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Primus' Articles
Don't Feel Sorry for the Disabled
Norman Vincent Peale
Why we should cheer for America
Evangelical Christians should Accept a Mormon in Office
Why George W. Bush was a Good President |
Why Evangelical Christians should not Just Accept a Mormon in Office but Embrace Him
Last year I wrote an article on the Evangelical crisis for a Mormon candidate and concluded that Evangelical Christians can indeed vote for Mitt Romney. Though much talk and controversy surrounded the former Massachusetts governor and Salt Lake City Olympic Commission boss one of the leading stars of the Republican Party for the past two decades, he was in many cases a scriptwriter's dream to be candidate for President. The problem for some was as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints he was unacceptable to many. Many both in Evangelical and secular camps called him “to task” and forced him to “answer for” the views of himself and his Church. As I predicted far more secularists than Evangelicals called him to task, the overwhelming majority of the Evangelicals were ready to back the best candidate whomever he may be, regardless of religion, it was simply ambivalence toward knowledge of the better candidates that kept more Evangelicals from supporting Romney. Indeed many of the conservatives who tend to come from the Evangelical wing of the GOP were leery of any of the “establishment” candidates which basically meant Romney, Rudy Gulliani, and John McCain. Even living here in Utah, I was surprised more members of the Church and other residents of the Inter-Mountain West did not do more to promote the Romney candidacy than was done. Though he won 80% of the Utah primary that was a closed primary for Republicans so few voters voted since Utahns tend not to register with a party. Mitt Romney's top allies in the campaign were not the Church or its top businessmen and backers, but talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Laura Inghram. In this article I will demonstrate that people of faith, should in the near future, in fact in every generation jump at the chance to have a faithful Mormon in leadership, in fact at every top level of power.
While for this article I will largely break it show to two points, there were many heard from perspective voters both religious and secular professing various faiths. One maintains that the Mormon Church is false, Joseph Smith was a false prophet and therefore a follower of his successors as national leader would be wrong, depraved, corrupt, and would bring in a regime from Salt Lake City to rule the country for its own benefit. The other perspective is that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are some of our greatest Americans firm believers in the Constitution and all things American and a great alternative to either a secularist or one who professes belief but is weaker on issues from defenses to public morality. Let us forever abandon the former view and let all Evangelicals and people of faith embrace the concept that a good member of the L.D.S. Church can be a good candidate for President or any other levels of government and can be our ally and help set this country on the right course for the Twenty-First Century. And for those Mormons who believe the negative stereotype about Evangelicals I want to set the record straight that the overwhelming majority of Evangelicals will vote for an L.D.S. candidate if he is the right person for the job. Sure a few misdirected Evangelicals said the Mormon Church was a lie from the pit of hell and therefore a vote for Romney would bring rule from hell, but they were not taken seriously by many Evangelicals. The greatest Evangelical giant of our age, James Dobson, said he would gladly vote for Romney, though he chose not to endorse a candidate in the primaries. This is consistent with many Evangelicals. There were other candidates far more in line with the Evangelical view than Romney, like Fred Thompson, Sam Brownback, and most of all Mike Huckabee, but Phylis Schlafly and Pat Robertson refused to endorse them and even Gary Bauer who had run for President did not endorse a candidate for the primaries though he previously endorsed the very controversial campaign of John McCain and was all but ostracized for years by Evangelicals for that endorsement.
Furthermore, such leaders and their perspective voting wing are repeated called the “Christian right” when no suite organization exists. IF there were a Christian Right then one would assume its most visible leaders, Dobson, Robertson, Ralph Reed, Gary Bauer, Mike Huckabee, would all line up with a united front for the elections. One would also expect them to take cues directly from George W. Bush the successful Presidential candidate and chief executive more associated with the Christian Right than any in history. Instead all of these leaders endorsed various candidates and individual Christians looked for the one who would make the best President as they always do, they did not look to who would win these so called big shots of the religious Right's endorsement with both Dobson and Bush refusing to endorse a candidate before primary season was over. Also most surprising to secular observers was that Mike Huckabee, a longtime Baptist minister was unable to secure a support base among the so-called religious right and had to turn to Chuck Norris to make his campaign noticeable outside his home sate of Arkansas. Indeed, like all stereotypes, the Religious Right is not an organization but an accusation. The L.D.S. Church is an organization with headquarters in Salt Lake City. The Republican, Democratic, and Constitution parties are visible organizations with leaders and literature in place. But the religious right is not an organization it is a term of contempt used by those who are opposed to people of faith taking active part in politics, to denigrate both clergymen and churchgoers who do take an active part.
While these facts have been obvious to over fifty million Evangelical churchgoers and educated observers and have contradicted all the stereotypes of the secularists who run the media, the secularists have not acknowledged them even when the facts proved them to be true. That is why, while religious voters tend to be less predictable at the polls then those defined by racial or career patterns, the fact remains Evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons living in “Red States” tend to come together on Election Day to see the same candidates getting the votes of the faithful. While some Mormons may have thought Evangelicals would never vote for a Mormon, in fact they leadened a little about a different neighbor during his campaign. Secularists on the hand did everything they could to hurt any candidate who practiced any traditional religion. Clearly most of the opposition to Mormons in government has come not from Evangelicals but from secularists who hate members of any conservative religion and did all they could to sabotage the chances of the most qualified attorney general in a century John Aschcroft who is a member of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God, as I am.
Just as in Utah an other parts of the Inter-Mountain West members of Evangelical churches have been voting for Mormon candidates for decades, they would be just as happy to vote for one for President if the right one came along. IF the so-called religious candidates (meaning Evangelicals) chose the nominee it would have been Mike Huckabee and in 1988 it would have been Pat Robertson,. IF there were a Mormon conspiracy to take over you would see billions in backing for Romney from the rank and file of the Church just as eight years ago you would have seen it for Orrin Hatch (who though an exceptionally strong candidate got less votes than Robertson in 88). Such conspiracy theories from Evangelical and religious candidates are ludicrous since as I have demonstrated the only conspiracy involved is to get the best, in our case often meaning the most pro-family and dedicated to the Constitution, candidates elected. Before the candidates were seriously in place there was some talk of Hatch running with Aschcroft as the Vice-President (or the reverse) which would have been the most religious ticket in our history. Both men had been effectively “typecast” and neither could mount a serious Presidential campaign, though Hatch outdebated George W. Bush and John McCain. Again, clearly neither man's co-religionists provided serious backing.
In one of his last public statements before he died Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority said most Evangelicals would vote for Romney if he could show he was pro-family and the most Evangelical friendly candidate in the election. Some call Falwell a relic from a past age, but we must remember that twas his efforts that worked to see Ronald Reagan elected President without which mullions of Europeans and others, including perhaps Americans would be speaking Russian today against their will. You may say Reagan and Falwell lived in a past age but they helped save Christian civilization for our age and many to come. And though little was specified by these Evangelical giants, Falwell and James Dobson indicated that they were perfectly willing to help elect an L.D.S. President if he could demonstrate he was pro-life, pro-family, and pro-Israel, and would seriously fight for our security,
The fact that members of the L.D.S Church are among our greatest Americans is not in dispute, it should be conceded, and like the judgment of Evangelicals, can only be made by those who hate them and/or hate America. Anyone who would deny the integrity of either is doing so out of hate. After having almost their entire existence wiped out by Midwesterners from Illinois and Missouri they migrated to Western enclaves where they became the majority. They could have stayed in their small communities and had little ongoing contact with the rest of the country., Instead like no persecuted group in history, perhaps the only persecuted religion in two hundred years of American history members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints became great Americans by embracing the majority culture. They have gone on to be great doctors, lawyers, professors, businessmen, and military contributors to all of our wars. Starting with the Mexican-American War where under Stephen Kearney they led a great force to help the U.S. emerge victorious. All the way through World War II and wars on Communism and terrorism Mormons have given us soldiers, sailors, Marines, and officers far above their proportions in the population. Members of the L.D.S Church have been leaders in science like Philo T Farnsworth who introduced the first TV. They have also made great contributions to politics where Washington D.C. Is the home of the most L.D.S. wards (local congregations) than any other city East of the Mississippi or North of Missouri. LDS leaders like Ezra Taft Benson who served as President Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture helped establish the concept across he West that North American is Zion and the Americas and the U.S.A. in particular exist to spread the Gospel to the rest of the world. While the Constitution of the U.S. was farsighted for its time perhaps the most farsighted document written in any time or age, the L.D.S. Church is to my knowledge alone in claiming it was given specifically as a mandate by God. The Constitution which has been our law for over twenty-two decades with limited changes has made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. No other country has ever had the same basis of laws for that long without needing major changes in its structure. If one cannot say that the Constitution is divinely inspired at least you can say it was done with Divine help. Similarly, if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints not scriptural, at least you can say it is 100% American.
While Christians of the Protestant and Evangelical branch have come to dominate our country's beliefs especially in the Republican Party and I would not have it any other way, it is clear to open-minded forward thinking Christians that this dominance must be open, and not a clique that shuts out members of other groups. Just as it was important to have Evangelical leaders involved at all stages of planning and running campaigns and serving as victorious leaders of government, just as it was important for Roman Catholics to be able to do this, so it is important that members of the L.DS. Church will be able to do this. As L.D.S, membership grows with the population and spreads out across the country, so members of the L.D.S. Church will become likely candidates just as other faiths, including Catholics, Jewish, Southern Baptists, Disciples of Christ, and Christian Scientists became viable candidates. The Assemblies of God became the fourth largest Protestant denomination (or the fourth largest denomination depending on what source you are looking at, as some still have the Methodists the third largest in the U.S.) and therefore we got an Assemblies of God attorney general. The same evolution happens where there are large numbers of Catholics or members of any other faith. Just as Catholics and Assemblies of God had the right and have the right to welcome people of their faith to public service it is time for members of the L.D.S. Church to do the same. The “religion bating” done in 1960 to keep Kennedy out of the White House was shameful and has been repented by many Protestants and their offspring in our day. And when the Democrats again nominated a Catholic in 2004, George W. Bush actually won the Catholic vote, a majority of both Catholics and Protestants would not vote for Kerry mainly because he was seen as a secularist.
The fact is the numbers relative to the population largely controls who can move into higher office. Over 60% of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Episcopalians and they therefore gave us the bulk of our first group of Presidents,. Similarly as more immigrants particularly from Northern Europe came to the U.S. they were of various Protestant denominations especially settling in the Midwest and West and so more Presidents were of various Protestant backgrounds including Southern Baptists. In the Twentieth Century that became the largest Protestant denomination and also that of the largest number of rising political stars since World War II. Other Presidents have been Quakers, Disciples of Christ, and Presbyterians. SO far no Lutherans, Pentecostals, Jews, Christian and Missionary Alliance, Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, or Muslims have been elected to the highest office, but with population shifts it could only be a matter of time. Similarly six of the first ten Presidents were from Virginia and others have come from the Midwestern heartland, especially after the Civil War they tended to come from conjoined Midwestern states especially Ohio. No President from the South was elected for a century except Woodrow Wilson who had been governor of New Jersey and accepted from that state though raised in the South, In the last fifty years the South has been the home of numerous Presidents and top candidates, while no state East of the Heartland except Massachusetts has produced a serious candidate. Because the U.S. is home to an enormous number of Catholics, large numbers of Baptists, and considerably large populations of Methodists and Assemblies of God Pentecostals these groups can have a good impact on leadership. On the other hand these tend to just happen to belong to their groups, as relatively few voted for Kennedy solely because he was Catholic and almost no one voted for George W. Bush primarily because he was Methodist.
Some said a Catholic President would give power to the Pope and hence a foreign regime, and much of America would therefore go Catholic. Some have stated or implied this about L.D.S. leadership. History and experience do not bear that out. No denomination has ever aggressively won converts based on who was in political leadership from the top on down. Most religious groups that gain many members eventually get famous ones, a few of them serve in politics. Baptist have never proselytized by inviting people to the faith of Oprah. The Assemblies of God has never invited anyone to join the Church of Elvis. Like other groups, the L.D.S. Church will largely attempt to stand on its feet and win converts based on their theology, not on how individual candidates do at the polls.
There remain two controversial parts of history that are embarrassing to people of the L.D.S. faith and may be “red flags” for others others to vote for them. That is the history of polygamy and a separate policy for people of African descent. The fact remains, however that mainstream members of the L.D.S Church do not practice polygamy and have not in over a hundred years. And the ban on Blacks receiving the priesthood was rescinded in 1978 and today Black saints are present in various levels of the Church including the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and other outreach and have won major converts including the singer Gladys Knight. Brigham Young University, the standard of the educational arm of the Church elected a Black class president. Indeed any polygamous and racial past of the Church is not a part of the Church today and individual voters should have no qualms with them on this standpoint. The L.D.S. Church of today is clearly above any charges of racism, while their attitudes toward Black men in leadership more closely mirrors that of other denominations, women of any race are unable to hold the priesthood, an issue beyond this article's scope.
Incidentally, this concept of as a religion grows in size and scope it can grow with government leaders may have a few exceptions. There may be legitimate qualms about members of Scientology or Wicca being elected national leaders but they fall outside the scope of traditional religions and at this point in history given modern day reality about L.D.S. people in practice of leadership everywhere else, the L.D.S. Church does not fall outside the scope. Today one is no more justified in fearing an L.D.S. candidate for high office as in fearing someone of an Evangelical denomination or as they were in the past of fearing Catholics in leadership. Such bigotry comes from secularists who want only secularists in leadership and want to elect those who protect abortion rights and institute the most extreme, anti-family, and anti-American policies in history. We as Evangelicals are allies and partners with Latter-day Saints (along with committed Catholics and Jews) in opposing such secularists every chance we get.
When all is said and done there are now two reasons for Mormon candidates to be encouraged both a the highest levels of government and for federal courts. As their population grows with the nation the nation should welcome some of its brightest an best in leadership. The other reason is personal. As a Republican after getting Barak Obama and Joe Biden in national leadership, it is time we need more conservatives in government. Given their pro-life, pro-family, and pro-America agenda the overwhelming majority of Latter-day Saints are conservative in their politics and Americans need to welcome them in leader. Americans of the Evangelical wing in particular need to say they are willing to vote for these fellow Americans, not shun them as unworthy of their leadership but embrace them as a like-minded counterpart and help see more members of the L.D.S. Church in leadership just as L.D.S. people were instrumental in electing large numbers of Evangelicals to Congress.
Primus S. Butler
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