Mitt Romney and his church

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Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney makes the case that there should be no religious test to qualify a candidate to be President of the United States. Years ago, when his father, then-Michigan governor George, campaigned to be the Republican nominee, little was made of the fact that the Romneys are Mormons. But this time around, many evangelical voters, seeking a candidate like themselves, have called the son's religious faith into question.Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, founded by an American in 1830. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center reveals that only 53 percent of voters express a favorable view of Mormons, no more favorably than those who think well of Muslim Americans. Although Romney is viewed by more than any other candidate of either party as "very religious," slightly fewer prospective voters (52 percent) believe Mormons to be Christians. Some 62 percent of Americans consider the Mormon faith to be "very different" from their own.The candidate wisely did not choose to explain those differences, but only insisted that Jesus is his Lord and Savior.During my own brief ministry I served as a Christian chaplain to two universities in Utah, a state where the culture is steeped in Mormonism. That experience prompted me much later to write a book, "America's Spiritual Utopias: The Quest for Heaven on Earth," which is scheduled to appear next year.The Mormons offer the largest single example of spiritually motivated living in America today. Motivated by a faith native to the United States, they overcame persecution, assassination, and the terrors of the wilderness to create their heaven on earth in the desert. But rather than shrink into their own enclaves, they became a vital missionary people, determined to share their vision of the best of all possible worlds.For the edification of the larger society, the Latter-Day Saints offer practical examples of community-building, generosity, mutual aid, dedication to work, reverence for humanity, strength of family, responsibility, and comradeship.There are more than 5 million Mormons in the U.S. alone. By dint of 60,000 volunteer missionaries in 160 nations, there are now more than 11 million Latter-Day Saints worldwide.As a young man, Romney was a missionary to Paris and Bordeaux. Today he laughs at his youthful attempts to convert the French to a faith that would require them to give up their wine. But he is philosophical: "It was good training for how life works... Rejection of one kind or another is going to be an important part of everyone's life." Romney was chief organizer of the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Unlike Atlanta's city fathers in 1996, who gave the city's vagrants one-way bus tickets out of town to rid the streets of them, Salt Lake City gave its homeless beds, job training, transitional housing, and substance abuse treatment not only during the Games but to this day.(David Yount's new book is "How the Quakers Invented America" (Rowman & Littlefield). He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com.)??