Hello, my name is FaithAndReason, and I'm a recovering Mormon.
Part 1: | Ask A Mormon Anything -- what I am and why you should care |
Part 2: | why Mormons support the GOP so strongly, and what you can do to change that |
Part 3: | Mormons and gay marriage |
Mormons (officially, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) are the most reliably Republican demographic in the United States: Mormons voted 88% for Bush in 2000. Utah and Idaho, with their predominantly Mormon populations, remain the only states where Bush's approval rating is even close to net positive.
If we could understand why Mormons support the GOP so strongly, we could go a long way to reducing the stranglehold that the GOP still has on so many that identify themselves as Christians.
Now, I'm not here to support or condemn any of my fellow Churchmembers' attitudes or beliefs. (It's a fundamental principle of the Church that every person is responsible for their own actions.) I can't speak for anybody else. So, since I don't support the GOP, I can only conjecture as to others' motivations. Here are my conjectures, in order from least likely to most likely:
Conjecture #1: Mormons are just racists.
It is true that until 1978, the Church was effectively segregated. And it is also true that many Mormons switched from (D) to (R) during the late '60s and Nixon's "Southern Strategy". But there was a lot more going on in politics at the time, with the Democratic Party also supporting abortion, feminism and other policies Mormons viewed as "anti-family."
Besides, that does little to predict racism today. Since 1978, membership growth has been predominantly in areas of the world we might term "Native American" or "Hispanic" -- Central and South America, the Philippines and the Pacific Islands -- to the extent that less than half the Church membership is in the US, and less than half of that is in Utah. There are blacks and Hispanics at the highest levels of the Church hierarchy.
Surely, much of the overt racism has been muted by changing demographics.
Also, those States where racist attitudes would seem most likely to flourish, namely the states of the Old Confederacy, have by far the lowest number of Mormons. (Of course, Mormons are even less welcome there than progressives -- the Southern Baptists, for example, are actively hostile to the Church. They must think we're all Satanists, like those Disney folks.)
So, based on these observations and my own personal experience, I'd say that the percentage of those who support the GOP out of racist impulses is about the same percentage as the general population, namely about 20%.
RESPONSE: shame them. Let them know that their attitudes are unacceptable, regardless of what bogus theological justifications they may bring to bear. For Mormons, like most true believers, guilt can be a powerful motivator. Also, this is mostly a generational attitude problem; we'll have to wait until they die off.
Even if 20% are (currently) a lost cause, that still leaves nearly 70% that may yet see the light. What do they want?
Conjecture #2: Mormons want the Party Of Small Government.
The antipathy between the Mormon Church and the Federal government is legendary. Every Mormon youth is taught how the government failed to protect the first Mormon converts, then turned actively hostile. They hear the story of how the US Government effectively destroyed the Church in 1890, seizing all its assets and revoking its charter, all over an issue (polygamy) which we characterize as a matter of personal religious choice.
The Church's basic tenets (aka "the Gospel") are about as libertarian as imaginable. (Joseph Smith described his governing philosophy as "I teach them correct principles, and let them govern themselves.) So it should be little surprise that we would support the party that professes to be the party of "hands-off" government. However, politically this doesn't jibe with the fact that most Mormons supported Democrats in the 40's and 50's when it was the "party of FDR" and the GOP was the "party of Lincoln." More importantly, it doesn't explain why rich, supposedly self-sufficient Utah has such a high percentage of people on public assistance, comparable to much poorer Alabama. To understand this, you have to understand the phrase "starve the beast."
Starving the Beast does not refer to reducing the size of government so that it can be less tyrannical and more responsive; it refers to destroying the government. When Norquist talks about "drowning [government] in the bathtub", do you really think he's talking about producing a kindler, gentler government?? No, quite the opposite, because government is the enemy. A fundamentalist worldview is necessarily Manichaean, recognizing only absolute good and absolute evil; so "government" plays the role of absolute evil. You won't gain much by telling a Mormon how the GOP is destroying Medicare, or Social Security, or education; those are all things they want to happen.
RESPONSE: scare them. Talk to them about how the Bush Administration is supporting policies that specifically harm them, and do it in the most apocalyptic terms possible. (We love apocalypses.) Don't say "Medicare is underfunded and spending is out of control"; say, "Medicare Part D is the result of secret negotiations with the drug companies to raise prices and prevent competition." Point out that every single time the Bush Administration has made a choice on energy policy, they have made the choice that was most likely to raise gasoline prices. Every. Single. Time. That's more than a coincidence, that's a conspiracy. (We love conspiracies.)
Still, that only tells us how to drive a wedge between LDS and GOP. How can we welcome Mormons into our Big Tent?
Conjecture #3: Mormons want somebody who speaks their language.
Mormons have a very distinctive theology, and with that comes a distinctive vocabulary. We instinctively trust someone who shares (or at least understands) that vocabulary, and instinctively distrust anyone who seems uncomfortable with it (I'm talking to you, John Kerry.) I tried to give at least a flavor of it with my previous diary, but suffice it to say that if you're familiar with a Pentacostal-type Christianity, you'll find most of it easily recognizable. (Except for some reason we use the words "witness" and "testimony" in exactly the opposite manner: we say we "have" a testimony and "share" a witness, while most Southern Baptists and/or lawyers would say that you "have" a witness that "shares" a testimony. Go figure. That, and instead of "Holy Spirit" we always say "Holy Ghost", which cracks me up and confuses my kids.)
Now, this matter of vocabulary seems a petty matter of pride, but we underestimate the power of vocabulary at our own peril. As George Orwell documented in detail, vocabulary precedes thought, and absence of vocabulary precludes feeling. If we don't have the words at our disposal, we are unable to think the associated thoughts and feel the associated feelings. Malcolm Gladwell also documented this relationship in his book Blink: there are distinctions that we are literally incapable of perceiving unless we have a sufficiently large and precise vocabulary. So if we are unable to use the vocabulary of faith, Mormons can reasonably conclude that we lack the experience of faith.
RESPONSE: share with them. Let them know how you feel, and how those feelings flow from your core beliefs. Don't be ashamed to use phrases like "I feel inspired" or "I know in my heart" or "I act out of the courage of my convictions." Tell them how those feelings motivate you to act morally, and to seek political responses that reflect those moral values. If that sounds silly to you, practice those phrases in front of a mirror; you'll get more comfortable with it, and I'll bet you'll feel a lot happier too. And it works if you're a Mormon, a Jew, a Wiccan or an agnostic.
"This little light of mine, I'm-a gonna let it shine... Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!"