"What if Mitt Romney Were Jewish?"

I love it when someone shows reason and common sense.  In harmony with my previous post, the following are excerpts from a  piece by Jeffrey Goldberg, a columnist for the Bloomberg View and a correspondent for the Atlantic.  It is titled, 

"What if Mitt Romney Were Jewish?" 

One (Romney) spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, has been throwing brushback pitches at reporters who write about Romney’s faith, asking if they would write similar stories about Jews.

“Would you write this sentence in describing the Jewish faith?”she asked, providing an example: “‘Jews believe their prophet Moses was delivered tablets on a mountain top directly from G-d after he appeared to him in a burning bush.’ Of course not, yet you reference a similar story in Mormonism.”

Here’s one sentence: “Outside the spotlight, Mr. Romney can be demonstrative about his faith: belting out hymns (‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’) while horseback riding, fasting on designated days and finding a Mormon congregation to slip into on Sundays, no matter where he is.”

And here’s a Mad Libs version: “Outside the spotlight, Mr. Romney can be demonstrative about his faith: belting out hymns (‘The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Such a Friend!’) while playing mahjong, fasting on Yom Kippur (except for possibly some nuts around 4 p.m.) and finding a shul to slip into on Saturdays.”

So what does the Romney camp find so frightening? In talking to my Mormon friends (some of my best friends are Mormons), the answer is clear. The practices and origin stories of most religions, when viewed by outsiders, all seem fairly strange. 

They point to the issue of “sacred underwear,” the derisive term for undergarments worn by some Mormons to remind themselves of their religious responsibilities. Many find the concept odd, but should they? Is Mormonism really that much stranger than other religions?

I vividly remember learning from a Catholic friend that, each Sunday, his family would attend church to drink the blood of .... and eat his body. Freaky. But is it any freakier than the sight of a bunch of Jews gathering around an 8-day-old boy to watch a man with a beard snip off ...., and then to eat blintzes afterward? Religious Jews, of course, also wear a variation of “sacred underwear” -- traditional garments that date back thousands of years, to the ancient Middle East.

The Mormon tradition dates back less than 200 years, to Palmyra, New York. What Mormons suffer from more than any other major religion is proximity. The foundation stories of Mormonism took place in the age of skeptical journalism, and they took place in the U.S.  Most Christians believe in a Second Coming. Mormons believe the Second Coming will be in Missouri. Many Muslims believe that Muhammad ascended to heaven from Jerusalem on a winged animal, which has the ring of something mystical and transcendent. If Muhammad had departed for heaven from Tenafly, New Jersey, well, that would open up Islam to some level of derision.

Check that: It wouldn’t open up Islam to derision, because some Muslims -- in particular a set of ill-tempered fundamentalists among them -- have made it quite dangerous for anyone to mock their religion. Not so with Mormons. This is something else that causes suffering for the Latter-day Saints: their ineffable niceness. If radical Mormons had initiated acts of terrorism inManhattan, do you think their religion would be held up for mockery each night on Broadway?

Mormons’ equanimity in the face of derision is refreshing, and speaks to the confidence they have in their religion. The Romney camp should also have confidence, and understand that not every reporter asking questions about their man’s religious practices is trying to subvert Romney’s candidacy or his church."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-18/let-mad-lib-test-settle-mormon-campaign-debate.html

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(The highlighted links don't work here in my blog, but you can go to the source and open them there.)  Also, the line highlighted in a bold font is my emphasis.


P.S.  Did you catch the lines about our "ineffable niceness" and "equanimity"?  I heartily agree with Mr. Goldberg.  We ARE nice, for the most part.  Not that niceness is a qualifier for the presidency, but it's a start. And if a religion has the reputation for producing nice people in spite of our perceived oddness, it's doing something right.