SALT LAKE CITY — Polygamy, missionaries on bicycles and the Osmonds.
What most people know or think they know about Mormons might be summed up in those few words. The renowned Tabernacle Choir and perhaps quarterback Steve Young could also fit on that list.
Despite 170 years of history, much about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the church of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney — remains a mystery to most.
Questions about his faith, which some mainline religious groups discount as a non-Christian cult, have dogged Romney throughout his campaign, and today he’ll tackle the issue at the George H.W. Bush Library on the campus of Texas A&M University.
Romney isn’t expected to focus on the details of Mormonism, but it’s in those details that evangelicals and other Christians sometimes break with Latter-day Saints.
The fundamental issue: the nature of God.
“Christians and Jews have always held that there is a great gap between creator and creature. God is God and we’re not,” said Richard Mouw, head of the Pasadena, Calif., Fuller Theological Seminary. “Mormons believe that God and humans are of the same species. In our eyes, they have tried to bridge that gap in ways that really is a fundamental violation.”
Many non-Mormons dispute claims that the faith’s central text, the Book of Mormon, is a valid account of Jesus’ dealings with ancient Americans. Mormons believe the book was translated through revelation by founder Joseph Smith from a set of buried golden plates. It’s one of three texts from Smith, who also drafted his own version of the Bible, altering passages in light of what he said were errors that had crept into modern translations.
“The Bible has almost a talismanic significance to evangelicals, and they simply don’t like the idea of anybody changing it,” said Randall Balmer, professor of religion at Columbia University.
Smith founded the church in 1830, 10 years after a vision near his family home in Palmyra, N.Y. The original church had just six members. Today the church claims nearly 13 million members worldwide. With about 5.7 million members in the U.S., it is the nation’s fourth-largest church.
Culturally, socially and politically, Mormons and evangelical Christians should have no trouble finding common ground. Mormon culture centers on faith and family, with church activities and callings — from teaching Sunday School to leading Boy Scout troops — filling the calendar. A patriarchal society, Mormons hold up the traditional family as the ideal, with women encouraged to raise children instead of working outside the home.
Mormons oppose gay marriage. They’ve largely supported the war in Iraq and twice voted overwhelmingly for President Bush. The church opposes most abortions.
But there are a host of Mormon beliefs that evangelicals find hard to swallow. Mormons, for example, believe in a Heavenly Mother — God’s female partner — a pre-existence in heaven before birth and a hereafter that includes a three-level heavenly kingdom. They wear religious undergarments that some say possess protective powers; they bar non-Mormons from entering their temples; they practice posthumous baptism and believe that man can progress to a God-like state in Heaven.
Another concern for some: that Mormon church presidents are held out as prophets with revelatory power that can alter the church’s direction and beliefs.
Such revelations discontinued the practice of polygamy in 1890 and, in 1978, ended a ban on giving black men priesthood authority.
Said Mouw, “That notion that things can just get changed is scary for a lot of people who worry that a church with a very strong authority center could influence a public leader by suddenly getting a new revelation that has an impact on public policy.”
