Romney, here with wife Ann, once served as a Mormon bishop. (Reuters)
There are 14 million Mormons in the world and more than 6 million in the US alone, yet little to nothing about the religion is known to those outside it. A recent Pew poll found that 68% of Americans don’t see Mormons as part of mainstream society, 32% think it’s not a Christian religion (it is), and 62% of Americans know “little or nothing about Mormonism.”
Yet there may soon be a Mormon in the White House.
Since the Obama and Romney campaigns seem to have a policy of detente when it comes to each other’s beliefs, it’s not likely Romney will be explaining Mormonism anytime soon. (And the other most powerful Mormon politician in America, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, is so quiet about his religion that it’s easy to forget he’s an observant member.)
“There is a history of persecution,” says McKay Coppins, a Mormon journalist who has been following Romney on the campaign trail. “Much like American Jews, Mormons sense persecution around every corner, even if it doesn’t exist.”
Mormonism is an American-born religion, originally practiced mainly by settlers, and the most poignant finding of the Pew poll is the frustration many Mormons feel at being thought of as odd: 46% say that Mormons suffer discrimination, and 62% say that Americans are “uninformed” about the religion. Yet the reluctance of most Mormons to discuss their beliefs and customs with non-members only adds to secular suspicion that the church is a cult.
“It would absolutely be better for the church if they were out in the open,” Coppins says. “It would seem less creepy to people.”
And what would change views faster than a Mormon in the White House? One who may even be ministered to by an average American like them?
There are 136 Mormon temples in the world, though most members worship at one of the thousands of smaller churches, which tend to resemble modest community meeting halls: a large room for services, smaller rooms for specialized group discussions, a basketball court for young followers.
The temples, however, are statements, and the one in DC, at 288 feet high, is the tallest in the States.
As you approach from the Beltway, its dove-gray marble edifice, largely without windows, looks like a Disneyland starchitect’s take on a castle. This one took nearly six years to build, and as with all temples, it was open to the general public for only two months after its completion in 1974; among the guests was then-First Lady Betty Ford.
Not even all Mormons are given entry to the temple — you must have what’s called a “recommend,” which means your bishop has questioned you about your devotion to the faith and overall moral uprightness and found you worthy. You are then issued a card — it’s small and unlaminated, like a valet ticket — which is checked every time you enter, and which is good at all temples worldwide for two years, at which point you must be debriefed again. (Most Mormons assume that Romney, who is an active member, has a recommend.)
There are rooms for Sunday services (these tend to have two facing walls with large mirrors, to give a sense of infinity), as well as rooms for baptisms (the fonts resemble miniature above-ground pools), weddings, and another airy, stately room, filled with sofas and chairs and done in a palette of pale pinks, to sit and think.
Sunday services last three hours, and begin with the hour-long “sacrament,” their version of communion, with water swapped in for wine. That’s followed by another hour of sermons, delivered by rotating congregants, and a third hour in which men and women split up to pray and converse in small groups.
The DC temple, which sits on 52 assiduously maintained wooded acres, would seem majesterial enough for a sitting US president, with the added benefit of being inaccessible to all outsiders. And this, says Harvard professor Noah Feldman, author of “Divided by God: America’s Church-State Problem and What We Should Do About It,” is precisely the reason Romney won’t choose it.
“It would make political sense not to go somewhere that has limitations on access,” says Feldman. “He’d go to the chapel, which is something non-Mormons can enter.”
Like every other Mormon, Romney would be assigned a chapel based on his ZIP code — so he’d attend the same chapel as Harry Reid, located in a leafy, well-to-do suburb of Maryland, a 20-minute drive from Capitol Hill. The optics of a sitting president walking into an unassuming brick building, mixing with and being ministered to by fellow congregants from different backgrounds, would be the best free advertising the religion’s had since the Osmonds.
Romney would also be assigned two “home teachers” — fellow Mormons who live in his vicinity and would visit with Romney once a month, probably in the White House, to counsel him on his faith and general emotional state, and these people could very well be working-class or poor men from D.C.’s inner city. Likewise, Romney will be paired up with another Mormon to counsel a fellow worshipper.
It sounds like a sitcom, but it would also be a very American tableaux: the most powerful man in the world being ministered to by a lowly civilian.
Twenty-six percent of Mormons are converts, and anyone from outside the religion is encouraged to drop by a visitors’ center. The one in D.C. sits on the temple’s grounds. Inside are a number of interactive displays (touch the screen to hear a various sermons from Prophet Thomas Monson, whose role is akin to the pope’s); a prefab house that serves as a paean to the nuclear family; and several screening rooms, where you can watch a well-produced hour-long biopic on Joseph Smith, the American who founded Mormonism in 1830 after claiming he’d been given “golden plates” — essentially, additions and revisions to the Bible — by an angel who appeared to him in upstate New York.
The visitors’ center is staffed by Mormon “sisters and brothers” as all congregants are called, and the young women working here wear calf-length skirts, flat shoes and an indefatigable air of energized piety. Answers to questions are short and brief but enthusiastically received, and offers to send missionaries to wherever you might like to receive them are made more than once.
Less than two hours after my visit — despite giving staffers only my first name and filling out no paperwork — I was startled to get a voicemail on my cellphone from someone identifying himself as a prophet, saying that he’d like to “start interceding for your life” and asking me to call an 800 number to join a prayer circle.
An intrusion like that may be one reason why, as Coppins puts it, “a lot of people think there’s some shady, creepy stuff that goes on,” even as the Pew poll shows that Americans are increasingly accepting of the religion, with 63% of respondents saying they think Mormons are becoming an integrated part of society — even if Mormons themselves don’t feel welcome.
Author Felman says that bias against Mormons is one of the few acceptable prejudices left, and ascribes 90% of that to “the polygamy” — which was outlawed by the church in the late 19th century and practiced mainly by members of off-shoot groups. Today, 86% of Mormons say polygamy is morally wrong.
“Mormonism has always been subject to greater bigotry than any other religion, including shoot-to-kill orders [against members],” Feldman says. “And if the platform of the Republican party, for 20 years, said that you were an enemy of the state — you develop the habit of not sharing those beliefs with the rest of the world.”
So, what do Mormons believe? Their teachings and customs aren’t that far removed from those of older versions of Christianity, and, in part, Mormonism seems weirder than other world religions mainly because it hasn’t been around for thousands of years. Catholicism was seen as a cult in the US up until the mid-20th century — JFK’s election had a lot to do with mainstream acceptance — and who could blame outsiders for thinking it’s strange when people say they literally ingest the body and blood of Jesus Christ every Sunday?
Mormonism’s key tenets hold that Jesus and Lucifer were once brothers but had a war in heaven, and that Jesus won. They believe that Jesus created the world under God’s direction, and that the Garden of Eden was located in Jackson, Mo., where Christ will eventually return and the dead will rise (Mormons also believe Christ will return to Jerusalem).
They believe Christ was the Son of God and that he is their Lord and Savior, although they also maintain that Native Americans are actually Israelites who came to the Americas to escape persecution.
Until 1978, the church taught that blacks were descended from Cain, citing the belief that Cain was “cursed with a darkness.”
There is little to no chance that most followers will wind up in hell, but it’s important that smaller rules be observed: no drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, no coffee or tea — there is a rule against hot drinks, though hot chocolate is OK, and so is caffeine in other forms, like Coke.
Mormons may not have premarital sex and are strongly warned against any activity outside of kissing before they’re married (unsurprisingly, they marry young). They also wear special undergarments, which are meant to remind them of their promise to God and to help keep them faithful, or “sexually pure” in the church’s parlance. Homosexuality is forbidden, though the church has been softening its stance of late.
When a Mormon reaches the age of 12, they are allowed to perform baptisms for the dead — the follower himself invokes the name before being submerged in a large baptismal font. Though Mormons are only supposed to retroactively baptize non-believing dead family members, the church came under harsh criticism last February, when — not for the first time — a congregant baptized Anne Frank.
“Some Mormons get carried away,” Copping admits.
After death, a good and faithful Mormon should find him- or herself in one of three levels of heaven: the lowest, called the telestial kingdom; the middle, the terrestrial kingdom, or the highest, the celestial kingdom. Nothing is fixed in the afterlife, including your own personal and moral development, so the idea is that you eventually become so much like God that you are given the opportunity to create your own planet and people it and oversee it.
Interplanetary rule isn’t strict dogma, but, Copping says, “that’s a widely held belief.”
While the church’s structure is hierarchical, there is really no such thing as status — everyone’s equal, everyone’s flawed and vulnerable. The closest analogue to its organization is, again, the Catholic church: The Prophet has the lifetime authority and job security of the pope — though he, too, must have home teachers and teach others, and he does not get to pick and choose his counselors.
Nor would President Romney. Home teachers are assigned by geography, off of church rolls, and you get who you get (although former US Sen. Gordon Smith was home taught by an heir to the Marriott hotel chain). “It’s entirely plausible Romney could be [assigned] some grad students or blue collar guys or poor African-Americans,” Coppins says. In fact, 60% of attendees at the Maryland chapel are black.
Anyway: The Prophet emerges from the 12-member Quorum of the Apostles, who are invited to join, serve for life and rise to Prophet based on seniority. Under them are the Quorum of the 70 (there are now more than that), the only servants who devote their lives to the church — all of the rest have jobs — and who live in Salt Lake City.
Then come the Stake Presidents (counselors) and bishops, who are appointed by elders to deal with managerial drudgery and preside over weekly services for about four or five years; Mitt Romney served as a bishop in Massachusetts before entering politics.
Perhaps the greatest commonality between Catholicism and Mormonism is the gradation of adherence among followers: only 49% of Mormons believe abstaining from coffee and tea is important, and only 32% won’t watch R-rated movies.
And like churches, different chapels have different philosophies: Leslie Mayhew, a 42-year-old mother of 3, says that she specifically asked to be moved to Reid’s Maryland chapel, because she has a relative who’s gay and her former place of worship housed some older, bigoted congregants.
She’ll be worshipping with Brother Romney should he win. Even if he loses, however, author Feldman thinks that his nomination itself is a watershed moment.
“That so many Americans don’t know he’s a Mormon, and that his religion wasn’t a factor in this primary — as it was four years ago — that’s directional,” he says. “ It’s a historically significant moment, and it’s progress. We’re improving as a country.”