Mormonism No Longer a Cult

[Atlanta Dan]

Thank God the religous right is one group we can count on that will not enagage in moral relativism and abandon bedrock principles for short term political gain :sofunny:

Evangelicals have been handed one more hint that it’s all right to vote for Mitt Romney, whose Mormon faith has long been considered beyond the pale of American Protestantism.

From the Charlotte Observer:
This week, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association removed Mormonism from its list of religious cults.
The reclassification follows Romney’s visit to Graham’s mountain home last Thursday, a meeting that also included Graham’s son Franklin, who now runs the association for his 93-year-old father….

An article on the Graham website had classified Mormons, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Unification Church, Unitarians, Spiritists and Scientologists, among others, as cults.

“Our primary focus at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has always been promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” Ken Barun, the evangelical association’s chief of staff, said in a prepared statement. “We removed the ( cult) information from the website because we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign.”

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2012/10/18/billy-graham-group-removes-mormonism-from-list-of-cults/

No explanation of course as to why the Graham Association started the "debate" by classifying Mormonism as a cult

[Vincent]

“I’ll do all I can to help you.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/after-romney-meeting-billy-graham-website-scrubs-mormoncult-reference/2012/10/16/fa4ce826-17d1-11e2-a346-f24efc680b8d_story.html)

Translation: Mormon is preferable to musloid.

Americans agree 52-45 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/157817/election-2012-likely-voters-trial-heat-obama-romney.aspx).

[Atlanta Dan]

Americans agree 52-45 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/157817/election-2012-likely-voters-trial-heat-obama-romney.aspx).

I guess it depends which Americans you poll:noidea:

Gallup vs. the World

The Gallup national tracking poll now shows a very strong lead for Mitt Romney. As of Wednesday, he was ahead by six points among likely voters. Mr. Romney’s advantage grew further, to seven points, when Gallup updated its numbers on Thursday afternoon....

However, its results are deeply inconsistent with the results that other polling firms are showing in the presidential race, and the Gallup poll has a history of performing very poorly when that is the case....


Usually, when a poll is an outlier relative to the consensus, its results turn out badly.

You do not need to look any further than Gallup’s track record over the past two election cycles to find a demonstration of this.

In 2008, the Gallup poll put Mr. Obama 11 points ahead of John McCain on the eve of that November’s election.

That was tied for Mr. Obama’s largest projected margin of victory among any of the 15 or so national polls that were released just in advance of the election. The average of polls put Mr. Obama up by about seven points.

The average did a good job; Mr. Obama won the popular vote by seven points. The Gallup poll had a four-point miss, however.

In 2010, Gallup put Republicans ahead by 15 points on the national Congressional ballot, higher than other polling firms, which put Republicans an average of eight or nine points ahead instead.

In fact, Republicans won the popular vote for the United States House by about seven percentage points — fairly close to the average of polls, but representing another big miss for Gallup.

Apart from Gallup’s final poll not having been especially accurate in recent years, it has often been a wild ride to get there. Their polls, for whatever reason, have often found implausibly large swings in the race.

In 2000, for example, Gallup had George W. Bush 16 points ahead among likely voters in polling it conducted in early August. By Sept. 20, about six weeks later, they had Al Gore up by 10 points instead: a 26-point swing toward Mr. Gore over the course of a month and a half. No other polling firm showed a swing remotely that large.

Then in October 2000, Gallup showed a 14-point swing toward Mr. Bush over the course of a few days, and had him ahead by 13 points on Oct. 27 — just 10 days before an election that ended in a virtual tie....

It’s much more likely that Gallup is wrong and everyone else is right than the other way around.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/gallup-vs-the-world/?hp