Ralph Kostant had an interesting take this week on Mitt Romney and whether his religion matters (and indeed whether it is an asset or a liability). As a Jew, he has a somewhat different perspective from the evangelicals who are presumed to be most likely to object to Romney’s Mormonism. From his piece:

let me… explain why it would surprise me if any American hesitates to vote for a Presidential candidate solely because that candidate is Mormon. The answer is “St. David.” St. David is a town of about 1750 residents, in Cochise County, Arizona. I first discovered St. David on a drive to Tombstone, Arizona, some 10 years ago. It was a beautiful, almost impossibly picturesque small town, and the most prominent building was the ward of the Mormon community, to which I suspect the entire population of St. David belongs…

St. David is about 16 miles north of Tombstone…

What does all this have to do with American presidential elections? Well, while Tombstone was founded in 1879, St. David was settled 1877. Mormon farmers started a town in the middle of Apache territory before Ed Schiefflien ever ventured out of Camp Huachuca. While Tombstone flourished as a Western mining boom town, filling our frontier lore with the tales of Wyatt Earp, the Gunfight at the OK Corral, the Bird Cage Theater and Boot Hill, some 16 miles away Mormon farming families went about their quiet lives, without the bars and brothels of their notorious neighboring community.

Just as Tombstone is part of American history, so is St. David. St. David itself is just one page from the rich history of the contribution of Mormon pioneers to the development of the American West. The Mormons have been part of the American scene for over 175 years. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints began in America. Love the Church or hate it, one cannot deny its essential Americanness. Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution requires that the President be a natural born citizen of the United States. The Mormon Church is a natural born religion of the United States. It would be indeed be ironic if American voters were to conclude that an adherent of this most American of religions should not hold the nation’s highest office.

The upshot of all this is: the Mormon Church is about as American as they come – as some have said, Mormons (who originally were separate from the United States before Utah achieved statehood) have become more American than the Americans since that time. The Church is not some new-age cult cooked up in the latter part of the 20th century, but rather is a long-standing religion with a rich history rooted in America (and just 54 years younger than the country itself). Perhaps this might suggest positive rather than negative associations for those who are its members.