Evangelical Voters and the South Carolina Primary

Evangelical voters make up a very sizable portion of the electorate in several Southern and Midwestern states.  In my last post, I pointed out that the endorsement of Rick Santorum by several evangelical leaders signaled a shift in attitudes.  Apparently, that endorsement changed few minds. 

The polls have closed, and the people of South Carolina have spoken.  South Carolina is a state with many evangelicals, and exit polls indicated that 65% of the people that voted today claimed to be evangelical Christians.  Apparently, that whole Santorum endorsement thingie didn't really work out too terribly well for the former Senator from Pennsylvania. 

One thing is for sure according to the exit polls from both South Carolina and Iowa, evangelicals are still not overly enthused about voting for a Mormon for president, as a pastor's endorsement of Rick Perry in October predicted.  Romney got 14% of the evangelical vote in Iowa, and his support rose to only 22% in SC, in spite of the dropping out of self-proclaimed evangelicals Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, who combined for 20% of the evangelical vote in Iowa.  Only 21% of evangelicals voted for Santorum in SC, in spite of the endorsement by some of their prominent leaders.  This is not the biggest surprise, however.

The biggest surprise, in my opinion, coming out of the South Carolina primary was the number of evangelicals who supported Newt Gingrich.  44% of evangelicals supported the former Speaker of the House, while only the 22% mentioned above supported Romney.  For non-evangelicals, Romney got 38% of the vote, while Gingrich only got 33%. 

Christianity emphasizes personal righteousness.  Evangelicals tend to pay serious lip service to this idea.  Only 18% of the voters in SC claimed that strong moral character was the main trait that they were looking for in a candidate.  If all of the these people were evangelicals, 47% find moral character as a secondary consideration to beating Barack Obama or someone having the right experience (Harry Truman did not have the right experience, but most historians and laymen consider him well above average when it comes to leadership).  While I understand that people can change and that there is redemption, I personally have to question the judgment of a serial adulterer who was kicked out of a Congress controlled by his own party for ethics charges.  The average person on the street considers Congressman/woman and ethics as an oxymoron, and this very body, Congress, kicked the Speaker out for ethics, all while his party had a solid majority.  His dealings with Fannie and Freddie have also come under fire.  That's not even mentioning the allegations his wife brought up this week.

But, hey, that's apparently better than having a Mormon as presidential candidate.

In Light of the Recent Hubbub about Romney and Mormonism

I recently published a post that dealt with one of Rick Perry's supporters (an evangelical pastor) who discounted Mitt Romney's presidential bid based upon his adherence to the Mormon faith.  While not holding Mormons as orthodox in their beliefs, I questioned the wisdom of giving a religious test to a candidate for elective office, basing my argument on the US Constitution.  I found this article by Thomas Kidd of Baylor University of interest in relation to the issue of Mormons in office, religious tests, etc.  I also found the dichotomy of evangelical attitudes toward Romney and Glenn Beck, another Mormon, quite interesting.  I must admit I've questioned why this is the case myself, and at least one commenter on my Facebook link to my previous post on the topic has also questioned this issue.

Upcoming Book on the Mormon War--Wonder if Romney Will Read

This week, a second member of the Mormons announced his candidacy for the nation's highest office. What does this have to do with my blog, you might ask.  Well, I'm about to go into that.  In looking at the History Book Club website's religion section for new books, I came upon a title that piqued my interest. 

The book is not even available yet, but the title hearkens back to a time in which Mormons were not just looked at as a unique religious group, but rather as a threat to the established order of a civil society.  In their early days, many Americans viewed the Mormons not with curiosity, but rather with animosity.  Hence, the subject for Brandon G. Kinney's book.  Kinney's book discusses The Mormon War: Zion and the Missouri Extermination Order of 1838.  Basically no one in nineteenth-century America welcomed the Mormons (for long, anyway) when they came to town, hence their move to many differing locales in the Midwest until they came to an area that no white men claimed--the Salt Lake Valley of Utah.  After some clashes between Mormons and Missourians, the governor of Missouri actually issued an executive order calling for the extermination or removal of Mormons from the state.

This is not a topic that seems to get much play in the discussions in American history classes.  I remember the first time that I heard about another Mormon conflict that happened in 1857.  I was in a graduate class on the Civil War and Reconstruction at Marshall University in about 2005.  One of the required books for the course was Kenneth Stampp's 1857: A Nation on the Brink.  This book discussed the military conflict between US government forces and those of "King" Brigham Young.  There was quite a bit of public outcry to keep order against the polygamous Mormons.  President John Tyler's son, Robert, encouraged sitting President James Buchanan to go after Young, arguing that "the eyes and hearts of the Nation may be made to find so much interest in Utah as to forget Kansas!" (Stampp, 200-208) This is a pretty bold statement considering that he was referring to the period known as Bleeding Kansas with the Sack of Lawrence and John Brown's slaughter on Pottawatomie Creek.

Although the 1857 "conflict" had little in the way of military engagement, other than a couple of raids, it did result in the Mountain Meadows Massacre in which several non-combatants passing through on their way to California.  This massacre was a reaction against a non-Mormon government coming in to take over Utah and was the biggest bloodshed in the whole event.

With the upcoming presidential primary, these topics have a bit of increased interest in my opinion.  The situation with the Mormons in the 1800s, in spite of their unorthodox beliefs, still illustrates some serious tension in the idea of religious liberty and church/state relations in American history.  Contemporary Americans would do well to look into the issue.

FYI--You can purchase either of these books by clicking on the Amazon link at the top of the page.