Does Mitt Romney's presidential bid have wider implications for the LDS Church and its members when it comes to doctrine and identity? Will it change what Latter-day Saints think about themselves?

Those were among the questions asked of five panelists at the annual Sunstone Symposium this week, and their answers ranged widely.

Former Time Inc. journalist Ronald Scott, who is finishing a book on Romney, due out later this year, said he thinks the LDS Church has been "undergoing an evolution for quite some time in preparation for the fact that Romney was likely to run."

Church President Gordon B. Hinckley has moved the LDS Church "more to the mainstream" since taking the helm in 1995, he said, adding that has "made a lot of people uncomfortable. But it doesn't make me uncomfortable at all."

Calling himself "sort of a Unitarian Mormon," Scott said he welcomes specific questions by the media about the faith that may help garner new perspective "on some doctrines that have been difficult to get at," including the church founder Joseph Smith's teaching that "as man is now God once was, and as God is now, man may become."

"Every time I've discussed that it takes five hours and I end up saying 'who the hell knows?' It puts a box around those kinds of issues," he said. "I see Mitt's Mormon Moment as a great one in terms of the evolution of what is happening in the church."

Lowell Brown, a California attorney and LDS blogger, said some leading Evangelicals fear if Romney were elected president, "it would put Mormonism into the mainstream."

Specifically, he referred to comments by Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Christian talk show host, who said "as a matter of Christian discipleship I would have an agonizing decision" about whether to vote for Romney as president. Some would see that as akin to "joining the cult and going to hell," he said.

Sunstone's new executive director, John Dehlin, said that on one hand, he'd like to see some "clarity" when it comes to Romney's positions on his faith and the specific doctrines it teaches. On the other hand, "I don't want to see the church weakened or diluted or Mormons losing their identity" as a "peculiar people" in many ways.

"I don't want Mormons to start feeling they are not really that unique or to become a weaker version of what we were," he told the audience Thursday night.