Salt Lake City--Some Local Thoughts on the Election

I've been in the wonderful town of Salt Lake City for the last week.  I must say that of all the larger cities in America (or Europe, or Africa) that I've visited, Salt Lake is by far the cleanest.  The streets are wide, and, although I've been in the downtown section of town, I think I've seen about one cop all week.

I've been on the light rail, and it's clean.  The hotel I've been in has a wonderful, helpful staff.  Everyone has been really nice.  The setting of the town is amazing with mountains in just about every direction you can look.  To the east are the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains, even though it's been around 85 degrees all week (another plus is the dry air--no sweating, even after walking about half-a-mile to the convention center).  Salt Lake hosted the Olympics a few years ago (2002).  I have little bad to say about the city as far as cities go.

The Mormon Temple--A Large Wall Encompasses Much of the Property

From a religious historian's point of view, however, it is quickly apparent that the LDS are still quite important in town, although not as all-encompassing as I might have earlier thought.  In one discussion, I found that the majority of town is not Mormon.  The importance of Mormonism to the town's history is evident in that the town's street grid is centered not upon the state capitol building, but on the Mormon Temple.  A couple of my historian friends were going to the Temple's genealogy center to do some research since we had an afternoon free today.  I didn't, but I did take a couple of pictures of the Temple grounds, which was only a block from the Salt Palace.

The Salt Lake Tribune had a couple of articles related to Mitt Romney's religion and the presidential campaign this year.  The first argued that his run was a positive and negative for the LDS.  They are looking at this as a "chance to clarify and educate" people regarding the religion.  Of course, the article concedes that questions regarding the status of African Americans and a polygamous past will come up in any discussion.  One wonders if Mountain Meadows or some other negative events in the church's history will also come up.

Note Moroni at the Top of the Temple

Apparently, some Mormons were concerned earlier this year about persecution if Romney won the nomination (LDS "Apostle" David Bednar).  Apparently, Mitt's Mormonism is not a big issue to many that had a problem a few years ago, however.   As we get closer to the election, we shall see if the Mormon question affect's Romney's bid.  Of course, President Obama's tie to liberation theology is not much closer to traditional orthodoxy, either.  Therefore, the place of religion in the election, especially among evangelicals who voted for people like Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush precisely because of their affirmation of evangelicalism, will be interesting to watch.

My Book, Baptists and Calvinist Soteriology, Mormonism, and My Latest Review

My book on a local Grand Forks church officially came out about three weeks ago, but I was out of town for all but about 12 hours of those three weeks, doing some research in Bismarck and visiting family back east.  Today, I mosied over to UND's campus to pick up a few copies of my latest (actually, first) book.  I was quite impressed with the book's layout and overall look, considering the low, low price of only $4.00.  You can get the book for yourself here. 

In other news, apparently there has been quite a bit of hubbub recently over the Southern Baptist Convention and the place of a Calvinist soteriology in the Convention.  Thanks to Baylor Professor Thomas Kidd for tweeting links of relevance, including this one from SBTS president Albert Mohler on this topic.

The Religion in America blog posted some commentary on the place of anti-Mormonism on both the left and right of the political spectrum, which should be of interest because this year will see the first Mormon candidate fielded by either of the nation's major political parties.  The topic of Mitt Romney's Mormonism, as I noted last year on the blog, caused a bit of consternation among evangelicals earlier in the campaign.  Now, up against Barack Obama's adherence to liberation theology, evangelicals seem to be getting over their antipathy to Romney to some degree.

Finally, I've been doing a bit of writing on another site to gain a bit more traffic for my writings.  I recently posted a review of Mark Valeri's Heavenly Merchandize at that site.  This book discusses the evolving opinion that early American Puritans and what Valeri referred to as post-Puritans dealt with issues related to business and profit.  The first generation of Puritan settlers would probably not be welcomed by many Americans who claim to revere them today.  Find out why by following the link above.

Until next time, have a great weekend.

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.

Goodbye 2011--The Best of the American Church History Blog

In case you've not heard, the New Year comes in tonight.  December 31 marks the end of the first calendar year of this blog, although the first post didn't show up until May 4.  The average daily visitors has grown by about 400% since that first month.  That's not what's the most interesting point, however.  One of the things that I find interesting is the pages that have been viewed the most...

Here are the top 5 pages for this blog for all of 2011:

1. My Paper from the Northern Great Plains History Conference
2. Jan Hus--Pics from Bethlehem Chapel in Prague
3. Perry, Romney, and Mormonism
4. New England Execution Sermons
5. Olomouc, Czech Republic--Pics Included

From this quick perusal of the most popular posts, it appears that people like pictures of cool things from a foreign country.  That's no big surprise.  A couple of other topics that surprised me as to their popularity (as shown from search results) were Mormons and execution sermons.  The Mormons may be getting a bit more press this year because two of their number are running for president.  New England execution sermons, or some variation of this topic received quite a bit in the way of search traffic, which was very surprising.  Perhaps, people enjoy reading about morbid stuff.  I enjoyed the book Between Heaven and Earth, the subject of my post on the subject of Puritan execution sermons.

What topics did you find most interesting?  What topics would you like to see covered in the future?  I'm interested to know going forward. 

Oh, yeah, and have a great 2012--even if the Mayans were right.

Perry, Romney, and Mormonism

One of the more controversial recent issues in relation to American religion involves the 2012 presidential race.  All of the candidates claim Christianity (defined very broadly).  The specific group to which each particular candidate belongs differs.  The controversy came about when Robert Jeffress, a mega-church pastor and a supporter of Texas Governor Rick Perry called Mormonism, the religion of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a cult.  Incidentally, one of my most-read posts on this blog dealt with Mormonism and its unpopularity in the nineteenth century.

Now, most people in America today don't think of Mormonism as a cult in the Branch Davidian/David Koresh kind of way.  However, it would be interesting to consider how people around its founding viewed the religion in the mid-1800s.  As mentioned in some comments on the post above, it took a while for Utah to achieve statehood because of some of their unorthodox beliefs, especially that of polygamy.  The Mountain Meadows Massacre was not exactly a warm, fuzzy affair. 

While I've read about Mormon beliefs previously, I went to their website, just to see what they say today.  It seems that some of what they say actually conforms to historical Christianity.  However, the same could also have been said of the Branch Davidians.  I am not in any way equating the Mormons with the Davidians, just pointing out that agreeing with some Christian doctrines does not necessarily make a group orthodox. 

Here is an interesting anecdote on some of the more interesting points of Mormon doctrine.  The author of this post, Bruce Gourley, actually holds a Ph.D. in history.  Many outside the Christian faith fail to see the importance of the differences between historical Christianity and Mormonism, but the differences are on some points quite significant.  Among others, one example pointed out by a 2007 post on the Washington Times website quoting Mormon sites shows that the Mormons teach that Jesus and Lucifer were spirit brothers in "pre-history."  Getting the identity of Jesus right is pretty much a prerequisite for claiming to be Christian.

However, this brings up another question.  Is there any reason that Mormonism should disqualify Romney from being president?  I would argue no.  The Constitution clearly prohibits religious tests from being a requirement of office.  It also permits freedom of religion.  Christians who would like to prohibit those of other faiths from being a public official fail to see that the argument could be turned on them in the future if Christianity become a minority religion in America.  Whether Romney (or John Huntsman, another Mormon running for president) is the best man for the job remains to be seen.  However, his Mormonism alone should not disqualify him.