The Mormon Issue

Before he announced last month that he would run as a Republican candidate in Michigan's 1962 gubernatorial race. George Romney fasted and prayed for 24 hours for divine guidance. His act of faith called attention to the fact that Romney, a remarkably successful and personable industrialist and community leader, is also a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Being a Mormon has never been a political liability in the past (in Utah, it is virtually a political requirement), and there was no reason to believe that it would hurt Romney in Michigan. But George Romney is being touted as a promising contender for the 1964 G.O.P. presidential nomination--and on the national scene his religion might stir up a real controversy, just as John F. Kennedy's Catholicism did in 1960. Around Michigan last week the word was being spread that the Mormon Church looks on Negroes as an inferior race, cursed by God.

Historically, the Mormon Church has held that all worthy males, except Negroes, may become members of the priesthood. Joseph Smith, the church's founder and first prophet, wrote in his Book of Abraham that Negroes are a cursed race, the descendants of Noah's son Ham, and Ham's son Canaan. They are not regarded as utter pariahs, however, and the Mormon Church grants them all of its blessings--including ultimate salvation--except the priesthood.

Down to Death. Brigham Young, the dynamic, much-married second head of the church, condemned Negroes, as descendants of Cain, to a heavenly waiting line: "They will go down to death. And when all the rest of the children have received their blessings in the holy priesthood, then the curse will be removed from the seed of Cain, and they will come up and possess the priesthood."

Through the years the Mormon missionaries have roamed the earth, proselytizing Orientals and all other races--except Negroes. Yet, remarkably, a few Negroes are active Mormons, and all Mormons believe that Negroes will ultimately cleanse themselves of their curse and attain equal status with the other latter-day saints. "It's sure to be," said a Mormon in Salt Lake City last week, "but the question is when." He recalled the proclamation of President Wilford Woodruff in 1890 abolishing polygamy--soon after Congress and the Supreme Court had outlawed the practice, and in good time to ensure Utah's admission as a state, six years later.

The Real Issue. Romney's Mormonism became an open issue in Michigan when he fasted and prayed before announcing for the governorship. Cried Gus Scholle, president of Michigan's A.F.L.C.I.O.: "This business of trying to put on an act of having a pipeline to God in order to become Governor of Michigan is about the greatest anticlimax to a phony stunt that I've ever seen." Democratic Governor John Swainson rebuked Scholle, and reminded the public that he himself had been until World War II a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an offshoot of the Mormon Church that admits Negroes to its priesthood. "I want to see the discussion of religion eliminated as a campaign matter," said Swainson, who is now a Lutheran.

The religious controversy is not likely to be eliminated. Most of last week's discussion raged irrelevantly around the tenets of the Mormon Church and not on George Romney's own personal feelings about racial minorities. He can point to a notable record: since World War II, he has been outspoken in his opposition to segregation and prejudice in Detroit, an active promoter of civil rights in every public controversy from race riots to desegregation of the city's industries and public housing. Says Romney: "I believe that the real issue--if there is to be an issue--is what George Romney feels about bias and discrimination against the Negro. No one can point to any word, act or attitude on my part that involved discrimination or discriminatory feelings."

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