Kudos for a balanced presentation of the issue - Reader comments at The New York Sun

Reader comment on:
Romney's Mormon Faith Proves Divisive

Submitted by Raymond Takashi Swenson, Jun 1, 2007 14:44

By and large this was a balanced presentation of the political issue that has been made oout of Mitt Romney being a Mormon. It could have been improved a bit by pointing out that it has not generally been an issue in electing Mormons as governors, congress members and senators. Besides Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and his father in Michigan, Mormons have served as governors in Arizona and (of course) Utah (though non-Mormons have also been elected, and Mormons who were not observant, such as the alcohol-imbibing but thrice elected Calvin Rampton). Mormons have been elected to the Senate from Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Florida, and to the House from Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Oklahoma. As far as I know, the fact of their being Mormon was not an issue in their campaigns in those states. Journalists are missing a story in failing to ask why the religious issue about Mormons is a no-never-mind at the state and congressional level but has been elevated in the news media to a make-or-break issue just for the presidential race.

With regard to the issue of blacks holding the priesthood in the LDS Church, a full picture would also point out that there have been faithful black Mormons since the beginnings of the Church, including in congregations where I lived in Utah, Colorado and Maryland, and that there was never racial segregation in Mormon churches; that the Church never had any racial restrictions on giving priesthood ordination of American Indians, Hispanics, Asians (like myself), or Pacific Islanders (many of whom are more dark skinned than many American blacks); that thousands of Mormons in Brazil are of partial African descent; that thousands of people in Ghana and Nigeria had formed themselves into congregations before 1978, begging for missionaries to be sent to baptize them, which was done immediately after the 1978 change, and there are now many tens of thousands of African Mormons in those nations and in Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania; that modern black Mormons include Gladys Knight and her family, who has formed a multi-ethnic choir of Mormons in Las Vegas that won the Grammy for best gospel album.

It is also worth pointing out that other churches in America have a history of racial segregation, the largest example being the Southern Baptists who split off from other Baptists over the issue of slavery. In some congregations of Southern Baptists, that segregation continued into Jimmy Carter's era (the 1970s), when Carter left a congregation because of its refusal to integrate. Southern Baptist history on race is just as recent in time, and in many ways more significant, and if reporters want to talk about the history of the LDS Church, they should use the Southern Baptist example as a standard for how "ordinary" Christians were handling the issue.

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Romney's Mormon Faith Proves Divisive