Better to Be an Adulterer than a Mormon?

Posted on January 19, 2012
Filed Under Politics, Religion | 11 Comments

A lot of people are discussing Francis Beckwith’s comments at Patheos about how evangelicals are not so subtly saying it is better to be an adulterer than a Mormon. It’s a great post and takes a line of thought I’d never even considered before. A few quotes:

 


He told me of a Mormon friend who in conversation with an Evangelical Protestant had asked him whether a Christian who committed adultery would lose his salvation.  The Evangelical answered, “No.” The Mormon followed up with this query, “What if the Christian had murdered someone? Would he then lose his salvation?” The answer, again, was “no.” Then the Mormon asked, “Well, what if he had become a Mormon?” The Evangelical answered, “That’s a good question. I don’t know.”

With Evangelicals considering only Gingrich and Santorum for their endorsement, Beckwith argues they are making a similar calculus.

Now I’m not entirely sure that’s fair. After all if one is doing a calculus in terms of results then it might be better to have someone who behaves unethically but gets the results one wants. If I pick a doctor I want the one who’s going to make me most healthy not necessarily the one who lives the best life. Likewise I can see Evangelicals finding Gingrich’s personal life abhorrent but thinking a Mormon as President might normalize acceptance of Mormonism leading to fewer Evangelicals much more than Gingrich would lead to more adulterers.

That said it has long been interesting to me that some Evangelical opposition to Mormons seems so much stronger than opposition to other things. It’s one thing to say something is theologically wrong. But frankly most lay Evangelicals believe lots of things that Evangelicals formally think is just as heretical as how they perceive Mormon belief. Why emphasize one rather than the other?

Related posts:

  1. Claiming Christ: Evangelical – Mormon Dialogue
  2. Mormons and Evangelicals
  3. Beck, Mormonism and Evangelicalism
  4. The Problem of Romney
  5. Mormons and Atheists Most Knowledgeable About Religion
  6. Mormon History & Critical Theory

Comments

11 Responses to “Better to Be an Adulterer than a Mormon?”
1 John Mansfield on January 20th, 2012 8:07 am

The bumper sticker version of this is “Christians aren’t perfect, just saved,” and if I’m following the idea correctly, being saved, which is better for the person in question, is not the same as being a better person. My wife claims that she saw many evangelicals in high school apply this concept by having fornication follow not long after being saved.

Yes – it’s the notion of cheap grace. It’s technically considered heretical by evangelicals. So I don’t want to accuse them of it. But it’s an awfully common believe by the laity. That said one doesn’t have to look far to find lots of Evangelicals condemning such beliefs.

One of my favorite evangelical ministers said this. “If you can go out and commit sin and your conscience not bother you, you are not saved.” I think most would believe this is true.

I think that’s true but the bigger issue is how we view wanting to do sin.

Okay Clark, you got me on that one. For instance, are you talking about a gay person or an addict in the Church, or just anyone that likes to be a jerk? Doing whatever they want to do just because they can. I think this can get very complicated.

Oh I definitely agree – I was more talking about the Evangelical perspective. Not my own.

I’m not sure the distaste for Romney comes from his being mormon so much as the perception of him as (fairly or not) utterly unreliable on the issues evangelicals and social conservatives tend to pay the most attention to. He rose to prominence in a liberal state, it wasn’t that long ago that he was casting himself as socially quite liberal, and even if it’s argued that he was doing so because of the state he was in it still leaves people wondering.

Keep in mind that Santorum and Gingrich are both catholics, Gingrich himself being a catholic convert, and it’s not as if that religion is always celebrated among evangelicals. (To be fair, it’s probably tolerated more than mormonism, but still.)

To tack on.

I’m not an evangelical, coming from a kind of traditional Catholic position with a thing for finding common ground between faiths. However, finding out how much Romney donated in charity, and how much he apparently supported his church, actually made the man rise up in my estimation. For all his flip-flopping, he didn’t flip-flop on his faith. I suppose, if one wanted to play dirty and unfairly, that’s one thing he has over Gingrich and Obama both.

Crude, I think that’s part of it except polls constantly show there are a lot of people who don’t like Mormons and don’t trust them. Further it’s not hard to find Evangelicals upset that a Romney nomination would “validate” Mormonism. So there definitely are fears of Romney because of his Mormonism. Although to be fair I’ll lay good odds that the secular left will attack Romney’s Mormonism much more than Evangelicals have once Romney has the nomination sewn up.

Oh, I don’t doubt that there are a lot of people who don’t like or trust mormons. It’s one I just haven’t seen coming up so heavily in the election so far, at least among the evangelical sites I glance at now and then. I honestly wonder, if it came out that Romney was in fact quite committed to his Mormon beliefs, if it would help him more than hurt him with some evangelicals – at least if that commitment could be translated into ‘and that’s why you can trust him on these issues you care about.’

I agree about the secular left. I’m actually surprised it’s not coming up very much at all thus far.

It’s starting. The NYTs ran some surprising editorials today. It’ll get worse as summer approaches.

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