http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2010/01/03/romney_will_hit_key_primary_states_on_book_tour/
They just announced that Mitt Romney is launching a book tour. Guess where he’s going to flack the book and speak out? Iowa.
So, to the shock of nobody, he’s running again in 2012.
Romney is no mere dabbler in Mormonism. He used a ministerial deferment to dodge the draft, spent two and a half years as a Mormon missionary, and got his bachelor’s at Brigham Young.
So, Mormonism.
Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, came from quite humble beginnings, born to farmers in a New York community that dabbled in mysticism, visions, and folk magic. The folk magic included a semi-mystical New England practice known as “treasure-digging”, sometimes using magic stones to hunt for treasure and lost items. One of these adventures, an alleged gold expedition, led to Smith’s conviction for fraud. At the ripe old age of 18 he was allegedly visited by an angel named, swear to God, Moroni. The angel allegedly led Smith to a site where ancient Egyptians, who had somehow wandered into upstate New York (wrong turn at Albuquerque?), had buried the Book of Mormon conveniently near Smith’s house.
The “sacred” texts were carved on metal plates in “reformed Egyptian”, a language unknown outside the world of the Mormons, but known somehow to Smith, despite the fact that he was a young farmer with no education, who of course had never been on the same side of the planet as Egypt. Smith convinced someone to write down the “Books of Mormon” as Smith dictated them from the “magic plates” hidden on the other side a blanket, like Clark Gable in “It Happened One Night”; the scribe was warned that if he tried to see the magic plates he would be struck dead. At other times Smith claimed he was reading the texts using magic glasses, or by looking at magic stones inside his hat. Then the plates were “magically” assumed into heaven. Thus, the “holy” book of Mormon was given to the world.
On the strength of this book, the Mormons insist that the church established by Jesus, Christianity, has fallen into spiritual chaos, changing Jesus’ laws and teachings, and following doctrines that are wrong, as Paul had allegedly foretold; as a result, God considers the modern Christian churches to be an abomination. The Mormons claim they are the ones who have restored Christianity to its proper form. Thus, the Mormon view of Christians.
Smith claimed that blacks, African-Americans, were descended from creatures who had refused to take a side in the battle between god and Lucifer; Smith referred to blacks as cursed and inferior. Brigham Young believed that blacks were lacking in intelligence, and that anyone who had sex with an African-American would die on the spot. Until 1978 the Mormons banned black men from the clergy.
Mormons also believe that native Americans are actually part of the lost tribes of Israel (I’m thinking BYU is a little shaky on anthropology and geography). They oppose gay marriage and equal rights for women.
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also, magic underwear.
This made the short span of man's life a glorious and zestful thing for them. Even so, the destiny of man in Hellenic thought was kept distinct from that of the gods. The reiterated theme of Greek tragedy was this: Would you be happy? Then remember your finiteness and be moderate in your desires and ambitions; else the envy of the gods will bring you disaster because of your presumptuous pride. "Know yourself" was the text of Socrates' teaching, and this was at once a warning to respect one's limitations and a promise that within the limits of human nature itself man could find full scope for the development of his powers. With its reasoned moderation Hellenism had characteristically little use for mysticism.
In spite of all this historical prejudice inherited from the earlier national period, the student finds mystical phenomena everywhere in the Graeco-Roman world. The imperial age was a time when religion was turning inward and becoming more emotional, while philosophy, converted to religion, was following the same trend. There was a cultivated antagonism between spirit and matter and the conscious endeavor to detach one from the other by means of ascetic practices. It was a period of world-weariness and other-worldliness. There was a demand for fresh emotional experience, and the culminating effort was to overleap the bounds of nature and to attain union with the divine in the occult region beyond. These were some of the currents that indicated the general direction of religious thought and feeling when the Christian era began.
They found cult expression supremely in the popular religions of redemption, in the mysteries of Eleusis and Attis and Isis and the rest. Even in the ascetic brotherhoods of Judaism these elements found practical exemplification among the Essenes of Palestine and the Therapeutae of Egypt--so far did the spirit of the times penetrate the inhospitable atmosphere of Judaism itself. More significant still was the philosophical expression of this identical interest. It came to the surface, for example, in the Hermeticism of Egypt and the revived Pythagoreanism of Italy, the latter being characterized by a curious mathematical mysticism accompanied by physical and moral austerities. Ever since the days of Plato the religio-philosophical movement named from Pythagoras had continued a concealed existence in connection with the mysteries of Dionysus and Orpheus. It almost betrayed itself in 181 B.C. by the flagrant forgery of "Numa's Book." But in the next century it appeared frankly in public view at Alexandria and Rome with a new religious literature and a sincere Roman champion in Cicero's friend, the senator Nigidius Figulus. At the time of Christianity's inception it had a more widely known exponent in the far-traveled Apollonius of Tyana. Furthermore, prominent thinkers like Philo the Jew, of Alexandria, and Plutarch the Greek, of Chaeronea, and Seneca the Spaniard, of Rome, all disclosed a high personal evaluation for this kind of religious experience. Each of these writers, in adopting a favorable attitude toward religious mysticism, belied the traditions of his own people, yet earnestly sought to bring his mystical longings into conformity with his own religious and philosophical heritage.
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