sure, but also doing good and helping others. The LDS Church strongly urges its youth to be missionaries; Mitt Romney served as a Mormon missionary for 2½ years.

And Mormons have stable families. While many Mormons divorce at rates comparable to other Americans, Mormons who commit to one another in the demanding “temple marriage” show only a 6% divorce rate. (Source: BYU Prof. Daniel K. Judd, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.)

Mormon family stability traces back to some unusual Mormon “family values.” From the BBC website:

“Mormon families differ from other families in that they can continue to exist as families after earthly death; and they live with the expectation that they will live again with their ancestors and their eventual descendants. Mormon parents regard it as their duty … to have children in order to create physical bodies for spirits to come to earth in order to fullfil God’s plan.”

I can think of two other religious groups that have been extraordinarily successful in their respective societies despite being tiny minorities (1.8% to 1.9% of the population), and in the face of religious persecution that sometimes rises to the level of violence: Jews in America, and Sikhs in India. The basic beliefs of Mormons, Jews and Sikhs may have little in common, but all three groups share a commitment to the centrality of family life.

(Sikhs occupy a niche in Hindu-dominated Indian society strikingly analogous to that of Jews in America. Carol and I know a lot of Sikhs, and we spent a month in India as the guest of Sikhs. It’s a long story, don’t ask.)

When it comes down to it, I don’t care what religious beliefs my President holds as long as he or she is doing a job for me. On that score, Mitt and I seem to diverge. Facing the same kind of voter hostility because of his Mormonism that John F. Kennedy faced in 1960 on account of his Roman Catholicism, Romney just delivered a major speech about faith in public life. He felt compelled to reassure voters he believes “that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind.” While he called for religious tolerance in public life, Romney also said “nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places,” and added: “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.”

Romney may welcome more demonstrations of religiosity in public life but lately I’ve had a bellyful of it. I deplore the litmus tests candidates feel compelled to take these days as they try to out-pander one another for the votes of the faithful. I’m with JFK who in his 1960 speech said: “I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”

Yeah, Mitt, I knew John Kennedy and, believe me, you are no John Kennedy. And by the way, where did you pick up that ridiculous nickname?

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Congratulations to my baby sister Judith Susan Joseph Thompson Assisi, affectionately known as Hey You, on her release from thralldom. Welcome to the free world, Toots. Now get to work on your tennis game.