The Mormons, critics say, are secretive and strange, and they are controlling more and more of your world. ~Stephen Stromberg

As the blogosphere’s foremost critic of Romney (or something close to it) and as someone who has thought about the “Mormon issue” more than is probably necessary or reasonable, I can confidently say that this is complete nonsense.  Not once in any of the criticisms of Romney’s Mormonism have I ever read anywhere that people are wary of Romney’s Mormonism because of LDS expansion and property holdings.  Weisberg thinks Mormons are unusually gullible, and no one really cares what he thinks; Linker uses elaborate webs of logic to conclude that Mormon theocracy is just around the corner, but no one acquainted with any actual Mormons believes this.  For that matter, probably very few people are agreeing with anything I have to say about the subject.  But the most vocal critics are not saying what Mr. Stromberg claims we are saying.  

For people to know that the LDS church is expanding or acquiring more properties, they would have to know something about Mormonism.  For people to know that there is no clergy in the LDS church would require people to know certain details about that church, which I bet most people don’t know.  I wager most people know next to nothing about Mormonism, except for the condensed version of Mormon history as revealed to them by South Park and other such edifying vehicles of public education (“Joseph Smith was a prophet, dum-dum-dum-dum!”)–therein lies Mormonism’s biggest problem with the American public.  It is not an obstacle that can be overcome in a presidential campaign, as I feel compelled to repeat yet again, especially when the candidate is making no effort to address the issue at all. 

But Mormonism isn’t Scientology–critics and observers don’t think that the religion is a gigantic racket for making money and controlling other people’s wealth or some enormous con aimed at dominating more and more of society.  That is what Scientology is, but that’s a subject for another day.  The critics of Mormonism view it with skepticism on religious grounds or for one of the many other reasons outlined here, but “critics” don’t say that Mormons are “controlling more and more” of our world, because most of the critics are not terribly concerned about this kind of “control.”  High levels of involvement in church are least likely to strike highly active conservative Christians as “cultish” or weird, since they, too, are extremely active in their churches.  It is significant here to note that the strongest opposition to a Mormon President of any one group comes from people who attend church services more than once per week.  

Opposition to Mormonism is not nearly so great among Protestants and Catholics of the “Chreaster” variety.  These folks are more inclined to shrug off the “Mormon issue” because they aren’t that fired up about their own religious observance (however, even among the fairly lacadaisacal and the lapsed, anti-Mormonism never goes below 30% of any cross-section of the population).  It isn’t intensive church involvement that strikes Mormonism’s strongest critics as kooky and worrisome–it is (how can I put this diplomatically?) Mormonism that is the problem.