evangelicals

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USA Today: “Update of popular ‘NIV’ Bible due in 2011”

The scholars and publishers behind the world’s leading English language evangelical Bible announced Tuesday that they would publish a updated translation in 2011.

“And we’ll make sure we get it right this time,” says Keith Danby, president and chief executive officer of Biblica, once known as the International Bible Society

More at Christianity Today, “Correcting the ‘Mistakes’ of TNIV and Inclusive NIV, Translators Will Revise NIV in 2011.”

2 September 2009 @ 9:58 am | No comments

NY Times Ad Defends Mormons

5 December 2008 @ 3:09 pm | 21 comments

Here’s one thing the internet still can’t provide: advocacy ads printed in the NY Times.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has placed a full-page ad in the New York Times today assembling various religious leaders to denounce the recent attacks on the Mormon Church in the wake of Proposition 8. You can see the ad at its companion site NoMobVeto.org.

The ad begins:

We’re a disagreeable lot. We differ about a great many important things. Most, but not all of us, are religious believers. We likewise differ on important moral and legal questions, including the wisdom and justice of California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage.

Nevertheless we’re united in this: The violence and intimidation being directed against the LDS or “Mormon” church, or other religious organizations – and even against individual believers – simply because they supported Proposition 8 is an outrage that must stop.

This is the latest of efforts to rally behind the Church’s as it has faced backlash in its support for Propostion 8 (also, see AboveTheHate.com and its open letter to President Monson). There has been speculation that the Church’s involvement with Prop has been a “fiasco.” But such handwringing seems to be from the perspective of those who think a boycott of Sundance would hurt Mormons.

Instead, the Prop 8 aftermath appears to have won the Mormon Church new appreciation among social conservatives. Whether that is momentary or incremental remains to be seen. I don’t think that’s necessarily a gain for the Mormon Church, but it is among those religious conservatives who were too religiously blinded to realize the Church should be a natural ally in many causes.

Did Church critics really want to push the Mormon Church closer to the religious right?

UPDATE: The LDS Church expressed appreciation for the ad:

Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said: “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints expresses its gratitude to the signatories of the full-page advertisement that appeared today in the New York Times. This was a thoughtful and generous gesture at a time when the right of free expression of people of faith has come under attack. We join with those of all religious faiths and political persuasions who have called for reasoned and civil discourse on matters that affect our nation.”

Mormons and Michiganders against Romney

24 July 2008 @ 11:48 am | 6 comments

It now seems clear that the recent McCain VP buzz was just supposed to keep the senator on the front page rather than actually crash Obama’s world parade. However, as the Romney name keeps getting mentioned, some interesting people are starting to push back on a Romney VP pick.

Speaking as a Mormon, Orson Scott Card “begs” McCain to not commit political suicide by picking a Mormon as his VP.

What is he going to bring you? Utah? You have Utah already.

What Mitt Romney would do, as your vice presidential candidate, is weaken you in areas that you absolutely must carry: The South and the Bible Belt.

You cannot afford to underestimate the number of people who will never vote for a ticket that includes a Mormon. . .

When you consider that in the South, the black vote will — understandably! — be energized and turn out in record numbers, the last thing you need is for the Evangelical Christian vote to be unenthusiastic, with large numbers of them sitting it out.

And from Romney’s home state, Michigan Democrats have actually produced a web ad as a preemptive strike against Romney on his biggest strength, his business experience.



I think Romney would make the best VP, but he may not be the best political choice. So OSC’s point is legitimate and pragmatic but a total concession to the crudest of identity politics.

And if the Michigan Democrats really think Romney is such a bad pick, why are they running ads discouraging McCain to NOT pick him? Somehow I don’t think they have McCain’s best interests in mind.

Evangelical backlash for not embracing Romney?

This is commonly known as being hoisted by one’s own petard. The problem the Religious Right had in this primary was the hang-up over religion, which their movement had avoided for most of its period of influence. In the end, their leaders couldn’t see past religion to policy, and that left Romney twisting in the wind . . .

When they finally engaged with Romney, they liked his agenda and his ability to organize. Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani, but most evangelical leaders lined up behind Romney, but refused to support Romney rather than just attack everyone else. They could not bring themselves to explain why Romney’s Mormonism shouldn’t matter, and indeed emphasized their analysis of it as a non-Christian religion, something Mormons hotly dispute. They lost sight of the political agenda and instead got tripped by their doctrinal agenda.

Depending on how the McCain campaign goes, it will be interesting to see if resentment towards Evangelicals builds.

19 February 2008 @ 2:29 pm | No comments

“Huckabee: Perceived anti-LDS comment taken out of context, misunderstood”

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says it is “unfounded” for anyone to say he has alienated the Mormon community or that he used rival Mitt Romney’s LDS faith as a wedge issue.

Try explaining that to the reddest state of the untion which would prefer Obama to Huckabee 58 to 42 in a head to head to race.

It’s good that Huckabee can’t escape (yet) what may be his legacy of the 2008 campaign.  But in the end it may be best for the rest of us to move on.

Huckabee ran television spots in Iowa calling himself a “Christian leader,” and refused to say whether he thought the LDS Church was a cult, referring that question instead to Romney. Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute for Politics and a Romney friend and supporter, said he wonders whether Huckabee’s response Tuesday was “revisionist history.
  “[But] I’m very happy to hear him say that,” Jowers said. “And I suppose the best thing to do is accept him at his word. However, his approach to Romney’s religion seemed very different in the days leading up to Iowa.”

12 February 2008 @ 2:05 pm | 2 comments

Different Mormon reactions to the Mormon Question at Article VI Blog. I’m both surprised and offended and hope to be a bridge-builder.

7 February 2008 @ 4:07 pm | No comments

The Politico: “Utah’s Mormons loathe Huckabee.” He can’t get past the perception that he has exploited anti-Mormonism to woo Evangelicals.

Quin Monson, assistant director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University, says many observers believe that “evangelicals have rejected Romney, and that Huckabee is aiding and abetting that. … He’s egging it on.”

Yeah, but they REALLY don’t like him, and actually have a soft spot for Barack Obama (emphasis mine):

In the deeply red state where President Bush still maintains some of his highest approval ratings, a place that has ranked as the most Republican state in the nation in six of the past eight presidential elections, a BYU poll released Monday reveals that Huckabee would pull off the seemingly impossible.

As GOP nominee, he would lose the state of Utah in a hypothetical matchup with Democrat Barack Obama, 58 percent to 42 percent.

Romney, by contrast, would defeat Obama 69 percent to 31 percent. McCain would also win against Obama, though by a more modest 55 percent to 45 percent.

Still, there are limits to how much Utah dislikes Huckabee: In a head-to-head matchup with Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, Huckabee wins handily, 60 percent to 41 percent.

5 February 2008 @ 11:14 am | 1 comment

Voting for Satan

1 February 2008 @ 1:34 pm | No comments

Matt Evans has an excellent and positive take on how hard Iowa was for Romney and even understandable for Evangelicals to vote as they did:

The anti-Mormon vote would be in that 56-11% gap (and the gap in the “religious views mattered somewhat” group CNN didn’t report), but of course not all of that gap would be anti-Mormon — some of it would be that evangelicals simply like, identify, and understand Huckabee’s religious views, and other things being equal, voters prefer the familiar. In this sense being Mormon is a bigger obstacle than being black or female — voters are more familiar with blacks and females and don’t find being black or female strange.

A Jehovah’s Witness would face the same issues running for Utah governor. Identity and unfamiliarity would be larger obstacles than would religious discrimination. Then imagine the JW’s challenge among the San Pete County GOP (Utah’s Iowa equivalent) if he had been a pro-choice mayor of Salt Lake (Utah’s Massachusetts equivalent), and was on record claiming to better support gay rights than Rocky Anderson (Utah’s Teddy Kennedy equivalent). Placing second in a crowded field of respectable candidates would be a gleeming silver medal.

4 January 2008 @ 4:00 pm | No comments

Would a Romney presidency help the Mormon Church? Probably not:

THE ONLY PROBLEM with those fears is that they don’t add up. Evangelicals may be surprised to learn that the growth of church membership in Massachusetts slowed substantially during Romney’s tenure as governor. In fact, one could make the absurdly simplistic argument that Romney was bad for Mormonism. . .

During the Romney years, the number of Mormon wards and branches, congregations that are created and dissolved based on geography and population, in the Bay State rose by one and fell by one, indicating that congregational growth was static. Nationwide, the number of congregations grew by 7.3 percent.

4 January 2008 @ 1:53 pm | 1 comment

Did Hucakbee Give Them Their Holy War?

4 January 2008 @ 11:22 am | 8 comments

Just as Romney seemed to finally answer the call to address the Mormon Question, the Huckabee surge came and fulfilled a year’s coverage of whether Evangelicals would vote for a Mormon.  The Iowa race was thus declared a “Holy War.”

Frank Lockwood makes the point that Evangelicals aren’t bigoted because a majority of Evangelicals voted for someone other than Huckabee.  Of course, Evangelicals aren’t the monolithic vote that they are too often described to be, just as Mormons aren’t.   Looking at the Iowa’s exit polls, Romney got the second-most number of evangelicals with 19% to Huckabee’s 46%

But, further review shows that Huckabee captured the religious beliefs vote with 56% of those who replied they mattered a “Great Deal” and 30% who said “Somewhat.” Romney won the vote of those who said “Not Much” (38%) or “Not at All” (40%).

I don’t want to overtstate the impact of the anti-Mormon vote.  Above all, I think it would be wrong and a huge mistake if Mormons joined the ranks of aggrieved minorities.  But it does look like Huckabee’s Christian identity pitch and leveraging anti-Momon sentiments made a difference.

 UPDATE:  Evangelicals were also 60% of the vote, up from 39% in 2000.  Huckabee’s surge unleashed a tsunami.

Reverse Psychological Doublespeak Dog-Whistling

28 December 2007 @ 6:44 pm | 2 comments

The technical term for this in political science is “Reverse Psychological Doublespeak Dog-Whistling”:

Huckabee: Don’t vote against rival Romney just because he’s Mormon

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said it would be wrong for caucus voters in Iowa to withhold support from rival Mitt Romney because of his Mormon faith, while criticizing the former Massachusetts governor’s economic record.

“I don’t think a person’s faith ought to be a plus or minus,” Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” scheduled to air today. “I would not want to think that people vote for me only because I’m a Christian.”

But for a state where one-third nearly half openly admit that being a Mormon is a negative, it doesn’t hurt to remind everyone who’s Mormon and who’s “Christian.”

Southern Baptists vs. Mormons

20 December 2007 @ 5:22 pm | 3 comments

Slate has a very interesting history of the “rivalry” between the Southern Baptist Convention and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Of course, the article strains to find some “extra meaning” in the current Romney/Huckabee conflict but it’s an interesting and a fair look that recognizes that if there is any conflict between the churches, it’s coming from the Baptists.

  • “This isn’t the first time a Southern Baptist and a Mormon have battled for the White House—Mo Udall was a nonpracticing Mormon when he ran against Baptist Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. “
  • “In the early 1980s, Southern Baptist Convention leaders discovered—much to their horror—that 40 percent of Mormonism’s 217,000 converts in 1980 came from Baptist backgrounds.”
  • “The Mormon Church has met efforts from the SBC and other evangelical groups with silence. While it maintains its claim as ‘the only true and living church,’ the denomination has avoided targeting specific faiths in the way it has so often found itself in others’ crosshairs.”

It ends with a hopeful note that the SBC may not be completely opposed to Mitt Romney, even if he belongs to a “cult”, which is “a false religion”, and his election may benefit the Church.  That’s progress, I guess.

According to a WP/ABC poll, 20% percent of Iowa Republicans and more than a third of Evangelicals are less likely to vote to vote for Romney because he is Mormon:

Religion remains a key factor in the campaign. Not only does Huckabee draw primarily from religious voters, but Romney’s Mormonism may also be an issue. While a majority of evangelical Protestants said Romney’s religion does not make a difference to them, more than a third said they are less likely to support him because he is a Mormon.

19 December 2007 @ 8:21 pm | No comments

The man to heal the Romney/Huckabee divide?: The Baptist Mormon Preacher. (Thanks, Mormon Mysticism)

18 December 2007 @ 1:33 pm | No comments

Romney’s Real Audience

7 December 2007 @ 1:46 pm | No comments

Yesterday, John Podhoretz made this bizarre statement on Gov. Romney’s “Faith in America” speech:

For those who don’t know Romney is a Mormon, well, they sure will now. For the next two or three days, it’s all anybody will know about him. Chances are it is the word that people will most associate with him from here on out. I don’t think that’s a good direction for a campaign that finds itself in the fight of its life in Iowa against the most explicitly Christian candidate in the field.

Huh!?!? If anyone who didn’t know until yesterday that Romney was a Mormon, they weren’t paying attention to the campaign and won’t start now.  Forget the next few days, for the past year the media’s portrayal of Gov. Romney has been relentless reporting that Romney’s biggest challenge is that he’s a Mormon which could only be removed by making some JFK-type speech. 

(I actually believe that the Governor’s biggest problem is his perceived “inaunthenticity” and supposed flip-flopping, which he hasn’t been able to deal with very well due to the oppressive religious coverage.  The Evangelical acceptance of a Mormon candidate is overplayed by a media herd-mentality eager to pick a fight.)

Romney didn’t add anything new yesterday that he hasn’t said in countless interviews before.  However, instead of speaking to one reporter, Romney spoke on a national platform.  Now when some lazy reporter decides to recycle the Mormon Question, the Romney campaign can at least point back to yesterday and say “been there, done that.” 

Conventional wisdom has it that yesterday’s speech was an appeal to Evangelicals to accept a Mormon candidate.  But most Evangelicals who weren’t willing to accept Romney before, probably aren’t willing to today.   Romney’s biggest accomplishment was telling the media to back off and drop the daily coverage of his faith.

Yesterday, Romney Campaign 2.0 was launched.  He may not have added anything new of substance to his campaign, but he sounded presidential, perhaps authentic.  And instead of becoming the “Mormon” candidate like Podhoretz suggests, he’s done his best to level the playing field and leave the “Mormon” tag behind.

Huckabee’s Double Standard

7 December 2007 @ 11:46 am | 1 comment

Charles Krauthammer outdoes even himself on Gov. Huckabee’s shameless and devious exploitation of religion in Iowa.  (emphasis added)

Just imagine that Huckabee were running one-on-one in Iowa against Joe Lieberman. (It’s a thought experiment. Stay with me.) If he had run the same ad in those circumstances, it would have raised an outcry. The subtext — who’s the Christian in this race? — would have been too obvious to ignore, the appeal to bigotry too clear . . .

Huckabee has been asked about this view that Mormonism is a cult. He dodges and dances. “If I’m invited to be the president of a theological school, that’ll be a perfectly appropriate question,” he says, “but to be the president of the United States, I don’t know that that’s going to be the most important issue that I’ll be facing when I’m sworn in” . . .

And by Huckabee’s own logic, since he is not running for head of a theological college, what is he doing proclaiming himself a “Christian leader” in an ad promoting himself for president?

Answer: Having the issue every which way. Seeming to take the high road of tolerance by refusing to declare Mormonism a cult, indeed declaring himself above the issue — yet clearly playing to that prejudice by leaving the question ambiguous, while making sure everyone knows that he, for one, is a “Christian leader.”

While I don’t expect Gov. Huckabee to meet Pres. Harrison’s fate, his campaign won’t make it out of Iowa unless it changes it’s tone quick.

Every mention of God in every inaugural address in American history refers to the deity in this kind of all-embracing, universal, nondenominational way. (The one exception: William Henry Harrison. He caught cold delivering that inaugural address. Thirty-one days later, he was dead. Draw your own conclusion.)

Dobson Approves

6 December 2007 @ 5:33 pm | No comments

Most pundits seem to think the speech was okay with qualified nitpickings.  But if Evangelical leader James Dobson approves of the speech, then that’s all Romney probably could have hoped for:

Gov. Romney’s speech was a magnificent reminder of the role religious faith must play in government and public policy. His delivery was passionate and his message was inspirational. Whether it will answer all the questions and concerns of Evangelical Christian voters is yet to be determined, but the governor is to be commended for articulating the importance of our religious heritage as it relates to today.

I think Dobson likes Romney but just can’t quite bring himself to get over the Mormon issue.  Or his followers won’t let him.

Elder Ballard responds to Evangelicals:

“They’re locked into the Nicene Creed . . . We’re locked into the restoration and the experiences of Joseph Smith,” said Elder M. Russell Ballard, a senior leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “And that will undoubtedly be an issue until God himself comes.”

6 December 2007 @ 9:53 am | No comments

More Playing Saturday Night Quarterback

5 December 2007 @ 8:07 pm | No comments

Unable to wait for the actual speech tomorrow, more keyboard pundits are already taking a swing at what they think Mitt Romney should say.

Russell Arben Fox:

I’m neither a historian nor a scholar of my own religion. I am just a believer . . . These are matters that can only be understood–that can only be taken seriously–if one gets into high theology, which I am not qualified to do and have no more need to do than John F. Kennedy had a need to explain the sacraments to his mostly Protestant audience. This is not, this should not be, where the political argument lies.

Noah Millman:

When Senator Joe Lieberman was nominated for the Vice Presidency on the Democratic ticket in 2000, his reaction was, “is this a great country, or what?” My sentiments exactly.

Mark Hemingway at National Review:

Now given the importance of religious liberty, I recognize that unlike men, not all religions are created equal. Some religious sects advocate violence, fail to recognize basic human rights, or are driven by greed. Membership in one of these groups might very well be an important factor in evaluating the judgment of someone that wishes to hold public office. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does none of these things. Regardless of what you think of Mormon doctrine, as a civic institution I am very proud to be a member of it. Like many of my fellow believers, I have already held high public office and no conflicts between personal faith and public life have materialized. I cannot fathom a scenario where a conflict would emerge between the two kingdoms of my individual faith and the shared political responsibilities of all Americans.

and National Review adds possibly the only way to win over the hardcore Huckleheads:

You know what would really be funny? If Romney declares on Thursday that he has been saved and shows a YouTube clip of his baptism, and a hearty endorsement by Dr. Dobson.

Governor Romney’s speech begins at 10:30 am Eastern tomorrow.  I bet we’ll have a few posts out there explaining how he messed up by 10:40 am.

Evangelicals praying for Mitt Romney.  Beautiful.

5 December 2007 @ 7:37 pm | No comments

Rod Dreher asks his fellow Christians a few questions: “If we say we wouldn’t vote for Romney because he holds bizarre religious convictions, and we therefore can’t trust his judgment, how could we expect a non-Christian to be fair-minded in considering a Christian for public office? . . . How can Christians be offended, or at least irritated, on Huck’s behalf re: the evolution question, yet maintain that Romney’s judgment is unreliable because of his Mormon beliefs?”

5 December 2007 @ 3:22 pm | No comments

Mark your calendars. Romney To Give his ‘Religion Speech’ this Thursday. Widely seen as an effort to counter Huckabee’s Iowa momentum with Evangelicals.  Unless he charts a course to Kolob and produces the Golden Plates for the New York Times to review I doubt anyone is going to be satisfied.

2 December 2007 @ 9:25 pm | No comments

If You Think the Evangelical Right Is Bad

20 November 2007 @ 11:24 am | 11 comments

Due to the bruising nature of the primaries, Evangelicals have been getting a lot of ire in the Bloggernacle (a lot of it justified). Romney’s religion has been constantly rehashed as a stumbling block for the Evangelical vote. 

However, if enough Evangelicals support Romney and he gets the nomination, his religion “problem” won’t be going away.  Although the Mormon issue has been widely portrayed as a GOP matter, Democratic voters are even less likely than Republicans to vote for a Mormon.

Well, first of all, polls like this one (see Table 4) suggest that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to rule out voting for a candidate on the basis of his Mormon faith. Now maybe all those anti-Mormon Democrats are African-American Baptists or working-class Catholics, but Dems with a post-grad education are more anti-Latter Day Saint than Dems with just a high school degree, which at the very least suggests that there are plenty of secular voters who wouldn’t pull the lever for a Mormon. Not, presumably, because they want to establish an “only Trinitarians need apply” standard for public office in the U.S., but because they consider Mormonism weird and cultish, and they don’t want a President who buys into its tenets.

According that April 2007 poll, Republicans are more likely to vote for a Mormon than Democrats by 50 – 38. That may be because Democrats don’t like the Mormon religion, they don’t like religion period, or they don’t like the predominant politics associated with Mormons.  What else?  

Could Democrat voters be as bigoted as Evangelicals?

“How did Romney pull that off?” Romney gets Paul Weyrich, Rudy gets Pat Roberston. Win-win for Romney.

7 November 2007 @ 12:12 pm | 2 comments

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