What's it like to be Mormon in America? with Mark Romney

Have you ever wondered how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fits with traditional Christian churches? Hear Mark Romney explain.

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason:
Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I am your host, George Mason. Today, we are continuing our series called American Faith, conversations with people of different faith traditions in the United States about their experience, their lived experience with the promise of being a part of a country that promises full religious freedom. And yet, while we have legal protections as such, we don't always experience all of the promise of that in our everyday lives. Today, we have the honor of having with us, Mark Romney. Mark is a friend of mine. We serve together in Faith Forward Dallas at Thanks-Giving Square, an interfaith group that seeks to promote the common good. Mark is a lawyer by profession, president of his own law firm that deals with international business, and contracts, and mergers, and acquisitions, and the like, but he is also the president of the Dallas Stake, which is similar, I guess, in other traditions to a conference, or a diocese, Mark, I assume, right?

Mark Romney:
Yes. I think if it were to be compared to say, for example, the Catholic Church, stake is an amalgamation of smaller units that are called wards. And then the stake would be about the equivalent of a diocese in the Catholic Church.

George Mason:
All right. Great. In this case, you can see in his graphic behind him the temple in Utah, right?

Mark Romney:
Is the Salt Lake Temple. Yes, sir.

George Mason:
Salt Lake Temple. So you can guess that Mark is part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And that is now the official name of the church. It recently, I think that's been a ruling that said, "This is how we're going to be called." Right?

Mark Romney:
Well, that's been the name of the church since the very beginning. I think at first, our enemies called us Mormons, but then we said, "Yeah. That's okay. You can call us Mormons." But now we've been asked by our president of the church to utilize the full name of the church, which is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

George Mason:
Great. So in a sense, Mark, you are representative of the church, that tall story called quintessential American faith, right? In the sense that you really are, when we talk about American faith, well, although your roots, of course, go back in Christianity to the beginning and beyond that the Middle East, nonetheless, the history of the church is a truly American experience.

Mark Romney:
It truly is, George. In fact, yes, I think you're accurate in saying that we are definitely one, if not the principal quintessential American church. The church was founded in the year 1830 in New York State. The beginnings of the church were here in the United States. And at this point it continues to be the headquarters for the church.

George Mason:
Right. And, of course, it's very much a missionary faith. And so while it's maybe located primarily in the Western Hemisphere, you are all over the world as well.

Mark Romney:
Well, that's true. You say Western Hemisphere and you're very accurate in that. The three principle languages spoken by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now are number one, Spanish. Number two, English. And number three, Portuguese.

George Mason:
All three of which you are fluent in, by the way.

Mark Romney:
Yes, I am. Thank you.

George Mason:
Yes.

Mark Romney:
I had an opportunity to serve as an LDS missionary in Brazil, but I spoke Spanish before I went, and I speak Spanish since. I preside over two congregations of Spanish speakers in my stake.

George Mason:
Terrific. Mark, I think when I grew up in New York City as an Evangelical Christian, I had only the meagerist understanding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And as among Evangelicals, I think there has always been a sense of trying to figure out where you all fit in Christianity, and maybe that's been true from your side as well. And, of course, some would put you inside and some would put you outside. You all live with one foot in both, wouldn't you say? How do you describe that?

Mark Romney:
Well, I think when you get down to brass tacks, we clearly are a Christian Church, hence the name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ, including the ordinances of the priesthood, the saving ordinances, which would be, of course, baptism, and then the temple ordinances which we perform in the temple, such as I have demonstrated in the background. That the authority was restored to the earth, through the prophet Joseph Smith, beginning in the 1820s, and continuing until his death in 1844. And with that authority then we have the opportunity to perform the saving ordinance of baptism. We have had restored to the earth the priesthood, both the Aaronic priesthood, and the Melchizedek priesthood. We had restored the temple ordinances, and saving ordinances, the endowments, the sealings of husbands and wives for eternity. So we believe that we are the quintessential not only American church, but we believe we are the church of Jesus Christ that has been restored on the earth through modern-day prophets.

George Mason:
Which, of course, then puts you in tension with other churches, a clear line that also make their own claims about their place. And yet you find yourself participating fully with churches like mine and with other religious groups in working for the common good in American life. So your particularism, and your identity, and a claim of uniqueness and authenticity of your own church doesn't prevent you from fully participating with others, and being generous about the work of other religious groups, right?

Mark Romney:
Well, it absolutely requires us to participate with others. We believe one of our basic tenets of Gospel doctrine is we believe that each of us that are here on this earth, each human that is here on this earth is a spiritual child of heavenly parents that are here on this earth to be tested and tried, to make covenants with our father in heaven, and to follow the teachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, by whom and through whom only is salvation made possible for us, but with the full expectation that someday we will hopefully be able to go back into the presence of our heavenly parents, and to live with them for eternity. We believe that everybody that we meet in the whole world is literally one of our brothers and sisters. So, yeah, it's required of us to love others, and to do our very best to help others.

George Mason:
Well, you mentioned earlier in our conversation before I think we came on that really your congregation is primarily organized and led by lay people. I think most people who would be listening to you doing some pretty deep theology here for a lot of folks would be interested to know that you yourself are a lay person, nonetheless, a leader in the church. And that the church is not organized in the same way as many others with the kind of clergy leaders so it's really led by lay people.

Mark Romney:
Well, that's true on a local level. It is absolutely led by lay people. Now we have, we sustain currently, President Russell M. Nelson as a prophet, and seer, and revelator. He presides over a quorum of the first presidency. He has two counselors. We also have a standing quorum of the 12 apostles we believe formed in the same mode, and same pattern as set forth by the Savior when he was on the earth. We have, of course, professional employees that run the operations of the church, which is a worldwide church. We are about 17 million people now. We're on every continent of the world that will let us be in. There are certain places where we're still not permitted to be, but we have humanitarian efforts throughout the world. So we have those that are full-time employees for that, but the actual ministry work on the local level is done by lay people.

Mark Romney:
There are presiding authorities that are what we call members of the quorum of the 70 that are lay people that have their own occupations, and that work, do their own support. And they do their ministering efforts on the weekends, and during the week like we do. They also do differently than perhaps a lot of other churches though, too, George, is essentially every active member of the church is given a calling, an assignment, a ministry of some sort to participate. I couldn't do the things that I do and also have a full-time law practice in the other areas that I'm interested in without the help of a lot of people, so everybody's working at the same time, and we're all working towards the same goal.

George Mason:
One of the things I really want to pursue in this conversation, Mark, is what the history of lived experience is of members of your church across time in America, and how there has been a growing acceptance, I would say, perhaps of members of your tradition, LDS Church, in American life, and that has been contested across nearly two centuries since the founding of the religion, including, in fact, the murder of Joseph Smith, right?

Mark Romney:
Yeah.

George Mason:
By those who rejected this movement. I know that gaining a sense of cultural, and, in fact, political acceptance, which going back to 1890, right? And the decision to end plural marriage by the church is part of that so that you become a state, you have this whole series of events and a growing sense of a rightful place in American society you might say. Can you give us a little survey of what that has been like for the church and its history in America?

Mark Romney:
You bet. I'm happy to do that. And it's an interesting history, George, in the respect that for a group of people that was literally kicked out of so many places, they held very strongly in their hearts the notion that the United States of America was divinely inspired, that the founders of the government were divinely inspired, and that the constitutional freedoms and liberties that we have were absolutely necessary to be available in order for the restoration of the Gospel to take place in a country that didn't have the class, didn't have a state church. And even then, though, the beginnings of the church was very precarious for many years. As I mentioned earlier, the church was started in 1830. It was officially organized in the state of New York. It grew fairly quickly. Joseph Smith had come from a very humble background. He was very uneducated, unlearned, and I won't go into the whole beginning story there, but it is a fascinating story, but the church as a group quickly centered in Kirtland, Ohio, so that's just a little bit outside of the Cleveland area. Remember, this is the 1830s.

Mark Romney:
Also, during those early 1830 years, some of the saints that were joining the church were centering in Missouri, first in Jackson County, which is where Independence is right outside of Kansas City. So there were two centers of the church at that time in the mid 1830s, Kirtland, Ohio, and then Missouri. And as things progressed, difficulties arose. There was a run on the banks, a lot of bank failures in the mid 1830s in Kirtland. The church basically lost all of its money. They were very poor. The church was never a place of wealth by any stretch of the imagination. The people built a temple as they were commanded by their father in heaven. And they built this building, which was a spacious building at the time for that part of Ohio. They were essentially driven out by persecution.

Mark Romney:
Then they grouped together in Missouri, which was like going from the frying pan into the fire. And considering what the history was in Missouri at the time it was on the frontier. It was some folks were coming from slave states. Some were coming from free states. There was a lot of confusion. Well, the Mormons, the LDS Church, those early pioneers settled at first in Independence. And then as more and more of them came in, their numbers started to outnumber those that were not members of the church, and that created some political friction. They were kicked out of Independence out of Jackson County. Another county was made just north of that. They went up there. Same thing happened. Then they were kicked out of that county, and they went up to some other parts a little bit further north in Missouri until we hit 1838 when literally the Mormon War was declared in Missouri.

Mark Romney:
And at that time, the governor of the state, Lilburn Boggs, issued an extermination order that the Mormons were to be driven from the state. Joseph Smith was thrown in jail for several months without being tried, and just kept there for five, or six months. At that time, there was one little town, a little settlement that was raided, and I believe 13 people were killed by a mob that were members of the church that were killed by the mob. There were disputes back and forth between them, and it ended up that the Missouri Militia essentially forced all the Mormons to leave in the dead of winter in 1838.

George Mason:
And if I could stop you there for a moment, Mark.

Mark Romney:
Sure.

George Mason:
I'll let you pick up in a moment.

Mark Romney:
Yeah.

George Mason:
I think it's important to say that you're talking about counties, government officials, state officials, the use of the state militias, and all this sort of thing, the arms of the state acting to deny religious liberty, and to persecute a faith when the Constitution, and the First Amendment were in force still, and yet this is still taking place. I think it's important to remember that just because we have laws on the books does not mean we live up to them always, right?

Mark Romney:
Yeah. And it gets worse. Trust me.

George Mason:
Yeah. Okay.

Mark Romney:
It gets worse than that. I mean, if you can imagine, but I do want to point out one of the things that sometimes we don't talk about enough, but is very dear to my heart. In the winter of 1838, there were literally 5,000 to 7,000 members of the church on the western banks of the Mississippi River across from Quincy, Illinois. Illinois is on the eastern side of the river and Missouri. They were huddled on the western banks of the Mississippi and Missouri. This town of Quincy, Illinois only had about 2,500 people. They put up 5,000 to 7,500 members of our church for a whole winter.

George Mason:
Wow.

Mark Romney:
And took them in, fed them, housed them, helped them find some jobs some of them. I defy any historian in the history of the United States to find an act of kindness, and charity, and love to the other as it were, as weird as the LDS Church was considered in those days, to take those people in with no regard for what they believed, or anything like that. And so I give complete tribute to those folks. And there was another episode that happened in 1912 in the city of El Paso, Texas, when they took in many, including some of my relatives. My grandparents were taken in when many of the members of the church had to flee Northern Mexico after they had been kicked out of the United States because of the practice of polygamy. Then Pancho Villa kicked them back into the United States.

Mark Romney:
The city of El Paso put up my grandparents and many others, many hundred others, and taking care of them for the winter in the old El Paso lumberyard. And for that, we as a church, are eternally grateful not only to the city of Quincy, Illinois, but to the city of El Paso, Texas for having taken care of many of our saints in the years.

Mark Romney:
The saints then moved in the late 1830s, they moved to a place called Commerce, Illinois, which was a swamp land. It's on Horseshoe Bend. At the time, there was a rapid right there by a little town in Iowa side called Keokuk. It was called the Keokuk Rapids. They bought the whole township. It was a swamp. People suffered from malaria when they went there. They drained that swamp. They started building homes and a city. They went to the state legislature in Illinois as we talk about religious freedoms, and there they were able to get a very good charter for their city that gave them the right to have their own militia. They weren't the only ones that had that. They called the town Nauvoo. They set up their own militia. They had their own university. They had their own city government, their own court system, and stuff. So for a few years, they had at least governmental help because they had their own government function among their own people.

Mark Romney:
That changed over the years as more members of the church. The church's missionary efforts principally in England, and in places like Denmark, and Germany brought literally tens of thousands of converts to the church that came to the United States. These were people that were typically poor. These were people that typically did not have high social standing in England, but these were people that were looking to find a better life. And after they joined the church in those countries, and they came very, very poor, destitute most of them coming. Including in those were most of my ancestors. They came in the early 1840s.

Mark Romney:
And as Nauvoo continued to build one of the important things that the church did at that time, though, was that Joseph Smith and the leaders of the church importuned the federal government in Washington, D.C. for recompense for the properties that were taken from them in Missouri. In fact, Joseph Smith and some of his associates went to Washington, D.C. Finally, were able to get an audience with President Martin Van Buren, who essentially said, "Sorry, this is a state matter. You need to go to the state courts invoking federalism." Which is not absolutely incorrect from a legal standpoint, but they were denied that. And they were never compensated for the losses of property, or lives, or anything that they suffered in the Missouri years.

Mark Romney:
The city of Nauvoo continued to grow, but as it continued to grow, continued legal problems were hitting them. They were gaining some political capital in that area. And that was one of the problems. I mean, here they are a different religion than most everybody else. And they've got all these people coming, all these new converts that are coming. The city of Nauvoo at that time was equal to the size of the city of Chicago. It was one of the largest cities in the state of Illinois.

George Mason:
Interesting. Okay.

Mark Romney:
But as the neighbors decided that they didn't like having all these members of the LDS Church there, they started to do persecution against them. The people from the state of Missouri kept coming, trying to come over, trying to arrest Joseph Smith. All kinds of charges were brought against him. Eventually, he surrendered to the state militia in Illinois. He and his brother, and two other folks were taken and held at a jail in the town called Carthage, which was about 30 miles away, maybe not quite 30 miles from Nauvoo.

Mark Romney:
And in June of 1844, Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were assassinated by a mob after the governor left them there, essentially, in the hands of the hostile mobs. Most people thinking that, "Well, that's it for the LDS Church. They're goners now because Joseph Smith is gone." But that's not the way things happened. We believe that Joseph Smith was given the keys of the priesthood, including the keys to administer the church. And those keys were given to the members of the quorum of the 12 apostles. And eventually as things worked out the president of the quorum of the 12 apostles, when the president of the church passes away becomes the next president of the church. We don't have a vote. We don't have an election.

George Mason:
No election. Yeah. Right.

Mark Romney:
No. That is a succession that happens very painlessly. I mean, it just happens as one passes away the other takes that reign. For example, today, our president became the president of the church when he's 93 and he's 96 now. And I defy, I would have a hard time keeping up with him. I mean, literally. He is extremely robust, but the church was eventually kicked out. They built a beautiful temple in Nauvoo. In 1845 and '46 they were finally pushed out by the mobs, and then they left. They were kicked literally outside the United States. They huddled on the banks of Iowa on the other side of the Mississippi. Many of them left in the dead of winter again. Why is it that people are always kicking folks out in the dead of winter? I mean, it has to get a little tired.

George Mason:
It's cruel. I mean, it happened to Roger Williams as well. I mean, that's just [crosstalk 00:25:06]

Mark Romney:
There's time-honored tradition being kicked out in the dead of winter.

George Mason:
That's right.

Mark Romney:
But they centered and they basically got the biggest body of them moving across Iowa. They settled in what is now Omaha area, which was back then called Council Bluffs, which included both the east side and the west side of the Missouri River. They made arrangements with the Indian tribes in that area to have temporary settlements there. They built thousands of cabins to house the people that were coming. And then in the spring of 1847, the pioneer company about 132 folks went on ahead with Brigham Young. And they went through what is now considered the Mormon Trail. And it's interesting that parallels for the most part, the Oregon Trail.

Mark Romney:
Now they had to go on a different side of the river, the Missouri River and the Platte River as they went up, and the Sweetwater, and things like that as they got further west. They had to go on the other side because you remember in those days when you were traveling with a big group like that all your animals had to have pasture. And so you couldn't have all the folks that were going up the Oregon Trail, and the folks going on the Mormon Trail with their herds and everything eating the same grass. You had to lessen that out. They arrived. The pioneer companies arrived on July 24th, 1847, and what is now the Salt Lake Valley. The place had been shown to Brigham Young in a vision. And when he got there, he was very ill, but he was able to lift up from his wagon as they cleared Emigration Canyon, which interestingly enough, the trail had been cut by the Donner Party the year before.

George Mason:
Right.

Mark Romney:
Things didn't turn out good for the Donners because they got through and gone. They got caught in the Sierra Nevadas, but the members of the pioneer trek from the LDS Church was going to the Salt Lake Valley, which was very desolate. And this was considered to be the place where they would settle. And then after that there became a pattern of people coming across the plains first in covered wagons in wagon trains the big bodies of the church going there. And then very interesting in 1850, starting in 1853, including many of my ancestors, some of the folks that were joining the church in England that were extremely destitute. I mean, these were typically factory workers in places like Manchester, Preston, things like this.

Mark Romney:
These were not wealthy people at all. They would save enough money to get their fare across the Atlantic, and get to back then Iowa City, which was where the railroad ended. From Iowa City, they would walk with a handcart pushing their goods. Every 20 people had a covered wagon that went with them to carry their bedding and their food, but they carried they had 15 pounds of goods that they could take per person pushing their hand cart for 1,200 miles from Iowa City to Salt Lake. And so you had many hundreds that went that way, thousands that went that way for a few years. The pioneer treks continued until 1869 when, of course, the railroads met in Promontory Point in Utah, just outside of Ogden, Utah. And that's where the Golden Spike was driven, and then after that, of course, people were able to come on trains. And so that ended what we call the pioneer period Utah history.

George Mason:
So, but let me just summarize if I can, because we don't have much more time, Mark.

Mark Romney:
Sure.

George Mason:
I want to say, so the story you've told is an American story of a religious group that is birthed in the United States of America. And that struggled to find its place in the country. The pioneer movement was fraught with persecution, and with tension until it arrived at a place that it could essentially live freely. And then there came a time when with the blessing of the fact that in your own doctrine there is a sense of progressive revelation. The church is able to change its position on plural marriage, and be more broadly accepted, and Utah becomes a state and those sorts of things.

George Mason:
So that, ultimately, if we could fast forward, what we have is now a history of representatives of your church that have served with enormous distinction in the halls of Congress, presidential candidates, George Romney, and his son, Mitt Romney, and Orrin Hatch, and Mo Udall, and people like this who have served in distinction in the Senate, and, of course, other leaders of our country. So that there is a sense of being enfranchised you might say now within more of the mainstream of political life, and even cultural life in America. And it's been a hard-won two centuries nearly of progress there in that way. So in effect now, you have founded, co-founded the DFW Alliance for Religious Freedom, and you're working to actually defend the rights of other people now, as well as your own in seeing the fruits of liberty be true in America.

Mark Romney:
Well, clearly, yes we are. What was never lost was the belief in the sanctity of the United States founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the freedoms given to us in the Bill of Rights, which, of course, just are the most fantastic thing that ever happened to humankind, frankly. We never lost that faith. We don't feel like we were treated fairly perchance with those issues, but we never lost that belief that the founding was foreordained by our father in heaven, that gave us the land of freedom, that the ability of people to have the rights to live their lives, to choose their religion, to choose their occupations, to progress, to be successful, to have the opportunity to, I mean, if you stop and think about the lay system in a church, if you don't have enough to take care of your own family how do you have the ability to help others?

Mark Romney:
You have to be standing on a place where you can help others come up to another plateau. So you have to do the things. That's one of the main tenets that we have that we are very strong. And perhaps we differ from a lot of other people, but we have a very strong belief in the power of agency that our heavenly father has given us that the government has that we are protected by that right to choose certain things including the responsibility that falls on all of us to be self-reliant. To do the very best we can so we encourage people to get as much education as they can. We don't tell people they need to go to college. I tell people all the time and I work with youth a lot. Get an education so that you can take care of yourself and your family.

Mark Romney:
You need to be able to take care of yourself. Then we can help others, and we can help them, but we want to help them learn how to take care of themselves as well. We want people to be self-reliant. We want them to learn how to do their own finances. We want them to learn how to get a job. We want them to learn how to get a better job, how to get an education. We have very low-cost education available to people of all faiths through Brigham Young University. There are various aspects of that and what's called a BYU-Pathway. We do this all around the world. We do this in many languages. We have courses on self-reliance, on study skills, on how to do things like that, but we encourage people to continue to improve.

Mark Romney:
We believe that each of us is in need of repentance every day, that we all make mistakes, but that we are trying to become like our heavenly father, and like the Savior. We're trying to live and live our lives patterned after that. In order to do so that means we have to be willing to correct ourselves when we're wrong. And to ask for forgiveness from our heavenly father as we repent. We believe that we are able to renew our covenants with our heavenly father when we take the sacrament, the bread and the water that we take on Sundays. That we renew those covenants, that we're able to have as each of us are baptized members of the team church would receive the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost to be guided by the spirit in our own life. We believe in personal revelation. We believe that each of us needs to have the ability to make decisions for themselves. The Book of Mormon is an incredible volume that we have, which has more mention of Jesus Christ than the Bible per page.

George Mason:
Per page.

Mark Romney:
It's just the fact. I mean, we believe it is a testament of Jesus Christ.

George Mason:
Right.

Mark Romney:
Another testament from people that left Jerusalem and came to the New World, but they had the Gospel. They had the books of the Bible, the prophecies of the Bible, Isaiah, those that talked about the Savior coming, they knew he was coming. He did come to visit some of the people here after he was resurrected in the Old World. And we also have a record of two whole sets of people that abandoned those principles and turned to evil, and were literally destroyed because of it.

Mark Romney:
It serves as a clarion call for us because the book that was compiled by the prophet Mormon was taken from all these records of 1,000 years of records that he gathered and compiled into what is now the Book of Mormon, but it wasn't written for those people. It was written for us because he knew it was coming out in our day, and it helps us as a church and helps the world to understand that, look, your salvation comes through Jesus Christ. You need to live the doctrine of Christ. You need to have faith. You need to repent. You need to make covenants. You need to have the gift of the Holy Ghost with you, and have your life living so that you can have the importunings of the spirit available to you. And then you need to endure to the end. So you all start that over every day, or every week. We're always in a continual progress.

George Mason:
Mark, I think listening to you, I'm taken by the boldness with which you are speaking into the American ethos out of the particularism of your own faith tradition, which is part of the beauty of America. And that is we don't ask you to enter into the public sphere, and just find the minimum acceptable way in which you can talk about religious experience, but rather we ask people to come and my organization called Faith Commons asks people to bring their unique particular faith with them, and to speak into the common good from that. You do that with us here in Dallas. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been doing that in American life for nearly two centuries now. Thank you for contributing to this conversation, and for helping us all to understand better your faith tradition among us. And we ask God's blessing on you.

Mark Romney:
Thank you, George. And if I could just say one last thing. That's one of the reasons why we're so adamant about religious freedom because we want not only the ability to believe what we want, but we believe that it's absolutely important that all religions have access to the public square to be able to state things that they believe in public without having to remain silent. And I know there's a lot of contention about that these days, and that's one of the reasons why we're so adamant. So thank you for your efforts, and I appreciate the chance to know you and work with you. And thank you for inviting us to discuss these matters.

George Mason:
Absolutely. Well, take care, Mark. And we'll be back with another edition of American Faith on Good God. Take care.

Mark Romney:
Thank you.

Speaker 3:
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