Joseph Smith Born Again Comes Through Covenants
Why We're Afraid of Mormons
BU-trained scholar says uninformed prejudice abounds
By their underwear ye shall know them.
A contempo USA Today story highlights how many Americans are "uninformed" virtually, and "wary" of, Mormonism, put off by such practices as the wearing of blessed undergarments as the sign of full fellowship in the church building. And even though the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced polygamy in the 1890s (with the exception of a militant sliver), some not-Mormons suspect that "fundamentalist groups were somehow hiding in manifestly sight within the fold of the church," says scholar Cristine Hutchison-Jones (GRS'xi).
In fact, she says, "no one has been more aggressive about prosecuting polygamists in this country in the 20th and 21st century than Mormons." As for that underwear thing, she notes that other religions invest sure garb with sacred significance. Facts aside, Mitt Romney's Mormonism has alarmed some conservative Christian voters pondering his run for president.
Hutchison-Jones, a Harvard University administrator, is not Mormon, merely an interest in religious intolerance led her to write her BU doctoral dissertation on "Reviling and Revering the Mormons: Defining American Values, 1890-2008." (Those years marked the official Mormon abandonment of polygamy and Mitt Romney'southward first run for president, respectively.) She began with the assumption that this would be some other American story of a minority'south absorption into, and credence by, the mainstream culture. To her surprise, she learned that Mormonism remains "actually problematic for a lot of people. The negative images of Mormons far outlasted my expectations." If voters' self-description can be trusted, things may not be so grim. A Pew Forum poll in July establish 81 percent maxim that they were comfy with, or indifferent to, Romney'southward faith.
BU Today spoke with Hutchison-Jones most what prejudice against Mormons says nigh us and the prospects for Romney's second bid for the White House.
BU Today: What do Americans in 2012 think of Mormons, and how much of what they think is accurate?
Hutchison-Jones: I think a lot of what Americans think they know nigh Mormonism is wrong. We recall of Sister Wives and Large Love [Television set shows about polygamous apostate Mormons]. At that place'southward been a strong theme in the final thirty years in popular representations of Mormons of Mormon violence against not-Mormons, pioneer violence. There was a film in 2007 called September Dawn, about the Mountain Meadows massacre in 1857 [the slaughter of a wagon train by Mormon militia]. It is very historically inaccurate. I have gotten calls from friends and family who grab it on HBO and say, "I learned so much from that flick."
Why do negative images of Mormons linger?
There are a couple of reasons. You had the rise of evangelical Christianity in politics, and for conservative Protestant Christians, Mormons are not Christians; Mormons are a cult. So y'all had an increase in the amount of anti-Mormon propaganda coming out of religious communities.
The other people who are uncomfortable with Mormons are socially and politically liberal Americans. Polls inquire, would you vote for a Mormon presidential candidate? People who cocky-identify as liberal have a tendency to say no. There'southward a trend to see Mormons equally a hegemony, as if they were en masse in thrall to church building leadership. The Moral Majority reached out to Mormons, and because of that association, liberals tend to see Mormons as off-limits. I had to get over some of that myself. That was the expectation I came into my research with. I headed off to the Mormon History Association national conference, and the group of scholars there are more often than not Mormon, and they are non in any kind of political lockstep. There's a wide diverseness of opinion.
With the Moral Majority, it seems Mormons were itch into bed politically with people who had a prejudice against them.
It's truthful. In the 1980s, the New York Times didn't know what to do with Orrin Hatch, who rode into the Senate as a bourgeois Republican Mormon. Then conservative Republicans proposed a schoolhouse prayer amendment to the Constitution. He said, "Admittedly not. I am role of a minority religion that has been abused, and I am not going to be party to telling anyone how they should or should not pray." Hatch famously went on to work with Ted Kennedy for federally funded children'due south health care. Mormons accept a very strong sense of the common good.
The guys who did South Park did Book of Mormon on Broadway.
I would argue, vulgarity bated, that they have one of the well-nigh sympathetic and understanding perspectives on Mormons of gimmicky representations. They never talk well-nigh polygamy, because they see it as ancient history, which it is.
If there is then much misperception, practise universities need to offer more course work on Mormonism?
Whatever faith-in-the-United states course that'south taught in the department of religion is going to embrace it. How well it's covered, that's another question. Mormonism usually gets a day. Whether or non you can justify an entire form, because they are less than ii percent of the U.South. population, might be a little hard. On the other hand, Jews are an extremely small minority, and every university worth its salt has some kind of Judaic studies. And Mormonism is growing by leaps and bounds. The last time I saw a syllabus for [College of Arts & Sciences religion professor] Steve Prothero'due south undergraduate form on religion in the United States, it included Jan Shipps' book on Mormonism. It isn't just a one-twenty-four hours passing thing. Information technology's reaching a point where it probably deserves some give-and-take in the context of world religion classes.
What practice Americans' views of Mormonism say nigh our ideals and values?
It boils downward to our sense of ourselves every bit a nation in which church and state are separate. I would argue that Americans aren't separating all organized religion from all politics. Nosotros're just non comfortable with groups that don't fit into a by and large moderate, Protestant mold. I've got a colleague who did his PhD on images of conservative Christians equally villains in Hollywood movie theatre. Y'all can almost certainly tell in whatsoever crime drama that if somebody quotes the Bible, you're subsequently going to find out that they're a psychopathic killer.
And we're nervous about groups who openly say the church should exist involved in our politics, whatever that church might be for that group. And Mormons wear their religion on their sleeve. The average Mormon spends something like twenty hours per week in activities at their local congregation. It's really the cadre and center of their community, and they are absolutely open up that their religion informs their social and political values. And Americans don't like that.
Do you recollect Romney might lose the ballot because of his religion?
I think if Romney loses, it's going to exist for a diverseness of reasons. And yes, Mormonism may be problematic for him going forward. Conservative voters might exist a little less enthusiastic most getting out the vote considering they're nervous that he's a Mormon, and they're the ones he needs. And you lot may find independents who notice his politics appealing, merely some of them might be put off past the association with Mormonism and the concern that Mormons are all conservatives.
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Source: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2012/afraid-of-mormons/
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