MY FAVOURITE sentence from last week's leader on Mitt Romney concerns the difficulty presented by his religion, Mormonism, which one in three Americans do not consider to be a branch of Christianity. As we say in the piece, there isn't much the candidate can do about this. "He could explain the Mormons' extraordinary missionary work, but he can hardly risk saying that it is not really any more incredible that God communicated His plans to man in upstate New York in 1820 than He did in Palestine in 0AD."

I was reminded of that sentence when reading Sam Harris's advice for Mr Romney. Mr Harris says that in order to appease Republicans, 60% of whom believe God created humans 10,000 years ago, he ought to say the following:

I believe what you believe. Your God is my God. I believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and the Son of God, crucified for our sins, and resurrected for our salvation. And I believe that He will return to earth to judge the living and the dead. But my Church offers a further revelation: We believe that when Jesus Christ returns to earth, He will return, not to Jerusalem, or to Baghdad, but to this great nation—and His first stop will be Jackson County, Missouri. The LDS Church teaches that the Garden of Eden itself was in Missouri! Friends, it is a marvelous vision. Some Christians profess not to like this teaching. But I ask you, where would you rather the Garden of Eden be, in the great state of Missouri or in some hellhole in the Middle East?

Mr Harris is being silly, of course, though he is accurately portraying Mormon beliefs. Prior to this bit, he has Mr Romney explaining to Republicans the teachings of his church, how they were derived "directly from the prophetic experience of its founder, Joseph Smith Jr., who by the aid of sacred seer stones, the Urim and Thummim, was able to decipher the final revelations of God which were written in reformed Egyptian upon a set golden plates revealed to him by the angel Moroni." To most non-Mormons, such events sound wholly unbelievable, just as few believe the Garden of Eden was actually located in Jackson County. It is odd, though, that many who find such stories bizarre, have little trouble believing in older tales involving magical fruit and talking serpents.

I was recently in Salt Lake City and walked around the pristine headquarters of the Mormon church. The iconography is a bit jarring at first: sculptures and paintings of men in relatively modern clothes being visited by angels. But if you put some robes on these fellows, and perhaps gave them beards, they wouldn't seem out of place in a Christian church. Which isn't to say that the doctrinal divide between Christianity and Mormonism isn't real. The point, rather, is that to perceive ridiculousness in any of these religions is to perceive ridiculousness in them all. There is enough magic and mythology in most of our pious beliefs that any believer must feel reluctant to throw stones.

Like most religions, Mormonism has other issues that invite derision, such as its history of polygamy and institutional racism. But its greatest vulnerability may simply be that it is relatively young, so has not yet become established in America's religious pantheon, and that it came of being at a time when good records were kept, which means we are better able to scrutinise its origins. Nevertheless, the divinely-inspired events of two centuries ago are hardly less believable (or unbelievable) than those that preceded them by some two millennia.

The good news for Mitt Romney is that none of this will matter if he wins the Republican nomination. Such is the level of disdain for the current president among religious-minded voters that they will eventually rally around the Republican nominee, even if he turns out to be a "non-Christian". In a Pew poll from December, 91% of white evangelical Republican voters said they would support Mr Romney, and 79% said they would support him "strongly". For them, it's hardly a choice: elect the guy who wants to be in their Christian club, or re-elect the man who some of them have called the anti-Christ.