Bloom warns against electing Romney

University | 4:58 p.m. | Nov. 15, 2011 | By Marissa Medansky

Sterling Professor Harold Bloom has concerns about electing a Mormon president. Photo by YDN.

Sterling Professor of the Humanities Harold Bloom GRD '56 got political last week when he weighed in on Mitt Romney’s bid to become the next Republican presidential nominee. In the Sunday Review of the New York Times, Bloom, the author of 1992’s aptly titled “The American Religion," revisits his interest in American faith, this time arguing that Romney’s Mormonism makes him a poor candidate for the Oval Office.

In establishing his argument, Bloom compares contemporary Mormonism with the faith and practices of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, who published the Book of Mormon back in 1830.

Referring to the contemporary LDS Church as a “Salt Lake City empire of corporate greed,” Bloom writes:

Should Mr. Romney be elected president, Smith’s dream of a Mormon Kingdom of God in America would not be fulfilled, since the 21st-century Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has little resemblance to its 19th-century precursor. The current head of the Mormon Church, Thomas S. Monson, known to his followers as “prophet, seer and revelator,” is indistinguishable from the secular plutocratic oligarchs who exercise power in our supposed democracy.

“The oligarchs of Salt Lake City,” Bloom believes, “betray what ought to have been their own religious heritage.”

Yet Bloom admires Smith’s keen acumen for leadership, and defends the Mormon Church from some of its harshest critics:

Our political satirists, with Mr. Romney evidently imminent, delight in describing the apparent weirdness of Mormon cosmology and allied speculations, but they forget the equal strangeness of Christian mythology, now worn familiar by repetition.

Bloom, however, ultimately questions the role Romney’s Mormon faith would play were he to take up office in the West Wing:

The Mormon patriarch, secure in his marriage and large family, is promised by his faith a final ascension to godhead, with a planet all his own separate from the earth and nation where he now dwells. From the perspective of the White House, how would the nation and the world appear to President Romney? How would he represent the other 98 percent of his citizens?

“We are condemned,” Bloom concludes, “to remain a plutocracy and an oligarchy.” Though Bloom’s somber forecast for America’s future will not likely influence the content of primary debates or campaign ads, Bloom’s observations add an interesting, albeit controversial, perspective to contemporary American political and religious dialogue.

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COMMENTS

River_Tam 6 months, 1 week ago

Nothing more than simple religious bigotry wrapped in Bloom's typical obfuscation-through-imagery.

I have a lot of respect for Harold Bloom's scholarship, but he displays a nasty side in this article.

(As an aside, can you imagine if this article had been written about a Muslim candidate?)

Doubtless Mr. Obama’s Christianity is sincere, but happily it is irrelevant to his governing style and aspirations.

This is more concerning. Imagine you believed sincerely and absolutely in the absolute and awesome power of God the almighty Father and his son Jesus Christ and the truth of the written Bible. And then you... ignored it in the way you conducted public policy.

What is worse? Someone who believes in God and ignores him, or someone who does not believe in God? (Hint: It's pretty obviously the former - Satan was essentially this incarnate: in the Miltonian interpretation, he was Fallen not because he rejected God, but because he rejected God after bearing witness to His Truth.)

theantiyale 6 months, 1 week ago

Which of the hundreds of Jesuses ---(the fleet of Jesuses)---produced by the Reformation, and later by latter day evangelicals, are you talking about? Mary Baker Eddy's Christ? Ralph Waldo Emerson's Teacher? Joseph Smith's Christ? Oral Roebrts' Jesus? Or are you talking about the Roman Catholic (Pope John Paul's) Christ?

claypoint2 6 months, 1 week ago

Ay. As a faithful mainline Christian (Episcopalian), I am appalled by Bloom's indictment of Romney. And, mind you, I'm a Democrat who will quite happily vote again for Obama.

Bloom reminds me of those who feared that JFK would be beholden to the Pope if he became President. Religious bigotry takes all kinds of forms, and we have an incarnation here.

theantiyale 6 months, 1 week ago

Nonsense. Bloom included The Book of Mormon in his The Western Canon. You don't know what you are talking about.

nycnikato 6 months, 1 week ago

If we ever had a Muslim candidate I'm sure there would be some apprehension. I do believe however, that if the candidate does not pretend to be Christian, and is straightforward in addressing doctrinal differences, he/she should do just fine in primary and general elections. Even certain Muslims sects (such as sufi ) have claimed Christianity in some of their doctrines

RonaldW 6 months, 1 week ago

What a bunch of Nazi propaganda. Such HATE speech in our great Country. I am very proud to be a Latter-day Saint. I have been married for 30 years to my wife and we have two sons both of whom are Eagle Scouts. We are very patriotic and love our Country. We don't put down others religon but have to read this garbage. Besides...this is not true. Mormon's are wonderful people who do not believe in lying, cheating or harming others. We believe in letting others worship how, where and what they may.

theantiyale 6 months, 1 week ago

"What a bunch of Nazi propaganda."

Hysteria.

theantiyale 6 months, 1 week ago

Our political satirists, with Mr. Romney evidently imminent, delight in describing the apparent weirdness of Mormon cosmology and allied speculations, but they forget the equal strangeness of Christian mythology, now worn familiar by repetition.

Yes----a strangeness which is enshrined in divinity schools at Ivy League universities which spend millions creating incentives for scholars to attempt to turn myth into fact. At least Amos Wilder at Harvard called a spade a spade: the Bible is "mythopoesis."

ThomasMason 6 months, 1 week ago

Unfortunately, Professor Bloom fails completely to get "inside" Mormon beliefs and realities. In the first half of my adult life I learned that being outside a paradigm, often allows you to see some things more clearly than those on the inside. It was later when I realized those inside, the engaged, have an equally potent advantage. As a former Mormon, I'll try to get the best of both paradigms.

Romney is hardly deep within the Mormon hierarchy. On that point, he would be a fairly ordinary competent Mormon (i.e. he went on a mission and served as a bishop). Bloom never tells us why he labels Huntsman as secular and presumably "freer" from the clutches of Mormon leaders, while Romney is defined as incapable of that.

To call top Mormon leaders plutocrats shows an ignorance of the way those individuals live their daily lives. Their lifestyles and homes are moderate and humble, they are hardly opulent plutocrats.

Mormons and Muslims have vastly dissimilar theologies regarding Jesus Christ and they see the authority of the Bible and other Christian authorities very differently. Bloom rightly points out that other Christianities are equally divergent from historical Christianity, but his analogy did not come close to putting Mormonism in theological context.

"The Salt Lake Empire of corporate greed"? Seriously? Straight out ad hominem. Besides, how exactly does the Salt Lake City leadership "sponsor" Romney? To their credit, the Mormon Church has made a tremendous effort to avoid promoting any politicians.

If Bloom were current on Mormon scholarship, he would know that most academic arguments over the last decades (never mind that the same historical debate has gone on since Mormonism’s founding) consider Joseph Smith anything but the sole inventor of the religion. To say nothing of Smith's use of third party sources to augment his theology.

Bloom’s polytheism conclusion is cursory and careless. To ignore Mormonism's monotheistic side is to miss its doctrinal core, which unambiguously puts “God the Father" and his son Jesus Christ front and center. Bloom, presumably unaware of the paradox within Mormon theology, unwittingly turns the Mormon polytheistic side of its doctrine into the whole story.

Bloom criticizes Mormonism on the basis of restricted temple access by comparing it to the openness of Pentecostal and Baptist churches. While I doubt he was being mean-spirited, at the least his point is based on a fundamental ignorance of the difference between a Mormon temple and a Mormon Church building.

Bloom’s quote by Orson Pratt is straight proof-texting and approximately 175 years out of context. It misses the fact that Mormonism's core tenet on this point is exactly opposite and firmly established in Mormon scripture and practice. How could Bloom miss or ignore the very strong thread of Mormon patriotism, their view of the U.S. Constitution, and the loyalty they have shown to the United States? Staggering.

theantiyale 6 months, 1 week ago

The thrust of these comments seems to be, since Bloom knows about Mormon history we need to discredit him on other grounds before he embarasses us.

River_Tam 6 months, 1 week ago

The thrust of these comments seems to be "Harold Bloom is a religious bigot".

theantiyale 6 months, 1 week ago

"Harold Bloom is a religious bigot".

Tommyrot.

Bloom for some exotic reason included a Mormon text in his The Western Canon!

Yale12 6 months, 1 week ago

Just because he recognized a religious text's influence on Western culture doesn't mean he's not bigoted against the people who believe the text is holy. I don't know how you can say a Mormon is unfit for presidential office because of their religion and NOT be bigoted against Mormonism.

whatwhat 6 months, 1 week ago

agree with Yale12

"Just because he recognized a religious text's influence on Western culture doesn't mean he's not bigoted against the people who believe the text is holy. I don't know how you can say a Mormon is unfit for presidential office because of their religion and NOT be bigoted against Mormonism."

bootapa 6 months, 1 week ago

Small oversights or inaccuracies are acceptable, I suppose, even in a NYT article written by a professor at Yale. However, misrepresentation of facts relating to the major theme of the article should be suspect.

Professor Bloom's article included the following statement by Orson Pratt:

"Any people attempting to govern themselves by laws of their own making, and by officers of their own appointment, are in direct rebellion against the kingdom of God."

Prior to the quotation, Bloom bolstered Pratt's credentials by describing him as a "Mormon theologian...close both to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young"--an accurate characterization. However, considering the religious leanings of one or two current presidential candidates, Bloom's next point is of potentially far greater significance: he described Pratt's statement as "a principle the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has never repudiated."

Having read that, one could hardly miss the implication that, according to current-day Mormon theology, the Constitution ("laws of their own making") and our elected officials ("officers of their own appointment"), constitute a government which is "in direct rebellion against the kingdom of God.” And therefore, the implication continues, were a Mormon to become President, those "plutocratic oligarchs" (Bloom's words) in Salt Lake City would be intent on having (their White House marionette) do whatever possible to pull down the Constitution and replace it with a Mormon theocracy!

However, after only a couple of clicks online, I found that as early as 1865,

"...a majority of the [Mormon Church leadership] officially condemned some of Pratt's doctrinal writings, [saying]:

'...writings by Pratt contain doctrines which we cannot sanction, and which we have felt impressed to disown, so that the Saints [church members] who now live, and who may live hereafter, may not be misled by our silence, or be left to misinterpret it. Where these objectionable works, or parts of works, are bound in volumes, or otherwise, they should be cut out and destroyed.'" (Wikipedia.org/Orson Pratt)

"Officially condemned,” “felt impressed to disown,” “should be cut out and destroyed." That sounds quite a bit like "repudiation" to me! And if I found it in about 60 sec online (at Wikipedia no less), is it possible that such an esteemed professor would not know about it? Maybe not. But at the least we might expect it would come to his attention prior to the completion of his pre-article research. After all, it does relate to perhaps his most disconcerting point. Would it be overstretching to wonder if a bit of fact-finagling was present as part of the professor's preparation?

Perhaps Bloom's misrepresentation of a major fact in his article was simply due to a lack of adequate research, but either way, it is sad to think that most of his readers will never know the truth about what this article so carefully led them to believe.

Or will they?

theantiyale 6 months, 1 week ago

writings by Pratt contain doctrines which we cannot sanction

VAUE. What writings? What doctrines? What leaders?

theantiyale 6 months, 1 week ago

writings by Pratt contain doctrines which we cannot sanction

VAGUE.

What writings?

What doctrines?

What leaders?

whatwhat 6 months, 1 week ago

agree with Yale12 "Just because he recognized a religious text's influence on Western culture doesn't mean he's not bigoted against the people who believe the text is holy. I don't know how you can say a Mormon is unfit for presidential office because of their religion and NOT be bigoted against Mormonism."