From JFK to Romney

[This is lifted from the NYTimes online blog "The Caucus".]

December 2, 2007,  5:04 pm

Romney to Address His Mormonism

By Michael Luo

Mitt Romney will deliver a speech entitled “Faith in America,” addressing his Mormon religion, on Thursday at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Tex.

His campaign is describing the address as an opportunity for Mr. Romney to “share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor’s own faith would inform his presidency if he were elected.”

Mr. Romney personally made the decision to give the speech last week, feeling it was the right moment to do so, his advisers said. After he decided he would make it, the campaign consulted with former President Bush’s library, which invited him to deliver it there.

Suspicions about his Mormon beliefs, which many conservative Christians consider to be heretical, have dogged Mr. Romney’s candidacy since it began, with many polls showing large numbers of Americans would not vote for a Mormon presidential candidate.

Mr. Romney had resisted delivering a speech dedicated to his faith up to this point, choosing instead to address questions about his beliefs when they came up from audience members and reporters.

But many, including evangelical supporters, have long urged him to address the questions head on and deliver an address modeled after the one John F. Kennedy delivered about his Catholicism to a gathering of Southern Baptist ministers in Houston in 1960 that many credit with defusing questions about his faith.

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