'Mormon Moment' lives on despite Romney loss

SALT LAKE CITY — Mormons in Utah and across the nation were thrilled by the prospect that one of their own might occupy the highest office in the land.

That won’t happen now. But Mitt Romney came closer to doing that than any other Latter-day Saint since that once-beleaguered brand of Christianity burst onto the American scene in 1830.

"For many Latter-day Saints, it was a surprise that a Mormon candidate was able to make it as far as Mitt," said Stuart Reid, a Mormon and a Republican state senator in Utah. "He’s done more than any single person in recent church history to share with the general public what a Mormon is, putting up a very positive image about Mormons and creating interest in our faith that was unprecedented."

Howard Rudy, a retired LDS businessman in Salt Lake City and a Romney backer, was disappointed.

The Republican nominee, Rudy said, is "the kind of character that Americans just don’t understand. He could have turned things around."

Despite the outcome, Mormonism came out a winner, said Philip Barlow, chair of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University.

"It developed a thicker skin in the eyes of the world," Barlow said, "and the world could see that a Mormon who runs for office isn’t, by definition, a nut case."

Overall, most observers say, the Romney candidacy was a net positive for his faith.

Romney’s bid did focus attention on Mormonism, which helped bring The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into the mainstream of American religion, says Jan Shipps, a Methodist and a leading expert on LDS history.

But being better known "may not be entirely positive, just different," she said. "Once a church loses its minority status, it may not be as protected as it once was."

The Mormon factor might have become more difficult, Shipps said, under a President Romney.

"During a campaign, he can blame his advisers for his lies or misrepresentations," she said, "but once he’s in the White House, he’d become more responsible for everything he says and does than any candidate."

The campaign may have educated more Americans about Mormonism, but it didn’t change overall attitudes, said David Campbell, an LDS political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. Perceptions of Latter-day Saints are "not driven by politics or by news coverage of Mormons. It is driven by personal relationships with Mormons."

Still, Romney’s run did alter some views: He won nearly the entire Bible Belt, dominated by evangelical Christians who long have been suspicious of Mormonism and critical of LDS theology.

"Right now, attitudes toward Mormons are sharply divided along partisan lines," Campbell said. If Romney were president, those partisan views could be "baked into the American political psyche ... (which would be) unhealthy for Mormons as a group, for religious tolerance, and for the Republican and Democratic parties."

Romney’s loss "may be a blessing for Mormons concerned about further public scrutiny of their faith," said Utah Valley University administrator Brian Birch. "A Romney presidency would almost certainly have kept Mormonism under the microscope for many years to come."

Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com