For Mormonism, the intensity of the faith got sublimated into missionary zeal and commerce.
Mormonism remained more or less theologically whole, with its holy book and its distinctive doctrines.
His brand of Mormonism might at times have been extra-planetary, but it was scarcely otherworldly.
The life-long Mormon has faced distrust from some evangelical Christians who claim Mormonism is a cult.
All of which leads to the inevitable question: To what degree is Mormonism responsible for Mitt Romney?
Some evangelical Christians, a core voting group in the Republican Party, consider Mormonism to be a cult.
For American Protestantism, Mormonism was the other: you defined yourself against those nuts.
The major newspapers have recently carried election primers on the role of Mormonism and evangelical Christianity in the election.
Yet in practical matters Mormonism seems well adapted to the modern world, for Mormons are, by many measures, disproportionately successful.
There's also the family as the basis of society "not unique to Mormonism but distinctively sharp in Mormonism, " Barlow says.
But these eccentric triumphs have been largely hushed, and Mormonism now emphasizes its congruence with conventional Christianity rather than its differences.
But the idea was abhorrent to all denominations until the 19th century, when the new American religion of Mormonism adopted it.
Mormonism makes many other claims that seem ambitious in the modern world.
Mormonism the only global religion to have been invented in the past 200 years is in some ways more business-friendly than its more ancient rivals.
"There will be a number of Republican evangelicals who stay home because of Romney's Mormonism, " said Clyde Wilcox, a government professor at Georgetown University.
One has a strong sense, reading the literature, of a contemporary Mormonism that has deliberately placed its most distinctive doctrines and icons in eclipse.
That it tackled the issue of Mormonism only made the story that much more interesting, delving into what is a fascinating, and often very dark, history.
Mormonism objects to making a big deal of the morbid agony of Jesus on the Cross at the expense of the more cheerful apparition of Man-made-into-God.
As Fluhman shows in marvellous detail, Mormonism was the great scandal of American nineteenth-century religion, somewhat as Scientology is today, though Mormons understandably dislike the comparison.
But other aspects of Mormonism have liberal, even socialist, elements.
Many Americans see Mormonism as a cult: in polls over the years a steady one in four say they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon as president.
If both the more pious Mr Romney and the more secular Mr Huntsman, who have been personal rivals in the past, run in the primaries, their Mormonism will become an issue again.
To his right are legions of social conservatives, evangelical Christians for the most part, who harbour deep suspicions about Mr Romney because of his Mormonism and his past flexibility over gay marriage and abortion.
Many do not think Mormonism is just another branch of Christianity - to them it is not Christian at all and a lot of them are reluctant to vote for a president who is not Christian.
Many evangelicals regard Mormonism as nothing more than a cult: and a cult, moreover, that is based not only on a false theology but also on a willingness to tamper with the inerrant word of God that is the Bible.
Te'o also provided details of just how devilish the hoax was how Kekua spoke to his mother about Mormonism, how he could hear a supposed ventilator when she was in her coma, even how she sought his checking account number so she could send him some money (he declined).
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