After Mitt Romney suspended his presidential campaign Thursday, in a speech praising conservative values and criticizing such scourges as liberal judges and France, the question became:

So, was it good for the Mormons?

Jews asked that question after Joe Lieberman ran for vice president in 2000, and it was never quite resolved.

"Mormons were chased out of the Midwest in the 1840s, and ever since then they've been looking to America for approval," says Bengt Washburn, a Mormon who is also a full-time comedian. Washburn says Mormons he knows will constantly list examples of mainstream Mormons, such as Gladys Knight, Steve Young — even Donny and Marie.

It's as if to say, "'See? Mormons aren't weird,'" Washburn says. "Well, yeah, we're weird." But here's the thing, the comedian adds: "All theology standing next to logic is weird."

Some say Romney's mistake is that he tried to make his religion sound palatable to evangelical ears, that he didn't just say that his beliefs may sound incredible to outsiders, but then again, a lot of the doings in Bible stories sound incredible to outsiders.

As historian Jan Shipps points out, Mormonism is a young faith. The earliest Christians were reviled, too. But politics doesn't permit that sort of honesty any more than it allows a candidate to say, "My faith is private, OK?"

Mormonism is in many ways the epitome of what was considered normalcy, back before the '60s upended the definition. Romney's teetotaling ways and his corporate demeanor broadcast health, uprightness, a life spent on the straight-'n'-narrow. His campaign put out an ad at one point of Romney jogging. Every morning on the campaign trail, he ate the granola his wife made for him herself.

Two big things happened to elevate the face of Mormonism in the last decade. One was Romney running for president. The other was the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002, which Romney took credit for turning around. During the Olympics, the Mormons were "wonderfully gracious" to visitors, as Shipps says, and everyone thought, wow, these Mormons aren't so weird after all.

"The result of this was that a lot of the stereotypes about Mormonism, the negative stereotypes — that they were clannish, that they were secretive — that sort of disappeared," says Shipps, who is one of the foremost non-Mormon scholars of the denomination.

But with Romney's candidacy, the scrutiny was different.

"I know Mormons and members of the church that felt like it was a terrible thing that Romney was running because we opened ourselves up to criticism," says Joel Campbell, a Mormon who teaches journalism at Brigham Young University.

"It certainly opens the conversation, but whether the conversation will be a friendly one or a contentious one, I'm not sure," says Shipps. "I do think it alerted a lot of upper-middle-class, exceedingly successful Mormon lawyers and doctors ... to the reality that not everybody thinks being Mormon is great. If you grow up in the mountain West and you grow up in a Mormon community and you send your kids to church and all the kids are going to school where there's mostly Mormons and there's not a lot of drugs and there's not a lot of crime, everybody thinks, 'Oh, being Mormon is just so wonderful.' And to realize that this is a perception that is very provincial."

Some evangelical voters see Mormonism as something other than Christianity. Mike Huckabee, an evangelical and former pastor, was quoted as saying, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the Devil are brothers?"

All of this gives Mormons something to chew on for years to come.

As historian Jan Shipps points out, Mormonism is a young faith. The earliest Christians were reviled, too. But politics doesn't permit that sort of honesty any more than it allows a candidate to say, "My faith is private, OK?"