This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt thinks Mitt Romney's biggest opposition comes not from evangelical Christians who view Mormonism as a cult, but rather from secular liberals who remain skeptical of anyone who believes in revelation, divine intervention or miracles.
Writers in Slate and The New Republic, for example, called Romney's Mormon beliefs ludicrous and suggested that believing them disqualified him from office. That is bigotry, pure and simple, Hewitt says, and all people of faith should condemn it - or no one is safe.
Hewitt, a blogger and best-selling author who served six years in the Reagan Administration, repeats that message often in discussing his just-published book, A Mormon in the White House? 10 Things Every American Should Know About Mitt Romney (Regnery Publishing, $27.95).
Not everyone is buying the thesis, however.
On CNN, interviewer Wolf Blitzer challenged Hewitt, pointing to a Feb. 9-11 USA Today/Gallup poll that found 75 percent of "liberal" respondents would vote for a Mormon for president, compared with 66 percent of "conservative" respondents.
In addition, Christian leaders such as Focus on the Family's James Dobson and Pat Robertson teach that Mormonism is a false religion and hostile comments about Romney's Mormonism run rampant on many conservative Christian blogs.
In A Mormon in the White House, Hewitt acknowledges Evangelicals' disdain for Mormonism and notes his own personal polling of radio audiences and Republican activists revealed that 20 percent wouldn't vote for a Mormon.
He narrows their objections to three: that LDS headquarters in Salt Lake City would dictate policy to Romney, that an LDS president would help the church's missionary efforts and that "the church is just too weird."
But Hewitt is confident such concerns can be overridden.
"The Religious Right's critique is made very quietly and obliquely with a great deal of hesitation," he says. "They understand that their argument [against Romney] is not legitimate and they are working their way through the process of recognizing that the Mormons represent the weak flank."
Reason to write: After Hewitt finished his eighth book last year, he proposed to Regnery, a conservative publishing house, that he write about Mitt Romney's run for the White House.
"They were not thrilled about it," Hewitt said in a phone interview from Southern California, where he teaches law at the Chapman University Law School. "Horse race books don't do well, and books about Mormons aren't exactly going to be flying off the shelf either."
Eventually, Hewitt convinced his publisher that the book would have a double audience - conservative Christians and Mormons. Then he began an in-depth exploration of Romney's background, abilities, and strengths as well as a description of the candidate's Mormon background and history. He examined Romney's so-called "Mormon problem," laying out the theological differences between LDS teachings and traditional Christianity and even quoting a well-known anti-Mormon, the late Walter Martin.
Still, it's such a positive portrayal that some critics have accused Hewitt of being a Mormon apologist. David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times even asked if the Romney campaign had paid Hewitt to write it.
Hewitt did not get a dime from Romney, though the candidate did cooperate with the project.
The author is not now, nor ever has been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but he does count many Mormons among his friends, including the late LDS apostle Neal A. Maxwell, whom he met while producing a PBS special about religion.
Asking the question: For his book, Hewitt asked people from different perspectives what they thought about Romney's Mormon problem.
Watergate felon and Prison Ministries founder Charles Colson believes that Mormons "are bound for hell unless they abandon their faith," Hewitt writes, but Colson is primarily concerned with Romney's "competence" and where he stands on moral issues.
Catholic Archbishop Charles Caput of Denver said he wasn't worried about aiding LDS missionaries.
"If Mormon missionaries are successful, it's because other religious communities are too often doing a bad job," he said. "People don't sign up for a religion because the current U.S. president is Baptist or Catholic or Mormon." Bill Clinton's former press secretary Mike McCurry, who lives near the Mormon temple in Kensington, Md., said Mormons are often mischaracterized as "snake-eating, serpent-dwelling people."
"But, you know, that gets overridden by so many role models that exist. People who know Mormons, people who live in Mormon families," McCurry said. "They know what their ethic is."
Others, though, clearly represented Hewitt's theory about bigotry.
Christopher Hitchens, a prolific writer and avowed atheist, told Hewitt if Romney believes that Joseph Smith found a golden book written by an angel, "then I have to say, well, he convicts himself of being an idiot."
If believing in angels disqualifies a person from the presidency, few would make it, Hewitt says. That is a religious test, which the U.S. Constitution forbids.