Evangelicals warm, cool to Mormon president

Franklin Graham, the fourth of Billy Graham's five children and president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, told the Christian Broadcasting Network recently that Mitt Romney's membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should not be a factor in his campaign for the presidency of the United States.

"The fact that Mitt Romney is a Mormon doesn't bother me," Graham said when CBN reporter George Thomas asked him if a Christian could vote for a Mormon for president. "I think when we are voting for president we need to get the person who is absolutely the most qualified. You can have the nicest guy and he can be a Christian and just wonderful but have absolutely no clue as to how to run a country — you don't want that. You want somebody who understands Washington, understands government, who understands how to bring people together so that we can move this country forward."

Graham didn't actually endorse Romney for the presidency, although he did say that "Mitt Romney is a very capable fellow, I know him." But he expressed similar confidence in candidates Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum.

Calling the 2012 election "the most critical election in my lifetime," Graham called upon Christians to ask God to provide candidates "who fear God and who will put God's standards above everything else and who will take us back to the God of our fathers … Right now our country is going in the wrong direction and we need to make a change."

Other evangelicals, however, are less comfortable with the possibility of a Mormon in the White House. The Washington Post spoke to 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who said that while he doesn't think "that [Romney's] faith being different means that he's less qualified to be president," he has "no clear idea of Romney's relationship with Jesus Christ."

Bob Vander Plaats, president of an influential Christian activist organization in Iowa called the Family Leader, told the Post that there are a couple of questions he'd like to ask Romney.

"'If you are an elder in the Mormon Church, and have been part of the Mormon faith for all your life, why not just speak openly about it?" Vander Plaats said. "'When you go to bed at night and bend your knees, who are you bending your knees to?' To us, it's to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and that's how we gain access to the throne of God. It's only through Him. Because we don't know enough about the Mormon theology. That is where the sense of pause comes from."