Word: churchful
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...Angeles Times and Bloomberg found that 35% of registered voters said they would not consider voting for a Mormon for President. Only Islam would be a more damaging faith for a candidate, the poll found. That's why Michael Otterson, a Mormon convert who is now the church's director of media relations, was calling on political reporters when he visited Washington from Utah in October. He wants them to know that in its 176-year history, the church has never endorsed a presidential candidate and that much of the folklore surrounding its beliefs just isn't true. "The message...
...church used a similar strategy successfully when Romney, who became wealthy building a venture-capital firm in Boston, was brought in as president of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee when it needed to rescue the 2002 Winter Olympics from a bribery scandal. Some critics wondered if the games would become the "Molympics," and Otterson says he met with a stream of sports reporters to try to "put some of the myths to rest--polygamy being the most enduring...
That task is never done. Even though the church has not allowed members to have multiple wives since 1890, that's not how it comes across on TV, in books or even in the courts. The popular HBO series Big Love shows a Utah family trying to "live the principle" of plural marriage; at the end of every episode, the network's defensive disclaimer informs the audience that the Mormon church, in fact, rejects polygamy. Similarly, the nonfiction best seller Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer chronicles shocking murders within a Mormon splinter group, though it was probably...
Even if the church succeeds in its public relations offensive, Romney still has some explaining of his own to do, particularly to the Republican evangelical base, which now makes up nearly a third of the party's electorate and can wield huge power in primary states, most notably South Carolina. That's because some Evangelicals hold the view that Mormonism is not a Christian faith. Because Mormons acknowledge works of Scripture that are not in the Bible, believe that their prophets have received revelations directly from God and teach that God has a physical body, Evangelicals consider them heretics...
Still, when it comes to managing the message about Romney's relationship with his church, his team has already shown vulnerability. The Boston Globe reported in October that Jeffrey R. Holland, one of the church's 12 apostles, had discussed the campaign at church headquarters with one of Romney's sons as well as with a key Romney donor and a paid consultant to his political action committee. The church says it was just a courtesy call, one of many such meetings Holland holds. But the Globe also described e-mails from two administrators of the business school at Brigham...