When I blogged about this controversy last night, I realized the story would cut at least three ways:
- Gingrich would be hurt by association with a “controversy.” Most people would just hear a blurb about it on TV or radio and absorb the notion that Newt was somehow connected to what would appear to be an unfair attack on his chief rival’s religion.
- Romney would be hurt, because the “controversy” would remind a certain number of conservative Christians that Mitt is a Mormon and, yeah, many people have categorized Mormonism as a cult.
- Gingrich would be hurt — and here’s the weird two-bumper carom shot — because some conservative Christians would see Newt as a gutless sellout for firing a guy who (in their view) had the courage to speak the truth about “the cult of Mormonism.”
Cui bono? Rick Santorum, of course!
But some friends last night on Twitter pointed out that fired Gingrich staffer Craig Bergman — speaking in an Iowa focus group last week, the day before he was hired as Newt’s Iowa political director — hadn’t said that he personally believes Mormonism to be a cult. Rather, Bergman was merely describing the beliefs of “a lot of the evangelicals.”
These are two vastly different things. It’s the difference between saying, “Let’s go burn a mosque to celebrate Tim Tebow leading the Broncos to victory over the Patriots” and saying . . .
Well, maybe that’s not the perfect example. But you get the point, and the point is amplified today by the Iowa Republican, the Web site that co-sponsored last week’s focus group:
The controversial comment came in regards to Mitt Romney’s prospects, if he captured the GOP nomination. “There is a national pastor who is very much on the anti-Mitt Romney bandwagon,” Bergman said. “A lot of the evangelicals believe God would give us four more years of Obama just for the opportunity to expose the cult of Mormon…There’s a thousand pastors ready to do that.” . . .
As co-moderator of the focus group, TheIowaRepublican.com believes Bergman was not making a statement that reflected his own views of the Mormon religion, but was relaying what he heard from the “national pastor” referenced in his comment.
In other words: Bergman got screwed.
He wasn’t saying that he has a problem with Romney’s religion. He was saying that many evangelicals — including “a national pastor,” whom he did not name — have a problem with Mormonism, and who can deny that Bergman has acccurately stated a fact?
Furthermore, having studied the subject some years ago, I can attest that many Christian theologians agree that Mormonism should be categorized as a cult. In defense of Mitt Romney, however, I’ll say that liberalism is also a cult, and it’s liberalism that’s taking America to hell in a hurry, so you can judge for yourself which cult poses the greater danger in 2012.
Look, if a Protestant like me can support a papist like Rick Santorum — “papist” being the kind of slur you don’t hear very often in our politically correct age — clearly the crisis is upon us.
In a contested Republican primary, everybody’s got their most favorite and least favorite candidates. For me, Newt Gingrich is down near the bottom of the list — worse than Ron Paul, but better than Jon Huntsman — and your mileage may vary, but I think we can all agree that Obama’s worse than any of the Republicans.
Except maybe Huntsman, who could be the Anti-Christ for all we know.
UPDATE: It was rather surprising to me that the very first comment — alas, from our loyal commenter Joe! — was to the effect that it is “offensive” to call Mormonism a cult. (Y’know, if you’re easily offended, this blog will give you a half-dozen reasons a day to be offended, at a minimum.)
Ask yourself this: Why are we required to tolerate atheists, who insist that all Christians are ignorant and deluded propagators of implausible superstition, and yet orthodox Christians are shouted down if they feel obliged to identify heterodox faiths as “cults”?
Why is that so, huh?
Answer: Because we have been, as the apostle Paul said, “conformed to this world,” and have adopted the widespread popular opinion that the greatest danger in American society is posed by those dangerous right-wing Christian theocratic extremists, that’s why.
The faults and failures — both real and imaginary — of traditional Christians have been magnified in the public mind over the course of the past several decades, so that the Christian who merely defends the basic beliefs of his faith is automatically accused of aspiring to “impose his beliefs” on others, among much other mischief and malice attributed to Bible-believers.
Look around you, my fellow Americans. Does it really seem to you as if the greatest danger to our nation is that right-wing Christians might suddenly seize control of government and start imposing their beliefs on society? I think not.
You see that I have attached to this post Amazon links for three books by Christian writers who are critics of Mormonism. Their characterizations of the LDS belief system, and the evidence they adduce, may be perused by any of you, and accepted or rejected as you see fit. I’m not trying to “impose” my own beliefs on anyone, but merely stating that there are — as Craig Bergman was fired for saying — many Christians who categorize Mormonism as a cult. And this categorization is perhaps only important to Christians who consider it their sacred obligation to proclaim the Way, the Hope and the Light.
Secularists are under no such obligation, and I understand that they may be offended by the evangelical impulse. But proclaiming the Gospel is not as “offensive” as, for example, flying jetliners into skyscrapers or strapping plastic explosives to your body and detonating yourself in the middle of a crowded disco. So stop whining about being “offended,” or I’m likely to do something genuinely offensive like posting photos of Helen Thomas.
And you wouldn’t want that, would you?
As far as politics goes, Mitt’s Mormonism bothers me less than RomneyCare. And if you want a Republican presidential candidate who stands solidly for religious freedom, Lisa Graas has a suggestion.
UPDATE II: Linked by Da Tech Guy, Lisa Graas and Daily Pundit — thanks! — and now a Memeorandum thread.
