Mitt Romney Mormon

When the new Belmont meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (”Mormon” Church) burnt down, members of the community extending generous, helping hands.

At that time of the incident, Mitt Romney was the congregation’s leader or Bishop. He had been vacationing with his family at Cape Cod when he received word of the fire. He returned almost immediately. The Arlington Ward was meeting in the Cambridge building, and with school resuming in just a month, the student wards at Cambridge University would fill the Cambridge chapel to capacity. That meant his congregation would need to meet elsewhere while their new meetinghouse was being rebuilt.

The community of Belmont solved that problem in a tremendous outpouring of concern and love. Father Rodney Copp of St. Joseph’s parish extended his condolences and offered his school for the LDS ward to meet in.

Within days after the fire, Bishop Romney received letters from seven other churches in the town, also offering their buildings. The Board of Selectmen of Belmont offered the town hall. Other churches not only extended their sympathy but also held fundraisers to help with the reconstruction of the LDS meetinghouse.

‘So many people wanted to help,’ says Brother Romney. As a man of vision, he felt all those offers should not be turned away by the Belmont Ward. Seeing the good that could come from this disaster, he responded to all the ministers and pastors who had offered their buildings and looked at each building.

However, not every church had the twenty-one classrooms the ward needed. “While it would have been far more convenient to use just one building, we decided to use every building where the facilities were sufficient for our needs,” he recalled. It was very difficult to adapt the meetings to these non-LDS meetinghouses, but Bishop Romney wanted the people in Belmont to get to know his ward members and accept them as friends.

Not only had the parking lot dispute caused some bad feelings among the townspeople, but according to Brother Romney, there had been hints ‘that we weren’t wanted. Some people in Belmont thought of Latter-day Saints as bizarre, and we were not part of the church community.’

During the nine months of reconstruction, the Belmont Ward met in the town hall for one fast meeting, in the Catholic school for three months, then in the Protestant Armenian Church meetinghouse, and finally in the Congregational Church. Connie Eddington, who has lived in Belmont for several years, says, ‘It gave us a different feeling to hold church elsewhere. When we were in the Catholic school, my feelings immediately changed toward every Catholic I knew. Every time I would see one of my Catholic neighbors, I would tell him or her that we enjoyed meeting in their church. I really wanted to thank them for their kindness to us.’

But most of all, Bishop Romney feels that the members of his ward learned about other faiths and the goodness of people. “They, in turn, learned about us,” he adds. Although he didn’t feel there was a lot of antagonism toward the Church in the town, he does feel that there was a good deal of ‘benign neglect. We weren’t considered part of the church community,’ he says. ‘Now the ward is part of the Belmont Church Council, which is an organization to further religious purposes. It has no ecumenical ambitions.’

No one in the Belmont Ward could have anticipated the great blessings the fire would bring. Although costly and inconvenient, the disaster increased community awareness of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Belmont and also served to foster feelings of love and concern toward Latter-day Saints. As one Belmont Ward member points out, “There is no question that it brought the ward closer together, and deepened our feelings of love and appreciation for our neighbors (Janet Peterson, Ensign, April, 1986, p. 21).