Great Job Frank Pastore.

As an Evangelical you wrote a great piece. As a Mormon I admire your intelligence, your control of the language. Your several abilities to promote your cause. However, had I written this article, and somehow possessed your expertise and your outline, a few elements would differ.
Readers should visit  Pastore's article:  "Christian angst over a Romney Presidency'     at TownHall.com

Please suffer me:

Rocky says:

Millions of Mormon conservatives have the same angst I do: we’re willing to vote for Mike Huckaby for president, but unwilling to compromise our Mormon faith in the process.

Calling us cults, devils, antichrists" and assuring that any discussion of Evangelical bigotry toward Mormonism is "out of bounds in prime time" only aggravates our deepest concerns and makes our vote for him more difficult and perhaps less likely.

As Latter Day Saints, our deepest allegiance and commitment is to Jesus Christ and His Gospel. We are Lds Christians first, Americans second and conservatives third—and we’ll support the Republican Party as long as it maintains fidelity to these deepest core values.

My whole Christian life has been spent fighting to secure a prominent place for the silenced, the disenfranchised in the market place of ideas against the forces of bigotry that would continually seek to silence that voice.

Ironically, many well-meaning Orthodox Christians are now working with Lds Christians and other minorities to assure the discussion of tolerance and co-operation in the public square—a tiny portion of this work is for the sake of improving the chances of a candidate belonging to a Minority religion winning a Presidential election. Mitt Romney. Evangelics for Mitt.

My vision, and the vision of many Mormons, is more long-term than the ’08 election. We’re defending the Gospel truth that America is no mere Kingdom, on the earth, but a God Ordained land of freedom where our differences become our strengths, where we differ, yet maintain our dignity and core values when intermingling.

What we are saying is this: "We stirve for a day when what we say about each other in private, we are willing to yell it from the rooftops. For a moment when the, not so ready for prime time anit-cult films and rhetoric loaded with flimsy distortions shown and discussed in secret places are long past. To a day when Politicians like Mike Huckaby, Mitt Romney and others can share with the world that which is done in secret without fear of hampering a positive political stradegy.

Every God fearing American must actively resist the attempts of both secular and religous leaders to practice what amounts to self , and affiliate censorship aimed at preventing certain undesirable elements of one's behavior, and, or ideology from reaching prime time ears and minds. Such would tend to shed too much unwanted light.

Today, certain Orthodox Christians find themselves unable to defend itself against the claims of most in the public square, primarily because somewhere down the road they forgot that Freedom is our most precious liberty. Slavery did not end because Evangelical Christians suddenly decided the practice was immoral, sinful, the work of madmen, but because the "godless northern yankees" ended it for them.

How will this group of believers ever maintain the right to, much less actually defend itself in the science classroom against the claims of macro-evolution and naturalism, or the philosophy classroom against the claims of atheism and secularism, or in the ethics classroom against the claims of moral relativism and post-modernity when for decades they preached the Negro less than human. The earth was flat and the Sun stood still for a few days. Hundres of awkward examples could be offered.

How is it that simply naming Evangelical Christianity in the south draws the now-predictable "bigoted, religous hate group" response—like the throwing of a human decency foul flag? If I was an Orthodox Christian I would relish the opportunity to talk about what my religion teaches in the back rooms, open up our attendance rolls and count the Negro's in my white congregation, rehash old memories of waterhosing Negroe's in our streets, hanging them from our trees, murdering and torturing them in every manner conceivable, and what better opportunity to get the message out than when a Baptist Preacher is running for president?

As Mike Huckaby pointed out in his refusal to publicy countenance his personal opinion of Mitt Romney's faith, Evangelicals who open up their hidden treasures for all to see risk being labeled bigoted hate mongers. You can bet Huckaby would be leading the charge in opening up his papers, sermons and speeches in dark places if he believed such could even remotely help his presidential bid. Maybe show a few anti-Mormon films, or something as simple as that.

The very fact that he won’t talk about it, publicly, at least, makes most sensible Americans suspicious. If there is an unwillingness to talk about what Evangelicals say about so-called cults in private, how can we work towards cooperation and understanding in the realm of shared values? How can legitimate God loving, neighbor serving Americans ever trust such a president coming from such a covert operation holding such exclusive bend.

Merely telling their sheep that Mormons are not Christian would likely suffice the average orthodox believer. Why should Evangelical and other religous leaders lessen their integrity even farther by creating a superficial chasm between the two faith groups? My Jesus is better than your Jesus. Your Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible. My God has no passion therefore he has no sex. Mormons really worship Joseph Smith, etc, etc. The distorted rhetoric could go on and on, but the point is that this idea that the ends justify the means when it comes to refuting Mormonism just doesn't get it. We Mormons already know the Source of this irate philosophy presenting itself as one of the many points of conflict between Orthodox Christianity and Mormonism. Between insightful Mormons and Mike Huckaby.

Mormons such as myself, view Orthodox Christianity in a manner akin to our view of Santa Clause or the Tooth fairy. Great stuff, likely developed from an element of truth, but can never ever be seen as real or even a literal appendage to any real founding person or movement. Mormons rightfully claim that Christianity, as we know it today, has it's roots in the reformation... just and only that deep, creating no positive link to the Man Jesus Christ in either geneaology or Revelation. That the Bible is complete and the heavens are sealed presents the most devistating element of Orthodoxy. The doctrine is Legitimacy Suicide conducive to a total and complete apostasy in need of Restoration.

Perhaps this is the real reason Mormons and Orthodox Christians share almost nothing in common. The former's every doctrine, was at least present in the earliest times, while the latter's primary oracles first appear in the era of reformation. Hence, the deceptively charged, formulatic claims of the anti-Mormon sluth who makes strident claims that Mormonism rejects two thousand years of Historic Christianity are hollow, meaningless nuances meant to be intentionally misleading. After all it isn't difficult to mislead the unsuspecting who never check the sources.

For example, Huckaby recently said he believed the Bible to be the inspired message of God to man. Something to that effect. Only he lay a few ground rules one must acknowledge. Semantics play into this interpretation, allegory and the works. One cannot believe Jesus actually meant for his people to poke out their eyes if they offend, or cut off one's hand if it caused him to offend. The question is, where did the allegory start and where did it end? Did it end before Hell or after? Are other scriptural instances of Hell allegorical? I'm sure Huckaby would halt the allegory before the mention of Hell and emphatically deny the latter, since any other program would disagree with Evangelical doctrine of Endless torment.

Unlike most Evangelicals, Mormons never tire of the fact Jesus and others in the Bible often spoke of an eternal devil's hell, but not once suggested men would stay there eternally. Coincedcence? Alternative Biblical Translations now reject the notion of an endless hell for men. However Evangelicals view such translations with suspicion, meaning any time one of these later versions disagree with their End Time view, it is wrong.

Allow me, please, to share with others, my testimony.

"I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind, the first born among many, and in fact, an infinite number of Sons of God. He is indeed the only begotten in the flesh, chosen from the beginning to bring the plan of redemption to many brethren. " Lucifer, a creation of God, and therefore GOOD, a son of God, and in that sense only exist an eternally fallen brother to Jesus.

Praise be to God, that in Christ Jesus I stand as heir to all the riches of God. Everything. In Christ Jesus I share in his divinity, for it is no longer I that work, but Christ in me. The end of the mirror is all knowledge, the end of death is God. God became man, that man might become one with him. Jesus was and is God simply because he was and is one with God. With he in me and me in he... one... I shrink not at the truth than man, through Christ Jesus is destined for diety. Though Mormons would prefer eternal progression over evolution. Semantics.

Let man reproduce after his own kind. God failed to choose an ox to bring forth the Only Begotten. I see no coincedence since the Lord himself set the standard. The Blue Jay to the Blue Jay, the dog to the dog, God to woman. Each of the same kind.

When it comes to Mormons and their support of Mike Huckaby for the presidency, I am concerned about where his ultimate, most fundamental allegiance lies. I would be comforted, somewhat, if there was an acknowledgement of some concern for what a Huckaby presidency would mean in terms of advancement of the radical Evangelical agenda. Would the racial and religous bigotry of the far right increase through bold missionary efforts, or perhaps even public policy? Would America devolve to the days of Martin Luther King, to the days when the Evvangelicals wielded their influence and power with the calm of an attack hound? Woud there be an upsurge in the desire to resurrect the stars and bars, the proud emblem of radical Evangelical south?

Do they not wonder that, though we may not hear much from Huckaby about stout Evangelical oddities during the campaign, we may in fact hear volumes from Georgia after the inauguration?

I’ll vote for Huckaby if I someone is holding a gun to my head, I suppose, if it will mean personal survival. But should he become president, I, along with millions of other Mormon Christians will expose each and every attempt by the Evangelicals and other like minded Christians to advance their exclusive ideology through the world, for we are aware of the potential spiritual challenges of having a Baptist preacher in the White House.

This is what makes the decision very difficult.

My hat is off to you, Mr. Pastore.   Thanks for the inspiration.