There are several ways I could respond, but I do not sense you will be satisfied with any. I will comment briefly on each – but will not pursure further dialogue if it will not seem productive to me.

1) Technically (as per the use of the English language) Mormonism is a Christian religions. Christian means follower of Jesus. The Mormon religion has some differing ideas about who Jesus is – as you know from your own experience) but to say that a Mormon is not Christian is technically incorrect.

2) Your understanding of Christianity involves a confession of faith about Jesus. There are some in the Mormon church that agree. They may not understand the doctrines of their own church – but even from your perspectice as a particular faith confession, the notion that any individual cannot be “a Christian” is certain an overstatement on your part, as one who does not know the heart of the individual.

3) Salvation is not our work, but God’s. To have any sort of formula that makes it something WE do is not biblcial…whether the formula is Mormon, Baptist, or otherwise.

4) The republican candidate do all seem to claim to follow Jesus. If we took a few moments to explore that with each of them as to doctrine, lifestyle, etc. We could each have a list of reasons why that could not be so. That only serves to furhter illistrate my prior points. We don’t get to make the call.

5) As to higher standard – YES and NO!

NO if you mean that we have some standard of legalism, some sense of doctrinal purity, or that sort ofn thing. That makes “Chrisitanity” about ME – how I live, what I believe, how I conduct myself, what institution I join, etc. Nope, I will not accept that sort of burden on myself, nor place it on any one else.

YES, in the sense that the love of Christ will be expressed through me, which means I will respect another – which means that the other (Romney, perhaps) can be wrong. The freedom of conscience (the hallmakr of a confessional religion) means I must respect the right of the other person to believe differently than me. If they do, they are still my sibling in the human family.

6) So all this brings me back to my last post and the original post. When we start taking our faith confession, religious training, conversion experiences, bad experiences with religion, etc. and making church doctrine, that’s one thing. When we nationalize it and seek to enforce that on the heart of another, that;s wrong. Our founders saw what that did in what was “Christian” england/europe and came here to get away from that. The freedom of consciouse means we permit people the right to be wrong – particularly in matters of the heart.

The founders took this higher theological truth an applied it to government in the only way that made sense – and that was to take such matters out of the public square. They said no religious test.

Of course, we have a civic responsibility to examine how a persons core belief (religiously or otherwise) will influence their public policies. For example, if a fundamentalist nChristian is running for public office – and their theology says we enforce a religious practicen on another by legislation (like prayer in school) I will oppose that as something that infringes on the freedom of conscious. If a Mormon seeks to impose of his faith confession on the nation – or a Catholic says he (if elected) will do everythng the Pope says, then their religious practice infringes on my liberty.

However, if I do not like or agree with how a man prays (or if he prays) – or what book he reads – and then says, “He’s not qualified, so he should not be presdsident!” Well, that to me is not Christian, not american, and not smart at all.

So, as I see it, the problem was not that the republican candidates were silent. Practically, that was smart, cause they want those votes. Beyond that, I always think the right answer to a wrong question is to stay as silent as possible. The question of whether the faith of Romney and Huntsman is a mute question, so the best answer is to say nothing.