Hitchens really, really did not like Romney's speech on religion!

"Holy Nonsense: Mitt Romney's windy, worthless speech," By Christopher Hitchens, Slate, December 6, 2007.

Christopher Hitchens, well known for his book published earlier this year titled God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, has a great command of the language, and really did not like Romney's speech.

He got me to thinking again. Romney said:

There are some for whom these commitments are not enough. They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs.

He also said:

Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.

On the other hand, the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints says:

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are blessed to be led by living prophets—inspired men called to speak for the Lord, as did Moses, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, Nephi, Mormon, and other prophets of the scriptures. We sustain the President of the Church as prophet, seer, and revelator—the only person on the earth who receives revelation to guide the entire Church. We also sustain the counselors in the First Presidency and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators.

So as I understand it, Romney maintains that he will be true to the faith of his fathers. That faith holds that the authorities of the Mormon church are prophets called to speak for the Lord. But Romney will not accord them any authority in the affairs of the nation, only in church affairs. The Mormon website addresses issues such as abortion, adiction, birth control, chastity, dating and courtship, debt, drugs, education, food storage, gambling, homosexuality, the Internet, justice, media, modesty, movies and television, music, parenting, peace, pornography, sexual morality, suicide, swearing, tatooing, war, and zion. Are we to infer that Romney thinks that none of the churches teachings in these areas overlap with the affairs of the nation.

Incidentally, Romney responding to a question, which asked the candidates if they believed every word of the Bible, claimed,

"I believe the Bible to be the word of God, absolutely."

The Mormon website has this to say about the New Testiment:

Writings belonging to the Apostolic age, selected by the Church and regarded as having the same sanctity and authority as the Jewish scriptures.

Or more fully in the Eighth Article of the Mormon Faith:

We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.