Frank Beckwith recalls a story in which an Evangelical is supposed to have said that a man could commit adultery or even murder and not lose his salvation, but if he became a Mormon, he might be hellbound. Frank, an Evangelical who returned to the Catholic faith of his youth a few years ago, points out that the Evangelical’s view could easily have derived from solid theological convictions. While the unnamed Evangelical might be commended for holding to a theological belief despite its unpopularity, there’s something else going on here:

But in another sense–tying a believer’s eternal fate to overt cognitive assent to a set of doctrines without regard to whether in fact the believer’s life reflects Christian virtue–seems not very Christian at all. It, ironically, reflects an acquiescence to the flip side of the spirit of the age: it treats the human person as a bifurcated being consisting of an all-important mind that consents to doctrine and an unimportant body that is alien to the “true” self.

This has political implications, Frank continues. That the Evangelical leadership gathered in Texas (the group that endorsed Santorum) considered the supposedly reformed adulterer Newt Gingrich fit for consideration for their endorsement, but not the family-man Mitt Romney, who reportedly was never in the running, sends a terrible message, according to Frank:

 Consequently, the message that our Mormon friends will hear from this is the same one heard by Bob Millet’s friend: better to be an adulterer than a Mormon.

This is the message that will be heard not only by Mormons, but by many others in the broader culture who may not have anything good to say about Mormonism, but who may find Evangelical ideas about politics and personal character to be weird and offensive. If a man like Gingrich, with a long and undistinguished character record in public office, is not disqualified from office, simply because he claims to have repented, but Mitt Romney, who has had a relatively exemplary life, is not, only because he professes a heretical theology, it calls the political judgment of Evangelicals into question.