Cult of Personality
A little over a week ago Pastor Robert Jeffress made news with his introduction of Governor Rick Perry and his subsequent remarks when questioned by reporters at the Value Voters Summit. The meat and potatoes of Jeffress' comments was his classification of Mormonism as a cult. This remark would land Jeffress his fifteen minutes of fame and he would spend the next week making his rounds on many of the media outlets.
This might comes as a surprise to many of you but I'm kind of a political junkie. The truth of the matter is I am a psychology junkie and that in turn leads to being hooked on many different subjects, politics one of them. So I'm not a political junkie in the sense I know all of the ins and outs of sausage making (that's political jargon) but I do consider myself more informed than the "average" person.
In the run up to the presidential elections in 2008 it became fairly clear to me several months out that Obama was going to become the next president. I can vividly remember having lunch nearly four years ago at Round Table (why isn't the lunch buffet pizza as good as the regular pizza I have delivered?) with one of my best friends, a moderate liberal that has his finger on the pulse of politics. Two things were on my mind that day when it came to picking his brain: I wanted to know what he thought was going to happen to the Republican Party after they lost the election and what he thought about Romney and his Mormonism for the election in 2012.
I mention this lunch meeting because I want to establish some credibility when it comes to the way I try to understand the psychology of our society. I don't just look at any one situation and form some knee jerk reaction as to what I think about it. I often times find myself predicting where we will be on issues one hundred years in the future and then try to imagine the chain of events that will lead to the evolved mindset.
A good example is the gay marriage issue. I'm fairly confident in one hundred years this will be a non-issue and gays will long for the day when we prevented them the opportunity to make the expensive mistake of marriage (that's sarcasm for all of you happily married readers). This is the point that I am always trying to hammer home, it's not about the issue, it's about the way we think about it. What draws me to these type of subjects is the process that is evolving right in front of our very eyes. We are learning to see things a different way and that is fascinating to me. There are many things that are going to be different in the future, but most of them are unknowable right now. So when we have obvious things in our lives right now that we can be fairly confident will be different in the future lives of American citizens I love to examine them and learn about them. If nothing else it just helps us understand how we tick.
Having a modest comprehension of the history of politics and the election process it wasn't a stretch to envision Mitt Romney as a likely front runner for the GOP ticket at lunch with my friend. There are a lot of obstacles that are trying to prevent this from happening but the most likely predicable scenario from four years ago is playing out today, Romney seems to be the guy to beat on the right. And much credit goes to Romney and his campaign team. There is a large block of people in his party that are seeking a different type of conservative. The Republicans had control of the country for several years when W. Bush was president and things didn't work out so well. These conservatives weren't happy with their government and they went more to the right. What else were they going to do, go left? All of this leads to an enormous task for Romney. If it wasn't for this riff in the GOP Romney would have had this thing locked up long ago. He has done everything right in this election cycle and has taken his weak points and turned them into strong points. He is more well rounded than any of his competitors in the GOP primaries and even though liberals might disagree with every one of his policy stances they would certainly admit that they could stomach his as president if he were elected. That is more than they could say about every other candidate on the right.
This brings me back to Robert Jeffress. Even Jeffress admitted he would vote for Romney, a non-Christian in his view, over Obama, a Christian, if these two were facing off in the general election. But he doesn't want to have to make that choice. What he would rather do is vote for a conservative Christian over a liberal Christian instead of a "conservative of convenience" non-Christian. And he's not alone.
Jeffress' comments, calling Mormonism a cult, occurred on a Friday afternoon. Monday he landed the top spot on Hardball with Chris Matthews and the first twenty five minutes of the show focused on this topic. Friday night he capped off his busy week by being the lead interview on Bill Maher's Real Time on HBO. What was terribly disappointing about both of the interviews I watched with Jeffress was the person conducting the interview. What an amazing opportunity to have meaningful dialogue about a very serious subject matter. Instead, Matthews and Maher couldn't help but waste time delivering monologues and one liners when they had a man that was more than willing to shoot them straight about what he believes.
Robert Jeffress doesn't seem crazy to me and he doesn't seem to be representing some fringe element. He is a pastor and understands what his specific doctrine teaches. He is portrayed as some "nut job" that is spouting non-sense and this seems entirely disingenuous to me. He isn't saying Romney or other Mormons are bad people (he would even vote for him if he had to), he's just saying their religion isn't the same as his. This normally isn't a point of contention amongst religions, very rarely do we observe one religion claiming to be the same as another and the two disagreeing on this topic. He simply feels he isn't doing a service to his Messiah, Jesus Christ, if he allows his teachings to become tarnished or misrepresented.
Jeffress doesn't just point out Mormons, he believes the Catholics have some things wrong too. That is the basis of the Protestant movement, it was a reformation of the Catholic teachings. However, Jeffress still states Catholics are Christian, just wrong on some things. He believes Mormons aren't Christians because they had their own reformation and it fails when it comes to the basic tenets of Christianity: Jesus is God and The Holy Spirit (the Trinity), Heaven is the ultimate goal, there is only one God. There are plenty of other differences but these are the main points that lead to the vast majority of Christians believing Mormons aren't like them when it comes to being a Christian. Seventy five percent of Protestant pastors believe exactly the same thing as Jeffress about Mormons.
It's hard to discuss this much religion and still lay claim to this piece isn't really about religion, but it's not. It's about how we think and how we use that thought process to coexist with one another. When we vote for elected officials, especially the President of the United States, we want those people to share our views on the most important issues in our lives. Religion is a very important issue to most people in our country. That's why it's not insane for Jeffress to make these remarks. Whether or not you agree with the comments or the sentiment doesn't mean it isn't reasonable to have the discussion.
One hundred years in the future I don't know where we will be as a country when it comes to our religion. But because I'm always looking at other areas where it is easy to observe the paradigm shift as it evolves I am keen to recognize moments that are defining and shaping us for our future society. This is one of those moments. And, again, it has nothing to do with religion.
The most notable, by far, situation that is happening is the awakening of a group of people. A group of people that have never sensed what it is like to go to the polls and vote for the leader of the free world and know his religious views are different than theirs. This is what inspires me to have this "Is Mormonism Christianity" discussion. It isn't me trying to pick on any one religion. I don't think one is "more right" than the other, they're just different. What I aim to gain from this discussion is knowing that people will be educated on the beliefs of each religion. Is that a bad thing? Does that make me offensive? It's made Jeffress offensive to many and that's all he's done. I'm confident most people, when given all of the information on Mormomism and Christianity, will come to the same conclusion as Jeffress, even if they aren't brazen enough to call one of them a cult. The more the reality sinks in that Romney will be the guy they will have to vote for the more this subject of his Mormonism will surface.
So many times we head to the polls and we know exactly why things need to be the way we want them to be. We have heard the other "side" and we have dismissed every one of their arguments. Fair enough. But rarely do we head to the polls and know what it feels like to be the other "side". And because we don't know what it feels like when we discover these untapped senses it generates new emotions and reactions, it develops perspective where a void once occupied. If Romney wins the GOP primaries I can guarantee you we will have all had enough of the "is Mormonism Christian" discussion we can handle. It will be inevitable because people will be overwhelmed by trying to adapt to this new sense and won't embrace a new perspective without a mental struggle. They will battle it every step of the way, they always do. It's the psychology of it all, not the politics, not the religion, that is amazing to watch.
There are millions of people that have never gone to the polls and ever felt what it is like to consider the fact the person they are voting for has different religious beliefs than they do. Just as they've never felt what it's like the be a minority, or had a different sexual orientation, or a necessity for alternative medical needs, or poor, or without health insurance. It's not just about coming to a different conclusion on these topics, it's about birthing a new perspective, what it's actually like to feel this way. That's an amazing occurrence from a psychological point of view. It's a mini-enlightenment. It's experiencing more of the "truth". I don't write on these topics to "stir the pot", I'm interested in how we all think so we can work together to solve real problems, to make the ride more enjoyable while we're on it and for those that will ride it in the future. The more common ground we share and realize we share it the more our perspectives are the same and the easier it becomes to work toward a common goal.
