The Best Choice Is Also a Good Choice
Why social conservatives should support Mitt Romney for president.
Jenny Hatch
More Here from Meridian Magazine: Daniel C. Peterson
Electing a Mormon President
Evangelical “Countercult”

“One reason for this, however, has been little noticed by political commentators, for the good and sufficient reason that they probably aren’t aware of it: Operating on the fringes of the conservative Protestant community — and prospering with it — is a vocal “countercult” movement that focuses much of its effort on Mormonism, which it routinely labels sinister, pagan, anti-Christian, and deliberately deceptive.

Well funded anti-Mormons have poured forth websites, books, radio programs, pamphlets, seminars, tabloids, videos, lecture series, newsletters, message boards, visitor centers, cable television shows, and “ministries” critical of what one writer has called Mormonism’s “fountain of slime,” and sometimes going so far as to accuse Mormons of sorcery, Satanism, treason, and murder.

(Some of these countercultists are also, either openly or rather discreetly, anti-Catholic, and many of their charges against Mormons have a lengthy pedigree in Protestant polemics against Rome.)

A particularly notorious anti-Mormon who operates out of the Pacific Northwest claims that the Mormon Church’s enthusiastic sponsorship of Boy Scout troops is designed to train paramilitary forces to support a planned Mormon coup. After the revolution, it seems, the president of the Church will issue his theocratic edicts to conquered America from a full-scale replica of the Oval Office located in the Mormon temple that stands just outside the Capital Beltway in suburban Maryland. (No such room exists, of course.)

Richard Mouw, a leading Calvinist theologian and the president of the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary in California, surely had such extravagant allegations in mind when, using potent biblical terms like “sin” and “false witness,” he apologized to a 2004 audience gathered at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.

“We evangelicals,” he said, “have often seriously misrepresented the beliefs and practices of the Mormon community.” (Professor Mouw has been roundly criticized for his remarks by those to whose excesses he referred.)”

I was not really aware of how many lies were being taught about my faith until my brother in law started investigating the mormon church when he was dating my sister. He was the Youth pastor at his Assembly of God church in Michigan and a favorite of the Pastor. Meeting with the missionaries, dating, and eventually marrying my sister, and then staying faithful to the LDS church has kept him at odds with family and former close friends for most of his adult life.
I attended a “get to know the mormons” night at his church shortly before my own marriage in 1988. The man who had been hired to teach was an “expert on cults” and he used some of the most extreme language to edify the people in the congregation with the “facts” of the LDS church. I was dumbfounded that such language could be used to describe the faith that I love.
Later after I moved out to Boulder I met a woman at a young mothers group I was attending and as we talked she shared with me that her church had spent many long hours teaching her about the Mormons. She was so turned off by the way this material was being presented that she left her church, even though her father was the Pastor. She felt that Christians should spend time learning how to be good people rather than learning how to hate and fear the mormons. It was good for me to talk to her and realize that honest hearted people who were being taught and propagandized in Anti-Mormonism were sometimes able to think for themselves.
However, I have met others through the years who when I told them I was LDS, immediately ceased all interaction with me and the fear I felt from them was palpable
I do believe a certain segment of the population who have been taught these things will never vote for a Mormon candidate. But I am grateful for the chance to use the Romney candidacy to share basic mormon doctrine with my blog readers who may be interested in learning for themselves the truth about my religion. It is the most beautiful thing in my life.