“If you are an elder in the Mormon Church and have been part of the Mormon faith for all your life, why not just speak openly about it, about what it is?” he said. By failing to do so, Romney created the impression that “like, yeah, you’re hiding something.”
“When you go to bed at night and bend your knees, who are you bending your knees to?” Vander Plaats asked. “To us, it’s to our lord and savior Jesus Christ, and that’s how we gain access to the throne of God. It’s only through Him. Because we don’t know enough about the Mormon theology. That is where some of that pause comes from.”
Mormons, he said, had “not only added a whole ’nother book,” a reference to the Book of Mormon, the scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “but they have changed to adapt a culture. It has changed.”
In essence, Vander Plaats is suggesting Mormons are inconsistent, a characterization that fits with the most pervasive attack on Romney — that he will say anything and is not to be trusted. It is also a characterization that officials at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints think smacks of bias. Despite significant theological differences with more traditional forms of Christianity, the church considers itself a Christian faith and, according to Michael Otterson, the church’s head of worldwide public affairs, “a restoration of that early Christianity from the time of Jesus Christ and the apostles.”
Vander Plaats also articulated the evangelical argument against another Iowa frontrunner.
“What gives us pause with Ron Paul,” Vander Plaats said, was that “sometimes his libertarian views, we believe, trump his moral compass.” Also, Israel plays a major role in the evangelicals’ view of the Second Coming, and they viewed parts of Paul’s foreign policy “as threatening to Israel.”
The president of the Family Leader had much warmer words for Gingrich.
“If we are just going to beat up Newt for his past, then we should probably stop preaching about David,” he said, “because David slept with Bathsheba and had her husband killed. Even in some ways, Newt looks good compared to David.”
Vander Plaats said he believed Gingrich had truly repented for his sinful ways. What’s more, he said, evangelicals no longer see Catholics as papist interlopers because they have a clearer idea of where the Catholic Church stands on the issues they care about.
“Here’s the deal,” Vander Plaats said: “The Catholic Church, I don’t see as changing. I see them as being pretty true to who they are and what they believe in.”
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