US presidential candidate Romney not likely to ease Mormon suspicion

Some experts predict Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's speech on Thursday addressing his Mormon faith will not likely allay suspicions, but rather open the floodgate for more questions.

In his brief 20-minute speech, Romney only mentioned the word "Mormon" once, choosing instead to replace the term with "my church", "my faith", and "my religion", according to The Associated Press.

Romney kept the focus on affirming the separation of church and state by declaring that if elected president, he would "serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause and no one interest".

"Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions," Romney said at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas.

"Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin."

Yet at the same time, he indicated he would not distance himself from his religion.

"I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs," he said, adding that if his faith hurts his candidacy, "so be it", according to CNN.

Romney's speech takes place as a growing number of evangelical Christians begin to coalesce behind presidential rival Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist preacher who runs on a conservative Christian platform.

Romney's speech is widely thought to be in response to Huckabee's rise in polls last week that found him in dead heat or even ahead of the former Massachusetts governor in Iowa, which holds presidential caucuses on 3 January 2008.

Additionally, Thursday's speech is also thought to be an attempt to counter criticisms against his record of flip-flopping on such issues as abortion and gay rights.

"The Romney strategy with the speech appeared to be to try to kill two birds with one stone - to placate voters who are apprehensive about him as a Mormon or as a flip-flopper," said Costas Panagopoulos, a political scientist at Fordham University, to AP.

"But I am not convinced he was successful in doing either," Panagopoulos said. "At the end of the day, it is very difficult to change voters' pre-existing beliefs, and it would probably take a much more powerful speech than the one Romney delivered today."

Meanwhile, Bill Bennett, a CNN contributor, commented, "I can see this speech he just gave being given by any of the Republican candidates and most of the Democratic candidates, frankly," according to CNN. "I'm not sure he was responding to the concern 'what about this Mormon thing?'

"I think he will probably get more questions on it, not fewer," Bennett said.

An AP-Yahoo poll last month found half of all respondents said they have problems with supporting a Mormon presidential candidate, including one-fifth who said it would make them very uncomfortable.

Moreover, 36 per cent of white Republican evangelical Christians said they were less likely to vote for a believer in Mormonism, which many view as heretical, according to an August poll by the Pew Research Center.

"I don't think his Mormonism is a deal breaker for most Americans, but only Mitt Romney can close the deal," Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, told ABC's "Good Morning America".

When asked if he thought Mormons were Christians, the prominent Southern Baptist conservative responded, "No, I do not."

Along with many Christian evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention does not consider Mormonism to be part of historic orthodox Christianity.

Romney did not go into specifics about Mormonism during his speech, saying to do so would amount to a "religious test", but acknowledged differences exist between the beliefs of Christian evangelicals and that of his church.

"I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the saviour of mankind. My church's beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths," he said, adding that these differences are "not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance", as reported by AP.

"Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree."