After watching the Republican National Convention last week I was struck by how much our nation is still struggling with the issue of a candidate’s religion and how it affects the electorate’s view of their suitability for the highest office in the land. The official Republican candidate for the presidency, former Gov. Mitt Romney is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), the Mormons. Republicans struggled with this issue of religion throughout their rather contentious primary process as many Evangelical Christians felt uneasy with the prospect of a member of the LDS church being their torchbearer.
I have always had an interest in this uniquely American religion. Back in the spring of 1820 a young man named Joseph Smith, perplexed as to which of the different Christian denominations he should join, prayed for divine guidance and claimed to have received the answer in a miraculous visitation by God the Father and Jesus Christ. They instructed him not to join any of these denominations and that the coming of the Church of Christ re-established would soon be revealed to him. On Sept. 21, 1823, he claimed a heavenly messenger, Moroni, revealed to him the existence of an ancient record containing the fullness of the Gospel of Christ (the Book of Mormon). This was a record of what the Resurrected Jesus Christ taught the Nephites, a branch of the House of Israel which inhabited the American continent well before the discovery by Columbus. Moroni in mortal life had been a Nephite prophet, the son of another prophet named Mormon, who was the compiler of the record buried in a hill situated about two miles from the modern town of Manchester, N.Y.
Joseph Smith witnessed that he finally received the record from the angel Moroni in 1827. He contended that it was engraved upon metallic plates of gold and written in a language he called Reformed Egyptian. He was also supposedly given instruments (Urim and Thummim) to help him interpret this ancient text into English. The result was the Book of Mormon, published at Palmyra, N.Y., in March 1830. The text tells the tale of God’s dealing with two great races that once inhabited prehistoric America, the Jaredites, who were led here from the Tower of Babel at the time of the confusion of language, and the Nephites, who came from Jerusalem just prior to the Babylonian exile in 600 BC. The Book of Mormon tells the tale of America being the “Land of Zion,” where the New Jerusalem will be built by a gathering of scattered Israel before the second coming.
While sharing many beliefs with traditional Christianity, Mormons also have a unique understanding of the nature of God. One of the articles of faith composed by Joseph Smith himself describes the ethos and good works exercised by so many Mormons worldwide. Article 13 states, “We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous and in doing good to all men; indeed we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul, ‘We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.’”
Their understanding of God, as a Trinity of Persons, differs greatly with our traditional Christian view promulgated in the early Councils of the Church. While Smith declared in his articles of faith that Mormons “believe in God, the Eternal Father and His Son, Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost,” he also added this description of the nature of God, “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens.”
Latter-day Saints have endured persecution since their founding. The earliest church members were hounded from one part of our country to another by angry and violent mobs. Joseph Smith himself was assassinated in 1844 in Missouri by one such mob. The Saints took flight and eventually sought refuge in their settlement at the Salt Lake Valley.
I hope we will learn more about the history and teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during this election. While their theology and beliefs differ greatly from ours, they are good-living, generous and faithful people.
Father Joseph D. Wallace is coordinator, Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs, Diocese of Camden.
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