Romney is tough sell for many U.S. Christians

[DeepModem Mom]

WP/Reuters: Romney is tough sell for many U.S. Christians
By Ed Stoddard
Reuters
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

....Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is running into...resistance as he tries to win over Southern Baptists and other evangelical Protestants in the race for the Republican Party's nomination for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Romney will need the support of this traditional Republican base if he is to take on former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is running strongly in opinion polls despite his three marriages and a pro-abortion position that is anathema to many Republicans.

The reason Romney faces difficulties with Southern Baptists, according to many experts, is his Mormon faith. Not only do many Southern Baptists regard the Mormon church as a cult, they also regard it as a competitor that is winning -- or poaching -- converts from among the evangelical flock. "There are now more Mormons that used to be Southern Baptist than any other denomination," said Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a 16-million strong group. "As a consequence, Southern Baptists and other evangelicals have taught their people what Mormons believe and why it's beyond the boundaries of the Christian faith, to inoculate them against those Mormon missionaries," he told Reuters....

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A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found (Romney) only had the support of about 10 percent of white Republican and Republican-leaning evangelicals....

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Many Americans associate Mormonism with polygamy, once a central tenet but now practiced by only about 40,000 renegades. One of those renegades, polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, was sentenced to 10 years to life on November 20 for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her cousin. Evangelical Protestants tend to be more aware than most that the Mormon church now opposes polygamy, but they have other bones of contention, such as Mormon efforts to recruit their members....

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The Mormon faith is growing faster than almost any other. In 1963, its membership stood at two million but now is close to 13 million with over half outside of the United States....Evangelical soil can be fertile ground for Mormon growth. Mormons and Southern Baptists take similar conservative stances on social issues and tend to vote Republican, so their cultural and political outlooks are not really in conflict....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/21/AR2007112100470.html?hpid=sec-religion

[cali]

1. yeah, but team him up with Huckabee and those folks will feel all

too comfortable.

[jwirr]

2. Both men are a threat to religious freedom - even for those of us

who are Christians. They want to have it all their way or no way. I want to keep the separation of church and state that we began with.

[msongs]

3. the systematic destruction of non-white, non-christian cultures, what a legacy to embrace nt