There aren’t many churches left that let you interview their apostles. There are even fewer whose apostles will tell you in one breath that they’re descended via an unbroken line of ordinations from Jesus Christ, and in the next that “our greatest challenge is to manage our growth”.

That’s what Elder Jeffrey Holland told me in his Salt Lake City office (who said apostles can’t have offices?) a long time ago. We met before a series of embarrassing polygamy trials involving fringe Mormons took some of the shine off the mainstream Church’s image, but Elder Holland’s optimism and openness stayed with me, and now it’s time to give a little back.

The Mormons know how to run a religion. Of all the splinter groups that have tried to update Christianity in the past 2,000 years, they’ve done by far the most effective job. They’re clean-living, hard-working, fast-growing, open to criticism, up for reform and unbelievably well organised.

On these grounds alone I’d be inclined to cut Mitt Romney, the Mormon presidential candidate, some serious electoral slack. To judge by Romney’s current poll lead among Republicans in states with early primaries, plenty of voters agree. But he is very far from a shoo-in for his party’s nomination, partly because of what Mormons actually believe.

As outlined in his interview with this newspaper yesterday, Mormons believe that in 1820 a 14-year-old boy named Joseph Smith was visited by both God the Father and Jesus in upstate New York; that three years later an angel called Moroni told him about a new gospel written on gold plates and hidden in a nearby hill; and that in 1827 Smith found and translated the plates to produce the Book of Mormon. They also believe you can be converted to Mormonism after death. Mr Romney has refused to disavow any of his faith, and some of his rivals have sought to undermine him on the basis that this faith is somehow weird.

It is. So’s this: “He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell. On the third day He rose again. He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”

“Mainstream” Christianity turns the two most preposterous ideas imaginable – conception without gametes and resurrection from the dead – into planks of its theology and has the nerve to taunt Mormons about adding gold plates into the mix. By simple assertion it anoints the Holy Land as the Holy Land and mocks Mormons for finding parts of Utah and Missouri just as holy. Through sheer hypocrisy it lectures Mormons on the evils of polygamy, discounting the Crusades and the Inquisition as earthly aberrations.

All faith is weird. So leave it out of politics.

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