Most of the reaction to MItt Romney's speech yesterday was positive but a significant number of conservatives gave it a limited endorsement. 

David Frum wrote that "Once Romney answered any question about the content of his religious faith, he opened the door to every question about the content of his religious faith. This speech for all its eloquence will not stanch the flow of such questions."

Jonah Goldberg talking to Mark Steyn on Hugh Hewitt's program seemed to concur, if the purpose of the speech was to put fears of a Mormon president to rest.  The conversation kept mentioning the term "scary Mormon," but didn't quite define what that means.  From the context, I guess it refers to the small excommunicated splinter groups who have gone back to polygamy.  There are a number of these in Utah and other states, closed, inbred communities with competitive patriarch battling over the leadership.  To regular Mormons, these groups seem as weird and creepy as the Branch Davidians and the Heaven's Gate Cult. 

John Podhoretz was also critical of Romney's speech for not settling the Mormon question, as if he should have said that religion is off the table rather than asserting that you can't  have freedom without faith. 

Peggy Noonan gave the speech high marks as well, faulting it only  as follows:

There was one significant mistake in the speech. I do not know why Romney did not include nonbelievers in his moving portrait of the great American family. We were founded by believing Christians, but soon enough Jeremiah Johnson, and the old proud agnostic mountain men, and the village atheist, and the Brahmin doubter, were there, and they too are part of us, part of this wonderful thing we have. Why did Mr. Romney not do the obvious thing and include them? My guess: It would have been reported, and some idiots would have seen it and been offended that this Romney character likes to laud atheists. And he would have lost the idiot vote.

I just heard Jake Tapper on Dennis Millers' radio show imply that the Church's revelation on granting the priesthood to all worthy males, thus ending the rule that negroes could not hold that authority, was prompted by a threat to the church's tax exempt status.  Actually, it was prompted by the number of black men joining the church despite the fact that the church was not proselyting them.   Some African men received their own revelation and contacted the Church asking it to send missionaries to them and baptized them.  It took years, and the church wasn't even allowed in some nations in Africa.  Also many converts in Brazil and Latin America were of mixed blood, and had to wait to receive the offices in the priesthood.  So the church leaders and many members began to pray for these people to receive all the benefits of membership, and eventually those prayers were answered. 
At least that's the way I experienced it.  When I heard the announcement, it came with a sweet affirmation that it was right.  None of us really knows why the restriction was imposed in the first place, unless it would have caused early missionaries problems when the slavery and civil rights issues were so volatile leading up to and following the Civil War.  It's easy to question these belief's but what can you do, when you believe that the church is guided by continuing revelation from God himself?  Who are we to tell God what his rules should be?

But the LDS church I know has always been pretty typically American.  Proud of our heritage as the only religious minority actually driven into the wilderness by persecution, we honored our pioneer ancestry as much as any Boston Brahmin.  Today, however, the church has reached 13 million in membership over half of which is outside the U.S.  In its first 150 years, the call was for converts to gather to Zion in Utah, and immigrants poured in from the British Isles and Scandinavia.  But today, that has been changed to stay home and build the kingdom of God there.  The largest growth has been in South America, particularly Brazil and Chile.   It has been so fast that the church is hard put to provide leaders for all the new congregations being formed. 

I don't have a source, but my wife read something to me the other day from a Baptist leader who claimed that most American converts to Mormonism come from his denomination.  That might explain this phenomenon, 

In any case it points to the real reason Romney felt he needed to give this speech.  Most persecution of Mormons since it's very beginning has been lead by protestant ministers who saw their livings being threatened by a rapidly growing religion with a lay ministry.   Although Mormons pay a full tithe, it doesn't go to support any local church leaders.  Only those who serve as General Authorities full time receive any stipend.  I worked at the church office building in Salt Lake City, for about a year, and the pay was not competitive to say the least.

The whole matter reminds me of the incident in Acts where Paul's preaching in Ephesus alarmed the guild there who sold statues (idols) of the Goddess Diana.   He was arrested and run out of town.   So much for ideals of freedom of religion and free speech. 

The Anti-Mormon forces have tried everything to discredit the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, calling it a cult of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, but it continued success has confounded that charge.  The strangest claim that seems to have the most play these days is the one that says members of the Church of Jesus Christ aren't real Christians, as though any other denomination has the authority to decide who is and isn't a disciple of Christ.  The theory is that since Mormon doctrine is that the Godhead consists of three separate beings, God the Father, his son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost,  they are in denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, which is odd because it's not in scripture but is clearly Catholic tradition.  It's like John Adams quoting King George III as an authority on democracy.  

There's a Baptist "street preacher" in Salt Lake City, who used to accost people going into Temple Square
with a bull horn with the loving message of Christ to the effect that all Mormons are going to Hell.  He used to impose himself and his bull horn on wedding parties where people had just been married in the temple  which was built on the center block of the city.

Twice a year on weekends closest to April 6 and October 6 the Church holds General Conference in which church leaders speak and members are given an opportunity to sustain or oppose new appointments and signify appreciation for those who are being released from callings.  In recent years, attendees of the Conference have had to pass through a gauntlet of critics of the church, including the guy with the bull horn, carrying signs and yelling taunts and condemnations at them.   The church simply refers its members to the Sermon on the Mount where it says Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man.