"A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan"

Some members of the GOP's largest voting bloc, like Florida preacher Bill Keller, think a Mormon in the White House would mean more souls going to hell.

By Michael Scherer

Read more: Republican Party, Politics, News, Michael Scherer, 2008 election, Mitt Romney

Salon image, Reuters photo

Mitt Romney at the Republican National Hispanic Assembly Convention's prayer breakfast in Washington, July 22, 2007

Nov. 6, 2007 | TAMPA, Fla. -- From the back room of a dilapidated used-car dealership, the televangelist Bill Keller has spent the past eight years battling to save the souls of men. In addition to his daily television broadcast in central Florida, his Web site, LivePrayer.com, has an e-mail list of about 2.4 million, and every day he says he receives some 40,000 electronic messages from people seeking the healing power of prayer to help their finances, health or relationships.

"It's kind of a mix between O'Reilly and Dr. Phil, but with a biblical worldview," Keller said of his ministry. When he met me late last month in his office, where the detached bucket seats of a compact car are the chairs, he was dressed in a red and black Michael Jordan tracksuit, with the zipper lowered halfway down his bare chest. At 49, he now keeps his hair peroxided platinum to hide the gray. "If people don't like what I say, go argue with God, don't argue with me," he told me. "I didn't write the book."

People often don't like what Keller says. A regional figure with national aspirations, he has called Oprah Winfrey a "new-age witch," the Koran "a book of fables," and the prophet Mohammed a "murdering pedophile," sparking a successful campaign by Islamic civil rights activists to get him kicked off the local CBS-affiliated TV station. But his passion is unabated, and in recent months, Keller has focused his biblical fire on a new target, Mitt Romney. Keller opposes Romney because the Republican presidential contender is a Mormon.

"A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan," Keller declared in his daily e-mail devotional last May. His reasoning went like this: Romney's election would serve as a giant advertisement for a competing religion, Mormonism, which Keller and others believe has falsely portrayed itself as another form of Christianity in an effort to find converts. "He would influence people to seek out the Mormon faith," Keller predicted of a Romney presidency. "They would get sucked into those lies and they would eventually die and go to hell."

Though Keller's rhetoric is extreme and his predictions are controversial, his biblical reasoning is mainstream for many of the nation's Christian evangelicals, who make up about 40 percent of the Republican Party. Large denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention have long considered Mormonism to be a cult, not a true path to salvation. National polling paints a stark picture of the problem. According to a recent Pew Center poll, 25 percent of Republicans say they are reluctant to vote for a candidate who is Mormon. Among white evangelicals who attend church weekly, 41 percent are reluctant to vote for a Mormon.

The Romney campaign, which has aggressively courted religious voters, is well aware of the problem. Romney has found himself, by dint of his personal faith, in the middle of a long-running competition between two rival evangelical faiths, each claiming the true word of God in the fight for converts. "It's Pepsi vs. Coke," said one Romney campaign aide, describing the differences between evangelical Protestants and Mormons. "But sometimes Pepsi and Coke have to team up to stop Starbucks from taking over the market." Starbucks, of course, represents secular America, which favors gay marriage, legal abortion and the minimization of religion in public life.

This is the reasoning that has allowed Romney considerable success in winning over many big-name evangelical leaders--focusing on values, not religious identity. But others have revolted. "The Jesus and God of the Book of Mormon are not the Jesus and God of the bible," explains Dr. Robert Jeffress, who pastors the 10,500-person First Baptist Church in Dallas. At a sermon in September, Jeffress warned that people risk damnation if they mistake Romney's faith for the true Christianity. "It is a big deal if anybody names another way to be saved except through Jesus Christ," he said.

Jeffress shares Keller's concern that a Romney presidency could promote Mormonism, adding credibility to the thousands of Mormon missionaries who go door to door. "It could legitimize it," said Jeffress in an interview. However, he also said he could see a situation in which he voted in a general election for Romney. The evangelical dilemma in the 2008 election, he said, may well come down to the choice between "an incompetent believer and a competent infidel."

Janet Folger, the founder of Faith2Action.org who helped organize a recent Values Voter Debate in Florida, says she has spoken to many other Christian leaders who fear that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will exploit a Romney candidacy. "They are using it as a recruitment tool right now," she said. "We are talking about some real core values of the Christian faith."

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