Mitt Romney’s evangelical appeal

By Nicole Greenfield

Last year Amy Sullivan predicted in the Washington Monthly that Mitt Romney, the nationally-popular Republican governor of Massachusetts, will face an“evangelical problem” if he runs for president in 2008. More recently, results from the latest Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll further support Sullivan’s argument by finding that thirty-seven percent of those questioned would not vote for a Mormon candidate simply on the basis of religion.

But if recent coverage of Romney in evangelical and conservative media outlets provides any indication, he may stand more of a chance with evangelicals than we think. Over the past several weeks, Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), Townhall.com, and Christianity Today have all published articles discussing Romney—articles that portray the governor in a positive light. Although they each note the problem that evangelical voters could pose, they do so casually, emphasizing Romney’s firm conservative stance on social issues instead.

The CBN piece, “The Almost Untold Story of Gov. Mitt Romney,” focuses on Romney’s life and his success, and specifically on what the author sees as his ability to turn negative situations into positive ones–like narrowly escaping death in a car accident, saving the Salt Lake City Olympic Games, and winning the gubernational election as a conservative in a predominantly liberal state. By emphasizing these accomplishments, it frames his disadvantage as a Mormon candidate in optimistic terms, suggesting that a win in 2008 would be yet another affirmation that Romney is a “turnaround specialist.”

The idea that widespread evangelical Christian opposition to Mormonism would have negative consequences on Romney as a presidential contender is brought up only briefly. “The country may face challenges, but so does the governor – in particular, his religion. He’s Mormon. Some, including several evangelicals, believe Mormonism is a cult. The Southern Baptist Convention Web site includes Mormonism as a cult on their a major cults and sects in America page.” The author, David Brody, presents this bit of information as new and surprising, implying that his readership is not included in that group of “several evangelicals” he refers to. Instead, Brody chooses to focus on Romney’s pro-life, anti-stem-cell research, and anti-gay marriage positions, essentially endorsing him as a candidate.

Columnist Cal Thomas, long a media kingmaker within the Christian conservative movement, also concerns himself with Romney’s socially conservative position, but relates it to the religion problem by referencing the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll. But Thomas doesn’t press the matter much further and concludes with his own opinion about Romney’s case: “It troubles me not that a Mormon might be president. It does trouble me a great deal that so many people would think a person’s faith—whether one shares it or not—should be the only reason to deny someone the presidency.”

Thomas also joins Brody and many other journalists in drawing a comparison between Romney’s Mormonism and John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism. He writes, “If Romney runs, he might consider following the example of another son of Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, who addressed the issue of his Catholicism in a speech to the Houston Ministerial Association during the 1960 campaign…The poll results may reflect attitudes toward Mormonism that are similar to what non-Catholic voters thought about Catholics four decades ago.”

On the surface, it is an accurate connection, but the essential differences in belief and doctrine between Mormonism and other forms of Christianity—including Catholicism—undermine the analogy. Today’s anti-Mormon attitudes are not similar to the anti-Catholic ones of forty years ago for countless reasons–one of the most important being that many evangelicals consider Mormonism to be a cult that has desecrated the Bible and diminished the significance of Jesus. Regardless of its validity, however, the fact that Thomas makes the comparison suggests that he has hope for a Romney win in 2008.

Ted Olsen’s “Latter-Day Complaints” in this month’s issue of Christianity Today is the latest piece in the magazine’s periodic coverage of Mormon-evangelical relations. Although it doesn’t focus exclusively on Romney, it provides some additional insight into how Christian media has been portraying him in recent weeks. In the article, Olsen refers to the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, Sullivan’s “evangelical problem,” and, like Brody and Thomas, he mentions the Romney-JFK comparison.

Olsen focuses more on the evangelical opposition toward Mormons than the other two writers and, as a result, comes across as less sympathetic toward Romney. He does assert, however, that “Mormons are more likely than evangelicals to support conservative Christian political causes,” and makes clear that “With their strong family values, constant Jesus talk, and passion for evangelism, Mormons seem almost like evangelicals’ cultural twins. In some ways, they represent our ideal.” These statements are the most telling in Olsen’s piece because in specifying how Mormons could represent the evangelical ideal, he suggests that their commonalities should take precedence over their differences. And despite his conclusion that evangelicals enjoy their differences too much to vote for a Mormon president, he leaves the reader thinking that Mitt Romney’s social conservatism just might make him good enough for the White House in 2008.

Nicole Greenfield is the managing editor of The Revealer.