This occurred to me while reading Walter Kirn's wonderful essay in the current New Republic about growing up Mormon. Even though he has long since left the church, and never came close to observing all its precepts, Kirn admires Mormonism as "our country's longest experiment with communitarian idealism, promoting an ethic of frontier-era burden-sharing that has been lost in contemporary America, with increasingly dire social consequences."
Kirn offers several examples of extraordinary kindnesses the Mormon Church and its members have done, in the spirit of community, for his own family and for him. The article certainly opened my eyes, and Romney is not just a member but a leader of this organization. He shouldn't be pushing his Mormonism into a corner and hoping people will forget about it. He should be making it a central part of his campaign. It's far and away the best thing I know about him.
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