Mormons have been called many things in the past 177 years: cultists, non-Christians, libertines. But even the vilest critics gave members credit for believing in God.

That is, until last week. That's when the LDS Church found itself in the political sights of Rev. Al Sharpton.

During a debate in New York with author Christopher Hutchens, Sharpton, a self-anointed civil rights champion, said that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney wasn't going to win the 2008 presidential election Sharpton said: "As for the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in God will defeat him anyway, so don't worry about that."

Romney responded by calling the comment "terribly misguided" and "bigoted." Sharpton has since offered a weak apology on CNN's Glen Beck show (Beck is also a Mormon) and by phone to LDS Church elders Russell M. Nelson and Henry B. Eyring of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

"If my words could be construed in any way that would hurt a regular Mormon, I apologize for them," Sharpton said on Beck's show. "The politics with Mitt Romney is a different thing."

So much for contrition.

Coming less than a month after Sharpton's verbal flogging of shock jock Don Imus for making racial remarks about the Rutgers University women's basketball team, the lame reversal shows his hypocrisy. The reverend, who frequently straddles the line between religion and politics and leaves tracks on both sides, must have overlooked the passage in the Bible that says one should be judged by the same standard he uses on others.

The suggestion that Mormons do not believe in God is, of course, absurd. Even many evangelical Christians who like to say that Mormons are not Christians will concede that Mormons believe in God.

What is particularly baffling in debates over the nature of God is that nobody has any greater claim to knowledge than anybody else -- at least in the external world. Differing concepts of God take discussion into supernatural realms, where virtually anything is possible. Truly religious people, therefore, should treat one another gently so as not to trample on tender personal feelings.

But then, anyone who has followed Sharpton's career realizes that he never lets circumspection, logic or even common decency get in the way of his quest for publicity. Remember, he was the family "adviser" for Tawana Brawley when she falsely accused police officers and a prosecutor of raping her in 1987. His antics, which included comparing some New York officials to Adolf Hitler, prolonged the case and the agony of the falsely accused for almost a year until a grand jury found no evidence to support a rape charge.

Sharpton has never truly apologized for that bit of defamation. Perhaps the Mormons should count themselves lucky that they got any form of a mea culpa out of him.

Sharpton's comments have raised national awareness and created public sympathy for both Romney and Mormons. At the same time the man has destroyed whatever microscopic scrap of credibility he had left.