Matching Tracksuits

Sharpton’s words about Romney bring to the debate so much that it’s difficult to know where to start.

CBS News has a great editorial about this.

Sharpton is entirely justified to question Romney on his views on the racist aspects of Mormonism. Blacks were excluded from assuming positions of power until the late 1970s. We all know, of course, that Romney will condemn that aspect of his religion — it would be political suicide to do otherwise. In that sense, we’ll never know if we got a straight answer from him. But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

What’s most disturbing about Romney is his religion — a cult, by the standards of many orthodox Christians. It has all the earmarks:

• exclusivity
• specially “revealed” information
• a founder who was somehow closer to God than anyone else

Oh, wait — I just described every major monotheistic religion, didn’t I?

Romney’s Mormonism will be problematic with many of his target constituency of conservative Christians. Evangelicals tend, I believe, to regard Mormons as misguided at best, Satanically deceived at best. Many of these same individuals (who would fall into the umbrella term “fundamentalists”) call Catholics non-Christians, and Catholicism is much closer, theologically, to evangelicalism than Mormonism is.

The question is whether Romney’s views on abortion and his generally conservative views — he is a Republican candidate, after all — will weigh more favorably with traditional Christian voters than his unorthodoxy.