LYNCHBURG, Va. — When it came to evangelicals in this year's primaries, Mitt Romney was most often the rejected suitor — struggling to overcome suspicions about his authenticity as a conservative and his Mormon faith.

On Saturday at the evangelical university founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Romney tried to tackle those lingering misgivings as the presumed Republican nominee — by delivering a speech that delved deep into his faith and by urging about 30,000 in the audience at Liberty University to look beyond their differences with his religion.