Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets Thomas and Patricia Evans, of St. Mary's, Ga., during a campaign event at Flagler college, Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, in St. Augustine, Fla.
Mary Altaffer, AP
Philip Barlow talks to a lot of reporters these days about events of 25 years ago.
Back then Barlow was a graduate student at the Harvard Divinity School who worked closely with Mitt Romney. Barlow was one of two counselors to Romney when he was a bishop for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Boston area in the 1980s.
As Romney begins to open up a bit about his faith heading into the Republican National Convention this week, Barlow, now a religious studies professor at Utah State University, is a suddenly hot commodity in news outlets from the AP and ABC to the Washington Post.
Journalists are tripping over each other to report many of the same anecdotes of Romney's days as a bishop leading a congregation, or as a stake president overseeing several congregations, or as a home teacher visiting the homes of members assigned to him by his bishop. One widely repeated anecdote relates how Romney visited the home of a church member and climbed up on a ladder to help clear away a nasty hornets' nest.
The same way many want to know what kind of manager he was at Bain Capital or of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, many are interested in Romney's time as a Mormon leader. The anecdotes often miss the broader context of Romney's church service, a context that helped shape him as he evolved as a church leader.
Mormon congregations are often referred to not just as wards, but as close-knit "ward families" where 200-600 church members watch out for each other, serve each other and — like real families — occasionally get on each other's nerves.
Leadership as a bishop in an LDS ward, where the usual human frailties and even personality conflicts are evident — does not center on fine theological issues, Barlow said.
"A Bishop Romney, like a Bishop Anybody, is all about hands-on involvement in the lives of the people, when people come to him with broken hearts about the death of their daughter, or a diagnosis of cancer, job loss or threats to the marriage."
Bishop Romney
Romney served as Mormon bishop from 1981-86, during the same period he left Bain & Company to launch the private equity investment firm Bain Capital. He typically spent 15-30 hours a week, without pay, organizing and leading the ward and counseling ward members.
Romney, Barlow said, "had a brilliant mind, but as a bishop it had a practical bent in serving people, solving practical problems and human relations."
