I don’t think we’re going to have Mitt Romney to kick around for very much longer, so here’s a last shot: a weirdly defensive rant from 2007, by Mitt Romney about Mormonism. He’s asked at :44 or so about the second coming of Christ. Is it in Jerusalem or Missouri? Romney:
The second coming, the arrival of Jesus Christ, our church says is in Jerusalem… That’s the church doctrine… Christ appears in Jerusalem, splits the Mount of Olives, to stop the war that’s coming in to kill all the Jews. Our church believes that, that’s where the coming and glory of Christ occurs.
After that Christ will reign from two places, Jerusalem and Missouri for 1000 years. Writes a friend: “It helped offer a certain clarity on the whole Christian Zionism thing and made me even more frightened about the possibility that this guy could win.”
Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
A new Mondoweiss comment rule says, it’s not allowed to …
-“pillory Jewish culture and religion as the driving factors in Israeli and US policy.”
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Well, but it seems to be allowed to pillory the Mormon religion as a possible driving factor in Romney’s Israel policy.
So, let me get this straight: it’s now the policy of this blog that we can’t criticize the Jewish religion or Jewish identity politics but we can go ahead and trash Mormon religion and eschatology?
Without any desire to pillory anyone: Missouri? why not? The man claims to know what his church teaches and no doubt he does.
That being settled, what does he believe his church’s teachings direct anyone (or any Mormon) to do?About Jerusalem? About Jews? About Jesus? etc.?
Has he said?
Interesting to see him with his back up, defending the strength of his religious convictions, and the articles of faith of the Mormons, to what appears to be a skeptical evangelical Christian audience.
He’s proven over and over that he will say whatever he feels his audience wants to hear him say.
In the end, however, I cast my vote against Sheldon Adelson. I think Romney would trigger greater enthusiasm among Republican business owners in hiring, which could be a self-fulfilling prophesy on the economy. But the prospect of Sheldon Adelson owning both the President and the Israeli Prime Minister is too much.