This was supposed to be such a time of legitimacy for the religion of Mormonism, predicted years earlier by academics such as Harold Bloom in 1992 in The American Religion and later on in the New York Times. But little could we have imagined the subtle way the religion of Joseph Smith was to worm its way into our collective national conscience. After Bloom, critics imagined Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, two supremely intelligent, intellectual and well-meaning men finally staging a national election of which we, as a nation, could be proud.
The reality of the 2012 election season has been much less kind, watching both candidates dumb down and shift their message to please whatever portion of the voting electorate they were focused on converting. Of particular disgust so far has been the way Romney’s religion, maligned by both our government in the 19th century, and Christianity later on, has not become part of our knowing of Mitt Romney. Continue reading
