The Mormon Question

A reader expresses something that deserves an airing:

I've for a while read with interest as you've followed Romney closely. I particularly enjoyed watching you discover the oddities of his religion awhile back (the whole "undies affair"). His policies and flip-flops aside, I am, like Jake Weisberg, tempted to toss him aside as a viable candidate simply because of his religion. As much as it makes me feel like a bigot, I can't help it. On paper, anyone who would call himself a Mormon is divorced from reality and reason. I must admit that I have atheistic biases, but even if I didn't, Mormonism still stands with Scientology.

On the other hand is my personal experience. I have never met a Mormon I did not both like and respect. They have all been academically respectable and generally more worldly and accepting than your average religious type. They have been immensely and genuinely friendly and helpful. Responsible, upstanding, well-meaning individuals. I must admit that even as a liberal, atheist, drinking, pot-smoking guy, I have always enjoyed their company and valued their friendship.

But always in the back of my mind there is a voice: "This guy is a delusional lunatic." We're fine with one another in the public, social world, but in our inside, private worlds, we could not be more different. I'm not sure where to go from there.

I think we leave it in the inside private world. Look: I believe that a man rose from the dead two millennia ago. Why am I not also "a delusional lunatic"? Cultic practices can be anathematized in a liberal democracy. Not religion.

But that makes it all the more important that religious people also respect the boundary between an inside, private world and an outside, social and political one. I know the boundaries can get fuzzy. Our faith will always inform our politics. But we have to insist on a space, a moment, a gap, between that private faith and public politics. That gap makes a secular democracy possible and political conversation feasible. Romney's candidacy should stand or fall on his secular qualifications for a secular office. The tragedy is: Karl Rove and George W. Bush have made this a great deal harder in today's G.O.P.

(Photo: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings with 21,000 other Mormons during the fourth session of the 174th Semi-Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Conference Center in April 4, 2004 in Salt Lake City, Utah. By George Frey/Getty Images)