I've read here that most people think with sources like the internet, it will be harder to win over new converts. But I wonder, just bare with me- if Mormons still traditionally have multiple children, and if one major(?) political factor, Mitt Romney, rises to the surface again, don't you think its possible that the church could continue to grow exponentially?

If Mitt becomes President, LDS would be considered a trendy faith to be and Mitt may convince many Arab countries and Mainland China to allow missionaries. Therefore, within 10 years of Mitt's Presidency, LDS could reach 100 million members by 2030 maybe.

What it has experienced is normal, rather limited growth as one would find in other organizations, with the exception that the LDS church does not care about the lives or whereabouts of people once they have been baptized. All the emphasis is merely on the baptism numbers themselves, and except for the potential income they bring to the church, the rest really is unimportant.

If he were to get the Rep. nomination it would bring MUCH closer scrutiny of the Cult. This is ALWAYS bad for them because they have so much to hide, and to anyone who is NOT brainwashed, when they hear the truth about the Cult of Mormonism, they are inevitably appalled and disgusted. Also, the hard Right Evangelicals HATE Mormons, and will fight a Mormon Candidate like they would a Muslim.

...that when Jack Kennedy was running for president, many people were fearful that he would be unduly influenced by the Pope in terms of his decision making. It put the Catholic church under heavy scrutiny. Ultimately, people were willing to take a chance with him. But in that respect alone, his election was ground-breaking.

Ask the average person about Mormonism, and I'm willing to bet the first associated concept that springs to mind is polygamy. After that, maybe the Osmonds if you're a baby boomer. Perhaps Utah. That's probably about it.

If Mitt gets the nomination, tons of people will be running the word "Mormon" through their search engines. Sites such as this one will come up readily. My opinion is that the concept that Mormons can one day progress to become gods will leave many other Christians slack-jawed. In fact, rightly or wrongly, many Christians will no longer consider Mormons to be Christian for that one reason alone. God and Jesus are separate beings having glorified, physical bodies? That will leave a bad taste in a lot of mouths. God lives on or near Kolob? That will put the Mormons in the same league as Scientology in many voters' minds.

I'm not saying that it's completely insurmountable, but it will be very, very difficult.

I agree with Sonoma, the cult will be under a microscope and not fare well.

Interesting thank you for your responses. I wonder what pressures Mitt feels- if he feels pressure to be symbol for the church and put himself out there- or if he has pressure from the church not to run because they FEAR scrutiny?

I would tend to think Mitt Romney becoming President would be bad for the Morg. There are too many skeletons in the Morg closet.

Right now, the general public could care less about the Morg and have little interest in it. So when the Morgbots can find "investigators" for the Morg, typically these people don't know much about Mormonism and the Morgbots can carefully nurture them and feed them the info they want the investigator to have and shield them from the ugly truth.

If Mitt becomes president, then the whole country, including journalists, will become fascinated with the religion and the Morg and its Morgbots won't be able to control the flow of information. The public will start doing research on the religion and, thanks in large part to the internet, discover all kinds of crazy shit about Mormonism that the Morg doesn't want people to know. The media will have a field day finding all the dirt on Mormonism and Mormonism will look even kookier than the Scientologists. People would get exposed to the wackiness before the missionaries can get their claws into them.