• What do Mormons believe?

    I thought I was unusually ignorant, in America, for knowing almost nothing about Mormonism: but if Mike Huckabee, who has devoted much of his life to the professional pursuit of religion, knows nothing much about Mormonism either, then there is a bigger information failure to be corrected.

    I have, in fact, been trying for several weeks to find somebody willing to write a feature about "what Mormons believe", mainly to answer my own desire for information on that point. So far I have failed. I do hear, however, that The Economist has one cooking. I hope that is correct, and I await it keenly.

    I see Mitt Romney is trying to rebrand the church—getting Jesus into the headline, as it were—by saying that "Mormonism" is a sort of nickname, and that he would much rather have it called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That may indeed make it sound a touch more user-friendly to other Christians (and should that "other Christians" be just "Christians"? I am as clueless as Mike Huckabee here).

    But to me that smacks of an unworthy defensiveness. The practical details of any religion are going to sound pretty fantastical, frankly, unless you believe in them. Is the archangel Moroni really any more improbable a figure than the archangel Gabriel? Is the revelation of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith any more implausible than the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses? Is "sacred underwear" any odder an aide-memoire than rosary beads? We become habituated to the elements of our better-known religions. I find it salutary to be surprised by a new variant every once in a while.


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