{"id":118,"date":"2007-11-20T09:26:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T09:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html"},"modified":"2007-11-20T09:26:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T09:26:00","slug":"romney-again-no-mormon-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html","title":{"rendered":"Romney Again: No Mormon Speech (For Now)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"romneypicture2.jpg\"In his recent sit-down with National Review’s<\/em> Byron York, Mitt Romney says it again<\/a>: for now, he has no plans to deliver a so-called Mormon speech. God-o-Meter thinks we in the media who want the speech so badly might try a little reverse psychology and stop asking for a full day or two. Here’s the latest hedge from Romney:<\/p>\n

He has no plans to do anything, at least not yet. \u201cMaybe a speech would be helpful at some point in some setting, but at this stage I don\u2019t see a particular requirement or need or value to that,\u201d he told me. Pausing for a moment, he added, \u201cBut that could change.\u201d I asked whether, as some rumors have it, the speech is already written and is just waiting for the right time. \u201cNo, no,\u201d Romney said. \u201cIf it\u2019s going to be written, it will be written by me.\u201d (Romney aides say a recent report that his advisers are dictating his decision was inaccurate; Romney has consistently said the decision will be made by him.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The helpful service that York provides is surmising what such a speech were to sound like–if it in fact happens–based on Romney’s comments on the subject so far. The highlights:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, the term \u2018Christian\u2019 means different things to different people,\u201d Romney told me. \u201cJews aren\u2019t Christian. That doesn\u2019t preclude a Jew from being able to run for office and become president. I believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world and is the son of God. Now, some people say, well, that doesn\u2019t necessarily make you a Christian because Christian refers to a certain group of evangelical Christian faiths. That\u2019s fine. That\u2019s their view. Others say, no, anyone who believes in Jesus Christ as the son of God and the Savior should be called Christian. That\u2019s fine, too. I\u2019ll just describe what I believe and not try to distinguish my faith from others. That\u2019s really something for my faith to do and for the churches amongst themselves to consider.\u201d
\nIt seems likely that if Romney decides to give the speech, he might include words like that. What else would he put in? There would almost certainly be a strong general reaffirmation of his faith. \u201cI know there are some people hoping that I will simply declare in some way that my church is all well and good but that I don\u2019t really believe it and I don\u2019t try to follow it,\u201d Romney told me. \u201cThat\u2019s not going to happen. I\u2019m proud of my faith. I love my faith. It is the faith of my fathers and mothers. I do my best to live by its teachings. And it in every way would teach me to follow the Constitution and follow the rule of law and recognize that my duty is to my country.\u201d (In the 1960 speech, JFK said he would not apologize for his faith, \u201cnor do I intend to disavow either my views or my church in order to win this election.\u201d)
\nBut a Romney speech would likely include no discussion about the specific doctrines of the Mormon Church. Romney often says he is happy to answer any questions about his religion. \u201cI was just recently on Bob Schieffer\u2019s program [CBS\u2019s Face the Nation], and in the first ten minutes he asked questions about my faith and I answered them,\u201d Romney told me. \u201cI didn\u2019t duck any of them.\u201d It\u2019s true that he doesn\u2019t duck questions, but he doesn\u2019t always answer them, either. For example, in that CBS interview, Schieffer asked him, \u201cI\u2019m told that the Mormons teach that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri. Is that correct?\u201d Romney answered: \u201cYou know, they\u2019re probably the right folks to give you the answers to questions related to a bunch of Mormon teachings. So I\u2019ll probably let them respond to questions about specific doctrines.\u201d From there, Romney went on to explain that the values of Mormonism are \u201cfounded on Judeo-Christian principles.\u201d
\nThat answer, and dozens of others Romney has given in the last several months, suggest that any speech he might give would be based on the strategy of stressing the general similarities between his religion and others while not discussing discuss any doctrinal details.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To God-o-Meter, this all suggests that if Romney gets around to giving a Mormon speech, it’ll be pretty anticlimactic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his recent sit-down with National Review’s Byron York, Mitt Romney says it again: for now, he has no plans to deliver a so-called Mormon speech. God-o-Meter thinks we in the media who want the speech so badly might try a little reverse psychology and stop asking for a full day or two. Here’s the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitt-romney"],"yoast_head":"\nRomney Again: No Mormon Speech (For Now) - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Romney Again: No Mormon Speech (For Now) - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In his recent sit-down with National Review’s Byron York, Mitt Romney says it again: for now, he has no plans to deliver a so-called Mormon speech. God-o-Meter thinks we in the media who want the speech so badly might try a little reverse psychology and stop asking for a full day or two. Here’s the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-11-20T09:26:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romneypicture2.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Romney Again: No Mormon Speech (For Now) - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Romney Again: No Mormon Speech (For Now) - God-O-Meter","og_description":"In his recent sit-down with National Review’s Byron York, Mitt Romney says it again: for now, he has no plans to deliver a so-called Mormon speech. God-o-Meter thinks we in the media who want the speech so badly might try a little reverse psychology and stop asking for a full day or two. Here’s the…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2007-11-20T09:26:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romneypicture2.jpg"}],"author":"dgilgoff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html","name":"Romney Again: No Mormon Speech (For Now) - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romneypicture2.jpg","datePublished":"2007-11-20T09:26:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-11-20T09:26:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romneypicture2.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/romneypicture2.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2007\/11\/romney-again-no-mormon-speech.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Romney Again: No Mormon Speech (For Now)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4","name":"dgilgoff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","caption":"dgilgoff"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/dgilgoff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}