The Origins of the Mormon Moment; or, How to Generate Your Own Such Moment

Christopher Jones

As a follow-up to Paul's post last week on "the Mormon moment in scholarship," and in an attempt to answer the questions posed by Elesha and Curtis in the comments of that post, I'll simply point readers to a post today ("2011: The Year of the Mormon") over at the Mormon blog By Common Consent. Embedded within that post, which surveys a number of individuals, events, and trends in pop culture, politics, sports, and scholarship that kept Mormonism in the spotlight all year long, is what appears to me to be a basic (if slightly complicated) formula for those interested in generating a similar moment for their respective religious movement/scholarly-subject of study/etc. With a giant tip-of-the-hat to the fine folks at BCC, then, here is my formula:

1. Aim for an election year (preferably a presidential election), and ensure that at least two of the candidates are of the specific faith community. If they represent divergent approaches to said faith, and maintain a personal and/or political rivalry dating back several generations, even better.

2. Politicians alone, of course, cannot create such a moment. They need to be buttressed by likeable star athletes that inspire hip-hop songs and videos, rock/pop music sensations that publicly proclaim their faith without coming across too condescending or annoying and incorporate elements of the religion's founding theophany in their music videos, and television programs portraying the more controversial elements of the faith tradition. For scholars of religion, it is particularly important that these figures not only be members of the religion, but also that their respective talents can be explained by alluding to, for example, Thomas Aquinas's theory of scripture. Landing these public figures on the cover of several prominent national publications doesn't hurt, either. Oh yeah, and if the guys behind South Park create the Broadway hit of the year about the religious community, that's just icing on the cake.

3. While loads of publicity may generate a "moment" for the religion, they do not automatically lead to a corresponding "moment" for scholarship on the subject. The key there, of course, is to keep researching and writing. The sheer amount of scholarship focused on Mormons and Mormonism over the past year (or that forthcoming in 2012) really isn't all that unique---historians, sociologists, and others have been generating volumes and volumes of scholarship on the subject for decades now. The key here, as I see it, is that the younger generation of scholars---folks like Pat Mason, Matt Bowman, John Turner, and Spencer Fluhman---are building on the work of their predecessors but also more directly engaging trends in larger fields (American religious history, religious experience, religion and politics, etc.) and demonstrating what the Mormon experience uniquely reveals about those larger subjects, trends, etc. It also helps if the institutional church in question decides to take an active role in that scholarship by expanding and publishing archival collections.

Looking forward to 2012, Paul may be right in wondering if "another mainline moment in being born." But just to be sure, someone may want to put in a call to the South Park guys.

The Mormon Moment in Scholarship

Paul Harvey

Everyone is discussing the "Mormon moment" thanks to Romney and national politics, and Max Mueller's piece for Religion Dispatches discusses why non-expert pontificators feel free to pontificate on Mormonism's "weirdness" where they would do no such thing about other religious traditions. Don't miss his article.

But it may actually be more the Mormon moment in the scholarly world than anywhere else. Our own John Turner's biography of Brigham Young will be out in a little over a year or so (and scroll down for John's recent post on Joseph Smith's Journals), with Harvard University Press, and the big biography of Parley Pratt by Terryl Givens and Matthew Grow will be reviewed here at the blog in just a little while. And don't forget Patrick Mason's The Mormon Menace, reviewed here at the blog a while back. The world awaits J. Spencer Fluhman's forthcoming study of nineteenth-century anti-Mormon rhetoric, coming out next fall with the University of North Carolina Press; the parts I've seen represent scholarship at its best.

The efflorescence of scholarship in the field is pretty astonishing, keeping up with it impossible. For a little assistance in the latter, I recommend Ben Park's "2011 in Retrospect: A Look at Important Books and Articles in Mormon History," over at Juvenile Instructor. Here are Ben's personal award winners for the year, but go over to his post for a much fuller and more extensive discussion of the variety of recent scholarship in the field.

My picks for a handful of MHA’s awards are as follows. (Drumroll please…)

• Best Book: Sam Brown, In Heaven as it Is on Earth
• Best Biography: Terryl Givens and Matthew Grow, Parley P. Pratt
• Best First Book: Patrick Mason, The Mormon Menace
• Best Article: Stapley and Wright, “Female Ritual Healing in Mormonism” (Stapley also gets recognition for “Adoption Sealing Ritual,” which is equally deserving of the award)
• Awards of Excellence (2 Articles): Patrick Mason, “God and the People”; Chris Jones, “The Power and Form of Godliness”
• Silver Award for Women’s History: Catherine Brekus, “Mormon Women and the Problem of Historical Agency”

Robert Jeffress and the History of Anti-Mormonism

Paul Harvey

Earlier this year John Turner reviewed for our blog Patrick Mason's new book The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South, a book foreshadowed in an outstanding article in the Journal of Southern History.

Good time to be reminded of this again while Mitt Romney endures the latest round of this particular ugliness. Over at Religion Dispatches, Joanna Brooks interviews Mason, and the two discuss the various stages of anti-Mormonism in American history -- from violent vigilantism in the mid-19th century, to the adoption of the "cult" terminology in the 1960s and 1970s (a word that my students still use to describe anything in religion that strikes them as vaguely weird or outside their experience), and more recently to "organized anti-Mormonism," reflected in the comments of the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. A little excerpt:

That helps me understand the edge I hear in the contemporary caricaturing of Mormonism as a “cult.” It’s not just theological differentiation. There’s an edge to the accusation. It’s a residue of the anti-Mormon violence of the nineteenth century.

Yes. Once Mormons drop polygamy in the late nineteenth century, anti-Mormon violence stops. Violent anti-Mormonism disappears, whereas African-American lynching does not. But latent ideas of Mormons as polygamists continue to dominate the Southern imagination.

Usage of the word “cult” as a descriptor for Mormonism picks up steam in the 1960s as a reaction to new religious movements like the Moonies, Jonestown, Scientology, and so forth. It also indexes a feeling of eroding religious authority on the part of mainline and evangelical Protestants who have had a custodial relationship to culture in the American South. Beginning in the 1960s, with greater secularism, there comes a sense that this Protestant custodial relationship is under threat. “Cult” becomes a catch-all phrase to catch new and unrecognizable religious movements.

Mason also discusses the role that anti-Mormonism also plays for church authorities (to label dissenting views or mild criticisms as "anti-Mormon"), and praises Mitt Romney's handling of the latest controversy.

Mormons, Pagans and ‘Post-Modern Polygamy’

By John L. Crow

One may ask what do Mormons and modern Pagans have in common in today’s religious marketplace? A recent post by a prominent Pagan blogger tells us: multiple-partner marriages. Last Tuesday, Jason Pitzl-Waters, who writes The Wild Hunt blog, posted about a recent Mormon polygamy case in Canada and the impact that they might have on Pagans in Canada and potentially the U.S. While paganism is not known for polygamy, it has a widely known association with polyamory. (As one example, see Raven Kaldera's book, Pagan Polyamory: Becoming a Tribe of Hearts.) For those not familiar with the term, polyamory is defined by Maura I. Strassberg, Associate Professor of Drake University Law
School, as:

a form of commitment which is flexible and responsive to the needs and interests of the individuals involved, rather than a rigid institution imposed in cookie cutter fashion on everyone, this new polygamy reflects postmodern critiques of patriarchy, gender, heterosexuality and genetic parenthood.

Strassberg calls polyamory a kind of ‘post-modern polygamy.’ This is not the only term used. She points to the web site/magazine, Loving More, a polyamory advocacy site, as a place where the numerous polyamory-related terms are defined. Other terms Loving More adds include: Poly-Family, “a group polyamorous people all the people living in or sharing life experiences in the same home or household”; Poly activist, “a person interested in taking action intended to counteract the political, social and religious enforcement of monogamy”; and One True Way Polyamorist, “a person who believes there is only one right way to be polyamorous often based on their own moral judgments (most believe there are many ways to be poly).”

This kind of diversity and specificity is not always appreciated by others. As Pitzl-Waters points out in his blog post, legal authorities have rarely cared to make a difference between polygamy and polyamory. He quotes Craig Jones, lead attorney for the British Columbia Attorney General’s office as saying, “When multi-partner, conjugal relationships are like ‘duplicative marriages,’ they are criminal regardless of whether the individuals are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.” It is this legal status that is causing the concern in pagan communities.

At a time when many celebrate the recent legalization of same-sex marriages in New York state, some question if the celebration is premature or what same-sex marriage legalization means for other types of marriage. This issue is certainly the one discussed by Strassberg in her 2003 essay in The Capital University Law Review where she notes,

The emergence of polyamory suggests that continuing efforts to legitimize same-sex marriage may raise questions about whether legalizing the marriage of same-sex partners would force the future legalization of polyamorous group marriages. (31.3, 443).

It is these concerns over future restrictions/prosecution that emerged within the pagan blogosphere. Within two-days, Pitzl-Waters’ post has received over 100 comments and other pagans have continued the conversation on their blogs and forums. (For examples see here and here.) Pitzl-Waters also mentioned the possibility of pagans working in tandem with Mormons to legally challenge marriage restrictions, and some think there is common ground to be found. However others, as quoted by Pitzl-Waters, have their doubts.

I can conceive of legal efforts which serve both groups’ interests, but I have difficulty imagining it politically. The movements have different cultural aims and have different relationships with the society at large. People in each movement tend to find the practices of the other distasteful, making any alliance fraught. Both groups would hesitate to focus only on tactics which support both groups. Both groups may fear that it will compromise their efforts if the public foresees benefits to the other group.

In June 2007 Salon.com published an essay discussing a retreat in central Florida for people practicing polyamory. The essay quotes a 2002 survey conducted by Loving More which claims that while 87% of those who took the survey where raised as Christian, approximately 30% of the respondents converted to paganism. It also stated that one retreat workshop was entitled “Poly and Christianity.” (This certainly would be an interesting topic for someone’s dissertation!)

The issues regarding sexual relationships, marriage and religion are not new to scholars of American religious history. We can point to Oneida, The People’s Temple, and many other groups who encouraged or demanded various sexual and marital practices. Yet there is a tendency today to think that polygamy is primarily a Mormon issue. If Pitzl-Water’s blog post and the ensuing discussions are any indication, polygamy, polyamory and multiple-partner marriage are clearly issues that concern American paganism too.

Broadway, The Book of Mormon, and Blackness

Christopher Jones

(cross-posted at Juvenile Instructor)

Over at Religion Dispatches, Jared Farmer, professor of history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and author of the excellent On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape, reviews the multiple Tony Award-winning broadway play, The Book of Mormon.

By all accounts, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's satirical look at Mormon missionaries in Africa is funny. With very few exceptions, everyone I've talked to that has seen it---including a number of believing Latter-day Saints---has praised both its humor and its ultimately touching (if somewhat condescending) message about religion: Religion (especially the brand of religion preached by Mormons) is naive, silly, and based on absurd beliefs and unprovable truth claims, but that belief can ultimately motivate adherents to do good, help others, and improve the world.

Farmer largely agrees with this assessment. "The Book of Mormon is fun, and occasionally uproarious," he writes. "If the giddy laughter I heard at the sold-out show on Easter Sunday is any indication, theatergoers love it." He then goes on to offer a more complete critique of the play than I'd previously seen, noting the ways in which Parker and Stone's portrayal of Mormon missionaries is sometimes on target ("Pairs of missionaries (“companions”) do often resent each other; sexual tension, homophobia, homesickness, and boredom strain the relationships of these co-workers/roommates. Many missionaries dislike their geographic assignments. Even as they compete against each other for baptisms in the field, missionaries often struggle to convert a single person in two years of service.") and other times not even close ("Pairs of missionaries are never equals; there is always a “senior companion” and a “junior companion.” The various missionaries (men and women) in an area are supervised by one (male) “mission president” and his wife, not by a three-person bishopric. ... The missionary program certainly no longer encourages Latter-day Saints to gather in Salt Lake City."), and the concludes by suggesting that "Most egregiously, the play mischaracterizes Mormon theology." This is tricky territory, as Mormonism has no systematic theology, and some of Farmer's points seem more credible to me than others. I think he's right that "Unlike evangelical missionaries who want to save you from going to hell, LDS missionaries want to help you reach your potential in heaven. Mormon eschatology is radically egalitarian, and very American: everyone gets a second chance, everyone wins," but his suggestion that "for Joseph Smith and his followers, the existence of the translated text—proof of Smith’s prophetic powers—was more important than its contents" is open to debate. Farmer's argument echoes that of a former generation of historians, but much new research on early Mormonism suggests exactly the opposite; that early Mormons read the book's contents with care and that the Book of Mormon's teachings shaped early Mormon theology in ways previously ignored.

Couched in between Farmer's analysis and critique of the Book of Mormon musical, though, is something that has been repeatedly mentioned in passing by numerous friends but never fully teased out---a seemingly significant critique of the Broadway hit that those too focused on the delightful ways in which the South Park creators mock Mormons have opted to either ignore or quickly dismiss. I speak of the show's racial overtones. Farmer summarizes the salient points:

The plot twists at the end raise questions about the racial politics of the show. Only a threat of American violence saves the villagers from the tyranny of the local warlord. Only the ingenuity of the white men provides Africans a useful religion. The dewy-eyed boys from Utah share the genius of Joseph Smith: the Yankee spirit of invention. The musical’s happy ending, complete with black missionaries in neo-Mormon garb, contains a strong note of American chauvinism.

And then offers his most stinging critique of the musical:

I cringed in my seat at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre as I watched talented African American actors hamming up “African-ness” for cheap laughs. It brought to mind the long, shameful history of Americans—black and white—performing blackness (often in blackface) on stage for white audiences. The Book of Mormon wants to have it both ways. It wants to make fun of The Lion King and its African stereotypes by substituting more authentic stereotypes. It wants to be transgressive and conventional, blasphemous and saccharine. This combination is not impossible, but incredibly difficult to achieve. Parker, Stone, and Lopez don’t pull it off.

If nothing else, Farmer's critique on this point raises important questions about the intersections of religious and racial representation and satire, and that, I think, is a conversation worth having.

"To Normalize the False Teachings of Mormonism the World Over"

Paul Harvey

As the long -- very long -- Republican primary season just begins to get going, here's a little reminder that anti-Mormonism didn't die out in the 19th century, or in the 20th century, or after that: Warren Cole Smith, "A Vote for Romney is a Vote for the LDS Church." A little taste:

Placing a Mormon in that pulpit would be a source of pride and a shot of adrenaline for the LDS church. It would serve to normalize the false teachings of Mormonism the world over. It would also provide an opening to Mormon missionaries around the world, who could start every conversation: "Let me tell you about the American president." To elect a Mormon President is to advance the cause of the Mormon Church.

Yes, like the election of Richard Nixon normalized the teachings of Quakerism, and the election of Clinton the teachings of Southern Baptists. Anyway, further discussion of the evangelical division about Romney's faith may be found here, and doubtless in a million other places in the months to come. As for said pending discussion, don't you know that you can count me out.

Our friend Joanna Brooks is about to fire up a post about this, so I'll update here when that is up.

Update: It gets worse. Joanna recounts her conversation with the author here.

In the meantime, that little blast from the past requires an antidote, so here's an interview with the South Park-ers Trey Parker and Matt Stone talking about their musical The Book of Mormon, the full soundtrack of which I'm looking forward to hearing sometime soon. Maybe they'll follow with a sendup musical about the United Church of Christ, or the Unitarian Universalists.

Update: Also, I meant to put this in the original post, but blog friend and part-time basketball analyst Matt Bowman of Georgetown University reflects here, in The New Republic, on the comparative "business Mormonism" of Romney and contrasts that with the much hipper public image of Jon Huntsman. Taking the two together, he says, suggests a sort of generational shift in internal LDS dynamics and culture. Very interesting reading.

Playing Jane: Black Mormon History and Memory

Paul Harvey

While our blog contributor Chris Jones is getting ready to ace his comprehensives, he sent along this outstanding piece by Harvard graduate student Max Mueller: "Playing Jane: The History of a Pioneer Black Mormon Woman is Alive Today," published online at the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin. Highly recommended reading, particularly if (like me) you know absolutely nothing about this subject. The article discusses the historical re-creation efforts of Jerri Halwell, who "plays" the remarkable character of Jane Manning James, an African American woman who served in Joseph Smith's household, became a convert, made the trek to Utah, and remained a faithful member of the Church until 1908. A brief taste from this piece (footnotes omitted):

Last summer, I went to Salt Lake City to look for Jane Manning James in the archives of the LDS Church History Library and the archives of the Utah Historical Society. I hoped that Jane would speak to me from scratchy microfiche and dusty letter-books. I hoped she would tell me how she dealt with the precarious place in which she lived out her life as a black Mormon pioneer in Zion, simultaneously at the center and on the margins of the nineteenth-century Mormon experience. I planned to "ask" her: How did you understand your status as a beloved member of the community, celebrated as a friend of the first prophet's family, as a pioneer of 1847, and as a steadfast member of the LDS Church? At the same time, how did you come to terms with LDS Church policy that, due to your race, defines you as innately cursed and thus unworthy to receive the same blessings as your fellow white saints?

Although this was my plan, during my time in Salt Lake City, I found that the archives are not the only or even the best place to find Jane. Certainly, the archives shed light on the question of how Jane in writing subtly challenged the Church's marginalization of blacks within Mormon history and within the Mormon community. But it was in my interviews with Jerri and in my observations of her reenactments that I discovered the canon is not closed on Jane's story. The legacy of Jane's black Mormon experience unfolds today in the lives of modern black Mormons like Jerri, who strike a precarious balance between their ongoing struggles with the Mormon "folklore" about black spiritual inferiority and the spiritual truth they find within their own Mormon testimonies of faith.

Continue reading here.

Me the People: A Roundup on the Rally

Paul Harvey

Our contributor and uber-blogger over at The Way of Improvement Leads Home, John Fea, has a great op-ed piece in today's New York Daily News. He concludes:

What we saw on Saturday was a group of anti-big government Tea Party libertarians trying to reclaim the civil rights movement - an initiative whose success ultimately required one of the most forceful and moral acts of federal power in American history.

In the On Faith section of the Washington Post, a reporter analyzes the varied reactions to Beck from conservative Christians. Richard Land, the well-known conservative Southern Baptist leader and (evidently) an enthusiastic participant in the picnic on the Mall (even though he finds Beck's Mormonism to be, at best, a "fourth Abrahamic faith" rather than Christianity), gives some interesting commentary on this issue in an interview on NPR.

Finally, Joanna Brooks synthesizes all the commentary on Beck and the march and concludes that Beck is America's first Mormon televangelist, while Alex McNeill's " 'Me' the People" gives his very charitable and sympathetic impressions after wandering among the crowd at the Mall Saturday, and analyzes how and why the individualism of the "me" became defined as Christian (just as Richard Land does in his NPR interview) while the "we" is somehow defined outside the fold.

After all this, Colbert had it right from the start: this was all about restoring the civil rights movement to its white, conservative roots.

New Scholarship: Opposition to Polygamy in the Postbellum South

by Edward J. Blum

For those of you still living in the present, I know this is a hard and confusing time. Reports of President Obama as a Muslim, debates over Ground Zero, and the start of the semester can trouble our souls. Perhaps you need an intellectual refuge. If you do, grab the current edition of the Journal of Southern History and read Patrick Q. Mason’s fantastic article on anti-Mormonism in the South <“Opposition to Polygamy in the Postbellum South,” Journal of Southern History 76, no. 3 (August 2010): 541-578)>. It’s a terrific study of how white southerners rallied against polygamy from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the twentieth century. Sure, it’s not a fun story (it involves murder and mayhem just like most aspects of American history), but the essay offers a lot to think about from the past.