Posted by
Conservative Wordsmith on Saturday, November 17, 2007 7:30:52 PM
Conservative Wordsmith Susan Baldwin writes: I just came across an absolutely fascinating article about Mitt Romney and his six-year service as a Mormon missionary, (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), in France, and later, at Brigham Young University, during the '60s. Mitt Romney went to France as a freshman at Stanford at the young age of 19, and, as a Mormon missionary, lived a strict lifestyle.
"The missionaries were discouraged from indulging in newspapers, radio, television or phone calls home. They spent twelve hours a day knocking on doors, often ending up defending the Vietnam War or American race relations against tirades by the French. Mr. Romney was so removed from the tumult at home that he was surprised to learn that his father, George Romney, had turned against the war while campaigning for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination."
"He left for France a 19-year-old freshman at Stanford, a sheltered child of privilege full of ideas about how to shake up the French mission. He could be goofy, quoting Sylvester the Cat this way — 'Sutherickin Schatash! It’s humiliatin’!'— in letters to friends. He was considered the free spirit of his crowd, the one who sneaked off to movies (discouraged for missionaries) and ate coq au vin (controversial because of his church’s prohibition on alcohol). He was a half-hearted Mormon whose beliefs, as he recalled recently, were 'based on pretty thin tissue.'"
"His sojourn through Paris and Provo, Utah, redoubled both his faith and his ambition. Missionary work gave him his first taste of power and responsibility, eventually overseeing the work of 175 peers. As president of the premier social club at Brigham Young, he first displayed a knack for fund-raising, bringing the university more than $1 million."
"While eager to discuss national politics, he hung back from the ferment of the day, recoiling against the student unrest he saw in France and staying on the sidelines when protests broke out over Brigham Young’s all-white sports teams."
"The Iraq war debate has given new relevance to the question of where presidential candidates stood during the Vietnam conflict — whether they were demonstrating on campus, tortured in a prison camp or trying to convert the French. For Mr. Romney, that chapter of his biography is also at the crux of the challenges facing his campaign. It helps explain the origins of the conservative convictions he has sometimes struggled to convey to Republican voters, and it underscores the formative role in his life played by a religion that remains mysterious to many Americans."
"Most of the missionaries, though, were also relieved that their service meant a draft deferment. 'I am sorry, but no one was excited to go and get killed in Vietnam,' Mr. Hansen said, acknowledging, 'In hindsight, it is easy to be for the war when you don’t have to worry about going to Vietnam.'"
"Mr. Romney, though, said that he sometimes had wished he were in Vietnam instead of France. 'There were surely times on my mission when I was having a particularly difficult time accomplishing very little when I would have longed for the chance to be serving in the military,' he said in an interview, 'but that was not to be.'"
"Eventually, the great debates of the day intruded even at Brigham Young. In the fall of 1970, the student government president and others distributed a pamphlet encouraging opposition to the Vietnam conflict by quoting past Mormon leaders on the evils of war, stirring a predictable campus fury."
"Mr. Romney wanted no part of such things. 'If we had asked Mitt to sign that pamphlet, he would have had a heart attack,' said Terrell E. Hunt, a fellow Cougar who signed it."
"Civil rights became an even more insistent issue, when boycotts and violent protests over the university’s virtually all-white sports teams broke out at away games. The Mormon Church at the time excluded blacks from full membership, considering them spiritually unfit as results of a biblical curse on the descendants of Noah’s son Ham. (During their training, a fellow missionary of Mr. Romney took notes that read: 'All men were created equal — No,' 'followed by 'Sons of Ham.')"
"A handful of students and prominent Mormons — including the Arizona congressman Morris K. Udall and his brother Stewart, then secretary of the interior — called for an end to the doctrine. Some Mormons hoped the pressure would persuade the church to abandon its exclusion of blacks, just as it had stopped endorsing polygamy."
"Mitt Romney had walked in civil rights marches with his father and said he shared his concern for racial equality. But neither publicly questioned the church’s teachings."
"'I hoped that the time would come when the leaders of the church would receive the inspiration to change the policy,' Mr. Romney said. When he heard over a car radio in 1978 that the church would offer blacks full membership, he said, he pulled over and cried."
Thanks to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21799799/ for the above excerpts and quotations, which are from the excellent New York Times article written by David D. Kirkpatrick, with contributed reporting by Ben Werschkul. You may read the entire lengthy (three pages) story by clicking on the provided link.
Mitt Romney has shown evidence of his conservative, yet individualistic thinking virtually his entire adult life. Mitt Romney has always shown empathy for our military and for our soldiers. Mitt Romney has demonstrated leadership skills throughout his adult life.
If you are an evangelical Christian, and you still think that Thomas Jefferson is in Hell because he was a Deist, and that Mitt Romney will end up there as well due to his Mormonism, let me assure you that I have it on the best authority that this is not the case.
You may read my exclusive interview between Thomas Jefferson and God, and then make up your own mind.* You may also read my post regarding the question of Hell as it pertains to Thomas Jefferson and Governor Mitt Romney.* Mitt Romney is the Republican presidential candidate of choice. Give Mitt a chance.
*The original date of this post was
November 15, 2007.
Related Links
http://www.mittromney.com/
http://www.mittromney.com/
Ann-Romney/index
http://www.evangelicalsformitt.org/
http://www.mittreport.com/
My Related Posts
*Thomas Jefferson's Interview With God
*Shall Romney and Jefferson Meet In Hell?
Mitt Romney and A PLEA FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
Mitt Romney in The Mittchant of Venice
Mitt Romney, Mormons, and One Martyr
Mormon Inventions For Everyman
Three Mormon Classics by CW
Meaty Mitt/Mormon Writings
Mitt Romney, Mormons, and Pacifism
Good Mormon: Ancient Samaritan Parable?
Mitt Romney Qualifies With Article 6
Mitt Romney and Two Political Deists
Mitt Romney, Mormons, and Nine Christians
Is Mitt Romney Still That MORMON Person?
Mitt Romney #1 Fave Of Top Evangelicals
Mitt Believes In Jesus Per Joel Osteen
Mitt Romney Support Urged By Evangelical
Conservative Wordsmith Susan Baldwin, author of the Conservative Wordsmith Weblog, appreciates your thoughts and comments.