"Religion Dispatches" calls Garry Wills's understanding of Mormonism wrong

Joanna Brooks, named one of “50 Politicos to Watch,” is the author of The Book of Mormon Girl: Stories from an American Faith and a senior correspondent for Religion Dispatches.

Yesterday at the New York Review of Books, Garry Wills used his recollections of a decades-old dialogue with a Mormon college student to raise concerns about the way a President Mitt Romney might regard, interpret, and apply the US Constitution.

According to Wills, an 18-year-old Mormon student once told him that:

“Like his fellow Mormons, he held that the Declaration of Independence is divinely inspired—in that sense, it is part of Mormon Scripture.”

Except for the fact that it really isn’t part of Mormon scripture, either in doctrine or practice....

It’s a ... problem when journalists misconstrue Mormon doctrine in the service of political critique, as did Wills. Yes, Mormon leaders have taught that the Constitution was “divinely inspired,” and many Mormons believe it. But that belief is not really a point of doctrine. Neither the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence are Mormon scripture. Not to millions of Mormons who live in the US, and certainly not to the millions of Mormons who live in other nations around the globe....