This article hits it on the head. Many Mormons have thought to themselves:
"Why can't the country understand that Mitt's life IS as it seems. He's not too good to be true. There are millions of others just like him."
But, the great thing is, we will continue to be that type of community - they type of community that others will look to and think, "Wow, that is too good to be true."
- We stay married
- Our mothers stay home to raise strong children
- We live a healthy lifestyle
- We look happy
- We feel happy
- We are disciplined
- Etc., etc., etc.,
I also feel that many people are looking at the LDS church and thinking, "Wow, that is too good to be true. How can I be like that?" Slowly but surely, more and more people will find themselves wanting shelter from our increasingly evil society and they will look to the Church of Jesus Christ for sanctuary. So, make sure you are ready to do your part by sharing why your life, in comparison to the world, is "too good to be true."
Did Mormons Get A Bounce From Mitt?
By Libby Copeland
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 8, 2008; C01
After Mitt Romney suspended his presidential campaign yesterday, in a speech praising conservative values and criticizing such scourges as liberal judges and France, the question became:
So, was it good for the Mormons?
The Jews like asking that question about themselves. They asked it a lot after Joe Lieberman ran for vice president in 2000, and it was never quite resolved to everyone's satisfaction. (Others are easier. Monica Lewinsky: Bad for the Jews.) Can you blame any minority for asking such a question about themselves? Who doesn't want to be loved?
"Mormons were chased out of the Midwest in the 1840s, and ever since then they've been looking to America for approval," says Bengt Washburn, a Mormon who is also a full-time comedian. (There aren't a lot of those, by the way. In case you were wondering.) Washburn says Mormons he knows will constantly list examples of mainstream Mormons to outsiders. Gladys Knight is a Mormon! Steve Young is a Mormon! Donny! Marie!
It's as if to say, "'See? Mormons aren't weird,'" Washburn says. "Well, yeah, we're weird." But here's the thing, the comedian adds: "All theology standing next to logic is weird."
Maybe that was Romney's mistake, that he tried to make his religion sound palatable to evangelical ears, that he didn't just say that sure, some of my beliefs may sound incredible to outsiders, but then again, a lot of the doings in Bible stories sound incredible to outsiders. (And, as historian Jan Shipps points out, Mormonism is a young faith. The earliest Christians were reviled, too.) But politics doesn't permit that sort of honesty any more than it allows a candidate to say, "My faith is private, okay?"
The truth is, Mormonism is in many ways the epitome of what was considered normalcy, back before the '60s upended everybody's definition. With his handsome tanned face and white teeth, his five square-jawed sons, his gorgeous blond wife and daughters-in-law, his teetotaling ways, his corporate demeanor, Romney broadcast health, uprightness, a life spent on the straight-'n'-narrow.
His campaign put out an ad at one point of Romney jogging, all that fabulous hair slighty mussed. The message seemed clear: Now here is a man vigorous and disciplined. (Take that, John McCain!) Every morning on the campaign trail, he ate the granola his wife made for him herself. How consistent! How homey!
Was he too normal?
We'll come back to that.
Two big things happened to elevate the face of Mormonism in the last decade. One, of course, was Romney running for president. The other was the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, which Romney took credit for turning around. During the Olympics, the Mormons were "wonderfully gracious" to visitors, as Shipps says, and everyone thought, wow, these Mormons aren't so weird after all.
"The result of this was that a lot of the stereotypes about Mormonism, the negative stereotypes -- that they were clannish, that they were secretive -- that sort of disappeared," says Shipps, who is one of the foremost non-Mormon scholars of the denomination.
But with Romney's candidacy, the scrutiny was different.
"I know Mormons and members of the church that felt like it was a terrible thing that Romney was running because we opened ourselves up to criticism," says Joel Campbell, a Mormon who teaches journalism at Brigham Young University.
"It certainly opens the conversation, but whether the conversation will be a friendly one or a contentious one, I'm not sure," says Shipps. "I do think it alerted a lot of upper-middle-class, exceedingly successful Mormon lawyers and doctors . . . to the reality that not everybody thinks being Mormon is great. If you grow up in the mountain West and you grow up in a Mormon community and you send your kids to church and all the kids are going to school where there's mostly Mormons and there's not a lot of drugs and there's not a lot of crime, everybody thinks, 'Oh, being Mormon is just so wonderful.' And to realize that this is a perception that is very provincial."
This is the nub of it, really. Romney seemed so Mormon, so squeaky clean, so Pollyanna-ish, even. (Remember when he went to Michigan and said he could bring those lost jobs back?) Romney's seeming normalcy isn't the norm anymore. Maybe we understand better those who've strayed or failed and recovered -- or, for that matter, those who aren't fabulously successful and can't put tens of millions into their own campaigns. Maybe we relate to the family lives of other candidates, candidates who have been divorced, who have blended families, whose children don't all campaign with them (and may not even like them). Sure, they're messier, but messy is authentic.
There was more to it than that, of course. Some evangelical voters -- who don't want messy -- see Mormonism as something other than Christianity. Mike Huckabee, an evangelical and former pastor, was speaking to them when he said, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the Devil are brothers?"
All of this gives Mormons something to chew on for years to come.
Maybe it was all for the good, no matter what, says Campbell. He quotes the prophet Brigham Young on the issue of persecution:
"Every time you kick Mormonism you kick it upstairs."
"That's kind of the optimism of Mormons," Campbell says, adding: "I guess that may sound like Pollyanna or something."
