On the day of Mitt Romney's make-or-break speech regarding his Mormon faith, Americans would do well to consult the New Republic for background reading. Over the past year, the magazine in print and on its web site has explored in detail the implications - real or imagined - of Romney's faith on his campaign and potential presidency. How fortunate, then, that one of TNR's more controversial pieces was restored to its web site just as Romney prepared to take the stage in Texas.
Back in January, the New Republic featured two sharply contrasting assessments of the impact the Church of Latter Days Saints would have on a Romney presidency. In the January 15th issue, Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, argued in "The Big Test: Taking Mormonism Seriously" that with its emphasis on prophecy Mormonism is "a theologically unstable, and thus politically perilous, religion." Two weeks later on January 29th, Richard Lyman Bushman vehemently disagreed in his article "Mormon President? No Problem.; Have Faith." Linker's logic, he argued, "has no grounding in reality."
Their sharp disagreement centered on Linker's assertion that:

In the case of Mitt Romney, citizens have every reason to seek clarification about the character of his Mormonism. Does he believe, for example, that we are living through the "latter days" of human history, just prior to the second coming of Christ? And does he think that, when the Lord returns, he will rule over the world from the territory of the United States? Does Romney believe that the president of the Mormon Church is a genuine prophet of God? If so, how would he respond to a command from this prophet on matters of public policy? And, if his faith would require him to follow this hypothetical command, would it not be accurate to say that, under a President Romney, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints would truly be in charge of the country--with its leadership having final say on matters of right and wrong?

But until yesterday, New Republic readers would have been at a loss to decide for themselves. Back in mid-November, I discovered that the Linker article was missing from the TNR web site and the contents of the January 15 issue it appeared in absent altogether from the New Republic archives. (The link from Linker's own web site takes you to a page with an error message, "We are sorry, but the page you requested cannot be displayed.")
Mercifully, there is less here than meets the eye. As I learned in email exchanges with New Republic staff, the culprit here was not a sinister effort to purge content critical of Mitt Romney and his LDS Church, but instead attributable to the more mundane pitfalls of web site revision and maintenance. "We have had lots of trouble with data and articles from before the redesign disappearing," they wrote, adding "preumably the Jan. 15 issue disappeared with lots of other old material when we relaunched the website." (The TNR staff was very helpful in quickly providing me both the text and hard copy of that issue.)
To coincide with today's address by Romney, it's clear that the folks at the New Republic showed "The Big Test" some big love. The TNR home page today features an item titled "TNR Flashback: Why Mitt's Mormonism Matters." The ensuing page includes a link to a PDF file of Damon Linker's article. (The January 15 issue still appears to be missing from the site.)
So as the post-mortem debate on Romney's speech intensifies, be sure to visit the New Republic. In addition to its January tete-a-tete between Linker and Bushman, Jonathan Chait argues in "Pray Tell" that while there are plenty of reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney, his faith should not be one of them. In "Latter Day Skeptics", Josh Patashnik describes growing concerns among LDS members that Romney is opportunistically blurring the distinctions between other mainline Christian faiths and their own. And just a couple of days ago, Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg agreed that Romney was bound to fail among faith-based GOP primary voters if he merely tried to reprise John Kennedy's 1960 effort to defuse the "religion issue."
UPDATE: The video and text of Romney's "Faith in America" address are now available.