Evangelical social activist and minister Tony Campolo was a guest on The Paul Edwards Program on Thursday, August 23. I  asked him if the Democratic candidates for president in this election cycle had conveniently, and purely for political expediency, discovered that a candidate’s religious faith is a vote getter, to which he replied in part:

I think that both parties can be criticized, and should be criticized. It will be easy for evangelicals to criticize the Democrats. But it’s going to be hard for them this year when the only candidate that they have running for the presidency that has only one wife is a Mormon. I mean, you’ve got to find a bit of humor in that! So both parties are up for scrutiny and need to be judged.

Tony Campolo finds humor in the fact that Mitt Romney - a Mormon - has only one wife? The audio of my question and Dr. Campolo’s response is here. I was up against a hard break and didn’t respond to Campolo’s obvious overture reinforcing the stereotype about Mormons and polygamy, but you hear my shocked laughter, not at what he was saying as much as that he said it. Was this a backhanded slap at Mitt Romney’s faith? Is Mitt Romney the only candidate whose faith is fair game in this campaign simply because it is perceived as out of the mainstream of religious practice?

It’s interesting that Dr. Campolo said that evangelicals - not Republicans - have only one candidate who is running for president who has only one wife. To set the record straight, Mitt Romney is not the only never divorced candidate running for president evangelicals might endorse. Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and a Southern Baptist minister, has also never been divorced.