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Mitt Romney, the Mormon who has seen his White House hopes fade in recent weeks, will stake his political future on a John F. Kennedy-style speech tackling the issue of his faith.

The Republican presidental candidate acknowledged tacitly yesterday that the speech had become necessary because of fears about his religion among evangelical voters in the crucial early state of Iowa.

A weekend survey of Iowan voters, who kick off the nominating process on January 3, suggested that Mike Huckabee, who portrayed himself as an “authentic” Christian conservative, had surged five points ahead of Mr Romney in the Republican race.

Mr Romney’s speech represents an enormous gamble in the late stages of a contest in which the Democrat front-runner, Hillary Clinton, is also hastily rethinking a suddenly troubled campaign strategy.

In an interview with a local radio station yesterday, Mr Romney said: “Particularly in a state like Iowa, there’s been interest in religion generally, and I think religion does have a very important role in our society, and therefore it’s important to talk about our religious heritage.”

The speech, entitled Faith in America, will be delivered at the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas on Thursday. Mr Romney will discuss “how my own values and my own faith will inform my thinking”.

For months his campaign has been wrestling with the question of whether – or how – to address concerns about his religion. Surveys show that 28 per cent of voters say that they are less likely to vote for a Mormon.

Christian conservatives often brand the Church of the Latter-Day Saints a cult because the 19th-century “revelations” of the Book of Mormon are given equal status with the New Testament. On Sunday Mr Huckabee, a Baptist minister, pointedly refused to say if his rival was a Christian. “Mitt Romney has to answer that,” he said. “It’s not for me to determine.”

In an interview with The Times earlier this year Mr Romney was asked if he believed the Mormon doctrine that Jesus Christ came to America and will one day return to rule the world from Jackson County, Missouri. “I’m not going to separate myself from my faith,” he replied, “I accept the doctrines of my Church and do my best to live by them.”

Mr Romney even discussed the pitfalls of advocating, as Kennedy did in 1960, a strict separation of Church and State when so many conservative Republicans wanted a bigger role for religion in public life. “I’m not sure I would be wise to repeat his line. I would have to update the principles,” he said. His speech would declare that “you don’t impose the doctrines of your religion on anyone but perhaps yourself”.

Although as recently as last month Mr Romney’s advisors were telling him that a big speech on the subject would be a mistake because it would “draw too much attention” to his religion, they were forced to think again amid reports of anonymous, anti-Mormon phone calls to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Mr Huckabee’s rise has thrown the battle wide open, with a Rasmussen poll yesterday put him in second place nationally – only 3 per cent behind Rudy Giuliani – and showing Mr Romney trailing in fifth place.

The race for the Democratic nomination has also become significantly closer with polls showing a resurgent Barack Obama leading Mrs Clinton in Iowa and closing in on her in New Hampshire. The front-runner has responded with personal attacks on Mr Obama, only weeks after she criticised rivals for throwing mud at her.

“There’s a big difference between our courage and our conviction,” Mrs Clinton said. Voters in Iowa, she added, would have a choice “between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who’s walked the walk”. She added: “Now the fun part starts. We’re into the last month and we’re going to start drawing a contrast.”

Asked if she was raising questions about Mr Obama’s character, she replied: “It’s beginning to look a lot like that. It really is.”

The Obama campaign hit back, saying that she was becoming desperate and unveiling a website called Hillary Attacks, which details every criticism Mrs Clinton has made in recent days.

JFK and the Catholic question

John F. Kennedy became America’s first Catholic president after delivering a speech in Houston on September 12, 1960, promising to uphold a strict – even absolute – separation of Church and State. “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic,” he said. In his America, “no Catholic prelate would tell the president how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote”

Source: Times archives

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