Tears in Tampa. “It won't be a conversation topic any more,” says Warren.
Image by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / Getty Images
TAMPA BAY, Florida — The Mormons on the floor of the convention hall here Thursday night were feeling like winners.
Not only had one of their own just officially accepted the Republican presidential nomination — marking a climax to the current "Mormon moment," and a triumphant emergence into the American mainstream for their faith — but Brigham Young University's football team was about win it's season-opener.
As the balloons fell, Utah delegate Brent Bishop looked up from his iPhone and announced the third-quarter score to the rest of the delegation.
"Fourteen-three, BYU!" he declared. "We're winners all around tonight!"
High-fives were exchanged. Woo-hoos were emitted. And Mitt Romney's proudest and most loyal constituency soaked in the feeling of victory on a night when their political and religious standard-bearer finally decided to join them in the Mormon moment.
It was a long time coming. For the vast majority of his 2012 campaign, Romney fastidiously evaded the subject of Mormonism, at times performing impressive rhetorical gymnastics to avoid even uttering the name of his faith. It was only recently — with the nomination in hand and the painful memories of a bruising anti-Mormon campaign four years behind him — that Romney decided to put his religion back in the spotlight.
Recognizing the historic moment his nomination represented for his faith, Romney "insisted" on making it part of the biggest night of his career, campaign aides told BuzzFeed. His Boston-based political strategists, meanwhile, appeared to come around to the idea of using "Bishop Romney" anecdotes to introduce voters to the candidate's driveway-shoveling, dinner-cooking, flock-tending soft side.
The result was a series of sentimental testimonials — not unlike the ones that are offered in Mormon sacrament meetings — from churchgoers who'd seen Romney at his most compassionate over the years.
First, there was Grant Bennett, a counselor to Romney when he served as a Mormon Bishop in suburban Boston. Bennett recalled early-morning phone calls from the long-suffering church leader, always informing him of a mini-crisis or temporal need of someone in their congregation. Bennett's ecumenical language in describing Romney's church service — he repeatedly referred to him as a "pastor," a title Mormons don't use —seemed geared toward universalizing the experience, as did his stripped-down description of Romney's religious philosophy.
"In our early-morning calls, Mitt didn't discuss questions of theology. He found the definition of religion given by James in the New Testament: 'Pure religion is to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction,'" Bennett said.
But even through the translation, Bishop, a delegate from Farmington, Utah, recognized the stories as authentically Mormon.
"Not that I knew his stories," Bishop said. "But in our family, those same stories have happened. We had a son with cancer, and people in the church helped us. We've helped other people when they were in need. It all felt really familiar."
He added, "I'm proud, not in a way that I feel like we're better than other denominations, but in a way that we were able to show people, like the Evangelicals, that we're Christians."
After Bennett, an elderly couple named Ted and Pat Oparowski, who told a story about their young son being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Romney, who had been asked by his Mormon ward to look after the family, befriended the boy, regularly visting him in the hospital and buying him fireworks. When the Oparowskis, through thick New England accents, recounted Romney delivering the eulogy at their son's funeral, everyone in the convention hall stood as the room filled with somber applause.
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