Word: mormons
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...Being a Mormon has never been a political liability in the past (in Utah, it is virtually a political requirement), and there was no reason to believe that it would hurt Romney in Michigan. But George Romney is being touted as a promising contender for the 1964 G.O.P. presidential nomination-and on the national scene his religion might stir up a real controversy, just as John F. Kennedy's Catholicism did in 1960. Around Michigan last week the word was being spread that the Mormon Church looks on Negroes as an inferior race, cursed...
Historically, the Mormon Church has held that all worthy males, except Negroes, may become members of the priesthood. Joseph Smith, the church's founder and first prophet, wrote in his Book of Abraham that Negroes are a cursed race, the descendants of Noah's son Ham, and Ham's son Canaan. They are not regarded as utter pariahs, however, and the Mormon Church grants them all of its blessings-including ultimate salvation-except the priesthood...
Through the years the Mormon missionaries have roamed the earth, proselytizing Orientals and all other races-except Negroes. Yet, remarkably, a few Negroes are active Mormons, and all Mormons believe that Negroes will ultimately cleanse themselves of their curse and attain equal status with the other latter-day saints. "It's sure to be," said a Mormon in Salt Lake City last week, "but the question is when." He recalled the proclamation of President Wilford Woodruff in 1890 abolishing polygamy-soon after Congress and the Supreme Court had outlawed the practice, and in good time to ensure Utah...
...Real Issue. Romney's Mormonism became an open issue in Michigan when he fasted and prayed before announcing for the governorship. Cried Gus Scholle, president of Michigan's A.F.L.C.I.O.: "This business of trying to put on an act of having a pipeline to God in order to become Governor of Michigan is about the greatest anticlimax to a phony stunt that I've ever seen." Democratic Governor John Swainson rebuked Scholle, and reminded the public that he himself had been until World War II a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...
...Borne Catnaps. A ruggedly handsome man, Romney is a Mormon leader who neither smokes, drinks (not even tea or coffee) nor swears, and who gives 10% of his annual income (which amounted to $250,000 last year) to his church. Before he announced his gubernatorial candidacy last week, he fasted for 24 hours in prayerful consideration. A physical-fitness bug, he arises each morning at 5, jogs for a mile or so in a sweatsuit or bangs golf balls around the country club adjoining his $150,000 house in Bloomfield Hills, a Detroit suburb. Because of the many irons...