tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/mormons-32916/articlesMormons – The Conversation2023-11-08T13:37:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169852023-11-08T13:37:40Z2023-11-08T13:37:40ZLatter-day Saints lawsuits raise questions over Mormon tithing – can churches just invest funds members believe are for charity?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558135/original/file-20231107-27-1fwyow.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2703%2C1531&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Mormon Temple is the centerpiece of Temple Square in Salt Lake City.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MormonChurchFinances-Lawsuit/2cc86ddc8b984f638d3e177fbfba6db1/photo?Query=latter-day%20saints&mediaType=photo,video,graphic,audio&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1387&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/mormon-church-donations-tithe-lawsuit-0849212284504c6172a93467148c22d2">Three men have filed a lawsuit against</a> the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – also known as the LDS or Mormon church – and its investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors, Inc. The men, at least one of whom remains an active member of the church, according to the lawsuit, <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2898/LDS_complaint.pdf?1699384415">allege that the church had fraudulently induced them</a> into making donations.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/119?lang=eng&id=p4#p4">LDS church doctrine requires its members to tithe</a> – that is, give <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/02/147749784/what-the-irs-could-learn-from-mormons">10% of their income</a> to the church. Otherwise, members <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2022/12/afw-eng-local-pages/local-news-001?lang=eng&id=p13#p13">cannot attend or participate</a> in worship in the church’s temples.</p>
<p>As a law professor who studies the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ef2n0uEAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">financial practices of churches and other tax-exempt organizations</a>, I have seen that it is hard for donors to win a lawsuit against their church – or any other charity – when they demand a refund for their donations.</p>
<h2>3 kinds of relief</h2>
<p>The lawsuit against the LDS church and Ensign Peak, filed on Oct. 31, 2023, is based on the premise that the church has violated its members’ trust by amassing massive investments in stocks, bonds, real estate and agriculture that don’t support charitable activities.</p>
<p>The men are seeking three forms of relief.</p>
<p>First, they want the court to certify their suit as <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/class_action">a class action</a> – meaning that these plaintiffs could pursue the suit on behalf of everybody who had allegedly been defrauded into making donations to the LDS church – which says it has about <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/facts-and-statistics/country/united-states">6.8 million U.S. members</a>. </p>
<p>Second, they’re asking the court to order the LDS church to stop its <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mormon-church-ensign-peak-whistleblower-david-nielsen-allegations-60-minutes-2023-05-14/">allegedly deceptive practices</a>, including its purported failure to give the money it has collected and reserved for charitable purposes to charity. The lawsuit also calls on the LDS church to make more of its financial practices known to the public and to appoint an independent special master to oversee the church’s collection and use of its revenue. </p>
<p>Third, they ask the court to order the church to refund the donations they have made over the last 10 years, <a href="https://www.abc4.com/news/local-news/lds-church-and-its-financial-arm-face-second-lawsuit-over-use-of-donated-funds-and-tithes/">an amount they say totals for the three of them around US$350,000</a>. They’re also requesting other monetary relief, including that the LDS church pay their legal fees.</p>
<p>The church doesn’t disclose details about its finances. It has <a href="https://ksltv.com/575393/court-reinstates-james-huntsmans-lawsuit-for-return-of-tithing-he-paid-as-a-latter-day-saint/">denied the allegations that it committed fraud</a> with its “<a href="https://youtu.be/dtTo63w8Bwc">sacred funds</a>” or <a href="https://kutv.com/news/local/lds-church-releases-explanation-of-its-use-of-tithes-donations-after-100b-fund-revealed">dipped directly</a> into tithed funds or other pools of money received for charitable purposes to make investments.</p>
<p>This financial opacity has hurt the LDS church before. In February 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission found that Ensign Peak, the church’s investment arm, had <a href="https://apnews.com/article/mormonism-us-securities-and-exchange-commission-religion-business-a598c9ef9544f57e0b60d5ca80774bf7">failed to make required disclosures</a> of its securities portfolio. The SEC fined the church and Ensign Peak a total of $5 million.</p>
<p>Estimates vary regarding the size of the church’s portfolio. By a whistleblower’s estimate, it may be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/15/mormon-church-whistleblower-taxes-hedge-fund">as high as $100 billion</a>.</p>
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<h2>Donors generally have no say</h2>
<p>Charitable donations, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/donation">generally of money or property</a>, are often deductible for tax purposes because churches qualify as exempt under section <a href="https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exempt-purposes-internal-revenue-code-section-501c3">501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code</a>. Just as when you give money to a friend or relative, you no longer own or control those dollars after the transaction is completed.</p>
<p>Unless a donation is a <a href="https://www.hurwitassociates.com/fundraising/restricted-gifts/">restricted gift</a>, making it contingent on the charity using it in a particular way, its use is out of the hands of the donor.</p>
<p>While <a href="https://theconversation.com/disappointed-donors-cant-count-on-getting-their-charitable-money-back-93635">donors cannot get their money back when they are disappointed by a charity</a>, they will probably stop making donations. </p>
<p>Most <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/drop-in-giving-from-2021-to-22-was-among-the-steepest-ever-giving-usa-found">donations to religious institutions are unrestricted</a>. That means that even if church members who tithe do not like how their church spends money, unless their church acted illegally in soliciting their donation – by, for example, lying about how they would use the donation – a member’s only option is to stop giving.</p>
<h2>Fiduciary duty – for the institution</h2>
<p>The men who are suing the LDS church and its investment arm don’t just say they disapprove of how the church is spending their tithed funds. They argue that the church breached its <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-is-a-fiduciary-en-1769/">fiduciary duties</a> to its members – all of whom are also its donors.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042915/what-are-some-examples-fiduciary-duty.asp">Fiduciary duties</a> encompass a special duty to act in the best interests of someone or something, based on certain legal relationships. Churches generally do not owe fiduciary duties to their members.</p>
<h2>Allegations of fraud</h2>
<p>While donors generally have no say regarding how their charitable donations are used, there is an exception when the charity fraudulently induces the donor to make the donation.</p>
<p>And these plaintiffs allege that this is what the LDS church did: that it claimed donated funds would be used for charitable purposes, but that they were not.</p>
<p>James Huntsman, brother of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., is also accusing the Mormon church of lying in a separate <a href="https://www.deseret.com/utah/2023/9/22/23885805/latter-day-saint-church-seeks-hearing-james-huntsman-fraud-lawsuit">lawsuit he filed on his own against the Church of the Latter-day Saints</a> in <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/2023/09/21/lds-church-appeals-says-james/">March 2021</a>. That case is still pending.</p>
<p>A Utah state law <a href="https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title13/Chapter22/13-22-S13.html">prohibits charities from lying to their donors</a> and allows donors to sue to get their money back from charities that violate this statute. And yet fraud is hard to prove. In Utah, in particular, there’s a <a href="https://casetext.com/case/armed-forces-ins-exchange-v-harrison">nine-part test for this purpose</a>.</p>
<p>This is all moot, at least for the lawsuit filed on Halloween in 2023, if the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/statute-of-limitations.asp">statute of limitations</a> has run its course. In Utah, plaintiffs must file fraud suits within three years of <a href="https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title78B/Chapter2/78B-2-S305.html?v=C78B-2-S305_2023050320230503">when they discover or should have discovered fraudulent behavior</a>.</p>
<p>And the Ensign Peak allegations <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mormon-church-ensign-peak-whistleblower-david-nielsen-allegations-60-minutes-2023-05-14/">first surfaced in 2019</a> – four years before the plaintiffs filed this lawsuit. Their lawyers argue that the statute of limitations does not bar the case, because the LDS church hid how it used the money and plaintiffs could not have discovered the alleged fraud until recently.</p>
<h2>Seeking relief</h2>
<p>If the three men were to win this new court case, they would be entitled to monetary damages, likely including at least the return of the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/01/mormon-church-sued-again-for-investing-donations-from-lds-members.html">$350,000 they have said they donated to the LDS church</a> over the past decade. But they are also asking for the court to order the LDS church to make periodic financial disclosures and to appoint an independent authority outside the church to oversee the church’s finances.</p>
<p>These orders would go above what Utah law requires of nonprofits incorporated in the state. But beyond that, I believe they would likely violate the church’s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">First Amendment rights</a> to religious freedom.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court has held that <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/344/94/">courts cannot interfere with churches’ internal affairs</a>.</p>
<p>A church’s internal affairs include not only disputes over doctrine and clergy, but also <a href="https://casetext.com/case/bryce-v-episcopal-church-in-diocese-of-co">disputes over church administration</a>. Appointing somebody to oversee how the LDS church raises and spends its money would violate this doctrine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216985/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Brunson is practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. </span></em></p>Like all charitable donors, church members – even those who make donations to remain in good standing with their religious institution – give up their legal right to control that money.Samuel Brunson, Professor of Law, Loyola University ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2130592023-09-13T12:27:26Z2023-09-13T12:27:26ZHow September 1993, when Latter-day Saints leaders disciplined six dissidents, continues to trouble the church<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547132/original/file-20230908-15-io327w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C1977%2C1494&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Three decades later, the expulsions of six Latter-day Saints members still have an impact.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/salt-lake-temple-royalty-free-image/532531061?phrase=mormon+excommunicate&adppopup=true">RiverNorthPhotography/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Lavina Fielding Anderson knew she was delivering a bombshell. Anderson, a dedicated Mormon who had previously edited the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ magazines, was also a scholar, writer and feminist. And on this day in August 1992, she was giving a conference presentation detailing how Latter-day Saints authorities had repeatedly <a href="https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-lds-intellectual-community-and-church-leadership-a-contemporary-chronology">silenced dissenting congregants</a>. She punctuated her remarks with the revelation that the church had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/22/us/religion-notes.html?searchResultPosition=1">created files</a> on members who had publicly criticized the church – files <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1992/08/15/mormon-church-keeps-files-on-its-dissenters/">a spokesman later acknowledged</a>.</p>
<p>Thirteen months later, in September 1993, six intellectuals <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/19/us/mormons-penalize-dissident-members.html">were either excommunicated or disfellowshipped from the faith</a>, including Anderson. The episode around the “September Six,” as they were soon known, remains a controversial topic within LDS communities, especially since many of the underlying tensions remain in place today. </p>
<p>Many religious traditions face moments of crisis between intellectual freedom and control. That has been true for the LDS church ever since its early years, <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631498657">the focus of my forthcoming book</a> – but September 1993, 30 years ago this month, is one of the more poignant moments. Understanding the episode and its aftermath reveals cultural fissures that one of America’s largest homegrown religions still wrestles with today.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547141/original/file-20230908-23-h62afq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An older woman in a coat and blue dress sings into a microphone on an overcast day, with a small group of women visible behind her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547141/original/file-20230908-23-h62afq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547141/original/file-20230908-23-h62afq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547141/original/file-20230908-23-h62afq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547141/original/file-20230908-23-h62afq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547141/original/file-20230908-23-h62afq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547141/original/file-20230908-23-h62afq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547141/original/file-20230908-23-h62afq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nadine Doole leads over 500 people in song as they gathered in support of the ‘Ordain Women’ movement within the LDS church in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nadine-doole-leads-over-500-people-in-song-that-were-news-photo/482981025?adppopup=true">George Frey/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Confronting change</h2>
<p>American Christians have faced difficult questions concerning faith, reason and authority throughout the 20th century. Incidents like <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1100/scopes-monkey-trial">the famous Scopes “monkey trial</a>” about teaching evolution in schools illustrated believers’ struggles to reconcile biblical teachings with modern philosophy, modern science and social changes.</p>
<p>Mormons were no exception, and some worried the faith was losing its moorings. Questions about the church’s direction often centered around gender, as a growing number of LDS women <a href="https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V06N02_7.pdf">sought to soften</a> the church’s patriarchal practices and doctrines. Only men are allowed to hold the priesthood, for instance, and they can serve in more leadership positions than women.</p>
<p>A circle of moderate reformers in Boston during the 1970s founded a new magazine called <a href="https://exponentii.org/history/">Exponent II</a>, dedicated to being both faithful and feminist. Later, more radical activists took further steps, like <a href="https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/lds-women-and-priesthood-the-historical-relationship-of-mormon-women-and-priesthood/">calling for women’s ordination</a>.</p>
<p>LDS leaders increasingly saw these movements as <a href="https://www.signaturebooks.com/books/p/the-september-six">threats to their authority and doctrine</a>. The church had grown increasingly intertwined with the religious right side of the U.S. culture wars, defending what they defined as the “traditional” family: a working husband, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/the-latter-day-saint-woman-basic-manual-for-women-part-a/women-in-the-church/lesson-14-the-latter-day-saint-woman?lang=eng">a stay-at-home wife</a> and children.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547137/original/file-20230908-15-v2nuih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photo of around a dozen women holding signs at a protest in the snow." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547137/original/file-20230908-15-v2nuih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547137/original/file-20230908-15-v2nuih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547137/original/file-20230908-15-v2nuih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547137/original/file-20230908-15-v2nuih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547137/original/file-20230908-15-v2nuih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547137/original/file-20230908-15-v2nuih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547137/original/file-20230908-15-v2nuih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A small group of demonstrators in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment – which the LDS church opposed – gather in Washington, D.C., in 1981.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/washington-d-c-a-small-group-of-pro-era-demonstrators-news-photo/515410736?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>By the time Anderson <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/22/us/religion-notes.html">delivered her address</a> at the Sunstone symposium in Salt Lake City, the conflict’s stakes were clear. In 1989, one LDS apostle, Dallin H. Oaks, had urged Latter-day Saints <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1989/04/alternate-voices?lang=eng">not to listen to “alternative voices</a>.” Two years later, top leaders <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1991/11/news-of-the-church/statement-on-symposia?lang=eng">issued a statement</a> that denounced gatherings at which participants explicitly critiqued the faith.</p>
<p>But instead of dampening activism, the statements escalated reformers’ resolve. <a href="https://mormonarts.lib.byu.edu/people/maxine-hanks/">Feminist theologian Maxine Hanks</a> published <a href="https://www.signaturebooks.com/books/p/women-and-authority">an explosive volume</a>, “Women and Authority,” in 1992. It included chapters on issues such as the divine feminine, whom the church calls “<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/mother-in-heaven?lang=eng">Heavenly Mother</a>,” but discourages members from investigating or worshiping. Anderson then <a href="https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-lds-intellectual-community-and-church-leadership-a-contemporary-chronology/">published her paper</a> on authorities’ efforts to rein in dissent a few months later.</p>
<h2>Cutting off the six</h2>
<p>Church leaders decided to take action. It was time to <a href="https://archive.org/details/coordinating_council_1993_boyd_k_packer/page/n1/mode/2up">root out the three “major invasions</a>,” apostle Boyd K. Packer declared in May 1993: “the gay-lesbian movement, the feminist movement” and “the so-called scholars or intellectuals.” </p>
<p>In total, at least six prominent intellectuals <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120215064851/https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/092-65-79.pdf">were disciplined</a> that September, although the church <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-09-18-me-36398-story.html">denied that it was a coordinated purge</a>. Anderson and Hanks were both excommunicated. So was lawyer <a href="https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/paul-toscano/">Paul Toscano</a>, who had criticized church leaders, as well as historian <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/04/22/historian-d-micheal-quinn/">D. Michael Quinn</a>. Lynne Whitesides, the president of an LDS feminist group, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/02/us/as-mormon-church-grows-so-does-dissent-from-feminists-and-scholars.html">was disfellowshipped</a> because of her writings on Heavenly Mother. The final target was Avraham Gileadi, a more conservative scholar whose biblical interpretations were deemed out of line. </p>
<p>The severing did not end there. Janice Allred, a feminist theologian, <a href="https://www.deseret.com/1995/5/11/19174734/lds-excommunicate-feminist-appeal-planned">was cut off in 1995</a>. Her sister Margaret Toscano, who was also Paul Toscano’s wife, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/mormons-toscano/">was excommunicated in 2000</a>. Several professors who were feminists or had criticized the church <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/11/us/academic-freedom-is-raised-as-an-issue-in-denials-of-tenure.html">were denied tenure</a> <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1996/07/06/brigham-young-fires-professor-for-heavenly-mother-reference/">or were fired from Brigham Young University</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547136/original/file-20230908-17-vuv5u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A few students walk by a sign for Brigham Young University with snowy mountains in the distance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547136/original/file-20230908-17-vuv5u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547136/original/file-20230908-17-vuv5u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547136/original/file-20230908-17-vuv5u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547136/original/file-20230908-17-vuv5u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547136/original/file-20230908-17-vuv5u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547136/original/file-20230908-17-vuv5u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547136/original/file-20230908-17-vuv5u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">BYU faculty and policies have often been focal points in debates over gender.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-walks-past-the-entrance-of-brigham-young-news-photo/140251396?adppopup=true">George Frey/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The disciplinary actions garnered national attention. Outside critics denounced them as an inquisition. The church has a policy of not commenting on <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-discipline#">disciplinary measures</a>, but internal defenders welcomed what they deemed to be necessary, if tragic, actions.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, leaders solidified their doctrines on gender. In 1995, authorities issued a document titled “<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng">The Family: A Proclamation to the World</a>,” which reaffirmed beliefs such as one that fathers should “preside” over families.</p>
<h2>A new chapter</h2>
<p>The “September Six” have taken divergent routes. Gileadi was quickly rebaptized, and Hanks <a href="https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=54514350&itype=cmsid">rejoined the faith</a> in 2012, though she never repudiated her feminism. Yet others never reentered the fold, even as several continued to affirm <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/09/05/writer-excommunicated/">their belief in core doctrines</a>. </p>
<p>The era had a chilling effect on the broader movement for gender reform. “<a href="https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?itype=storyID&id=100E3AC144F972CC">Where have all the Mormon feminists gone?</a>” the Salt Lake Tribune asked in 2003. Some observers spoke of <a href="https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-september-six-and-the-lost-generation-of-mormon-studies/">a “lost generation” of young scholars</a> who did not see a future within the faith.</p>
<p>Yet the internet resurrected these debates. Digital connections eased access to information <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/us/some-mormons-search-the-web-and-find-doubt.html">outside official channels</a> and provided a platform for unorthodox voices. In response, some recent church initiatives have attempted to bring more transparency to controversial issues <a href="https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/">about founder Joseph Smith’s life</a> and <a href="https://religionnews.com/2020/10/27/for-mormons-in-a-faith-crisis-the-gospel-topics-essays-try-to-answer-the-hard-questions/">church teachings</a>.</p>
<p>There have been more recent examples of the church disciplining dissenting members, however. Activist Kate Kelly, who agitated for women’s ordination, <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/06/kate-kelly-founder-of-ordain-women-excommunicated-by-the-mormon-church.html">was cut off</a> in 2014. John Dehlin, a podcaster who cultivated a large following of Latter-day Saints who question fundamental church teachings, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/john-dehlin-popular-mormon-podcaster-excommunicated-church-n303656">soon followed</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547113/original/file-20230908-21-n5gp3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a red jacket smiles while speaking into a microphone as people snap photos of her outside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547113/original/file-20230908-21-n5gp3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547113/original/file-20230908-21-n5gp3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547113/original/file-20230908-21-n5gp3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547113/original/file-20230908-21-n5gp3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547113/original/file-20230908-21-n5gp3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547113/original/file-20230908-21-n5gp3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547113/original/file-20230908-21-n5gp3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Kate Kelly talks to supporters on April 5, 2014, as they ask church leaders to open up an all-male conference session to women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kate-kelly-founder-of-ordain-women-talks-to-over-500-news-photo/482981019?adppopup=true">George Frey/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>And the church remains firm on culture war topics related to gender: <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/12/01/new-church-office-cutting-faculty-members-brigham-young">not only homosexuality</a>, but also issues related to <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/05/08/latter-day-saints-are/">Heavenly Mother</a>. Church-owned universities have <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/12/01/new-church-office-cutting-faculty-members-brigham-young#">not renewed contracts</a> for several faculty who have been outspoken on LGBTQ and feminist issues, and they now require <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/03/10/new-employment-policy/">a statement of ecclesiastical support</a> from professors. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/elder-jeffrey-r-holland-2021-byu-university-conference">an address to faculty at BYU</a> in 2021, apostle Jeffery R. Holland <a href="https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/dallin-h-oaks/challenges-mission-brigham-young-university/">quoted Apostle Oaks</a>, encouraging more metaphorical “musket fire” in defense of LDS doctrine, particularly about marriage and families – language that <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2023/03/17/thousands-oppose-an-lds-church/">many people criticized</a> as dangerous. It is essential for the school to “stay in harmony with the Lord’s anointed, those whom He has designated to declare Church doctrine,” Holland said. </p>
<p>As in 1993, the time of the September Six, today the LDS church seems eager to make sure that intellectuals are loyal to approved doctrine, especially concerning gender and sexuality – issues that other religious groups must grapple with as well, from calls for women’s ordination <a href="https://religionnews.com/2023/07/25/synod-raises-hopes-for-long-sought-recognition-of-women-in-the-catholic-church/">in the Catholic Church</a> to debate over <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/03/nyregion/yeshiva-university-ny-public-funds.html?searchResultPosition=7">LGBTQ student groups</a> at an Orthodox Jewish university. Even if “purges” appear far-fetched today, the underlying tensions remain pressing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213059/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Park does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many faiths face conflicts over dissent and institutional control. In Latter-day Saints history, the episode around the ‘September Six’ is particularly memorable.Benjamin Park, Associate Professor of History, Sam Houston State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092962023-07-11T12:31:28Z2023-07-11T12:31:28ZMormon leaders – whose church is often associated with the GOP – push back against one-party politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536365/original/file-20230707-862-oxh2s9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C4%2C1011%2C674&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A golden sculpture of the angel Moroni atop the temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Rexburg, Idaho.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/golden-sculpture-of-an-angel-moroni-is-seen-atop-the-temple-news-photo/1253747353?adppopup=true">Natalie Behring/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dropped a bombshell in June 2023 by telling their flock to vote for Democrats – well, almost.</p>
<p>In a letter that local leaders <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/06/06/straight-party-voting-threat/">read during worship meetings nationwide</a>, the church’s president and his two counselors instructed church members not to vote solely for one political party. Latter-day Saints, often known as Mormons, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/seeking-the-promised-land/C34567402A987719AA98E8606B3AF180">have overwhelmingly supported Republicans in recent decades</a>.</p>
<p>“Merely voting a straight ticket or voting based on ‘tradition’ without careful study of candidates and their positions on important issues is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with revealed standards,” <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/06/06/straight-party-voting-threat/">the church’s top three authorities</a> wrote, referring to Latter-day Saint scripture.</p>
<p>Such letters are frequently used to direct the faithful. For example, in 2008, similar letters <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/california-and-same-sex-marriage">mobilized Latter-day Saints</a> in California to support Proposition 8, a ballot initiative against same-sex marriage. As suggested by the significant time and money church members <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/11/17/how-getting-burned-by-prop-8-led/">poured into Proposition 8</a>, these letters can be persuasive due, in no small part, to leaders’ unique role. Within the faith, top LDS authorities are known as “<a href="https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/content/prophet-seer-and-revelator?lang=eng">prophets, seers, and revelators</a>,” and members often speak of the need to “follow the prophet,” referring to the church’s president. Indeed, there is <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/music/library/childrens-songbook/follow-the-prophet?lang=eng">a catchy children’s song with that title</a>, which includes the repeated refrain “follow the prophet, don’t go astray.”</p>
<p>To the casual observer of American politics, it is no doubt surprising to hear that LDS leaders are promoting the idea of voting for Democrats. But as <a href="https://politicalscience.nd.edu/people/david-campbell/">a political scientist who studies religion</a>, including the LDS church, I believe the letter highlights an important trend in American Christianity.</p>
<h2>GOP fans – but not always</h2>
<p>It is true that Mormons rival white evangelical Christians in <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/09/13/2-party-affiliation-among-voters-1992-2016/">their support of the Republican Party</a>, and they generally hold <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/09/30/6-facts-about-u-s-mormons/">very conservative views</a>. According to the <a href="https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/">Cooperative Election Study</a>, 60% of LDS church members identify as Republican and only 23% as Democrats. </p>
<p>However, Mormons <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139227247">do not always align perfectly</a> with the priorities of other Republicans. </p>
<p>For example, they are more moderate <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-mormon-churchs-past-shapes-its-position-on-immigration-today-100234">on immigration policy</a>, and while <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/official-statement/abortion">opposed to abortion</a>, the church has never called for a total ban. Despite a history of opposing gay marriage, LDS leaders <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/us/politics/mormon-church-same-sex-marriage.html">endorsed the recent bill in Congress</a> affirming the right to same-sex marriage – albeit only after ensuring that religious organizations would not be required to recognize such marriages.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536366/original/file-20230707-15-vgwotx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three older men in suits and ties, with balding hair, sit while addressing an audience out of view." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536366/original/file-20230707-15-vgwotx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536366/original/file-20230707-15-vgwotx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536366/original/file-20230707-15-vgwotx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536366/original/file-20230707-15-vgwotx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536366/original/file-20230707-15-vgwotx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536366/original/file-20230707-15-vgwotx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536366/original/file-20230707-15-vgwotx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ three highest leaders answer questions after Russell Nelson, center, was announced the new president in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-russell-m-nelson-1st-counselor-dallin-h-oaks-and-news-photo/905704966?adppopup=true">George Frey/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Latter-day Saints never fully jumped on the Donald Trump bandwagon, either. In 2016, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/utah">Trump only took 45% of the vote in Utah</a>, a predominantly Mormon state, largely because <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-trumps-mormon-problem-could-mean-he-loses-utah-to-evan-mcmullin-67898">third-party candidate Evan McMullin</a>, a member of the church, ate into his support. Going into the 2020 election, Trump had <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/03/18/evangelical-approval-of-trump-remains-high-but-other-religious-groups-are-less-supportive/">lower approval ratings</a> among Latter-day Saints than among other heavily Republican groups.</p>
<p>Many members’ ambivalence toward Trump may stem from earlier messaging by church leaders. In 2016, <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2016/10/8/20598212/in-our-opinion-donald-trump-should-resign-his-candidacy">an editorial in the church-owned Deseret News</a> called on Trump to pull out of the race – though it did not endorse his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. </p>
<p>Even more directly, church leaders <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2015/12/8/20578359/lds-church-releases-statement-on-religious-freedom-as-donald-trump-s-muslim-controversy-swirls">issued a statement</a> decrying Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban.” An uncharacteristic move for the church, it reflected Latter-day Saints’ particular opposition to the targeting of religious minorities, given their own history of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-mormon-churchs-past-shapes-its-position-on-immigration-today-100234">being treated as outsiders</a>. </p>
<p>It is no coincidence that the most prominent LDS politician in the country, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, has long been <a href="https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/06-9-2023/romneys-fire/">a thorn in Trump’s side</a>.</p>
<h2>Eyes on the future</h2>
<p>Why are leaders speaking out? One might argue that this is nothing new, since the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/22/us/political-briefing-a-democratic-mormon-offers-hope-in-utah.html">LDS hierarchy has previously encouraged more two-partyism</a>. “It’s not in our interest to be known as a one-party church,” one elder told The Salt Lake Tribune during <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/22/us/political-briefing-a-democratic-mormon-offers-hope-in-utah.html">a 1998 interview</a>.</p>
<p>A better question is why the church’s top authorities are speaking out now. Part of the explanation likely stems from <a href="https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=5021251&itype=CMSID">concern over the hold that Trump</a>, and the Trumpian approach to politics, has on the Republican Party.</p>
<p>But I argue that there is another explanation. Latter-day Saints are well known for their extensive missionary program around the world. Within the United States, however, the church has not been immune from the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/">national decline in religious affiliation</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Latter-day Saints missionaries walk to Sunday lunch in Colonia Juarez, Mexico, in July 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/from-left-mormon-missionaries-elder-gil-elder-moak-and-news-photo/119786889?adppopup=true">Dominic Bracco II/Prime For The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The church itself reports <a href="https://religionnews.com/2022/04/07/is-mormonism-still-growing-five-facts-about-latter-day-saint-growth-and-decline/">declining growth in official membership numbers</a>, which are based on baptism records. Public surveys, however, find that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/03/republican-party-mormon-church-decline/">the number of Latter-day Saints in the U.S. is actually declining</a>, not just the growth rate. Even among self-identified Latter-day Saints, <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/05/20/jana-riess-1-4-us-latter-day/">a quarter have considered leaving the church</a>.</p>
<p>Research that I and other political scientists have done shows that one reason so many Americans <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108923347">are turning away from religion</a> is the relationship between conservative Christianity and the Republican Party. People whose religious views align with the religious right but do not share its politics often feel conflicted. In some cases, they leave the congregation where they worship for a new one. Others, however, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3088891">give up on religion</a> altogether – one reason for the dramatic growth in the percentage of Americans who <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/">have no religion</a>.</p>
<p>While most of this research has focused on evangelicals’ entanglement with the GOP, it follows that, as a predominantly Republican faith, Mormonism is also likely to experience an exodus. Strikingly, in her research into why people leave the LDS faith, religion writer Jana Riess finds that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-next-mormons-9780190885205?cc=us&lang=en&">former church members are far more likely to be Democrats </a> than those who stay in the fold. </p>
<p>Older Latter-day Saints continue to identify heavily as Republicans, but members under 30 are <a href="https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/young-mormons-are-abandoning-the?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2">much more likely to describe themselves as Democrats</a>. If those young church members see their church as a bastion of Republicanism, they may decide that Mormonism is not for them – whereas more bipartisanship might keep them in the fold.</p>
<p>This recent call from LDS leaders could create a potential counter-example of a trend within American religion. Increasingly, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12829">Americans tailor their religious beliefs to their politics</a>, rather than the other way around.</p>
<p>Here, on the other hand, is a statement from men whom Latter-day Saints believe speak for God, telling their co-religionists that they should break Republican ranks. If there were ever a case to expect religion to inform people’s politics, this is it – with eyes on the 2024 election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Campbell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The faith’s association with conservative politics has stayed strong for decades, but could become a liability, a political scientist argues.David Campbell, Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy, University of Notre DameLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2029152023-04-21T12:41:15Z2023-04-21T12:41:15ZBoy Scouts of America can now create $2.4 billion fund to pay claims for Scouts who survived abuse – a bankruptcy expert explains what’s next<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518556/original/file-20230330-1211-2pnq14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C46%2C2757%2C1918&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The alleged sexual abuse that led to this settlement occurred from 1944 through 2016. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/boy-scouts-of-america-dressed-in-uniforms-carry-american-news-photo/1159640147">Newsday LLC via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>On April 19, 2023, the <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-boy-scouts-of-america-bsa-announces-confirmation-of-plan-of-reorganization-and-emergence-from-chapter-11-bankruptcy-to-equitably-compensate-survivors-while-ensuring-scouting-continues-across-the-country-301802086.html">Boy Scouts of America declared that it has exited its bankruptcy</a> case after <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/boy-scouts-emerges-chapter-11-bankruptcy-2023-04-19/">clearing one of the last legal hurdles</a> in its way. Some insurance companies and sex abuse claimants objected to the Boy Scouts’ plan to pay claimants, but the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the plan can go ahead anyway while the insurers’ appeal is pending. It’s now possible to begin the process of paying at least US$2.45 billion to resolve about 82,000 claims against the Boy Scouts and affiliated entities asserted by people who allege that they were <a href="https://abusedinscouting.com/history-of-abuse/">sexually abused as children</a> over the <a href="https://vaumc.org/blog/2022/07/08/important-positive-news-regarding-the-boy-scouts-and-our-local-churches/">past 80 years</a>.</em> </p>
<p><em>The Boy Scouts operate through the national organization known as the BSA, which includes hundreds of separate but affiliated organizations known as <a href="https://www.scouting.org/about/local-council-locator/">local councils</a>, and faith-based or civic groups called <a href="https://scoutingmagazine.org/2021/04/scouting-faq-chartered-organizations">chartered organizations</a>. Because these troop-sponsoring nonprofit organizations across the country are responsible for ensuring the safety of children in scouting, all of them faced child sexual abuse claims.</em></p>
<p><em>The BSA <a href="https://cases.omniagentsolutions.com/?clientId=3552">filed for bankruptcy in February 2020</a> to halt the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-delaware-dover-lawsuits-religion-38c9b9db99c491bec9e1bd31d26ea63d">hundreds of lawsuits that were then pending</a> in state courts. More than two years later, the BSA reached an agreement with many of its insurers, all of the local councils, some of the chartered organizations and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-payments-to-sex-abuse-victims-in-boy-scouts-bankruptcy-could-take-18-months-11648077889">roughly 85% of all sex abuse claimants</a> on a plan to pay claims.</em> </p>
<p><em><a href="https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/faculty/reilly">The Conversation asked Marie T. Reilly</a>, a Penn State law professor who studies bankruptcy cases involving child sex abuse claims against Catholic dioceses, to explain what this means.</em></p>
<h2>What happens next?</h2>
<p>The plan the court approved in the BSA’s bankruptcy case will <a href="https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/6cfcb7aa-d181-40ec-aad1-5543a02babcd_BSA_Plan_Summary_and_FAQs.pdf">create a settlement trust</a> to process and pay sexual abuse claims.</p>
<p>Two retired judges and a committee made up of lawyers who represent sex abuse claimants will administer the trust, which will be <a href="https://www.bsarestructuring.org/event/district-court-rules-in-favor-of-bsa-upholding-the-order-to-confirm-the-bsas-plan-of-reorganization/">the largest sexual abuse compensation fund</a> ever established in the U.S. It will operate independently of the BSA. </p>
<p>The trust will take over responsibility for all claims against the BSA. All parties that contribute to it will be relieved of their liability.</p>
<h2>Where will the money come from?</h2>
<p>The BSA will contribute to the trust property estimated to be worth $220 million. Local councils will contribute about $515 million in cash, property and money obtained from their insurers. Chartered organizations, including the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/boy-scouts-revises-bankruptcy-plan-to-remove-250-million-mormon-church-settlement-11660589753">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-religion-delaware-sexual-abuse-by-clergy-dover-287019e3686c8b0005ffe6ee715a4a04">Roman Catholic and Methodist</a> churches, schools and other affiliated institutions, will also contribute and receive a release from liability for claims.</p>
<p>The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, still sometimes called the Mormon Church, used to participate in the Boy Scouts but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/us/boy-scouts-mormon-church.html">severed ties to it in 2018</a>. It will contribute <a href="https://www.bsarestructuring.org/event/bsa-marks-progress-with-chartered-organizations-and-announces-new-agreements-for-1-037-billion-in-contributions-to-trust/">$250 million</a>.</p>
<p>Insurance companies that issued policies covering the BSA will contribute about $1.6 billion. The trustee of the settlement trust has the authority to sue the insurance companies that have not agreed to the settlement to try to get more money to pay claims.</p>
<h2>How much money will survivors get and when will payments begin?</h2>
<p>People who have filed sex abuse claims have three options:</p>
<p>1) Accept a $3,500 payment based on the information already submitted about their claim in the bankruptcy case. <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-payments-to-sex-abuse-victims-in-boy-scouts-bankruptcy-could-take-18-months-11648077889">About 6,700 survivors have already elected</a> this option.</p>
<p>2) Submit additional information and have the trustee determine the amount based on <a href="https://www.bsarestructuring.org/estimated-potential-payment-calculator/">agreed-upon factors</a>, including the severity of the abuse.</p>
<p>3) Sue in state court and have a jury determine the amount.</p>
<p>Payments will not start to flow until the trust determines the payment amount of each claim. If the fund is not big enough to pay every claim in full, the trust will reduce the amount of each claim to reflect the estimated shortfall. </p>
<p>It’s hard to say how long it will take to process the nearly 75,000 claims that have not elected the $3,500 option.</p>
<p>Among other things, the trust will need to hire and onboard staff and to set up secure systems to gather and evaluate personal information from tens of thousands of people.</p>
<p>This is likely to be both expensive and slow.</p>
<h2>How will this settlement affect the Boy Scouts?</h2>
<p>The Boy Scouts face an uncertain future after the bankruptcy case.</p>
<p>The organization’s <a href="https://www.ncacbsa.org/who-pays-for-scouting/">revenue depends on membership dues</a>, contributions from its troop sponsoring organizations, product sales, service fees and donations. And the dues are lower because of a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-health-coronavirus-pandemic-7afeb2667df0a391de3be67b38495972">sharp decline in membership</a>. The BSA now has a little <a href="https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2023/01/05/1-million-and-growing-bsa-membership-is-on-the-rise/">more than 1 million members</a> across the country – about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/us/boy-girl-scouts-membership-decrease-covid.html">half as many as in 2019</a>.</p>
<p>Trying to convert some of the Boy Scouts-owned properties into cash to meet the organization’s obligations under the bankruptcy plan is complicated. It may take years to accomplish, dragging out the timeline.</p>
<p>Local councils are already selling property to raise the cash they need to make the contribution to the fund.</p>
<p>For example, a local council in New Jersey is <a href="https://www.poconorecord.com/story/news/environment/2022/12/21/boy-scout-camp-sale-in-poconos-would-go-towards-victims-of-sex-abuse/69734886007/">selling its land in the Pocono Mountains</a> to pay its share of the contribution to the compensation fund. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/poconos-coal/monroe-county-group-hoping-to-keep-former-boy-scout-camp-from-being-sold-to-developers/article_ec0bc5be-9135-11ed-bbcb-c7ebc89469f6.html">Local residents are concerned</a> that the pristine land, estimated to be worth $4 million, will end up lost to developers.<br>
The same controversy is unfolding regarding the <a href="https://www.curbed.com/2022/07/boy-scouts-open-space-for-sale.html">sale of local council property in Connecticut</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/science-technology/loss-of-open-space">U.S. Forest Service estimates</a> that 6,000 acres (24 square kilometers) of open space are lost every day to other uses. <a href="https://www.scouting.org/outdoor-programs/properties/">Local Boy Scouts councils own</a> a significant portion of open space in the U.S., and much of it may be lost.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518559/original/file-20230330-17-vzefiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A lakeside structure in the wilderness with a large rustic building in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518559/original/file-20230330-17-vzefiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518559/original/file-20230330-17-vzefiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518559/original/file-20230330-17-vzefiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518559/original/file-20230330-17-vzefiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518559/original/file-20230330-17-vzefiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518559/original/file-20230330-17-vzefiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518559/original/file-20230330-17-vzefiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Deer Lake Boy Scout Reservation in Killingworth, Conn., is among the many properties nationwide being sold by local councils.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BoyScouts-CampSelloff/02f7fcf4e1234edebf58bc56a493144b/photo?boardId=37be9465fcce45d283d5431cccb20a6a&st=boards&mediaType=audio,photo,video,graphic&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=331&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo/Pat Eaton-Robb</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Are there precedents for this?</h2>
<p><a href="https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/bankruptcy/">Catholic organizations have resolved liability</a> for child sexual abuse in bankruptcy cases with plans that are similar to the BSA’s. But the scale of the Boy Scouts’ case in terms of the number of claims and the size of the settlement trust fund is much larger than any case involving a single diocese, or any other nonprofit organization bankruptcy case.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marie T. Reilly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This is a green light for creating the largest-ever compensation fund for sex abuse claims.Marie T. Reilly, Professor of Law, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2010512023-03-28T12:15:23Z2023-03-28T12:15:23ZBehind the Latter-day Saint church’s vast wealth are two centuries of financial hits and misses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516774/original/file-20230321-26-djhpwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C3%2C1019%2C669&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thousands of church members sing during the 2016 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/thousands-of-mormons-sing-with-the-mormon-tabernacle-choir-news-photo/518743136?phrase=%22general%20conference%22%20latter-day&adppopup=true">George Frey/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the first weekend of April 2023, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will hold <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2023/04?lang=ase">its semiannual General Conference</a> in Salt Lake City. Tens of thousands of members will attend in person, with millions watching from home.</p>
<p>Over two days, Latter-day Saints – often called “Mormons” – will hear an array of talks from religious leadership. But another speaker will likely be a member of the church’s auditing department, who, if he <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2022/04/22larson?lang=eng">follows tradition</a>, will state that the institution’s financial activities from the past year were “administered in accordance with Church-approved budgets, accounting practices, and policies.” No further specifics are typically provided.</p>
<p>This yearly ritual may seem striking in the face of the church’s February 2023 agreement to <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/mormon-church-fined-5-million-for-obscuring-size-of-investment-portfolio#:%7E:text=SALT%20LAKE%20CITY%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94,and%20Exchange%20Commission%20announced%20Tuesday.">pay a US$5 million fine</a> in a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. According to its press release, the SEC concluded that the church went to “great lengths” <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-35">to “obscure” its investment portfolio</a>. A <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-issues-statement-on-sec-settlement">church statement</a> expressed “regret” that its leaders had followed faulty legal counsel and insisted that the fine would be paid through “investment returns” rather than members’ donations.</p>
<p>The settlement came on the heels of <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/11/02/whats-up-with-lds-finances/">other controversies</a> about the church’s taxes and financial portfolio, which journalists and whistleblowers have estimated at around <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mormon-church-amassed-100-billion-it-was-the-best-kept-secret-in-the-investment-world-11581138011">$100 billion</a>.</p>
<p>These revelations have raised questions concerning the ethics of a religious organization amassing such a large amount of wealth, and how it is balanced with charitable giving. But headlines often overlook the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mormons-and-money-an-unorthodox-and-messy-history-of-church-finances-129132">long and surprising history</a> of the modern church’s financial success – as well as the continued anxiety surrounding its economic reserves.</p>
<h2>Share and share alike</h2>
<p>Mormonism was born through <a href="https://deseretbook.com/p/joseph-smith-rough-stone-rolling-richard-l-bushman-5351?variant_id=104298-paperback">the spiritual quest of Joseph Smith</a>, who was raised amid America’s <a href="https://www.ushistory.org/us/22c.asp">Second Great Awakening</a> during the early 1800s, a period of Christian revivals. His parents were religious seekers who struggled to find a fulfilling church, and tussled with the young country’s financial turbulence. Smith’s father had lost savings in <a href="https://latterdaysaintmag.com/joseph-smith-sr-starts-a-ginseng-business-and-loses-their-farm/">an ill-fated ginseng deal</a>, plunging the family into two decades of poverty. </p>
<p>It is no surprise, then, that when Smith formed his own church, its teachings included a sharp critique of the capitalist system. Early converts to what was originally called the Church of Christ, organized in 1830, were encouraged to <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/42?lang=eng&id=30-42#p30">consecrate all their goods</a> to their new religious community so it could redistribute resources to those in need.</p>
<p>It was one of <a href="https://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/ushistory/chapter/antebellum-communal-experiments/">many communal experiments</a> Americans attempted during the antebellum period as religious innovators offered alternatives to what they believed was a dangerous and uncaring economic system. Smith’s earliest revelations denounced individualism and urged believers to <a href="https://rsc.byu.edu/doctrine-covenants-revelations-context/all-things-are-lords-law-consecration-doctrine-covenants">share their property and resources with one another</a>. </p>
<p>Yet financial difficulties, personal clashes and other challenges doomed the experiment from the start. Within just a few years, the new church’s leaders had already abandoned the consecration ideal. In its stead, Smith directed members <a href="https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-8-july-1838-c-dc-119/1">to donate “surplus property</a>” to help pay off the group’s immediate debts and then to donate “one tenth of all their interests annually.” This commandment commenced <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/tithing#:%7E:text=For%20Latter%2Dday%20Saints%2C%20tithing,paid%20on%20the%20honor%20system.">a practice of tithing</a> that still exists today, though it has been interpreted in different ways over the years.</p>
<h2>Hardscrabble years</h2>
<p>Over the first two decades of the church’s existence, the Latter-day Saints had to relocate their headquarters multiple times – including <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631494864">seven years in Nauvoo, Illinois</a>, a focus of <a href="https://benjaminepark.com/">my historical research</a>. By the time the Saints <a href="https://theconversation.com/utahs-pioneer-day-celebrates-mormons-trek-west-but-theres-a-lot-more-to-the-history-of-latter-day-saints-and-migration-186099">reached Utah’s Great Salt Lake</a> in 1847, leaders and members alike largely embraced the economic system that Smith had previously decried.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517044/original/file-20230322-28-holukq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white drawing of a small main street, with mountains in the distance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517044/original/file-20230322-28-holukq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517044/original/file-20230322-28-holukq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517044/original/file-20230322-28-holukq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517044/original/file-20230322-28-holukq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517044/original/file-20230322-28-holukq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517044/original/file-20230322-28-holukq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517044/original/file-20230322-28-holukq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing of Salt Lake City from a book published in 1875.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-the-main-street-salt-lake-city-utah-america-in-the-news-photo/188003483?adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A series of <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/banking-panics-of-the-gilded-age">national economic crises</a> during the late 19th century further tested the church’s finances and financial ideals. In addition, the government’s decision to prosecute polygamists amid growing criticism of the church’s “plural marriages” <a href="https://archives.utah.gov/research/exhibits/Statehood/intronew.htm">crippled the region’s economy</a> until Latter-day Saint leaders <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/mormons-polygamy/">renounced the practice</a> in 1890. </p>
<p>Facing financial ruin, the church’s prophet and president in 1899, Lorenzo Snow, urged members to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23286314">redouble their commitment to tithing</a>. The church formalized its expectation that members donate 10% of their annual income to remain in good standing. To this day, Latter-day Saints are expected to meet with local bishops every year and <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/tools/help/conduct-tithing-declaration?lang=eng">state that they have paid a full tithe</a>.</p>
<p>By 1907, Snow’s successor, Joseph F. Smith, <a href="https://archive.org/details/conferencereport1907a/page/n7/mode/2up?view=theater">jubilantly announced</a> that tithing income had paid off all the church’s loans. He even predicted that if the current rate continued, “we expect to see the day when we will not have to ask you for one dollar of donation for any purpose.”</p>
<h2>Bust to boom</h2>
<p>Donations only increased over the following decades, however, as the church continued to grow rapidly. The prosperity of the 1950s enabled <a href="https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/david-o-mckay-and-the-rise-of-modern-mormonism/">an ambitious construction agenda</a> for the next decade, as the church built over a thousand new meetinghouses and temples for its exploding membership.</p>
<p>Yet high spending, poor financial management and unwise or unlucky investments brought another financial crisis, and the church soon found itself cash-poor. By 1962, the budget had amassed a $32 million deficit. Leaders <a href="https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/102-17-29.pdf">ceased offering detailed financial reports</a>, which had been inconsistent yet common staples at the church’s General Conference.</p>
<p>Things started looking up the next year when N. Eldon Tanner, a successful Canadian politician and businessman, <a href="https://rsc.byu.edu/firm-foundation/n-eldon-tanner-church-administration">joined the church’s leadership</a> and <a href="https://sunstone.org/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/102-17-29.pdf">modernized its financial structure</a>, investing any surplus. The church was once again on solid financial footing by the end of the 1960s, though it did not resume the release of detailed financial reports. Instead, Tanner empowered a private economic team to <a href="https://www.signaturebooks.com/books/p/the-mormon-hierarchy-2">continue growing the faith’s portfolio</a>. </p>
<p>Decades of <a href="https://religionnews.com/2022/04/07/is-mormonism-still-growing-five-facts-about-latter-day-saint-growth-and-decline/">membership growth</a>, tithing donations and lucrative investments resulted in the modern church’s massive accumulation of wealth. This financial success has enabled it to oversee a worldwide church with <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/facts-and-statistics">nearly 17 million members of record</a>, tens of thousands of employees and countless volunteer and charitable programs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517045/original/file-20230322-2513-m87hvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A grand-looking church building with tall spires lit up at night." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517045/original/file-20230322-2513-m87hvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517045/original/file-20230322-2513-m87hvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517045/original/file-20230322-2513-m87hvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517045/original/file-20230322-2513-m87hvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517045/original/file-20230322-2513-m87hvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517045/original/file-20230322-2513-m87hvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517045/original/file-20230322-2513-m87hvw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ historic temple in Salt Lake City, Utah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints-historic-news-photo/1189395667?adppopup=true">George Frey/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Its investments became so profitable in the early 2000s that, <a href="https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2023/34-96951.pdf">according to the SEC report</a>, church leaders explored ways to shield their success from the public. According to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/mormon-church-has-misled-members-on-100-billion-tax-exempt-investment-fund-whistleblower-alleges/2019/12/16/e3619bd2-2004-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html">one whistleblower</a>, church authorities feared that greater transparency would discourage members from further tithing. </p>
<h2>Giving to God</h2>
<p>While the church reports giving over <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/2022-annual-report-caring-for-those-in-need">$1 billion</a> in charitable aid last year, some members and observers alike critique leaders for not donating more, given the vast size of its investment portfolio, which is almost <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/about/endowment/">twice the size of Harvard’s endowment</a>.</p>
<p>The issue also raises important ethical questions regarding a religious institution’s obligations toward its own members. Should Latter-day Saints, especially those who are struggling financially, still donate a tenth of their income to a church whose reserves <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mormon-church-amassed-100-billion-it-was-the-best-kept-secret-in-the-investment-world-11581138011">are likely deep enough</a> to pay off more than a decade of expenses? The <a href="https://religionnews.com/2022/12/14/on-mormon-tithing-and-a-100-billion-investment-fund/">seeming discrepancy</a> between the transparency required of individual members and the church’s own lack of accountability has unsettled some members.</p>
<p>Yet many believers emphasize that their tithing’s purpose is not merely to add to the church’s coffers but to help build the kingdom of God – their donations are primarily offered for spiritual reasons, not worldly ones. And investments are also a safety net for the faith’s growth: Leaders likely hope it can <a href="https://bycommonconsent.com/2009/03/11/the-church-and-the-debt-bubble/">support rapidly growing membership</a> in lower-income countries. </p>
<p>As absurd as it may be to call a $100 billion dollar portfolio <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/02/08/lds-church-kept-lid-its-b/">a “rainy day” fund</a>, the church’s turbulent history may have led leaders to see it as just that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Park does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Joseph Smith encouraged early Latter-day Saints to pool their resources. Two centuries later, one of the results is an investment portfolio estimated at $100 billion.Benjamin Park, Associate Professor of History, Sam Houston State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1916282022-11-04T12:29:13Z2022-11-04T12:29:13ZMormon church’s celebration of Latino cultures puts spotlight on often-overlooked diversity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491449/original/file-20221024-6031-4lkam3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C8%2C957%2C530&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Each year, the church's 'Luz de las Naciones' event celebrates Latino cultures.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/event/2022-luz-de-las-naciones">The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every November since <a href="https://www.thechurchnews.com/2021/11/11/23217743/luz-las-naciones-latino-culture-celebration-todd-christofferson-pandemic">2002</a>, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has held an annual show called “<a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/event/2022-luz-de-las-naciones">Luz de las Naciones</a>,” or “Light of the Nations.” With a cast of more than 500, most of whom are Latino members of the church, the program incorporates music, dancing and spiritual messages in a celebration of Latino identity across cultures.</p>
<p>The theme for 2022 is “Juntos es Mejor,” which means “Better Together.” The free program is held in the LDS Conference Center, just north of the famous <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/feature/templesquare?lang=eng">Temple Square</a> in Salt Lake City, Utah: headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also historically known as the Mormon or LDS church. Luz de las Naciones is the only annual long-standing multilingual and multicultural televised celebration sponsored by the church headquarters. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://search.asu.edu/profile/3106827">a scholar of immigration, race and religion</a>, particularly in the LDS church, I often encounter a stereotype that it is overwhelmingly conservative, white and American. Yet that is increasingly not the case. What was once a tiny religious movement has grown into a global faith with almost 17 million members, <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/facts-and-statistics">by the church’s count</a>, and over 60% of members live outside the United States. Using <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/facts-and-statistics">LDS church statistics</a> and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/mormon/racial-and-ethnic-composition/">Pew Research</a> reports, I estimate around 40% of members worldwide are from Latin America, or descended from people who are.</p>
<h2>Two-century transformation</h2>
<p>Many stereotypes about the LDS church are rooted in its controversial history. Joseph Smith established the faith in 1830 in New York state, and early members moved to Ohio, then Missouri and then Illinois before they <a href="https://theconversation.com/utahs-pioneer-day-celebrates-mormons-trek-west-but-theres-a-lot-more-to-the-history-of-latter-day-saints-and-migration-186099">settled in present-day Utah</a>, which led to <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674047433">conflicts and displacement</a> of local Native American groups. Even today, LDS influence is strongest in the so-called <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/where-is-the-mormon-corridor.html">Mormon Corridor</a>: states in the western U.S. with <a href="https://utahvalley360.com/2015/07/13/top-10-states-mormons/">large LDS populations</a>, including Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Arizona.</p>
<p>Despite facing hostility in the church’s early decades, leaders emphasized the importance of evangelizing. This focus on “<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/teachings-david-o-mckay/chapter-6?lang=eng">every member a missionary</a>” resulted in one of the most organized worldwide <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199778362.013.14">missionary programs</a> and, ultimately, large membership growth abroad. In the U.S., the primary sources of growth are <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/future-mormon-church-it-s-latino-n570621">Latinos</a>, and there is continued push for <a href="https://religionnews.com/2021/07/15/lds-outreach-to-immigrants-grows-pushing-church-members-to-examine-gop-ties/">immigrant outreach</a>.</p>
<h2>Leaders vs. reality</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://doi.org/10.5406/dialjmormthou.53.1.0005">ethnographic research</a> focuses on the experiences of <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12050333">Latina Mormon mothers</a> in the U.S. and internationally, highlighting the diversity of the modern church. One likely reason this diversity sometimes surprises Americans is the lack of representation within institutional LDS leadership.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two rows of men in suits sit in a formal room with a painting depicting Jesus in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493142/original/file-20221102-24-el8js4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493142/original/file-20221102-24-el8js4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493142/original/file-20221102-24-el8js4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493142/original/file-20221102-24-el8js4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493142/original/file-20221102-24-el8js4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493142/original/file-20221102-24-el8js4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493142/original/file-20221102-24-el8js4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints listen to Russell M. Nelson after he was announced as the 17th president of the church in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mormron-apostles-sit-to-the-side-listening-to-president-news-photo/905697610?phrase=%22church%20of%20jesus%20christ%20of%20latter-day%20saints%22%20nelson&adppopup=true">George Frey/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Only <a href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24117135/October_2022_General_Authority_General_Leaders_Chart_English.pdf">nine of the 130</a> roles in the church’s main leadership bodies, about 7%, are open to women. Of those nine, seven are currently held by U.S.-born white women. All are in temporary roles, often limited to a few years. More top roles reserved for men, on the other hand, are lifelong appointments. LDS congregations do not have ordained clergy, but all male members as young as 12 who are considered “worthy” are ordained into what is called <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/families-and-temples/what-does-it-mean-to-be-ordained-to-the-priesthood?lang=eng">the priesthood</a>. Priesthood holders are believed to possess spiritual authority that empowers them to act in God’s name. Yet LDS women cannot be ordained to the priesthood, limiting their opportunities for formal leadership.</p>
<p>Over the years, highly publicized public messaging campaigns like “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15348423.2014.871973">I’m a Mormon</a>” have sought to subvert common assumptions about LDS doctrine and culture, but stereotypes endure. Events like Luz de las Naciones show institutional attempts to create a more international and multicultural image, specifically regarding Latino members. Beginning in 2021, for example, the church began a <a href="https://www.veniracristo.org/dia-de-los-muertos-2021">bilingual campaign</a> using the holiday Dia de los Muertos as a way for members to share its teachings about life after death.</p>
<h2>Latino Saints</h2>
<p>In my three years of fieldwork in the U.S. Southwest, I have found that Latina women, in particular, are a <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/5/333">backbone of local growth and support</a> for the church, with more women active in their local congregations than men. Although women do not hold many institutionalized leadership positions, they are typically entrusted with the informal labor and community-building that is necessary for both small activities like congregational holiday parties or large-scale events like Luz de las Naciones. They often take on these responsibilities with limited institutional support or resources. </p>
<p>Many women I interviewed between 2018 and 2021 felt great pride and satisfaction in contributing to the LDS community in this way, but also described frequent experiences of sexism, racism and discrimination by American-born members. Ana, a pseudonym for a member who is originally from El Salvador, told me she’s met non-Latino church members who are “super sweet, but many are very sheltered … it’s difficult for them to accept us … to see things from our perspective … they don’t know our experience.” </p>
<p>Another Latina member from Argentina, “Camila,” told me: “Anglo members didn’t really talk to us or give us service opportunities. For a couple years, church did not feel the same. We decided to go the Spanish-speaking LDS congregation. There, I met some of my best friends. Things changed, and we were happier.” Both my research and other scholars’ studies have addressed these seeming <a href="https://doi.org/10.5406/dialjmormthou.50.4.0001">contradictions</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479804542.003.0007">tensions</a> in Latino members’ <a href="https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/multiculturalism-as-resistance-latina-migrants-navigate-u-s-mormon-spaces/">complicated experiences</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A brunette woman in a white top and blue skirt waves a yellow scarf as she dances." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493144/original/file-20221102-19-r2k2fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493144/original/file-20221102-19-r2k2fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493144/original/file-20221102-19-r2k2fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493144/original/file-20221102-19-r2k2fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493144/original/file-20221102-19-r2k2fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493144/original/file-20221102-19-r2k2fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493144/original/file-20221102-19-r2k2fu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Veronica Freire performs in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ annual Hispanic heritage celebration in 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/p-mdmoment9_17-date-september-12-2009-credit-mark-gail-twp-news-photo/97153400?phrase=latter-day+saints+south+america&adppopup=true">Mark Gail/The The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>These cultural divides felt particularly strong in areas where immigration has been deeply politicized. Arizona, for example, passed the controversial <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Arizona_SB_1070">SB1070</a> in 2010, requiring immigrants to <a href="https://news.azpm.org/p/news-splash/2020/7/30/177558-show-me-your-papers-a-decade-after-sb-1070/">carry documentation of their legal status at all times</a> and permitting law enforcement to demand it from anyone they deemed suspicious during traffic stops. SB1070 was widely criticized as a form of <a href="https://www.aclu.org/other/frequently-asked-questions-about-arizona-racial-profiling-law">racial profiling</a> and one of the most extreme anti-immigration laws at the time.</p>
<p>SB1070 was sponsored by state Sen. Russell Pearce, a former sheriff and member of the LDS church. He was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/arizona-recall-why-russell-pearce-lost/2011/11/09/gIQALj6a5M_blog.html">defeated in a recall election shortly afterward</a> by charter school executive Jerry Lewis, a Republican and local Mormon leader who opposed Pearce’s stance on undocumented immigration.</p>
<p>The overarching whiteness and conservatism of LDS leaders – both in politics and in the church – were often a point of contention for Latina Mormons I interviewed. “Nora,” a Mexican mother of two, told me that the fallout over immigration politics was “unbelievable,” causing “so much of the church’s reputation to be damaged.” She described members who support immigrants, like Lewis, as “sent from heaven.” </p>
<p>Although there has been an alarming rise in online support for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/09/deznats-religious-extremists-mormon-vision">white supremacy</a> among U.S. LDS membership, there are also ongoing significant efforts on the part of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/09/27/rise-liberal-latter-day-saints/">LDS progressives</a> to rethink the church’s approaches to diversity and inclusion. As the Luz de las Naciones event emphasizes, parts of the church and its membership welcome the idea that it is “Better Together.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191628/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brittany Romanello does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Latina women hold few top leadership positions in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but their contributions help keep congregations going.Brittany Romanello, Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1914892022-10-19T12:38:23Z2022-10-19T12:38:23ZWhy the GOP’s battle for the soul of ‘character conservatives’ in these midterms may center on Utah and its Latter-day Saint voters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490375/original/file-20221018-8391-wkks8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=96%2C16%2C5289%2C3011&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Utah Sen. Mike Lee, right, and his challenger Evan McMullin before their debate Oct. 17, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2022SenateUtah/abf9316077f54ba9b10c76472d688fa0/photo?Query=mcmullin&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=154&currentItemNo=2">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. Sen. Mike Lee is seeking reelection in Utah – a typically uneventful undertaking for an incumbent Republican in a state that hasn’t had a Democratic senator <a href="https://historytogo.utah.gov/senators/">since 1977</a>. But he faces a unique challenger: Evan McMullin.</p>
<p>The former CIA operative, investment banker and Republican policy adviser left the GOP in 2016 because of Donald Trump. McMullin then ran for president as an independent, styling himself as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/11/09/evan-mcmullin-conservatives-must-now-abandon-the-republican-party/">a principled conservative</a>, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/utah">won 21%</a> of Utahans’ votes.</p>
<p>Lee himself <a href="https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=11167528&itype=storyID">voted for McMullin</a> in 2016, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/mike-lee-trump-rant-224970">saying Trump was “wildly unpopular</a>” in Utah because of “religiously intolerant” statements about Muslims. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-utah-salt-lake-mormons-20181215-story.html">Some 62% of the state’s residents</a> belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has its own history of suffering persecution. Yet Lee embraced Trump after his election, and now McMullin is trying to upend him.</p>
<p>Both men are devoted members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often known as the Mormon church or the LDS church. As <a href="https://www.utica.edu/people/luke-perry">a scholar of U.S. elections</a> and author of <a href="https://www.abc-clio.com/products/a3928c/">two books</a> on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137360823">LDS politics</a>, I see their November face-off as part of a larger fight over what it means to be a “character conservative.” This battle has been raging around the country, not only in Utah; but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/us/politics/arizona-mormons-trump-biden.html">LDS voters</a> have become an especially interesting example since Trump’s rise.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A man with a shaved head smiles while standing outside in a light blue suit and white shirt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489637/original/file-20221013-22-ujdh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C16%2C5383%2C3573&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489637/original/file-20221013-22-ujdh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489637/original/file-20221013-22-ujdh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489637/original/file-20221013-22-ujdh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489637/original/file-20221013-22-ujdh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489637/original/file-20221013-22-ujdh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489637/original/file-20221013-22-ujdh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Utah’s Evan McMullin speaks during an interview on July 23, 2022, in Provo, Utah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2022UtahSenate/a54d883f07304c81b12103f976b4f3c0/photo?Query=utah%20senate&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=2646&currentItemNo=5">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Road to acceptance</h2>
<p>Over two centuries, Latter-day Saints have transformed themselves from among the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/mormons-opposition/">most persecuted religious groups</a> in U.S. history to a global religion <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/2021-statistical-report-april-2022-conference">of almost 17 million members</a>, by their own count, with an estimated <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mormon-church-amassed-100-billion-it-was-the-best-kept-secret-in-the-investment-world-11581138011">US$100 billion</a> in resources.</p>
<p>Politics has always been woven into this history. Early Latter-day Saints were forced gradually westward from state to state because of neighbors’ distrust, mob justice and government oppression – most notably, <a href="https://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/mormon.asp">an extermination order</a> was issued by the state of Missouri in 1838. The church ultimately fled the U.S. after founder Joseph Smith was killed and settled around Salt Lake, which was a Mexican territory when church members first arrived.</p>
<p>Utah was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/mormons-utah/#:%7E:text=Congress%20would%20refuse%20the%20Utah,Union%20on%20January%204%2C%201896.">granted statehood</a> in 1896, and the Senate provided a building block for increased LDS immersion into American culture – though it didn’t look that way at first. In the early 1900s, the church was so widely reviled that Sen.-elect Reed Smoot <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Seating_of_Reed_Smoot.htm">was blocked from taking his seat</a> over accusations that his role in the church made him inherently hostile to the government.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows a formally dressed man in a light-colored suit walking across a lawn." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489655/original/file-20221013-23-l2qugm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489655/original/file-20221013-23-l2qugm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489655/original/file-20221013-23-l2qugm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489655/original/file-20221013-23-l2qugm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489655/original/file-20221013-23-l2qugm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489655/original/file-20221013-23-l2qugm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489655/original/file-20221013-23-l2qugm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Reed Smoot, photographed between 1913 and 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/senator-reed-smoot-between-1913-and-1917-american-news-photo/1425951053?phrase=reed+smoot&adppopup=true">Heritage Art/Heritage Images/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet Smoot was exonerated, and his three-decade tenure significantly enhanced the church’s acceptance in national politics. The soft-spoken senator became a leading voice of conservative morality and embodiment of <a href="https://www.abc-clio.com/products/a3928c/">Mormonism in wider American culture</a>, replacing Brigham Young, the bearded patriarch with multiple wives.</p>
<p>LDS ascendance throughout the 20th century culminated in Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential nomination and wider cultural attention dubbed “<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2012/02/the-mormon-moment-072361">the Mormon moment</a>.” Some LDS beliefs and practices – such as the teaching that Smith discovered scripture on golden plates buried in upstate New York – have long generated curiosity, if not derision, from other Americans. Many Latter-day Saints and observers felt Romney’s nomination suggested <a href="https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=jiass*">greater acceptance</a> of the religion.</p>
<p>In particular, LDS conservatives have become political allies with white evangelicals when it comes to social issues <a href="https://religionnews.com/2014/09/08/mormon-leaders-gay-marriage-supreme-court/">such as opposing gay marriage</a>. In popular culture, Latter-day Saints are often seen as the embodiment of 1950s conservative Americana. LDS cultural norms such as <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/1976/07/gods-hand-in-the-founding-of-america?lang=eng">patriotism</a>, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/word-of-wisdom?lang=eng">abstinence from tobacco and alcohol</a> and prioritizing child rearing, family life and devotion to service have forged a conception of character widely embraced by conservatives. </p>
<p>This all helped position Latter-day Saints as a small but influential group within the Christian right. </p>
<p>And then Trump decided to run for president.</p>
<h2>An inconvenient candidate</h2>
<p>Trump galvanized parts of the Republican Party. Yet conservatives were divided over the candidate’s character – especially his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-primary-is-over-but-donald-trump-keeps-attacking-fellow-republicans/2016/05/25/f1ab3c4e-2291-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html">unorthodox attacks</a> on primary rivals and <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-attacks-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-captured-120317">former GOP presidential candidates</a>, the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_2">Access Hollywood” video</a> in which he bragged about groping women, and numerous <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/10/21/trump-sexual-assault-allegations-share-similar-patterns-19-women/5279155002/">allegations of sexual assault</a>.</p>
<p>Latter-day Saints are <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/23/u-s-religious-groups-and-their-political-leanings/">the most Republican</a> religious group in the country, making them a particularly interesting <a href="https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/social-conservative-rebels-shake-lds-gop-alignment">case study</a> of character conservatism. Trump’s overlap with the LDS community “starts and stops” with his GOP affiliation, as Brigham Young University political scientist <a href="https://politicalscience.byu.edu/directory/quin-monson">Quin Monson</a> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-clinton-mormons-20161019-snap-story.html">told the Los Angeles Times</a> in 2016.</p>
<p>Romney thoroughly criticized Trump and encouraged Republicans to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/03/mitt-romney-trump-is-a-phony-a-fraud-who-is-playing-the-american-public-for-suckers/">vote for any other primary candidate</a>. Grounded in his LDS faith, which prioritizes family <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/africacentral/beliefs/family-values">on Earth</a> and <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/africacentral/beliefs/families-together-forever">for eternity</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/us/politics/mitt-romney-speech.html">Romney urged Utahans</a>: “Think of Donald Trump’s personal qualities. The bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics. … Imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does.”</p>
<p>Deseret News, the church-owned newspaper in Salt Lake, <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2016/10/8/20598212/in-our-opinion-donald-trump-should-resign-his-candidacy">opposed Trump</a> for not upholding “the ideals and values of this community.” Just <a href="https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4573783&itype=CMSID">16% of Latter-day Saints</a> thought he was a moral person.</p>
<p>When McMullin ran in 2016, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/utah">Trump still won Utah</a>, but with 45% – the lowest for a Republican nominee there since 1992. Nationwide, just over 50% of Latter-day Saints <a href="https://theconversation.com/faith-in-numbers-trump-held-steady-among-believers-at-the-ballot-it-was-the-nonreligious-vote-he-lost-in-2020-158513">voted for Trump in 2016</a>, almost 30 percentage points lower than white evangelicals. The second time around, he won over 60% of the LDS vote, but most church members who are people of color or are under 40 <a href="https://religionnews.com/2021/04/01/younger-u-s-mormons-voted-for-biden-but-trump-performed-well-overall/">did not vote for him</a>.</p>
<h2>GOP soul-searching</h2>
<p>Jan. 6, 2021, was a pivotal moment for the Trump presidency and character conservatives. Half of Republicans believed Trump <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/04/a-look-back-at-americans-reactions-to-the-jan-6-riot-at-the-u-s-capitol/">bore at least some responsibility</a> for what happened. Voters’ disapproval was compounded by further activities, such as Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/06/trumps-brazen-attempt-overturn-2020-election-timeline/">trying to overturn the 2020 election</a> and taking <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/08/13/1117297065/trump-documents-history-national-archives-law-watergate">highly classified documents</a>. Still, GOP candidates face strategic pressure to pledge allegiance to Trump: The Republican National Committee, for example, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/rnc-warning-trump-run-president-stop-paying-legal/story?id=87486985">has directed millions of dollars</a> to his legal defense.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People at a fair, many of them in cowboy hats, inspect a pig standing on straw." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489680/original/file-20221013-13-i2l2zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489680/original/file-20221013-13-i2l2zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489680/original/file-20221013-13-i2l2zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489680/original/file-20221013-13-i2l2zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489680/original/file-20221013-13-i2l2zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489680/original/file-20221013-13-i2l2zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489680/original/file-20221013-13-i2l2zv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, standing center, with an award-winning hog at the Weber County Fair on Aug. 13, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2022UtahSenate/8ebf0cd0cbea4b8e830783771b3695a4/photo?Query=evan%20mcmullin&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=76&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Sam Metz</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Character conservatives are reckoning with two different impulses. Trump is not a role model, but he has demonstrated willingness to fight for some religious-conservative values, such as reconfiguring the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/24/roe-v-wade-decision-trump-takes-credit-for-supreme-court-abortion-ruling.html">to enable the overturning of Roe v. Wade</a>. Some character conservatives support Trump, believing the ends justify means. Others reject Trump’s behavior as immoral and unacceptable for democracy – and the majority are probably somewhere in the middle.</p>
<p>The Utah Senate contest will provide some clarity to these countervailing trends. Lee has previously <a href="https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/10/29/21540402/news-sen-mike-lee-compares-donald-trump-to-captain-moroni-from-book-of-mormon">compared Trump with Captain Moroni</a>, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/gs/moroni-captain?lang=eng">a hero from LDS scripture</a>. McMullin, meanwhile, contends that Lee’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results were “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/25/utah-democrats-mcmullin/">brazen treachery</a>.”</p>
<p>Independent polling has Lee and McMullin <a href="https://www.deseret.com/utah/2022/10/10/23396679/evan-mcmullin-mike-lee-locked-utah-senate-race-poll-attack-ads">in a virtual tie</a>. Incumbency advantage is powerful, but Utah’s Democratic Party has uncharacteristically <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/24/politics/utah-democrats-evan-mcmullin-mike-lee">decided to support McMullin</a> rather than field its own candidate. </p>
<p>The character divide between Trump-supporting candidates and McMullin questions the extent to which LDS values and the carefully crafted public identity of the church can be disentangled from the modern Republican Party. Lee remains the favorite, but the fact that this is a competitive race speaks to how ongoing concerns continue to trouble the former president’s party, even in deeply red Utah.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191489/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Perry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many Republicans have wrestled with whether to embrace Donald Trump and his brash political style. Latter-day Saints are an especially telling example.Luke Perry, Professor of Political Science, Utica UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1875092022-08-02T12:59:43Z2022-08-02T12:59:43ZCongress is considering making same-sex marriage federal law – a political scientist explains how this issue became less polarized over time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476974/original/file-20220801-24-y51nxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A same-sex marriage supporter waves a rainbow flag outside the Supreme Court in 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/samesex-marriage-supporter-vin-testa-of-washington-dc-waves-a-rainbow-picture-id471417652?s=2048x2048">Drew Angerer/Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-abortion-became-divisive-issue-us-politics-2022-06-24/">public opinion</a> and <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/overview-abortion-laws">different state laws</a> on abortion rights are sharply dividing the country, there’s growing indication that most people agree on another once-controversial topic – protecting same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>The U.S. House of Representatives voted on July 19, 2022, to <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8404/text?r=1&s=1">enshrine same-sex marriage </a> into law with a bipartisan vote – all 220 Democratic representatives voted in favor, joined by 47 Republican colleagues. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8404">Respect for Marriage Act</a>, as it is called, would repeal the 1996 <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defense_of_marriage_act_(doma)">Defense of Marriage Act,</a> a federal law that defines marriage as the legal union between a man and a woman.</p>
<p>The bill faces an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-split-sex-marriage-bill-faces-uncertainty-senate-rcna39574">uncertain fate</a> in the closely divided Senate – so far, five Republicans out of 50 have said they would vote for it. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer <a href="https://www.vox.com/23274491/senate-republicans-same-sex-marriage-bill-respect-for-marriage-act">has said</a> the Senate will vote on the bill once it has 10 Republican votes. </p>
<p><a href="https://academics.morris.umn.edu/tim-lindberg">I am a scholar</a> of political behavior and history in the U.S. I believe that it’s important to understand that the bipartisan support for this bill marks a significant political transformation on same-sex marriage, which was used as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096505056295">contentious point</a> separating Democrats and Republicans roughly 15 to 20 years ago.</p>
<p>But over the past several years, same-sex marriage has become less politically divisive and gained more public approval, driven in part by former President Donald Trump’s general <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/16/republicans-gay-marriage-wars-505041">acceptance of the practice</a>. This environment made it politically safe for nearly a quarter of Republican House members to vote to protect this right under federal law. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476967/original/file-20220801-24-s4g4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men wearing suits stand with their backs to the camera and signs that say Just Married on their backs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476967/original/file-20220801-24-s4g4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476967/original/file-20220801-24-s4g4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476967/original/file-20220801-24-s4g4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476967/original/file-20220801-24-s4g4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476967/original/file-20220801-24-s4g4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476967/original/file-20220801-24-s4g4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476967/original/file-20220801-24-s4g4yz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A same-sex couple are shown after they married at San Francisco City Hall in June 2008.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/samesex-couple-ariel-owens-and-his-spouse-joseph-barham-walk-arm-in-picture-id81601297?s=2048x2048">Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What makes opinions change?</h2>
<p>Seventy-one percent of Americans say they support legal same-sex marriage, according to a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/393197/same-sex-marriage-support-inches-new-high.aspx">July 2022 Gallup poll</a>. In 1996, when Gallup first polled about same-sex marriage, 27% supported legalization of same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>This shift in public opinion has happened despite increasing polarization in the U.S. <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/12/17/in-a-politically-polarized-era-sharp-divides-in-both-partisan-coalitions/">about gun control, racial justice</a> and climate change.</p>
<p>What becomes, remains or ceases to be a divisive political issue in the U.S. over time depends on many factors. Changes to laws, shifting cultural norms and technological progress can all shape political controversies.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030619000277">My research, for example, explores</a> how Mormons in Utah territory – what would later become Utah state – were denied statehood by Congress until they gave up their religious belief in polygamy. Polygamy was outlawed under U.S. law, and known polygamists were excluded from voting and holding office. In the 1880s, <a href="https://theconversation.com/explaining-polygamy-and-its-history-in-the-mormon-church-81384">an estimated 20% to 30%</a> of Mormons practiced polygamy. Yet, political pressure led the Mormon Church president in 1890 to <a href="https://theconversation.com/explaining-polygamy-and-its-history-in-the-mormon-church-81384">announce</a> that polygamy would no longer be sanctioned. </p>
<p>In 2011, <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2012/1/15/20244382/mormons-say-polygamy-morally-wrong-pew-poll-shows">86% of Mormon adults reported that they consider polygamy morally wrong</a>, nearly in line with <a href="https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/214601/moral-acceptance-polygamy-record-high-why.aspx">general public opinion</a>. </p>
<p>Many political leaders, both on the left and right, were also largely hostile to same-sex marriage <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/high-profile-politicians-changed-positions-gay-marriage/story?id=18740293">until the early 2010s.</a> </p>
<h2>A rising controversy</h2>
<p>In 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/05/31/issenberg-book-excerpt-bill-woods-honolulu-doma-491401">state must have a compelling reason to ban same-sex marriage</a>, after a gay male couple and two lesbian couples <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/07/us/in-hawaii-step-toward-legalized-gay-marriage.html">filed a suit</a> that a state ban on same-sex marriage violated their privacy and equal protection rights. </p>
<p>Concern among conservatives that this legal reasoning would lead the Supreme Court to acknowledge a right to same-sex marriage led to a <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/how-and-why-doma-became-law-1996-msna20387">Republican Senator and Congressman</a> introducing the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defense_of_marriage_act_(doma)">Defense of Marriage Act</a>.</p>
<p>President Bill Clinton signed the bill in 1996 after <a href="https://law.jrank.org/pages/6038/Defense-Marriage-Act-1996.html">342 – or 78% – of House members and 85 senators</a> voted for it. Polling at the time showed support among the general population for same-sex marriage was <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/210566/support-gay-marriage-edges-new-high.aspx">27% overall, including just 33% among Democrats</a>. </p>
<p>Seven years later, in 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Court struck down a <a href="http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/440/440mass309.html">state ban on same-sex marriage</a>. With a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/311672/support-sex-marriage-matches-record-high.aspx">strong majority nationally of Republicans and independents opposed to same-sex marriage</a>, former President George W. Bush used conservative reactions to that decision to encourage voter turnout in 2004. <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/GAY-MARRIAGE-Did-issue-help-re-elect-Bush-2677003.php">Bush’s campaign highlighted state amendments to ban same-sex marriage</a>, all of which easily passed. </p>
<p>Although voters prioritized <a href="https://doi.org/10.2202/1540-8884.1056">other issues</a> in the 2004 elections, the opposition to same-sex marriage <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.2202/1540-8884.1058/html">helped Bush win reelection</a>, while Republicans picked up seats in both the House and Senate.</p>
<h2>A political change</h2>
<p>The legal and political landscape on same-sex marriage <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/06/24/same-sex-marriage-timeline/29173703/">became much more liberal</a> in the years following 2004. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/prop-8-passed-california-gay-marriage">In 2008,</a> state courts in California and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/nyregion/11marriage.html">Connecticut struck down</a> bans on same-sex marriage. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gaymarriage-vermont/vermont-becomes-4th-u-s-state-to-allow-gay-marriage-idUSTRE53648V20090407">Vermont became</a> the first state in 2009 to pass legislation and legalize same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>A major national shift occurred in 2012 <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-biden-forced-hand-on-same-sex-marriage-but-alls-well/">when then-Vice President Joe Biden</a> and President Barack Obama openly supported same-sex marriage. This was a major change for both men. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/22/politics/marriage-equality-congress-evolution/index.html">Biden had voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act</a>in 1996. <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/dissecting-president-obamas-evolution-gay-marriage/story?id=18792720">Obama publicly supported</a> marriage as being between a man and a woman in his 2004 senatorial campaign.</p>
<p>In 2015, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-556">struck down</a> all national and state restrictions on same-sex marriage, making same-sex marriage the law of the land.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476966/original/file-20220801-67954-kemfwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The White House is shown at night, light up with rainbow colors." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476966/original/file-20220801-67954-kemfwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476966/original/file-20220801-67954-kemfwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476966/original/file-20220801-67954-kemfwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476966/original/file-20220801-67954-kemfwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476966/original/file-20220801-67954-kemfwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476966/original/file-20220801-67954-kemfwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476966/original/file-20220801-67954-kemfwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rainbow-colored lights shine on the White House after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in June 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/rainbowcolored-lights-shine-on-the-white-house-to-celebrate-todays-us-picture-id478678270?s=2048x2048">Mark Wilson/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Trump effect</h2>
<p>The lack of attention Trump paid to same-sex marriage is one factor that contributed to it becoming a less divisive issue. While Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/24/absurb-claim-that-trump-is-most-pro-gay-president-american-history/">actual record on LBGTQ rights</a> generally aligns with conservative Christian values, Trump had said in 2016 that he was <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-same-sex-marriage-231310">“fine” with legalizing same-sex marriage</a>. </p>
<p>Still, despite the legality of same-sex marriage, many conservative Midwestern and Southern states <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/state-maps">deny other legal protections</a> to LBGTQ persons. Twenty-nine states still allow licensed professionals to conduct youth gay-conversion therapy, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/07/health/conversion-therapy-personal-and-financial-harm/index.html">a discredited process to convert LGBTQ people into no longer being queer</a>. </p>
<p>More than 20 states allow discrimination in <a href="https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/non_discrimination_laws">both housing</a> and public accommodations based on sexual orientation. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476998/original/file-20220801-70473-f142qs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman holds up a sign that says 'every child deserves a mom and dad'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476998/original/file-20220801-70473-f142qs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476998/original/file-20220801-70473-f142qs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476998/original/file-20220801-70473-f142qs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476998/original/file-20220801-70473-f142qs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476998/original/file-20220801-70473-f142qs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476998/original/file-20220801-70473-f142qs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476998/original/file-20220801-70473-f142qs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman participates in a protest in Washington after the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/opponents-of-samesex-marriage-demonstrate-near-the-supreme-court-28-picture-id471432028?s=2048x2048">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Respect for marriage</h2>
<p>Some Republican leaders have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/us/politics/after-roe-republicans-sharpen-attacks-on-gay-and-transgender-rights.html">grown bolder </a>in their opposition to same-sex marriage since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. </p>
<p>Other Republicans have said that codifying federal law same-sex marriage is <a href="https://www.vox.com/23274491/senate-republicans-same-sex-marriage-bill-respect-for-marriage-act">not necessary</a> since they don’t believe the Supreme Court is likely to overturn federal protections for same-sex marriage. </p>
<p>Democrats first moved to protect same-sex marriage in federal law because Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion in the Dobbs case that the court <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitutional-rights-00042256">should reconsider,</a> “all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” the latter being the case that legalized same-sex marriage.</p>
<p>But despite public opinion polls showing that most people favor legalizing same-sex marriage – including <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/311672/support-sex-marriage-matches-record-high.aspx">nearly half</a> of Republicans – the issue could still be a liability for Republican politicians. They have to answer to their core conservative constituents who largely oppose the practice. <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3570528-same-sex-marriage-debate-poses-problems-for-republicans/">This could mean</a> that Senate Republicans may have to consider splitting from their own base, or stepping away from moderate voters.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187509/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Lindberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The U.S. House of Representatives recently voted for a bill that would federally protect same-sex marriage – and 47 Republicans signed on, too. Same-sex marriage isn’t the partisan issue it once was.Tim Lindberg, Assistant professor, political science , University of MinnesotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1816912022-04-29T12:18:44Z2022-04-29T12:18:44ZWhat is a Latter-day Saint temple?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460151/original/file-20220427-15-fllvtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C4%2C1005%2C836&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints along the Capital Beltway in Kensington, Md.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/washington-d-c-temple-of-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-news-photo/564086389?adppopup=true">Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Temples in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often referred to as the Mormon church, have long been a site of <a href="https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0018/4515652.pdf">curiosity, suspicion and admiration</a>. Grand, sometimes even imposing structures, temples are among the most distinctive symbols of the church.</p>
<p>Temples are where the faith’s <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/27-temple-ordinances-for-the-living?lang=eng">most sacred rites</a> or “ordinances” are performed, so church members were traditionally taught not to discuss some of them publicly. But Latter-day Saint leaders have worked to dispel confusion about temples by posting photographs of the interior, <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/02/06/so-what-happens-an-lds/">describing rites in more detail</a> and promoting public tours. Many locations include adjacent “visitors centers” that offer a brief introduction to the temple and church teachings, and new or remodeled temples are open to the public before they are dedicated for worship.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2022/04/19/look-inside-maryland-mormon-temple">The LDS temple in Washington, D.C.</a>, for example – <a href="https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/library/facts/">the faith’s tallest</a>, and a common landmark for commuters in the U.S. capital – will be <a href="https://dctemple.org/open-house/">open for tours</a> from April 28 to June 11, 2022, after <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/washington-dc-temple-open-house-rededication-2022">four years of renovations</a>.</p>
<p>Once a temple is being used for religious rituals, however, entrance is restricted to members of the church who hold what is called a “<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/new-era/1995/04/your-temple-recommend?lang=eng">temple recommend</a>”: a document from local religious leaders attesting that the church member is in good standing. So what happens inside?</p>
<h2>Not just ‘church’</h2>
<p>Temples are different from churches in the Latter-day Saint faith. Weekly Sunday services are held at “meetinghouses,” where congregation members teach religious lessons and celebrate Communion, which they call “<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-23-the-sacrament?lang=eng">the sacrament</a>.” Churches also host other events for the local LDS community.</p>
<p>There are <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/mormonism-in-pictures-chapels-dot-the-globe#:%7E:text=Church%20congregations%20exist%20in%20over,each%20week%20for%20worship%20services.">tens of thousands of such meetinghouses</a> around the world, which are open to the public and commonly display a “Visitors Welcome” sign. These are simpler, smaller buildings that look similar to other Christian churches.</p>
<p>By contrast, temples are rarer and considered much more sacred. There are currently <a href="https://churchofjesuschristtemples.org/temples/">170 operational temples</a> in the world, on every continent except Antarctica. Temples are closed on Sundays.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An ornate white building rises above a cityscape." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460344/original/file-20220428-4038-o6g7fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460344/original/file-20220428-4038-o6g7fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460344/original/file-20220428-4038-o6g7fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460344/original/file-20220428-4038-o6g7fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460344/original/file-20220428-4038-o6g7fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460344/original/file-20220428-4038-o6g7fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460344/original/file-20220428-4038-o6g7fg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Latter-day Saint temple in Salt Lake City, Utah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/salt-lake-city-cityscape-with-mormon-temple-temple-royalty-free-image/1307732459?adppopup=true">tiaramaio/RooM via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Holy covenants</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://religion.kzoo.edu/faculty/dr-taylor-petrey-2/">a scholar and historian of Mormonism</a>, I can confirm that temples have long been a source of controversy – even back in 1903, when the election of a prominent Latter-day Saint to the U.S. Senate <a href="https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/expulsion/091ReedSmoot_expulsion.htm">sparked a yearslong government investigation</a>. Critics argued, unsuccessfully, that the vows Latter-day Saints make in temples should disqualify them from office.</p>
<p>In the past century, temples have continued to spark public scrutiny, generally when a local community <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2009/9/17/20376878/phoenix-neighbors-voice-opposition-to-lds-temple">opposes plans to build a new one</a>.</p>
<p>The three primary rites that take place inside are marriages, called “sealings”; the “endowment,” which reenacts the Bible’s creation story; and “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/why-do-mormons-baptize-the-dead/2012/02/15/gIQAnYfOGR_story.html">baptisms for the dead</a>.” In this ritual, also called proxy baptism, church members stand in for people who died without having received an LDS baptism. Latter-day Saints believe that the deceased person has an option in the afterlife of accepting or rejecting the baptism.</p>
<p>Latter-day Saints often experience these rites as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2013.802554">deeply transformative</a> and are taught that they have eternal consequences. In <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-and-church-history-gospel-doctrine-teachers-manual/lesson-31-sealed---for-time-and-for-all-eternity?lang=eng">marriage sealings</a>, for instance, Latter-day Saints believe they connect with a spouse not only for their lives on Earth, but for all time in the afterlife as well, although divorce is permitted.</p>
<p>During the endowment rite, in which many adult Latter-day Saints participate, members make vows to serve God and others and receive instructions about salvation. Those who have received the endowment ritual also promise to wear <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/temple-garments">a sacred “garment”</a> under their regular clothing.</p>
<p>Some members find the rites <a href="https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2014/09/13/i-loved-to-see-the-temple/">esoteric, strange or outdated</a>. But most return again and again to absorb the symbolism and seek answers to prayer.</p>
<h2>God’s house</h2>
<p>On the outside, temples display a variety of styles from Gothic to modernist. Today, most have a prominent steeple with a golden angel blowing a trumpet: <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix-contributor/2017/02/14/what-those-little-gold-trumpet-players-top-all-those-churches/97617766/">the Angel Moroni</a>. Moroni has a central role in the church’s narrative, as a prophet in the Book of Mormon who appeared to modern church founder Joseph Smith.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A gold-colored statue shows an angel blowing a trumpet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459548/original/file-20220425-2721-fpa5ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459548/original/file-20220425-2721-fpa5ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459548/original/file-20220425-2721-fpa5ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459548/original/file-20220425-2721-fpa5ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459548/original/file-20220425-2721-fpa5ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459548/original/file-20220425-2721-fpa5ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459548/original/file-20220425-2721-fpa5ji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A statue of the Angel Moroni sits atop many Latter-day Saint temples.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/MormonFinances/ef9694abd55c41309ac84d055abe3897/photo?Query=mormon%20temple&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=444&currentItemNo=64">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Inside, each of the rituals has a distinct room or rooms. Baptisms for the dead are performed in the basement in <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1993/03/i-have-a-question/why-are-oxen-used-in-the-design-of-our-temples-baptismal-fonts?lang=eng">a large font</a> on the backs of 12 oxen. Sealing rites are performed in smaller rooms with a central altar at which a couple kneels as they are married. </p>
<p>The endowment is the most elaborate. Participants sit in a small theater, with men and women on separate sides, to watch a film that depicts a sacred drama of Adam and Eve. At the end, all are admitted together to pray and converse in an elegant salon called the “celestial room,” the most sacred room, which represents the presence of God.</p>
<h2>Lightning rods</h2>
<p>The rites have often raised debate. Outsiders are excluded, which means that even immediate family members might not be present at a loved one’s marriage ceremony. Same-sex couples are excluded from sealings. Before 1978, Black church members <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1978/06/10/archives/mormon-church-strikes-down-ban-against-blacks-in-priesthood-change.html">were prohibited</a> from participating in any of the rites. Latter-day Saint feminists have criticized some of the vows in the endowment for reinforcing gender hierarchy, although some welcomed <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/01/02/lds-church-releases/">changes the church made in 2019</a>. </p>
<p>Baptisms for the dead also have drawn criticism. Zealous church members have used genealogical records to perform baptisms for the dead for Holocaust victims, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna27647809">which Jewish groups have condemned</a> as disrespecting victims’ faith. Church leaders have put controls in place to discourage the practice, such as urging members to <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/manual/members-guide-to-temple-and-family-history-work/chapter-7-providing-temple-ordinances?lang=eng&_r=1">focus on their own ancestors</a>.</p>
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<p>Yet temples have also brought inspiration, and not only to adherents. The late Lutheran theologian <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/us/16stendahl.html">Krister Stendahl</a> once applied <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Holy_Envy/PLuPDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">his famous idea of having “holy envy</a>,” or admiring aspects of other faiths, to describe his own appreciation for LDS temples.</p>
<p>As sacred sites where members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints engage in distinctive practices, temples are bound to spark a variety of responses for years to come, especially as the church continues its ambitious project to build more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181691/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Taylor Petrey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Temples are often open to the public for a period after construction or renovation, but only church members may enter once religious ceremonies begin.Taylor Petrey, Associate Professor of Religion, Kalamazoo CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1741932022-01-07T13:29:19Z2022-01-07T13:29:19ZWomen are finding new ways to influence male-led faiths<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439740/original/file-20220106-23-wdopex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5742%2C3828&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The number of women religious leaders is growing, but the 2018-2019 National Congregations Study, which surveyed 5,300 U.S. religious communities, found that only 56.4% of these communities would allow a woman to “be head clergy person or primary religious leader.”</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PatriarchalFaithsWomensRolesBuddhists/9235011302194770bf3fe7dc798ed7d3/photo?Query=women%20in%20religion&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=418&currentItemNo=75">AP Photo/Young Kwak</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In some religions, women are barred from serving as clergy or excluded from top leadership roles. Nonetheless, women have broken into influential roles in these male-led faiths. How are these women forging new pathways in these traditionally patriarchal religions? </p>
<p>The Associated Press, Religion News Service and The Conversation held a webinar with academics, journalists and religious leaders to discuss the future of women in faith leadership on Dec. 9, 2021.</p>
<p>The panel featured <a href="https://huronatwestern.ca/profiles/faculty/ingrid-mattson-phd/">Ingrid Mattson</a>, chair of Islamic Studies at Huron University College at Western University; <a href="https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/people/bio/emiliem-townes">Emilie M. Townes</a>, dean and distinguished professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt Divinity School; <a href="https://www.purdue.edu/research/staff/biographies.php?id=122">Carolyn Woo</a>, distinguished president’s fellow for global development at Purdue University; and <a href="https://denison.edu/people/jue-liang">Jue Liang</a>, visiting assistant professor of religion at Denison University. <a href="https://twitter.com/roxyleestone">Roxanne Stone</a>, managing editor of Religion News Service, acted as moderator. </p>
<p><em>Below are some highlights from the discussion. Please note that answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.</em></p>
<p><strong>Some of the women [faith leaders I’ve spoken] with [talk] about how leadership isn’t just in titled positions, but in influence. What is your definition of leadership? In the male-led faiths that you’re paying attention to, are you seeing any examples of women taking on nontraditional, unofficial leadership roles?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Carolyn Woo:</strong> I think leadership is the ability to have a vision that really advances that particular organization and serves that organization, and the capacity to translate that vision into action. I think influence is very important. I think informal influence for women comes from the fact that perhaps [they] are very invested with [their] work and have expertise and have good relationships with people and credibility. Those are informal sources of influence, but it is not fair. Women shouldn’t only operate with informal power – not because it is not useful, but because they also deserve formal recognition of their position. Formal positions allow you to have a vote. You don’t have to whisper it to somebody else. </p>
<p><strong>Jue Liang:</strong> The Buddhist way of thinking about leadership is more in the identity or the role of a teacher or a role model. Everyone has the potential to become enlightened, just like the Buddha. [In Buddhism] leadership is considered, at least in theory, open to all. [Historically, it has not been] the case. But through education and ordination, we’re [seeing] more [role] models that are inhabiting the body of women. [Leading] more women to think, “Maybe I can do that too.”</p>
<p><strong>Are women who have informal or non-clergy roles of influence – say in publishing, social media or academia – able to maintain that informal influence long term?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Emilie M. Townes:</strong> I think our ability to lead and influence is going to be tenuous [in any circumstances]. Influence is always going to be dependent on whether or not people are listening. I think it becomes even more tenuous if you are in a more conservative setting that has a hierarchy of roles where the thought of challenging is just not a part of everyday life. </p>
<p><strong>Ingrid Mattson:</strong> I see a lot of self-censorship. When I speak to women religious leaders about issues that impact women, there’s a lot of caution that the majority exercise. They feel like their authority is very tentative and that all it takes is a few guys calling them a radical feminist [to lose their influence]. The women who are ready to step out have other sources of support. They are at universities or women’s organizations, so that even if they are dismissed in this way, they still have a basis for support.</p>
<p><strong>When we talk about these issues [that women in male-led major religions face], there is almost an assumption that change is inevitable, that younger generations are just not going to stand for this. And that if women do not start to have more top leadership posts in some of these traditions, that they’re not going to survive. What are your thoughts on that, and where do you think we’re headed?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Carolyn Woo:</strong> Changes are inevitable, but the direction and the sources of those changes are not homogeneous. You have young people who walk away from the church and become disaffiliated. On the other hand, I also see women who have started ministries for women athletes. Within the Catholic Church, [women have started ministries] to try to understand our own menstrual cycles so that they could appreciate the female body. </p>
<p><strong>Emilie M. Townes:</strong> Change is happening, but I always look at the structures of the change happening. [We may have more women seminary students than men], but if the basic structure of the church remains the same, the roles perpetuate the structure. I like to think more in terms of transformation. I think it pushes us further along. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://vimeo.com/655441151/80896b131a">Watch the full webinar</a> to hear more detailed answers to these questions and to hear the panelists discuss stereotypes women leaders face, the future of women’s leadership in the Catholic Church, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Muslim women leaders and more.</em> </p>
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<p>[<em>The most interesting religion stories from three major news organizations.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-best-of-1">Get This Week in Religion.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174193/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Three female academics discuss how women are forging new pathways in faith leadership throughout religions that traditionally have been patriarchal.Emily Costello, Director of Collaborations + Local News, The Conversation USThalia Plata, EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1706132021-12-14T13:28:30Z2021-12-14T13:28:30ZWhat partnership looks like in Mormon marriages is shifting – slowly<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436490/original/file-20211208-19-1jlb8tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=34%2C47%2C2082%2C1362&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What should a marriage look like? Religious leaders' ideas have shifted for centuries.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">davidf/E+ via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Discussions about women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS church or Mormon church, often revolve around <a href="https://religiondispatches.org/why-the-womens-ordination-question-will-shape-the-future-of-mormonism/">one question</a>: Will they ever be ordained? </p>
<p>Latter-day Saint women may serve as leaders of <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/learn/relief-society-general-presidency?lang=eng">women’s</a> or <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/learn/primary-general-presidency?lang=eng">children’s organizations</a>, but power in the church remains firmly in the hands of men.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.cgu.edu/people/caroline-kline/">my research on Mormonism and gender</a>, however, I’ve studied how women’s status and leadership have noticeably increased within Latter-day Saint families since the 1980s.</p>
<p>This change is significant, given <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/family?lang=eng">the importance of the family</a> in the church’s teachings. Latter-day Saints believe that families continue to be together beyond this life, and that familial relationships shape their destinies after death.</p>
<h2>Two centuries of change</h2>
<p>Unlike many churches, the LDS church does not employ paid, full-time clergy at the local level. Instead, all practicing men and boys are ordained into a lay priesthood, usually around age 12. Priesthood holders can lead local congregations as <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/my-calling-as-a-bishop/getting-started?lang=eng">bishops</a> and <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/my-calling-as-a-counselor-in-the-bishopric/getting-started?lang=eng">bishops’ counselors</a>. Depending on their status within <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-14-priesthood-organization?lang=eng">the priesthood hierarchy</a>, boys and men can officiate in baptisms and Holy Communion, which is called the “sacrament.”</p>
<p>Women of all ages, however, are barred from ordination and therefore barred from serving as bishops, apostles and prophets, among other types of leaders. In recent years, <a href="https://ordainwomen.org/">a grassroots movement</a> called Ordain Women has pushed to extend the priesthood to women. However, senior church leaders have held firm that “<a href="https://www.thechurchnews.com/archives/2014-04-05/elder-dallin-h-oaks-keys-and-authority-of-the-priesthood-40861">the divinely decreed pattern</a>” is for only men to be ordained, as one apostle of the church said in 2014. They emphasize that the blessings of the priesthood are available for everyone, including women and children. </p>
<p>The LDS church was founded in 1830, at a time when most Christian groups in the United States emphasized men’s “headship” or predominance in the family. Early Latter-day Saint leaders echoed these ideas and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23286316">likewise affirmed male superiority</a>.</p>
<p>Throughout the 20th century, LDS leaders often used the word “preside” to describe their vision of men’s leadership role in the family, which, up to the 1970s, emphasized their prerogatives to be <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1973/02/strengthening-the-patriarchal-order-in-the-home?lang=eng">the ultimate decision makers</a>.</p>
<p>But the 1980s and 1990s saw the beginnings of a noticeable softening in leaders’ rhetoric about male “headship.” Increasingly, notions of men’s presiding within the family were coupled with messages about equal partnership between husbands and wives. Sermons from church leaders began to emphasize the importance of <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1989/07/unrighteous-dominion?lang=eng">joint decision making</a>, compromise and <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1998/04/the-relief-society?lang=eng">working together within marriage</a>.</p>
<p>This shift toward a double discourse – one that simultaneously affirms male headship and egalitarianism in marriages – is reflected in the 1995 document known as “<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world/the-family-a-proclamation-to-the-world?lang=eng">The Family: A Proclamation to the World</a>.” The proclamation laid out the church’s official stance on family and gender roles. It states that “fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurturing of children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.”</p>
<p>Many Latter-day Saints consider it to be a <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1998/02/the-family?lang=eng">divinely inspired document</a>. </p>
<h2>Balancing act</h2>
<p>How does a religion simultaneously emphasize both of these ideas: that men should preside and that men and women should be equal partners? How does a Latter-day Saint couple uphold both these visions of power dynamics within the home? </p>
<p>Part of the answer is in how the church has redefined the term “preside.” The church’s 2006 <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/family-guidebook?lang=eng">Family Guidebook</a> describes male “presiding” as leading religious training and rituals within the family. Presiding was no longer attached to male decision making; rather, it involved proactive participation within the family.</p>
<p>Even more recently, the concept of male presiding <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2012/06/counseling-together-in-marriage?lang=eng">has been reinterpreted</a> to simply mean that fathers need to make sure the whole family is happy and thriving and that decisions are made mutually with both partners’ full participation.</p>
<p>Another way LDS teachings have accommodated egalitarian ideas is by reinterpreting the role of Eve – the first woman on Earth, according to the Bible.</p>
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<img alt="God stands over Adam and Eve in an illustration." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436493/original/file-20211208-27-bblzge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436493/original/file-20211208-27-bblzge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436493/original/file-20211208-27-bblzge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436493/original/file-20211208-27-bblzge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436493/original/file-20211208-27-bblzge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436493/original/file-20211208-27-bblzge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436493/original/file-20211208-27-bblzge.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">In many traditions, expectations for gender roles often circle back to Adam and Eve.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Angel_of_the_Divine_Presence_Clothing_Adam_and_Eve_with_Coats_of_Skins,_object_1_(Butlin_436).jpg">William Blake, 'The Angel of the Divine Presence Clothing Adam and Eve with Coats of Skins'/Fitzwilliam Museum</a></span>
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<p>Throughout the church’s history, messages about Eve have reflected <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199358212.003.0011">evolving understandings of women’s roles</a>. In the 19th century, Latter-day Saints, like most other Christian traditions, used the curse God placed on Eve – <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/gen/3?lang=eng">that her husband would rule over her</a> – to justify <a href="https://jod.mrm.org/13/197">female subordination</a>.</p>
<p>Leaders in the early and mid-20th century downplayed the curse and evoked Eve as <a href="https://emp.byui.edu/SatterfieldB/Talks/Motherhood/Wives%20and%20Mothers%20in%20the%20Plan%20JRC.pdf">a noble model</a> of what they considered women’s main purpose in life: to become mothers. And in the late 1970s, then-president of the church Spencer W. Kimball, while <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1976/03/the-blessings-and-responsibilities-of-womanhood?lang=eng">speaking about Eve</a>, rejected the starkly patriarchal concept of men ruling over wives, saying he preferred the softer term “preside.”</p>
<p>Leaders in the 2000s have continued to reinterpret the story of Adam and Eve in increasingly egalitarian ways. Church leader <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2007/08/crossing-thresholds-and-becoming-equal-partners?lang=eng">Bruce Hafen</a> sees Adam and Eve as “equal partners.” </p>
<p>This focus on Eve to justify newer ideas of women’s leadership within their families – though still couched within concepts of men’s “presiding” – is especially meaningful given Latter-day Saints’ emphasis on the story of Adam and Eve. During a major rite in church members’ lives, called the <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/what-is-temple-endowment?lang=eng">temple endowment ceremony</a>, participants reenact part of the story, with men taking on Adam’s role and women Eve’s.</p>
<p>[<em>There’s plenty of opinion out there. We supply facts and analysis, based in research.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=politics-no-opinion">Get The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p>
<p>In 2019, leaders changed the part of the ceremony where women made an obedience covenant, promising to “hearken” unto their husbands in righteousness – which had been one of the last and most significant ways the church stressed men’s predominance in the family. In a nod to rising egalitarianism, women now make a covenant <a href="https://religionnews.com/2019/01/03/lds-church-changes-temple-ceremony-gives-eve-a-bigger-role/">to obey God directly</a>. Husbands no longer serve as middlemen between wives and the divine. </p>
<h2>The next generation</h2>
<p>This momentous change to the temple ceremony signaled the death knell for older Latter-day Saint concepts of female subordination within marriage. Tellingly, however, church leaders have doubled down on language of male “presiding,” even if it does not mean so much in practice. The same year the women’s temple covenant was changed, church authorities <a href="https://www.the-exponent.com/guest-post-why-is-preside-in-the-new-sealing-ceremony/">added a reference to male “presiding”</a> to the marriage ceremony.</p>
<p>The Latter-day Saint tradition continues, therefore, to embrace a double discourse of male headship and marital egalitarianism. For many Latter-day Saint feminists, this discourse is <a href="https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2007/11/30/the-trouble-with-chicken-patriarchy/">disingenuous and unsatisfying</a>. These progressives desire teachings about marriage that better fit the new egalitarian ideals espoused by church leaders.</p>
<p>While leaders are clearly in no hurry to step away from talk of male “presiding,” one important outcome of the shift toward egalitarian rhetoric may be increasing male participation in the home. As fathers step into active, nurturing roles, a new generation of Latter-day Saint couples may increasingly live out a theology closer to equal partnership.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Kline does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>LDS leaders still stress that men should ‘preside’ over their families. But in recent years, messages about marriage have stressed more equal partnership.Caroline Kline, Assistant Director of the Center for Global Mormon Studies, Claremont Graduate UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1616422021-06-29T12:05:15Z2021-06-29T12:05:15Z‘Cheating’s OK for me, but not for thee’ – inside the messy psychology of sexual double standards<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408231/original/file-20210624-15-fmgty7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=467%2C355%2C5052%2C3798&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The mating game often involves convoluted rationalizations.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/concept-of-divorce-quarrel-between-man-and-royalty-free-illustration/1319939719?adppopup=true">tomozina/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sexual double standards – in which women and men are judged differently for the same sexual behavior – will probably sound familiar to most people. </p>
<p>The classic one centers on multiple sexual partners: Men who are promiscuous <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/men0000076">are lauded</a> as “studs,” “lotharios” or “ladies’ men,” while women who have a lot of sex <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/david-m-buss/the-evolution-of-desire/9780465097760/">get called</a> “sluts” or “whores.” Men who cheat on their wives aren’t exactly praised, but they’ll often get a pass. Women who do the same, on the other hand, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/david-m-buss/the-evolution-of-desire/9780465097760/">risk sullying their social reputations</a>.</p>
<p>There’s a different sexual double standard, however, and it’s one that exists between two partners. </p>
<p>In my new book, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/When-Men-Behave-Badly-Harassment/dp/0316419354">When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault</a>,” I spend some time exploring the underlying psychology of infidelity. Thanks to the way men get a pass for their promiscuity, you might assume men are more likely to rationalize their own cheating than women. </p>
<p>But in what I call the “me-versus-thee double standard,” it turns out that each side is just as likely to play mental gymnastics when it comes to justifying their bad behavior.</p>
<h2>Hypocrisy at its finest</h2>
<p>What’s behind the classic sexual double standard, in which men get more of a pass for having multiple sexual partners?</p>
<p>Part of the answer lies with men’s evolved mating psychology. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.1.85">Relative to women, they have a stronger desire for sexual variety</a>, which shows up in their sex drive, the number of partners they seek out, their tendency to fantasize about different women and their patronage of prostitutes.</p>
<p>So throughout human history, you’ll see men in power lay down parameters that give themselves more latitude for promiscuity. </p>
<p>Roman emperors, for example, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8438454/Romes-most-controversial-emperors.html">created harems of females</a> guarded by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/eunuch">eunuchs</a>, while Joseph Smith, when he founded the Mormon religion, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363814184/mormon-church-publishes-essay-on-founder-joseph-smiths-polygamy">formalized polygamy</a>, arguing that God wouldn’t have made women so enticing if he wanted to limit a man to one woman. </p>
<p>However, Smith was keen to note that the same rules didn’t apply to women. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/revelation-12-july-1843-dc-132/8">In his handwritten documents</a>, Smith relays how the Lord told him: “And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him… But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed… according to my commandment.”</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, women often find this sexual hypocrisy baffling and logically inconsistent. </p>
<p>Yet versions of this sexual double standard persist, even in the most sexually egalitarian countries on Earth, <a href="https://www.hbes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/conference_29.pdf">such as Norway</a>. And <a href="https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/63379/ASAO-DISSERTATION-2017.pdf?sequence=1">recent studies of more than three dozen cultures</a> found that it’s women, not men, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-women-still-get-judged-so-harshly-for-having-casual-sex-160583">who receive the brunt of the criticism for having casual sex and cheating on their partners</a>. </p>
<h2>‘What counts as sex’ isn’t so stable</h2>
<p>The sexual double standard just outlined has to do with what’s acceptable for men versus what’s OK for women. </p>
<p>The other has to do with what’s acceptable for oneself versus one’s partner.</p>
<p>In 2008, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490802398332">three social scientists posed the same question to men and women</a>: “What counts as sex?” </p>
<p>Only 41% of the men in existing relationships said that oral contact with someone else’s genitals would count as sex. But 65% of the men said that if their partner had oral contact, it would count as sex. </p>
<p>You might think that this reveals the usual sexual double standard, in which women are evaluated more harshly than men for the same conduct. </p>
<p>However only around one-third of women – 36% – said that if they had oral contact with someone else, it would count as sex, which is about the same as what men said. Meanwhile, 62% of women said that if their partner had oral contact with someone else, it would count as sex. </p>
<p>These findings reveal a previously unexplored sexual double standard – not between men and women as groups, but rather between standards people hold for themselves versus their partners: the “me-versus-thee” double standard.</p>
<p>If people hold sexual double standards about what counts as sex – not sex if I have contact with others, but definitely sex if you do – it’s easy to see how this quirky rationalization can lead to conflict in relationships: </p>
<p><em>It’s OK for me to kiss someone else; it doesn’t really mean anything, and besides, it’s not really sex. But you’d better not.</em> </p>
<p><em>It’s OK for me to receive a bit of oral pleasure when you’re out of town because it’s not really sex. But if you do, it’s infidelity with a capital “I.”</em></p>
<h2>Going after the competition</h2>
<p>It turns out that just as women are equal participants in the me-versus-thee double standard, they also help perpetuate the traditional male-versus-female double standard.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/63379">my research team conducted a series of studies</a> and found that women are somewhat more likely than men to condemn cheating and casual sex. However, women in many cultures are significantly harsher on other women than men are on other men. They’re also more likely to spread gossip that other women can’t stay loyal to one partner. And although women don’t admire promiscuous or adulterous men, they express less moral condemnation toward men who cheat or sleep around than they do toward women who do the same. </p>
<p>It all comes back to the fact that women’s sexual psychology, like that of men’s, evolved in the brutal and amoral furnace of <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/david-m-buss/the-evolution-of-desire/9780465097760/">sexual and reproductive competition</a>. Women’s fundamental competitors have always been other women, and sullying the sexual reputations of their rivals is a key strategy in the serious game of procreative success.</p>
<p>When it comes to sexual double standards, perhaps we’re all moral hypocrites.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161642/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David M. Buss does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Both men and women play a role in perpetuating attitudes toward sex that are hypocritical and logically inconsistent.David M. Buss, Professor of Psychology, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1600792021-06-07T12:35:29Z2021-06-07T12:35:29Z‘Lady of Guadalupe’ avoids tough truths about the Catholic Church and Indigenous genocide<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404125/original/file-20210602-27-1ftytdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C3%2C2032%2C1358&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 2020 film is the latest of many movie takes on this Catholic miracle story.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/ladyofguadalupemovie/photos/?ref=page_internal">@ladyofguadalupemovie via Facebook</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10886702/">Lady of Guadalupe</a>,” first released in 2020 and now available on many streaming services, mixes a fictional retelling of the 16th-century appearance of the Virgin Mary to a Mexican peasant named <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-virgin-of-guadalupe-is-more-than-a-religious-icon-to-catholics-in-mexico-151251">Juan Diego</a> with the tale of a wholly fictional 21st-century reporter named Juan working on a story about miracles involving the Lady of Guadalupe. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6622-liminal-sovereignty.aspx">researcher of religion</a>, I’m interested in how religious history gets incorporated into contemporary faith and movies. It reminds me of the documentaries I watched as a child about the history of my own religious community: Mennonites who emigrated from Ukraine to Canada. </p>
<p>Religious communities, like the Mennonites and Mormons I have studied, can act in ways that may perplex people. As I contend in my forthcoming book about <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/showproduct.aspx?ProductID=7170&SEName=unholy-trinity">religion and film in Mexico</a>, when films use religious symbols, experiences or figures, they make larger historical and social commentary. In Mexico, that often involves presenting critical views of Catholic priests as a way to comment on Mexican political leaders.</p>
<p>As I watched “Lady of Guadalupe,” I was curious to see how it might handle Catholicism’s role in the colonial period. Unfortunately, that aspect of the movie leaves a lot to be desired. Although it portrays the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe for a broad audience, ultimately this film sanitizes the real-life brutality of the Church toward Indigenous peoples in the 16th century.</p>
<h2>The Virgin of Guadalupe in film history</h2>
<p>Many filmmakers have been drawn to the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which is one of the earliest and most enduring Catholic miracle stories in the Americas. Juan Diego is said to have experienced a vision in 1531 of the Virgin Mary <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-virgin-of-guadalupe-is-more-than-a-religious-icon-to-catholics-in-mexico-151251">in Tepeyac, an area that is today the northern part of Mexico City</a>. </p>
<p>When his bishop demanded proof of the apparition, it is believed the Virgin again appeared to Juan Diego and told him about a place where he could pick some roses to bring back to the bishop. It’s said that when the bishop looked at the roses, the Virgin appeared to him as well. The Catholic Church confirmed this miracle when it <a href="https://stfrancis.clas.asu.edu/article/canonization-juan-diego">canonized Juan Diego in 2002</a>, making him <a href="https://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/slatta/hi216/documents/juandiego.htm">Mexico’s first Indigenous saint</a>.</p>
<p>Over the five centuries since the report of Juan Diego’s vision, the Virgin of Guadalupe has come to be credited with many other miracles. In the fight for Mexican independence, Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-virgin-of-guadalupe-is-more-than-a-religious-icon-to-catholics-in-mexico-151251">used her images on his banners</a>, uniting Mexicans in their fight against Spain. </p>
<p>Since then the Virgin of Guadalupe has been a hugely important <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/spimis">national symbol</a>. So it’s no surprise that many filmmakers would be drawn to this story. One of the earliest known film versions of this story, “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0187584/">La Virgen de Guadalupe</a>” or the “Virgin of Guadalupe,” appeared in 1976, and more than a dozen have appeared since. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man dressed as Miguel Hidalgo performs with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe at the beginning of the 'Relief for Peace with Justice and Dignity' caravan in Mexico City on June 4, 2011." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404549/original/file-20210604-17-1d97qy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404549/original/file-20210604-17-1d97qy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404549/original/file-20210604-17-1d97qy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404549/original/file-20210604-17-1d97qy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404549/original/file-20210604-17-1d97qy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404549/original/file-20210604-17-1d97qy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404549/original/file-20210604-17-1d97qy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 2011 movement in Mexico against drug trade violence and crime evoked the legacies of two powerful figures in the country’s history: independence fighter and priest Miguel Hidalgo, and the apparition of the Virgin of of Guadalupe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com">Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Film scholar and priest <a href="https://ctu.edu/faculty/antonio-sison/">Antonio D. Sison</a> has identified two common themes in these films. The stories center either how priests used the Virgin to further their attempts to convert Indigenous people to Catholicism, or on the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Religion-and-Film/Lyden/p/book/9780415601870">supernatural aspects of her unexpected appearance</a> to Juan Diego. </p>
<h2>Sanitizing history, simplifying the present</h2>
<p>I argue that this recent film about the Lady of Guadalupe falls into the first of these categories. But the film avoids uncomfortable truths. </p>
<p>In terms of the historical record, the film simplifies the role of the Catholic Church in <a href="https://theconversation.com/statues-topple-and-a-catholic-church-burns-as-california-reckons-with-its-spanish-colonial-past-142809">Spain’s brutal colonization</a> of Mexico’s Indigenous peoples in the 16th century. When it portrays the colonial period, it shows priests using the apparition of the Virgin Mary to an Indigenous man as a way to encourage conversions to Catholicism. But it leaves out the ways in which the Spanish colonizers destroyed symbols of Indigenous religions, killed local political leaders and forcibly kidnapped children and <a href="https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/mexican-catholicism-conquest-faith-and-resistance">converted them to Christianity</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, the film offers a few brief scenes of one-on-one interpersonal violence that do nothing to convey the complete genocidal decimation of cultures and traditions that took place during <a href="https://indigenousmexico.org/">the colonial period</a>. </p>
<p>Pedro Brenner, the producer of “Lady of Guadalupe,” has asserted that the film offers “a guide to better understand what it means to be Latino in the <a href="https://lastylemix.com/2021/03/15/lady-of-guadalupe-director-pedro-brenner-talks-hope-faith-and-latin-culture-the-acclaimed-directors-latest-film-lady-of-guadalupe-will-be-available-on-demand-april-6-in-spanish-and-english/">modern day</a>,” while some Catholic critics believe “Lady of Guadalupe” inspires <a href="https://www.franciscanmedia.org/st-anthony-messenger/may-2021/film-reviews-with-sister-rose">religious devotion</a>. But in my view both are overly simplistic. Being Latino in the United States is not exclusively related to Mexico, nor to Catholicism, and focusing solely on the role of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Latino identity is inaccurate. Moreover, the film inspires a sentimental view of the past.</p>
<p>[<em>This week in religion, a global roundup each Thursday.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-global-roundup">Sign up.</a>]</p>
<h2>Comparison with other films</h2>
<p>The Ecuadorian director Santiago Parras’ 2006 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887259/">Guadalupe</a>” provides an important comparison to 2020’s “Lady of Guadalupe” in how well it handles historical accuracy and historical truths. </p>
<p>Released to commemorate the 475th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe to Juan Diego, the film <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Religion-and-Film/Lyden/p/book/9780415601870">juxtaposes the story of two archaeologists</a> who attempted to uncover the truth behind the Virgin’s miraculous appearance. In doing so, it combines both scholarship and religious devotion. </p>
<p>For example, when the the Virgin appears before Juan, she speaks in Nahua, an Indigenous language spoken by people living in what is now Mexico City, including the Aztecs. This reflects one of the details of the actual miracle story: that the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego as an Aztec princess.</p>
<p>“Guadalupe” is not a perfect film. But its emphasis on scholarly inquiry and attempts to use original source material more effectively combine religious devotion and scholarship than “Lady of Guadalupe,” which relies too heavily as a film on a selectively edited vision of the past. In my estimation, this absence of critical engagement with the account of the Virgin’s appearance does not do justice to religious devotion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160079/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Janzen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The latest movie to take on this classic story sentimentalizes history in the name of inspiring religious devotion.Rebecca Janzen, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1585132021-04-08T12:04:01Z2021-04-08T12:04:01ZFaith in numbers: Trump held steady among believers at the ballot – it was the nonreligious vote he lost in 2020<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393848/original/file-20210407-19-1mu1vfi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3967%2C2430&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">White evangelicals continued to back Trump in 2020 in significant numbers.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/voter-fills-out-his-ballot-with-christ-on-the-crucifix-news-photo/1229449053?adppopup=true">Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For all <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/10/trump-religious-voters-411248">the predictions</a> and talk of a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-loss-support-biden-evangelicals-election-polls-religion-2020-11">slump in support among evangelicals</a>, it appears Donald Trump’s election loss was not at the hands of religious voters.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://www.eiu.edu/polisci/faculty.php/hendrickson.php?id=rpburge&subcat=">analyst of religious data</a>, I’ve been crunching <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/E9N6PH">data released in March 2021</a> that breaks down the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by faith. And by and large there was very little notable change in the vote choice of religious groups between 2016 and 2020 – in fact, for most faiths, support for Trump ticked up slightly. Instead, it was among those who do not identify with any religion that Trump saw a noticeable drop.</p>
<p><iframe id="7DQAz" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/7DQAz/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Despite exit poll data initially pointing toward a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html">drop in white evangelical support</a> for Trump in 2020, the latest data shows this not to be the case. The data is based on the <a href="https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/">Cooperative Election Study</a>, which has become the gold standard for assessing vote choice because of its sample size and its ability to accurately represent the voting population of the United States.</p>
<p>In fact, with 80% of white evangelicals backing Trump in 2020, support actually ticked up from the 78% who voted for him four years earlier.
Trump also saw two-point increases in the vote of nonwhite evangelicals, white Catholics, Black Protestants and Jews compared with four years ago.</p>
<p>These differences are not statistically significant, and as such it would be wrong to say it definitively shows Trump gained among religious groups. But it indicates that among the largest religious groups in the U.S., voting patterns in the November 2020 vote seemed to hold largely steady with four years earlier. Trump did not manage to win significantly larger shares, nor was winner Joe Biden able to peel away religious voters from the Trump coalition.</p>
<h2>Losing the nonreligious</h2>
<p>However, there are some interesting and statistically significant trends when you break down the data further. Nonwhite Catholics shifted four points toward Donald Trump. This fits with what we saw in places like the <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/miamidadecountyflorida/PST045219">heavily Hispanic</a> and <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/metro-area/miami-metro-area/">Catholic</a> Miami-Dade County, Florida, where Trump’s <a href="https://www.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/04/elections-compare-florida-vote-president-2016-2020/6156532002/">overall vote share improved</a> from 35% to 46% between 2016 and 2020.</p>
<p>Trump also managed to pick up 15 percentage points among the Mormon vote. On first glance this would appear a large jump. But it makes sense when you factor in that around <a href="https://religioninpublic.blog/2018/07/25/mormon-voting-patterns-in-the-2016-election-a-comprehensive-analysis/">15% of the Mormon vote</a> in 2016 <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/utah-mormon-vote-mcmullin">went to Utah native and fellow Mormon Evan McMullin</a>, who ran in that year’s election as a third-party candidate. Without McMullin in 2020, Trump picked up Mormon voters – as did Joe Biden, who did slightly better than Hillary Clinton had among Mormons.</p>
<p>There is also some weak evidence that the Republican candidate picked up some support among smaller religious groups in the U.S., like Hindus and Buddhists. Trump increased his share among these two groups by four percentage points each. But it is important to note that these two groups combined <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/">constitute only about 1.5% of the American population</a>. As such, a four-point increase translates to only a very small fraction of the overall popular vote.</p>
<p>What is clear is that Trump <a href="https://religioninpublic.blog/2021/04/06/the-2020-vote-for-president-by-religious-groups-the-nones/">lost a good amount of ground among the religious unaffiliated</a>. Trump’s share of the atheist vote declined from 14% in 2016 to just 11% in 2020; the decline among agnostics was slightly larger, from 23% to 18%. </p>
<p>Additionally, those who identify as “<a href="https://religionnews.com/2019/07/03/rise-of-the-nothing-in-particulars-may-be-sign-of-a-disjointed-disaffected-and-lonely-future/">nothing in particular</a>” – a group that represents 21% of the overall U.S. population – were not as supportive of Trump in his reelection bid. His vote share among this group dropped by three percentage points, while Biden’s rose by over seven points, with the Democrat managing to win over many of the “nothing in particulars” who had backed third-party candidates in the 2016 election.</p>
<p>Looked at broadly, Trump did slightly better among Christians and other smaller religious groups in the U.S. but lost ground among the religiously unaffiliated. What these results cannot account for, however, is record turnout. There were nearly <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections">22 million more votes</a> cast in 2020 than in 2016. So while vote shares may not have changed that much, the number of votes cast helped swing the election for the Democratic candidate. A more detailed breakdown of voter turnout is due to be released in July 2021 by the team that administers the Cooperative Election Study; that will bring the picture of religion and the 2020 vote into clearer focus.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan Burge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump saw a decline in support among atheists, agnostics and voters not affiliated with any religion in the 2020 election.Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1301072020-03-30T12:15:20Z2020-03-30T12:15:20ZHow prisoners, soldiers and Mormon missionaries make the census more complicated<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318350/original/file-20200303-66078-1of29ef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Counting Americans is a complicated process.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/closeup-united-states-census-2020-form-1510688600">Tada Images/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. census is the most democratic and inclusive activity we do as a country. </p>
<p>For <a href="https://www.cpc.unc.edu/people/staff/rebecca-tippett/">demographers like myself</a>, this once-a-decade count serves as the backbone of virtually every product that we use to understand who Americans are, how they’ve changed and what this might mean for the future. The U.S. also uses the census counts to distribute political power and allocate funding for everything from highway spending to programs like Medicare and Head Start.</p>
<p>But not all groups are equally likely to be counted in the census. </p>
<p>Some, like <a href="https://www.ncdemography.org/2020/03/02/where-are-college-students-counted-for-the-2020-census/">college students</a> or people who own two homes, are more likely to be counted more than once. Others, like <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/2020-census/research-testing/undercount-of-young-children.html">young children</a> or people who have recently moved, are less likely to be counted at all.</p>
<p>And then there those for whom getting counted is a little more complex, because where they live on Census Day – April 1, 2020 – is even less clear. There are three groups that have consistently posed problems to the U.S. census throughout history and continue to spark debate to this day: military members, Mormon missionaries and prisoners. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318912/original/file-20200305-106584-1k96beb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318912/original/file-20200305-106584-1k96beb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318912/original/file-20200305-106584-1k96beb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318912/original/file-20200305-106584-1k96beb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318912/original/file-20200305-106584-1k96beb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318912/original/file-20200305-106584-1k96beb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318912/original/file-20200305-106584-1k96beb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318912/original/file-20200305-106584-1k96beb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2020, the Census Bureau will continue to count military personnel stationed overseas, but where they are counted will change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/us-soldiers-giving-salute-716498566">Bumble Dee/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Military members</h2>
<p>Overseas military personnel have long been counted in the census, but they were not included in the apportionment population – the number the federal government uses to apportion 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among the states – until the 1970 census. </p>
<p>Due to the scale of the Vietnam War and U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, there was bipartisan congressional concern for the <a href="https://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/overseas/techn62-1.pdf">“unusually large numbers of military personnel [stationed] overseas on Census Day.”</a>
U.S. military and federal civilian employees stationed abroad, and their dependents living with them, were counted and allocated back to their home states beginning in 1970. </p>
<p>Although this group was left out of the 1980 census, due to no official legal requirement and no demand, U.S. military and federal civilian employees have been counted and included in the apportionment population in every census since 1990. </p>
<p>For the purposes of congressional apportionment, these individuals are allocated to their state of residence. That means that a person from North Carolina who might be serving abroad in Iraq will count as a resident of North Carolina. </p>
<p>Because the 1990 census included military personnel stationed abroad, one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives shifted from Massachusetts to Washington state. Massachusetts challenged the Census Bureau’s decision to count military personnel abroad, arguing that it created an inequality in the counting of state populations. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court disagreed with Massachusetts. In <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-1502.ZS.html">Franklin v. Massachusetts</a> in 1992, the court found that the enumeration of overseas military personnel was “consistent with constitutional language and goal of equal representation.” They found that the Census Bureau’s decision on where to count individuals was consistent with their standard of “usual residence,” which reflects where people live and sleep most of the time.</p>
<p>In 2020, the Census Bureau will continue to count military personnel stationed overseas, but where they are counted will change.</p>
<p>Traditionally, military personnel were counted at their “home of record” – their permanent address according to the military. </p>
<p>But, in 2020, military personnel who are temporarily deployed abroad will be counted at their home base address, not their home of record. For example, an Army soldier stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, who is temporarily deployed abroad, would be counted at their Fayetteville address.</p>
<p>This could have a big impact <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/02/26/census-troop-counting-rules-could-tip-congressional-balance/">in communities and states with a large military presence</a>, such as North Carolina, Texas and California, who could stand to receive more federal funding.</p>
<h2>Mormon missionaries</h2>
<p>The Census Bureau does not count other Americans abroad. </p>
<p>This decision has a large impact on Utah. Utah has a significant overseas population: In 2000, there were more than 11,000 Mormon missionaries from Utah living abroad, more than three times the state’s overseas military and federal employee population.</p>
<p>Had these missionaries been included in the 2000 census count, Utah would have gotten a fourth seat in the House of Representatives. Instead, the House seat went to North Carolina, which had 18,360 overseas military and federal personnel counted in the census.</p>
<p>Much like Massachusetts after the 1990 census, Utah <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/143/1290/2428922/">sued after the 2000 census</a>, claiming that either Mormon missionaries should be counted or no American living abroad should be counted. </p>
<p>The district court disagreed. They found that Utah’s argument was not fundamentally different from the argument Massachusetts had made a decade earlier. Moreover, they found that including only Mormon missionaries in addition to federal employees “would overwhelmingly favor Utah vis-a-vis all forty-nine other states.” In other words, all states can benefit from the Bureau counting federal overseas employees, but only Utah would benefit from the inclusion of Mormon missionaries. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case on appeal. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318927/original/file-20200305-106610-1ds3wtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318927/original/file-20200305-106610-1ds3wtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318927/original/file-20200305-106610-1ds3wtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318927/original/file-20200305-106610-1ds3wtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318927/original/file-20200305-106610-1ds3wtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318927/original/file-20200305-106610-1ds3wtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318927/original/file-20200305-106610-1ds3wtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318927/original/file-20200305-106610-1ds3wtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Young Mormon missionary men walking in Papeete, Tahiti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/papeete-tahiti-10-dec-2018-view-1541682563">EQRoy/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Prisoners</h2>
<p>Since the first U.S. census was conducted in 1790, prisoners have been counted <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/12/31/761932806/your-body-being-used-where-prisoners-who-can-t-vote-fill-voting-districts">as residents of their correctional facility, not at their home address</a>. </p>
<p>This sparked nearly 78,000 comments to the Census Bureau when they published a document in the Federal Register in 2018 <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/02/08/2018-02370/final-2020-census-residence-criteria-and-residence-situations?">asking for public input on census residence criteria</a>. Virtually all comments suggested that prisoners should be counted at their home address or where they lived before being incarcerated. </p>
<p>In a summary of the comments, the Census Bureau noted, “Almost all commenters either directly suggested, or alluded to the view, that counting prisoners at the prison inflates the political power of the area where the prison is located, and deflates the political power in the prisoners’ home communities.” </p>
<p>Prior to the 1970s, the size of the incarcerated population was small enough that it did not have a clear impact on redistricting. Today, the size of the prison population, at 2.2 million people, can distort redistricting processes by creating voting districts made up primarily of incarcerated populations. Or, it could play a role in a community receiving increased grant money based on census counts. In other words, a county with a large prison would receive more votes and more federal funding. </p>
<p>Some commenters on the Census Bureau’s federal register notice argue that these impacts are unfair, as in most states, <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/prisoners-in-just-two-states-can-vote-heres-why-few-do/">prisoners cannot vote</a>. </p>
<p>To address some concerns about “prison gerrymandering,” some states have passed laws that <a href="https://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/">require relocating prisoners to their last known home addresses for redistricting purposes</a>. </p>
<p>Communities only have one shot to count all of their residents. If a community is undercounted, or if the rules governing who counts and where they count change, it can have lasting implications on representation and federal funding for the next decade. </p>
<p>[<em>Want to learn more about the 2020 census?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/census-72">Sign up here for our new newsletter course</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130107/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Tippett is the Board Chair of the NC Counts Coalition, an organization dedicated to achieving a complete and accurate Census count for North Carolina.
</span></em></p>The 2020 census will now count some groups differently than it has in the past. That could make a difference in the final count – affecting which states receive funding and congressional seats.Rebecca Tippett, Director of Carolina Demography, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1291322019-12-20T19:07:33Z2019-12-20T19:07:33ZMormons and money: An unorthodox and messy history of church finances<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308030/original/file-20191219-11896-1h6r56l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There was something fishy about this $3 bill.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/mormon-money-issued-by-kirtland-safety-237228478">Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/439385879/Letter-to-an-IRS-Director">allegedly amassed US$100 billion in purportedly charitable assets</a> since 1997 without ever giving any money away – a possible breach of federal tax laws.</p>
<p>This estimate of the size of its investment vehicle known as Ensign Peak Advisors became public knowledge when David A. Nielsen, a former employee and a member of the church, blew the whistle. </p>
<p>Together with his <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/mormons-heres-why-we-published-our-revelations-about-lds-churchs-100-billion-stockpile-1478084">twin brother Lars</a>, a former church member, Nielsen gave the Internal Revenue Service evidence he claims proves <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/mormon-church-has-misled-members-on-100-billion-tax-exempt-investment-fund-whistleblower-alleges/2019/12/16/e3619bd2-2004-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html">the church mishandled funds</a>.</p>
<p>According to the Nielsens, Ensign Peak Advisors has invested the church’s annual surplus member contributions to build up a $100 billion portfolio. But the Nielsens say they could find no evidence that Ensign Peak Advisors spent a dime of this money for religious, charitable, educational or other “public” purposes as <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/1.501(c)(3)-1">IRS rules require under most circumstances</a>. They also allege that it diverted tax-exempt funds to finance some for-profit projects, which could also violate <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/326/279/">IRS rules banning such transactions</a> in some situations.</p>
<p>If the IRS determines that the investment fund failed to act as a charity even though it benefited from tax breaks, it might find that Ensign Peak Advisors <a href="https://bycommonconsent.com/2019/12/17/some-thoughts-about-ensign-peak-advisers-and-the-church/">broke tax laws</a>. If that happens, and the IRS collects back taxes, David Nielsen could receive a cut as a reward.</p>
<p>If the numbers are accurate, Ensign is the nation’s largest charitable endowment, with as much money as <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/081616/top-5-largest-university-endowments.asp">Harvard University</a> and the <a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-Information/Foundation-Factsheet">Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation</a> have at their disposal, combined, if not more.</p>
<p>Church leaders <a href="https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/first-presidency-statement-church-finances">deny that they have violated</a> any laws that regulate tax-exempt institutions. The church “complies with all applicable law governing our donations, investments, taxes and reserves,” said the <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2019/12/17/lds-church-we-obey-all/">three-member council</a> headed by church president Russell M. Nelson. </p>
<p>From my vantage point as a <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737433">historian of Mormonism</a>, this news marks a new twist on an old story. For nearly two centuries, the church has conducted its finances in ways that defy the expectations Americans have for religious organizations.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DXOWRN19i-4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Lars Nielsen, brother of whistleblower David Nielsen, explains how Ensign Peak Advisors allegedly operates.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A church-owned ‘anti-bank’</h2>
<p>Consider what happened in the <a href="https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/articles/joseph-smith-and-his-papers-an-introduction">summer of 1837</a>, when the fledgling church teetered on the brink of collapse.</p>
<p>At the time, Joseph Smith and many church members lived in Kirtland, a small town in northeastern Ohio. The Smith family had moved there in the early 1830s, seeking a safer gathering place for church members in the face of persecution in New York state.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307986/original/file-20191219-11946-1vow5ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307986/original/file-20191219-11946-1vow5ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307986/original/file-20191219-11946-1vow5ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=669&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307986/original/file-20191219-11946-1vow5ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=669&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307986/original/file-20191219-11946-1vow5ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=669&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307986/original/file-20191219-11946-1vow5ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307986/original/file-20191219-11946-1vow5ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307986/original/file-20191219-11946-1vow5ca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=841&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Smith’s followers built this temple in Kirtland, Ohio before most of them moved westward.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2015646065/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Smith and his followers began building a <a href="https://www.kirtlandtemple.org/">temple in Kirtland</a>. The Saints dedicated their temple in 1836, but the project left Smith and others deep in debt. Like many communities in antebellum America, Mormon Kirtland was land-rich and cash-poor. A lack of hard currency hampered commerce. </p>
<p>Smith and his associates <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/kirtland-safety-society?lang=eng">decided to start their own bank</a> to solve their financial woes. The circulation of bank notes, they thought, would boost Kirtland’s economic prospects and make it easier for church leaders to satisfy their creditors.</p>
<h2>Lots of currency</h2>
<p>The idea of Mormon leaders printing their own money wasn’t as crazy as it sounds in 2019. The United States <a href="http://numismatics.org/a-history-of-american-currency/">still lacked a uniform currency</a>. A host of institutions of varying integrity – chartered banks, unchartered banks, other businesses and even <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674032446">counterfeiting rings</a> – issued notes whose acceptance depended on the confidence of citizens who might accept or refuse them. </p>
<p>Mormon leaders bought engraving plates for printing bank notes and asked the Ohio state legislature to charter their bank. The Mormon proposal <a href="https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/topic/kirtland-safety-society">went nowhere in the legislature</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308027/original/file-20191219-11939-zxoe67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308027/original/file-20191219-11939-zxoe67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308027/original/file-20191219-11939-zxoe67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308027/original/file-20191219-11939-zxoe67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308027/original/file-20191219-11939-zxoe67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308027/original/file-20191219-11939-zxoe67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308027/original/file-20191219-11939-zxoe67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308027/original/file-20191219-11939-zxoe67.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Smith: Latter-day Saints movement founder and, for a time, currency creator.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At this point, church leaders took a more fateful and dubious step.</p>
<p>They had collected money from investors and had already begun printing notes of the “<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_835201">Kirtland Safety Society Bank</a>.” Instead of shutting down the operation when the charter failed to come through, they doubled down. Worried about the legal risk of running an unchartered bank, church leaders altered the notes to read “anti-Banking-Co.”</p>
<h2>A brief boom</h2>
<p>For a while, all went well. “Kirtland bills are as safe as gold,” <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416857">one church member wrote</a> in January 1837. The town enjoyed a short-lived boom. </p>
<p>Soon, however, the anti-bank proved anything but safe. Non-Mormons questioned the society’s ability to redeem its notes, and church leaders could not keep it afloat. The Kirtland Safety Society’s struggles were not unusual. Scores of banks, including some of the nation’s largest, failed in what became the <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801478864/americas-first-great-depression/">Panic of 1837</a>. Real estate speculators lost their fortunes, and workers lost their jobs. </p>
<p>What made Kirtland different was the bank’s ownership. Many church members lost not only confidence in the society’s banknotes, but faith in the prophet who had signed them.</p>
<p>The crisis divided the church. At one point that summer, church members wielding pistols and bowie knives fought with each other in the temple. Smith and one of his top associates were <a href="https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/topic/kirtland-safety-society">convicted of issuing banknotes without a charter</a> and fined $1,000 each. They soon fled the courts and their creditors, taking refuge with fellow church members in Missouri. </p>
<p>After anti-Mormon mobs forced the Latter-day Saints out of Missouri and then Illinois, Smith’s successor, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/religion/brigham-young">Brigham Young</a>, led thousands of church members to what became the Utah Territory. </p>
<h2>From a railroad to a shopping mall</h2>
<p>The church has never stopped blending commerce and religion.</p>
<p>In the late 1860s, Mormons built the <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469653204/railroading-religion/">Utah Central Railroad</a>, which connected Salt Lake City with Ogden – a stop along the transcontinental railroad. Church leaders controlled the railway until 1878, when <a href="https://utahrails.net/utahrails/uc-rr-1869-1881.php">Union Pacific</a> bought it.</p>
<p>Beginning in 1868, the church also operated the <a href="https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4083139&itype=CMSID">Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution</a>, a department store designed to put the squeeze on non-Mormon businesses. </p>
<p>The church sold the store in 1999, but in many ways its commercial interests have become more grandiose since its frontier days of railroading and retailing.</p>
<p>In 2003, the church’s for-profit real estate division purchased the land on which the store had stood. Nine years later, the estimated $1.5 billion <a href="https://www.curbed.com/2018/3/20/17142760/salt-lake-city-downtown-development-hot-market">City Creek Center</a> development opened to the public, including a glitzy mall. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308023/original/file-20191219-11946-vrfwzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308023/original/file-20191219-11946-vrfwzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308023/original/file-20191219-11946-vrfwzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308023/original/file-20191219-11946-vrfwzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308023/original/file-20191219-11946-vrfwzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308023/original/file-20191219-11946-vrfwzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308023/original/file-20191219-11946-vrfwzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308023/original/file-20191219-11946-vrfwzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mormon Church’s commercial real estate arm built the lavish City Creek Center shopping mall in Salt Lake City.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ef2n0uEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the time, <a href="https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=54478720&itype=cmsid">church officials asserted</a> that they had not used any tithing money on the City Creek project. The <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/tithing-and-fast-offerings/how-are-tithing-funds-used?lang=eng">church explains</a> that tithing – the contribution of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/mormon/customs/tithing.shtml">10%</a> of its <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/2018-statistical-report-released-during-april-2019-general-conference?lang=eng">16 million members’</a> annual income – is for the construction and maintenance of church buildings, local congregational activities and the church’s educational programs. The church’s <a href="https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=54478720&itype=cmsid">for-profit divisions</a> handle commercial projects, including real estate and publishing. </p>
<p>The Nielsen brothers allege that Ensign Peak Advisors <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/mormon-church-stockpiled-100-billion-intended-charities-misled-lds-members-whistleblower-says-1477809">diverted $1.4 billion in tithing funds</a> to pay for the development, a possible violation of the <a href="https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exemption-requirements-501c3-organizations">IRS rules that govern tax-exempt institutions</a>.</p>
<p>It is impossible to confirm the accusation without greater transparency on the part of the church, which has told <a href="https://religionunplugged.com/news/2019/12/16/whistleblower-exposes-100-billion-stockpile-by-mormon-church">Religion Unplugged</a>, a nonprofit media outlet, that it “does not provide information about specific transactions or financial decisions.”</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ef2n0uEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Samuel Brunson</a>, a tax law professor, the church was <a href="https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mormonism_and_church_finances/Twenty-first_century/Disclosure">more open</a> about its ledger sheet and business arrangements during the first half of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Then, in the mid- to late 1950s, it <a href="http://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/102-17-29.pdf">lost approximately $10 million</a> in municipal bond investments. The resulting embarrassment was one factor in the church’s decision to become less forthcoming about its finances.</p>
<p>In this respect, the church is not unique. U.S. laws do not require churches to disclose their financial information in much detail. While some churches do so voluntarily, others – including the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/07/17/facing-financial-boycott-west-virginias-catholic-diocese-agrees-hire-new-auditor-make-findings-public/">Catholic Church</a> – keep their financial and commercial interests <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/how-rich-is-the-catholic-church-it-s-impossible-to-tell-13295788">shrouded from public view</a>. </p>
<h2>Saving for a ‘rainy decade’</h2>
<p>It remains to be seen whether Ensign Peak Advisors is going to become the subject of IRS investigations.</p>
<p>There are, of course, ethical and moral questions in addition to legal ones. For example, should the church amass so much money? And might the church use more of its excess funds and investment gains for humanitarian purposes or to make the tuition at church-owned <a href="https://news.byu.edu/news/byu-tuition-increase-three-percent-2019-2020-academic-year">Brigham Young University</a> even more affordable?</p>
<p>What’s also at stake is confidence in the church’s leaders. Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee and the nation’s most politically influential Mormon, <a href="https://twitter.com/thomaswburr/status/1207021336721268736?s=20">professed to be</a> “happy that they’ve not only saved for a rainy day, but for a rainy decade.”</p>
<p>Romney’s perspective makes some historical sense, given that the most obvious problem in Kirtland, Ohio, was that Joseph Smith’s financial stewardship was decidedly unwise. At least today’s church leaders earn good returns on their investments.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129132/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Turner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A historian connects the $100 billion reportedly at the church’s disposal with the rocky start Mormons got in finance in the 1830s.John Turner, Professor of American Religion, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1264932019-11-06T22:59:50Z2019-11-06T22:59:50ZMormons in Mexico: A brief history of polygamy, cartel violence and faith<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300518/original/file-20191106-12450-4ivbr8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5751%2C3828&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bullet-riddled vehicles that members of the LeBaron family were traveling in sit parked on a dirt road near Bavispe, at the Sonora-Chihuahua border, Mexico, Nov 6, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Border-Killings/23b38dbe2e924000b31dfec8a725ee1e/4/0">AP Photo/Christian Chavez</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nine members of a prominent Mormon family in northern Mexico, all women and children, were gunned down on Nov. 4 in territory whose control is disputed by the Sinaloa Cartel and the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-06/mormons-mexico-lebaron-fundamentalist-history">La Linea</a> militia. </p>
<p>Mexico, which has experienced <a href="https://perrocronico.com/la-tentacion-de-la-guerra/?fbclid=IwAR24WeGCfA9W2iHQmdo_2Z7_uJCH97u8pBoMDRkX7EAYaSnF8MDHx1Ppsbw">high</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-is-bleeding-can-its-new-president-stop-the-violence-109490">crime</a> for over a decade, has seen violence surge in recent weeks. On Oct. 17, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/20/world/americas/culiacan-mexico-chapo-son.html">shootout in the city of Culiacan</a> involving the Sinaloa Cartel led officials to release from custody Ovidio Guzman, the son of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.</p>
<p>In the context of so much bloodshed, the LeBaron killings are both highly unusual and tragically quotidian. </p>
<p>Unlike most murder victims in Mexico, the <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2019/11/5/20949505/us-citizens-die-drug-cartel-attack-north-mexico-trump?">LeBarons are U.S. citizens</a> and Mormons – part of a religious community that <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-11-06/mormons-mexico-lebaron-fundamentalist-history">broke away from Utah’s Church of Latter-Day Saints</a> years ago. But, as many Mexican journalists <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2019/11/asesinatos-secuestros-chihuahua-sonora-julian-lebaron/">have written</a>, the peace activism of family member Julián LeBaron could also have made his community a target. And the LeBarons have a history of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/us/mexico-mormon-community.html?action=click&module=Top+Stories&pgtype=Homepage&fbclid=IwAR01EPjk9dusQds1TQyyKe-F1HWqpe-DNCa7aZ7zow8wsj9TssFpgxiHI0w">violent encounters with organized crime</a>. </p>
<h2>Mormons in Mexican history</h2>
<p>In my 2018 <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6622-liminal-sovereignty.aspx">book on American- and Canadian-based religious enclaves in Mexico</a>, I researched the Latter-Day Saints community and the LeBaron Mormons of Chihuahua state, near the U.S. border. Typically, these communities’ members are somewhat reluctant to talk to outsiders, beyond proselytizing. </p>
<p>But as a person of <a href="http://mennoniteusa.org/who-we-are/">Mennonite</a> background with relatives in Mennonite colonies in Mexico, I was able to interview members of the <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints</a> – the official name of the mainstream Mormon church – in northern Mexico.</p>
<p>Along with the Romneys – relatives of Sen. Mitt Romney, whose <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-10-30/meet-romneys-mexico">father was born in Mexico</a> – the LeBarons are among the most storied families in Mormon history. </p>
<p>Members of Utah’s Latter-Day Saints community emigrated <a href="https://www.yearofpolygamy.com/year-of-polygamy/year-of-polygamy-mormon-polygamy-in-the-mexican-colonies-episode-56/">to Mexico</a> in the 1880s to follow their religious beliefs by living in polygamous families, which was illegal in the United States. Polygamy was illegal in Mexico, too, but the government there offered a flexible definition of family and did not enforce its anti-polygamy laws. </p>
<p>Alma “Dayer” LeBaron, the patriarch, was born in 1886 and grew up as a Latter-Day Saint in Colonia Dublán, Chihuahua. In 1904, he married a woman from nearby Colonia Juárez. She left him when he sought a polygamous marriage. </p>
<p>LeBaron fled the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Mexican-Revolution">Mexican Revolution</a> for Utah in 1912, where he married two women – Maude McDonald and Onie Jones – and had what’s been described as “a <a href="https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/new-light-on-the-lorin-woolley-story-and-early-fundamentalist-beginnings/">large family of sons</a>.”</p>
<p>LeBaron and his big family returned to Mexico in 1924 to find that their <a href="https://www.yearofpolygamy.com/year-of-polygamy/episode-76-the-lebarons/">Latter-Day Saint neighbors</a> did not welcome their polygamy. So LeBaron established his own colony, called LeBaron, in Chihuahua, Mexico. Today it stretches approximately six miles along a municipal highway and is four miles wide, surrounded by fields. LeBaron also began his own <a href="https://www.mormonfundamentalism.com/polygamous-groups/the-lebarons/">Mormon church</a>. </p>
<h2>Poverty and conflicts</h2>
<p>For 50 years, the LeBarons migrated back and forth across the Mexico-U.S. border, with Alma’s sons serving as missionaries <a href="http://www.ruthwariner.com/the-sound-of-gravel/history/">evangelizing on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints</a>. </p>
<p>But the community struggled with poverty and, starting in the 1970s, ran into land conflicts with a nearby farming community that had been <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/ejido">granted land by the government after the Mexican Revolution</a>. </p>
<p>The LeBaron colony’s land may have been illegally purchased from this neighboring land grant. Area peasants called the LeBarons “American invaders” and destroyed their fences. This allowed cattle into the LeBaron’s fields, damaging their <a href="https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6622-liminal-sovereignty.aspx">crops</a>. </p>
<p>Judges in Mexico, however, sided with the LeBarons, whom they saw as productive members of the local economy. The land clashes between Mormon and Mexican ranchers have largely dissipated, though <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ranchers-Clash-for-Water-in-Northern-Mexico-20180502-0016.html">a flare-up occurred just last year</a>. </p>
<p>After Alma Dayer LeBaron died in 1951, his sons – Joel, Ross, Ervil and Verlan – disagreed over the future of the church Alma had established, leading to violence within the family and the formation of new fundamentalist <a href="https://www.mormonfundamentalism.com/polygamous-groups/the-lebarons/">groups</a>. </p>
<p>Ervil LeBaron was arrested and convicted for the 1972 murder of his brother Joel. That verdict was later <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-09-20-vw-1753-story.html">overturned</a>, but in 1981, a Utah court convicted Ervil of a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-09-20-vw-1753-story.html">different murder</a>. He died in prison in <a href="https://www.mormonfundamentalism.com/polygamous-groups/the-lebarons/">1981</a>. </p>
<p>Members of this community report enduring <a href="https://www.yearofpolygamy.com/year-of-polygamy/episode-121-daughter-of-a-prophet/">beatings, underage marriage and other abuse</a>, as the escapee <a href="http://annalebaron.com/">Anna LeBaron</a> recounts in her 2017 memoir “The Polygamist’s Daughter.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300520/original/file-20191106-12459-j1p5ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300520/original/file-20191106-12459-j1p5ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300520/original/file-20191106-12459-j1p5ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300520/original/file-20191106-12459-j1p5ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300520/original/file-20191106-12459-j1p5ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300520/original/file-20191106-12459-j1p5ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300520/original/file-20191106-12459-j1p5ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300520/original/file-20191106-12459-j1p5ml.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The entrance to Colonia LeBaron, a religious enclave in Chihuahua state in northern Mexico, Nov. 6, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Border-Killings/f985528ff4584469ba32b9ba4370a8c1/12/0">AP Photo/Marco Ugarte</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The LeBarons have also been victims of violence. In 2009, 16-year-old Eric LeBaron was kidnapped by drug <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/lebaron-murders-victims-dad-says-20821313">traffickers</a>. His family successfully lobbied the government for help and secured his release. In retaliation, a cartel <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-06/what-we-know-about-the-mormons-killed-in-mexico/11676054">killed Eric LeBaron’s brother Benjamín LeBaron and brother-in-law Luis Widmar</a> in 2011. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.oceano.mx/ficha-libro.aspx?id=12833">Frustrated by violence</a>, another brother, Julián LeBaron, that year joined a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/09/mexico-anti-violence-caravan-javier-sicilia">high-profile peace movement</a> founded by the poet Javier Sicilia. </p>
<p>LeBaron and Sicilia reportedly fell out in <a href="https://www.milenio.com/politica/julian-lebaron-activista-cuya-familia-atacada">2012</a>. But after the murder of Julián’s cousin and other family members on Nov. 4, Sicilia wrote a <a href="https://heraldodemexico.com.mx/pais/javier-sicilia-envia-carta-a-julian-lebaron-se-solidariza-por-masacre-a-su-familia-y-pide-a-mexico-unirse-para-exigir-justicia/">condolence letter</a> encouraging Julián to “uncover the barbaric reality.” </p>
<h2>Integration in Mexico</h2>
<p>As their peace activism shows, the LeBarons are more integrated in Mexican society than other religious minority groups I’ve studied. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300521/original/file-20191106-12464-e5zv9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300521/original/file-20191106-12464-e5zv9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300521/original/file-20191106-12464-e5zv9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300521/original/file-20191106-12464-e5zv9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300521/original/file-20191106-12464-e5zv9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300521/original/file-20191106-12464-e5zv9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300521/original/file-20191106-12464-e5zv9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300521/original/file-20191106-12464-e5zv9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An American relative of some of the Latter-Day Saints killed in Chihuahua is comforted by a neighbor in Queen Creek, Ariz., Nov. 5, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Border-Killings/bd53d45758184581a7664c0810b47ada/21/0">AP Photo/Matt York</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The LeBarons have long sought connections with fellow Mexicans to <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/13998">proselytize about their beliefs</a>. And 39-year-old Alex LeBaron, from this community, has worked for the government of Chihuahua. From <a href="http://sil.gobernacion.gob.mx/Librerias/pp_PerfilLegislador.php?Referencia=9218881">2015 to 2018</a>, he was even an elected official. Alex LeBaron also married a Mexican woman, Brenda Ríos, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SorayaNunezFotografia/photos/a.207768106047701/210474205777091/?type=3&theater">in a Catholic ceremony</a>.</p>
<p>Like other <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-small-mexican-border-town-prizes-its-human-and-environmental-links-with-the-us-112807">northern Mexicans</a>, the LeBarons are a thoroughly <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1tg5nvh">cross-border community</a>. Much of their purchasing power in Mexico comes from remittances sent by male relatives who work in the <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/13998">U.S.</a></p>
<p>Like their neighbors, too, the LeBarons are vulnerable to the violence that surrounds them. Mexico’s death toll in 2019 is on pace to exceed the <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3019530/murders-mexico-surge-record-first-half-2019">33,341 murders seen in 2018</a>. In spite of a new <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence/murders-in-mexico-surge-to-record-in-first-half-of-2019-idUSKCN1UG0QS">National Guard</a> established to fight crime, last year was Mexico’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-is-bleeding-can-its-new-president-stop-the-violence-109490">deadliest year since modern record-keeping began</a>. </p>
<p>Violence in Chihuahua state, where homicides <a href="https://theconversation.com/rising-suicides-in-mexico-expose-the-mental-health-toll-of-living-with-extreme-chronic-violence-99131">had dropped markedly in recent years</a> is rebounding.</p>
<p>So the LeBarons may have an uncommon backstory. But from kidnappings to gruesome murders, they share a familiarity with tragedy that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Los-gueros-del-norte-Spanish-ebook/dp/B01GIL5Z7C">far too many Mexicans know far too well</a>.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Janzen received funding from the C Henry Smith Peace Trust, the Plett Foundation and the Kreider Fellowship at Elizabethtown College for this research. </span></em></p>Who are the LeBarons, the Mexican-American Mormons who lost nine family members in a massacre on Nov. 4.?Rebecca Janzen, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1150242019-04-12T10:41:56Z2019-04-12T10:41:56ZThe Mormon Church still doesn’t accept same-sex couples – even if it no longer bars their children<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268856/original/file-20190411-44773-128bak5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Russell M. Nelson, center, during the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints conference on April 6, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mormon-Conference/5bc7fc62c6ec48938486b748fe5f7dd2/15/0">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Top leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/us/mormon-lgbt-policy/index.html">reversed a policy</a> that prevented minor children of same-sex married couples from joining the church and participating in its sacred rituals since 2015.</p>
<p>Many conservative churches oppose same-sex relationships and have done so with <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469624112/reforming-sodom/">increased intensity</a> since the second half of the 20th century. In the case of Latter-day Saints, the reasons for opposing same-sex marriage are based in their <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng&old=true">theology of a “real family,”</a> as willed by God.</p>
<p>However, as a <a href="https://kzoo.academia.edu/TaylorPetrey">scholar</a> of gender and sexuality in Mormonism, I argue that the 2015 decision to bar children of same-sex parents from the church was tied to the conservative fight against same-sex marriage that was finding an increasing acceptance at the time in courts and elsewhere. </p>
<h2>Mormon theology</h2>
<p>Mormon theology is based on a divine heterosexual archetype that sets the pattern for all intimate human relationships. </p>
<p>Latter-day Saints hold an ideal that heaven is a domestic paradise where families will live together in eternal harmony. In Latter-day Saints’ view of God, there is a divine Father in Heaven, but also a <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/mother-in-heaven?lang=eng">Mother in Heaven</a>, who are believed to be the heterosexual parents of human spirits.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268853/original/file-20190411-44810-1h5aqcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268853/original/file-20190411-44810-1h5aqcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268853/original/file-20190411-44810-1h5aqcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268853/original/file-20190411-44810-1h5aqcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268853/original/file-20190411-44810-1h5aqcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268853/original/file-20190411-44810-1h5aqcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268853/original/file-20190411-44810-1h5aqcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mormons protest over the 2015 rule change by church officials that bars children of same-sex couple from being baptized.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mormons-Gays/a71a9c7d22f54479ad325fa0477bde14/30/0">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the policy was adopted in 2015, the church deemed same-sex married Latter-day Saints as “apostate” and excommunicated them. This involved removing their names from the records of the church and nullifying any previous rituals. </p>
<h2>‘Protecting children’</h2>
<p>In order to explain why the children were also deserving of official sanction, the church said it was an effort to “<a href="https://www.lds.org/church/news/elder-christofferson-says-handbook-changes-regarding-same-sex-marriages-help-protect-children?lang=eng">protect”</a> them. </p>
<p>One senior church leader claimed that it was an act of “love” and “kindness” to prevent the children of same-sex families from participating and joining the church. One church leader, Elder D. Todd Christofferson, <a href="https://www.lds.org/church/news/elder-christofferson-says-handbook-changes-regarding-same-sex-marriages-help-protect-children?lang=eng">said</a>, “We don’t want the child to have to deal with issues that might arise where the parents feel one way and the expectations of the Church are very different.”</p>
<p>In the religious practice of Latter-day Saints, a child’s name on church records initiates visits to their home and an expectation of attending church-sponsored activities. Christofferson claimed, that it would not be “an appropriate thing” for a child living with a same-sex couple.</p>
<p>The church even issued an official statement about not wanting to subject children to teachings that their same-sex married parents were “apostates.” </p>
<h2>Mormons and politics</h2>
<p>What I argue is that the roots of rhetoric of the focus on family goes back to the emergence of the anti-gay politics of religious conservatives starting in the 1970s.</p>
<p>At the time, several preachers and anti-gay activists such as Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye and others increasingly <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15416.html">spoke out</a> against the gay rights movement as a threat to “family values” that would undermine society. Latter-day Saints joined this opposition.</p>
<p>These conservatives, advocating for “family values,” opposed same-sex marriage. These efforts often relied on claims that same-sex marriage would <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080817025036/http://www.newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/commentary/the-divine-institution-of-marriage">harm children</a> belonging to same-sex families as well as those children who interacted with them.</p>
<p>In 1977, evangelical activist Anita Bryant launched a national campaign against the gay rights movement, specifically to keep gays and lesbians out of schools, and successfully rallied conservatives to this cause.</p>
<p>Bryant’s campaign was a simple slogan, “<a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781403980694">Save Our Children</a>,” which depicted gay men and lesbians as pedophiles recruiting young people into “perversion.” Her campaign also suggested that “our children” belonged only to heterosexual people. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268852/original/file-20190411-44814-1jdv3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268852/original/file-20190411-44814-1jdv3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268852/original/file-20190411-44814-1jdv3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268852/original/file-20190411-44814-1jdv3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268852/original/file-20190411-44814-1jdv3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268852/original/file-20190411-44814-1jdv3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268852/original/file-20190411-44814-1jdv3ek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=541&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Gay rights activists protest against the Mormon Church’s alleged heavy support of the anti-gay marriage initiative in 2008,</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Gay-Marriage-Protest/86b6cd5877414c89973345fad0057f36/102/0">AP Photo/Reed Saxon</a></span>
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<p>In the 1990s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints <a href="https://www.deseretnews.com/article/415259/3-LDS-OFFICIALS-SEEK-TO-JOIN-HAWAII-SUIT.html?pg=all">backed campaigns</a> and mobilized members and <a href="https://www.deseretnews.com/article/655422/LDS-Church-joins-gay-marriage-fight.html">money</a> to deny same-sex couples the right to create legally protected families. </p>
<p>The policy on children <a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/handbook-changes-same-sex-marriages-elder-christofferson">was a response to</a> a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier that year that legalized same-sex marriage. </p>
<h2>What’s not changed</h2>
<p>When it was first announced, the policy was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/14/us/mormons-set-to-quit-church-over-policy-on-gay-couples-and-their-children.html">deeply unpopular</a> among the rank and file. The truth is that many members of the church increasingly <a href="https://religionnews.com/2017/06/27/mormons-are-changing-their-tune-on-same-sex-marriage/">support</a> same-sex marriage. </p>
<p>A Public Religion Research Institute survey found that 55% of Mormons <a href="https://religionnews.com/2017/06/27/mormons-are-changing-their-tune-on-same-sex-marriage/">opposed same-sex marriage</a> in 2016. But this number was rapidly declining. In 2015, the same survey had found 66% of Mormons opposing same sex marriages. In one year, it noted, there was an 11-point drop in opposition, with a corresponding 11-point increase in support. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268855/original/file-20190411-44773-a6c37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268855/original/file-20190411-44773-a6c37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268855/original/file-20190411-44773-a6c37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268855/original/file-20190411-44773-a6c37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268855/original/file-20190411-44773-a6c37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268855/original/file-20190411-44773-a6c37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/268855/original/file-20190411-44773-a6c37g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People holding placards at an annual conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mormon-Conference/4478704c01754a82aa19a6faabba6fed/65/0">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In light of this trend, it was no surprise to see the unpopular policy reversed. </p>
<p>The reversal of the 2015 policy, however, does not change the status of same-sex relationships in the church. These relationships are still forbidden and subject couples to potential excommunication. Only their children can once again participate fully in the church without sanction. </p>
<p>In my view, the church faces a real conceptual problem when it comes to imagining same-sex families as “real families” that may include children. How can it support the children of same-sex families when its teachings claim that they are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/04/mormon-leaders-same-sex-marriage">“counterfeit and alternative lifestyles”</a> and not part of the family organization willed by God?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Taylor Petrey has received funding from the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School.</span></em></p>In 2015, the Mormon Church barred children from same-sex marriage from the church. An expert explains why this policy was tied to a larger conservative battle against gay rights.Taylor Petrey, Associate Professor of Religion, Kalamazoo CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1104162019-03-26T10:39:11Z2019-03-26T10:39:11ZRomney’s Mormon religion helps explain his criticism of Trump<p>Mitt Romney has been one of few prominent Republicans to criticize Donald Trump, beginning with the 2016 presidential campaign. He did so again <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/19/mitt-romney-criticizes-president-trump-john-mccain-attacks/3217645002/">recently</a> in response to Trump’s critical comments about John McCain. </p>
<p>“I can’t understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain,” Romney tweeted.</p>
<p>Why is Romney staking out a lonely position as a Republican Trump critic? </p>
<p>Among the answers floated by observers are that he still <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/the-run/articles/2019-01-03/mitt-romney-says-hes-not-running-for-president-but-that-could-change">wants to be president</a> or he <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/01/02/why-guys-like-mitt-romney-dont-scare-donald-trump-223617">fundamentally misunderstands</a> how to influence Trump’s political behavior, or both.</p>
<p>To date, though, there has been little mention of Romney’s religion. <a href="https://www.ucpublicaffairs.com/?author=584db4c2e58c627c3bfe93df">I’m a scholar who has studied the role of religion in U.S. politics</a>, and I believe Romney’s Mormon faith is central to understanding his concerns about Trump’s character and leadership.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265347/original/file-20190322-36252-bfq3hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265347/original/file-20190322-36252-bfq3hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265347/original/file-20190322-36252-bfq3hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265347/original/file-20190322-36252-bfq3hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265347/original/file-20190322-36252-bfq3hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265347/original/file-20190322-36252-bfq3hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265347/original/file-20190322-36252-bfq3hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265347/original/file-20190322-36252-bfq3hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The world headquarters of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jan. 3, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH7Y5MQG&SMLS=1&RW=1427&RH=649#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH7Y5MQG&SMLS=1&RW=1427&RH=649&POPUPPN=44&POPUPIID=2C0BF1XGYC3VL">REUTERS/George Frey</a></span>
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<h2>Family’s deep Mormon roots</h2>
<p>Donald Trump is arguably the <a href="https://www.ucpublicaffairs.com/home/2017/5/19/sound-off-americas-least-religious-president-heads-to-holy-lands-by-luke-perry">least religious president</a> in U.S. history and has displayed a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-outrage-over-the-trump-putin-meeting-important-questions-were-overlooked-99930">penchant for moral relativism</a> over bedrock beliefs. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2012/results/president.html">Had he won the 2012 presidential campaign</a>, Romney would have arguably been the <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137360748">most religious president ever</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, Romney is personally motivated, politically calculating and pragmatic, like most national political figures. But he is also immensely devout. You cannot fully understand Mitt Romney without recognizing this. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-75">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon)</a> asks adherents to regularly contribute significant amounts of time and resources to the church. </p>
<p>As I document in my book <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137360748">“Mitt Romney, Mormonism, and the 2012 Election,”</a> Romney’s family has deep roots in Mormon history, tracing back to the conversion of his English ancestors <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18422949">175 years ago</a>. Romney has been a respected religious leader dating back to his mission in France, where he <a href="http://archive.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/articles/part1_main/">distinguished himself</a> by assuming an expanded leadership role after surviving a deadly car accident, which killed the wife of the mission president. </p>
<p>Mormon missions involve two years of service, often seeking converts, anywhere in the world. Missionaries are allowed little contact with family or friends back home. </p>
<p>Romney has particular standing in the state he now represents, after <a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/06/mitt-romney/how-important-was-romney-fixing-troubled-salt-lake/">his management of the 2002 Olympics in Utah</a> following a major corruption scandal. This event was a pivotal moment in the development of his political career because it provided national name recognition and revitalized his electoral prospects following a failed Senate bid in Massachusetts. </p>
<p>In 2012, he became the first Mormon presidential nominee of a major party, the centerpiece of the “<a href="https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865625703/Instead-of-ending-has-Mormon-Moment-evolved-into-something-bigger.html">Mormon Moment</a>,” a term used to describe heightened attention and interest in LDS life within popular culture. </p>
<h2>Driving forces</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2012/03/15/mormons-and-civic-life/">Righteousness, family and service</a> are three crucial components of Mormon life and Romney’s life.</p>
<p>For Mormons, the <a href="https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1999/10/righteousness?lang=eng">pursuit of righteousness</a> is an overarching process of overcoming human weakness and moving toward God during one’s life. Being a <a href="https://www.lds.org/study/manual/eternal-marriage-student-manual/the-family-a-proclamation?lang=eng">faithful spouse</a> and good role model for children is essential on earth and beyond as <a href="https://www.lds.org/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-and-church-history-gospel-doctrine-teachers-manual/lesson-31-sealed---for-time-and-for-all-eternity?lang=eng">families seek to be sealed together for eternity</a>. And Mormons dedicate around 20 hours per week to various church “callings.” </p>
<p>Trump is not visibly committed to any of these general values, prompting concern among Mormons. Just <a href="https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4573783&itype=CMSID">14 percent</a> of Utah voters in 2016 viewed Trump as a good role model. That’s a remarkable development considering that until recently, <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/party-affiliation/">Mormons were the most Republican religious group in America</a>. Nearly <a href="https://religionnews.com/2016/09/15/mormons-are-less-republican-this-year-pew-study-finds/">70 percent</a> still identify as “Republican.”</p>
<p>Several prominent Mormon politicians have publicly opposed Trump or Trump’s actions.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/never-trump-delegates-have-support-needed-to-force-rules-vote-225716">Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, fought Trump’s nomination</a> all the way to the floor of the 2016 national party convention. <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?442536-1/senator-flake-calls-conservative-challenge-president-trump-2020">Former Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona</a>, was the first member of Congress to call for a primary challenge to the president. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/us/politics/mia-love-trump-utah.html">Former Utah Rep. Mia Love, a Republican, publicly rebuked the president</a> for his derogatory comments about Haitians and his leadership of the Republican Party. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/01/02/harry-reid-trump-is-worst-president-weve-ever-had/?utm_term=.8294778565f1">Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, recently described President Trump as an “amoral”</a> person with “no conscience” who is “without question the worst president we’ve ever had.” </p>
<h2>‘Dishonesty … greed … misogyny’</h2>
<p>These sentiments echo <a href="http://time.com/4246596/donald-trump-mitt-romney-utah-speech/">Romney’s 2016 speech at the University of Utah</a>, during the Republican presidential primary. </p>
<p>Romney said that “dishonesty is Trump’s hallmark” and asked people to consider his defining attributes: “the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third grade theatrics.” </p>
<p>“Imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does,” said Romney, adding that he encouraged Republican primary voters to choose anyone but Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Over the last two years, Romney <a href="https://action.romneyforutah.com/as-i-see-it-race-and-equality/">criticized Trump’s comments</a> on Charlottesville, where Trump suggested “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-blame-sides-charlottesville-now-anniversary-puts-spot/story?id=57141612">both sides</a>,” Neo-Nazis and their critics, were to blame for violence. </p>
<p>Those comments “caused racists to rejoice,” Romney said. And he described the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant families at the border as an “inexcusible” and “dark chapter in American history.” </p>
<p>Romney has also criticized Trump on foreign affairs, race relations, the role of the press, and on his disparagement of <a href="https://action.romneyforutah.com/as-i-see-it-john-mccain-and-leadership/">John McCain</a>. He has called Trump’s handling of meetings with Vladimir Putin “<a href="https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1084950753469480962">inappropriate</a>” and described the president’s response to Russian meddling in American’s electoral process as “<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/397310-romney-trumps-remarks-at-putin-summit-disgraceful-and-detrimental-to">disgraceful and detrimental</a> to our democratic principles.” </p>
<p>Romney has stated that “<a href="https://action.romneyforutah.com/as-i-see-it-free-press/">no American president</a> has ever before vilified the American press as an ‘Enemy of the People.’” While recognizing this can benefit conservative politics, Romney expressed concern that “denigrating the media diminishes an institution that is critical to democracy, both here and abroad.”</p>
<h2>Before no love lost</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265337/original/file-20190322-36267-sn1ksx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265337/original/file-20190322-36267-sn1ksx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265337/original/file-20190322-36267-sn1ksx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265337/original/file-20190322-36267-sn1ksx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265337/original/file-20190322-36267-sn1ksx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265337/original/file-20190322-36267-sn1ksx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265337/original/file-20190322-36267-sn1ksx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265337/original/file-20190322-36267-sn1ksx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Businessman Donald Trump endorses presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012 in Las Vegas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump-Romney/e900d748ccce4b698d1c67acf4fcd78b/23/0">AP/Julie Jacobson</a></span>
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<p>Romney has not uniformly opposed Trump. He accepted Trump’s endorsement in 2012 and was interviewed to be Trump’s secretary of state in 2016.</p>
<p>That’s led critics to claim that Romney now <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/3/editorial-mitt-romney-for-president-or-something/">craves the national spotlight</a>, perhaps to fuel <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/mitt-romney-donald-trump-op-ed">another presidential candidacy</a>. </p>
<p>This is a bit simplistic. </p>
<p>In my opinion, Romney now holds the best elected position he could hope for. He represents the most distinctive Mormon subculture in the world and can probably do so as long as he wants. Romney has also made clear <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/01/30/mitt-romney-isnt-running-for-president-again-but-hes-going-to-get-what-he-wants-in-the-2016-race/?utm_term=.d227577482ee">he has no interest in running for president</a> again. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/03/politics/utah-mitt-romney-trump-republicans-support/index.html">Utah residents hold him in much higher regard than President Trump</a>, so he can be relatively unconcerned with a primary challenge, which would not happen for five years anyhow. </p>
<p>And <a href="https://www.hinckley.utah.edu/hinckley-poll-january-2019">54 percent</a> of Utah residents support Romney’s criticism of the president, though 51 percent of Republicans do not. </p>
<p>“I know what my principles are,” <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/02/romney_my_op-ed_was_about_my_relationship_with_trump_and_how_well_work_together.html">Romney said,</a> in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-the-president-shapes-the-public-character-of-the-nation-trumps-character-falls-short/2019/01/01/37a3c8c2-0d1a-11e9-8938-5898adc28fa2_story.html?utm_term=.9d2319ddae8a">defending his op-ed in The Washington Post</a>, in which he wrote that Trump’s character is insufficient for a U.S. president. </p>
<p>Sen. Romney will largely support conservative policies President Trump embraces, because he is conservative. </p>
<p>But I believe that as a Mormon and a politician, he will never be comfortable with what he sees as the president’s lack of character and leadership.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Perry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is one of the very few GOP critics of President Trump’s character and leadership. Why has he staked out this lonely position? His Mormon faith.Luke Perry, Professor of Political Science, Utica UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1002342018-07-23T17:28:01Z2018-07-23T17:28:01ZHow the Mormon church’s past shapes its position on immigration today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228615/original/file-20180720-142411-2wqhfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brigham Young and other men are shown preparing women in dresses for war.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Brigham_Young_Mustering_his_Forces.jpg">Harper's Weekly, volume v. 1, November 28, 1857, p. 768. Scan from BX8609.A1a#466, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee library, Brigham Young University.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 24, 1847, Brigham Young and 146 other Mormon pioneers <a href="https://history.lds.org/overlandtravel/companies/1/brigham-young-pioneer-company">made their way</a> into the Salt Lake Valley. They had left the United States and found themselves in Mexican territory. </p>
<p>At the time, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/kera/usmexicanwar/index_flash.html">the Mexican-American War was raging</a>, and within a year Mexico would cede the Salt Lake Valley to the United States. But that was not in the Mormons’ plans. They were trying to leave the United States <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mUSUJb-mhFsC&lpg=PP1&dq=brigham%20young%20leave%20united%20states&pg=PA123#v=onepage&q=%22prettiest%20enterprise%22&f=false">to escape violence and persecution</a>. </p>
<p>But once they were in the new territory, they settled in the Valley without the approval of the Mexican government or the indigenous <a href="https://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/american_indians/nativeamericansinutah.html">people who already lived</a> in the arid land near the Great Salt Lake. The Mormon history in Utah reveals them to be both persecuted migrants and colonizers.</p>
<p>In Utah, July 24 is celebrated as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.utah.gov/research/utah_symbols/holiday.html">Pioneer Day</a>. From <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KT0k4-8AAAAJ&hl=en">my perspective as a scholar</a> of Mormon history, revisiting the story of the Mormon settlement of the Salt Lake Valley has profound implication for the ways the leadership of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today thinks about issues of immigration.</p>
<h2>The history of Mormon immigration</h2>
<p>Before they made their way to Salt Lake City, the Mormons lived in New York, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. The church encouraged Mormon converts to gather together, and by the 1840s, some <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=MPMrsnxfIVEC&lpg=PA119&dq=british%20migrants%20to%20nauvoo%2025&pg=PA119#v=onepage&q=british%20migrants%20to%20nauvoo%2025&f=false">25 percent</a> of the population of the Mormon settlement in Illinois were British converts and immigrants.</p>
<p>The Mormons’ neighbors were suspicious of them for a number of reasons. They were perceived as outsiders because many were immigrants, but they were also <a href="http://www.pbs.org/mormons/themes/problem.html">clannish</a>. In elections, the Mormons voted as a bloc. They tended to keep their trade and economic activity among themselves. As their numbers swelled into the hundreds and thousands, their neighbors feared their influence. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228617/original/file-20180720-142417-1qfgtpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228617/original/file-20180720-142417-1qfgtpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228617/original/file-20180720-142417-1qfgtpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228617/original/file-20180720-142417-1qfgtpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228617/original/file-20180720-142417-1qfgtpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228617/original/file-20180720-142417-1qfgtpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228617/original/file-20180720-142417-1qfgtpe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1842 watercolor portrait of Joseph Smith by Sutcliffe Maudsley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, their religious practices attracted suspicion. In the 1840s, the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, began practicing polygamy, and though he tried to keep it secret, rumor quickly spread. As one Missouri writer <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Gazetteer_of_the_State_of_Missouri.html?id=6H8UAAAAYAAJ">described</a> them in 1837, they were a “mass of human corruption, [a] tribe of locusts, that still threatens to scorch and wither the herbage of a fair and goodly portion of Missouri by the swarm of emigrants.”</p>
<p>Through the 1830s and 1840s, the Mormons fled from one state to the next. In 1838, the governor of Missouri issued what historians often call the “<a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Extermination_Order">extermination order,”</a> directing the state militia to drive Mormons out. </p>
<p>For several months Missourian forces and an ad hoc Mormon militia fought across several counties in the western portion of the state. By 1839, the Mormons had settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, hoping to escape such tensions. </p>
<p>But in June 1844, Joseph Smith was assassinated by a mob in Carthage, Illinois. His successor Brigham Young determined that the United States was not safe for the Mormons. He selected the Salt Lake Valley as the place for their settlement because, as Young <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=GrPpCAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT219&dq=%E2%80%9Ca%20place%20on%20this%20earth%20that%20nobody%20else%20wants%E2%80%9D&pg=PT219#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Ca%20place%20on%20this%20earth%20that%20nobody%20else%20wants%E2%80%9D&f=false">said</a>, it was “a place on this earth that nobody else wants.” </p>
<h2>Mormonism as an immigrant religion</h2>
<p>The Mormon leadership today remembers that they are historically a religion of immigrants. Indeed, the church in the United States still is. Mormonism is growing faster in Latin America than in any other region of the world, and nearly <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/mormon/">10 percent of the church’s membership</a> in the United States is Latino or Latina. </p>
<p>These reasons lie behind the church’s consistent support for a humane immigration policy. The <a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/daca-statement-january-2018">church officially supports</a> increasing opportunities for the “Dreamers,” people brought to the United States as children. It has offered <a href="https://www.apnews.com/7de6b7f4c6934568bac300018caad5c9">criticism of the punitive practices</a> the Trump administration has implemented toward migrant families.</p>
<p>Its leadership helped to draft the <a href="https://the-utah-compact.com/">“Utah Compact</a>,” a statement of principles that urges a “humane approach” to immigration that emphasizes the importance of being “a place that welcomes people of goodwill.” After all, as church leaders <a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/daca-statement-january-2018">stated in an official statement</a>, “Most of our early Church members emigrated from foreign lands to live, work and worship.”</p>
<p>At the same time, it is also true that the Trump administration’s immigration policies enjoy about <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/06/24/a-slight-majority-of-utahns-say-president-trump-is-doing-a-good-job-but-approval-dips-on-his-immigration-policy/">50 percent approval</a> in Utah, a state that has about <a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/united-states/state/utah">two million Mormons</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, recently <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/06/18/utah-governor-opposes-trumps-nominee-from-the-state-to-oversee-us-refugee-program/">President Trump nominated</a> Ronald Mortensen to oversee the State Department’s refugee program. Mortensen, a Mormon and former <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/who-ronald-mortensen-trump-nominates-immigration-hardliner-post-dealing-944180">officer in the U.S. foreign service,</a> has blasted the Utah Compact and other of the church’s statements on immigration for being too favorable to immigrants. </p>
<p><a href="https://cis.org/Mormon-Church-and-Illegal-Immigration">Mortensen attacked</a> the church for being “biased in favor of illegal immigrants,” and said its positions “weaken the rule of law.”</p>
<h2>The disputed legacy of Mormon immigration</h2>
<p>Mortensen’s stand reveals the divided mind of the church. Though its leadership remembers Brigham Young’s entrance into the Salt Lake Valley as a reason for sympathy to immigrants today, Mortensen’s hard line brings to mind a different aspect of Mormon history. </p>
<p>Despite Brigham Young’s claim that nobody else wanted the valley, it was indeed <a href="https://heritage.utah.gov/history/uhg-history-american-indians-ch-5">populated by thousands of Native Americans</a> when the Mormons arrived. Mormon-Native interaction was uneasy, characterized by alternating cooperation and spurts of violence. </p>
<p>Though Brigham Young sometimes sought to work peacefully with Native tribes, he was also willing to enforce his will upon them with <a href="http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/672">violence</a>. Mormon settlers gradually displaced Native Americans from the land and resources they depended upon to support themselves.</p>
<p>In consequence, wars between the Mormon settlers and Native peoples <a href="https://heritage.utah.gov/history/uhg-history-american-indians-ch-5">broke out in the 1850s and 1860s</a>. As with most other areas in the United States, Native people were eventually confined to reservations. </p>
<p>Aspects of this legacy persist. Recently, for instance, Mormon elected officials have supported the Trump administration’s decision to reduce the size of the Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah. The monument was created by President Barack Obama in 2016. It is centered on a pair of large buttes called the “<a href="https://www.fs.fed.us/visit/bears-ears-national-monument">Bears Ears,”</a> which are held as sacred or significant by a number of Native American groups. Many Native leaders therefore <a href="http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/367227-utah-bill-tramples-on-tribal-sovereignty-at-bears-ears">protested</a> the Trump administration’s plan and Utah leaders’ support for it. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228619/original/file-20180720-142414-xylajl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228619/original/file-20180720-142414-xylajl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228619/original/file-20180720-142414-xylajl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228619/original/file-20180720-142414-xylajl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228619/original/file-20180720-142414-xylajl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228619/original/file-20180720-142414-xylajl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228619/original/file-20180720-142414-xylajl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A replica of the log house in Palmyra, New York, where church founder Joseph Smith lived when he encountered his first vision that led to the formation of the Mormons.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Democrat and Chronicle, Burr Lewis</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The conflicts over Bears Ears on the one hand and recent immigration policy on the other show that the church’s own experience as a migrating people, but also as a colonizing people, oppressed and oppressor in turn, continues to shape the church’s position on immigration today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100234/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Bowman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On July 24, 1847, Mormon leader Brigham Young and 146 followers entered Salt Lake City to escape persecution. This history has implications today.Matthew Bowman, Associate Professor of History, Henderson State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/979812018-06-19T10:25:28Z2018-06-19T10:25:28ZWhat it means to be a Christian in America today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223374/original/file-20180615-85830-4j5aa3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young people hold hands for a prayer during a gathering at sunset outside the Christian Fellowship Church in Benton, Kentucky.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/David Goldman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump spoke recently to the <a href="https://www.sba-list.org/gala">Campaign for Life Gala</a>, an annual Washington gathering of activists opposed to abortion. There he declared that Americans depend upon divine protection to ensure that “our nation will thrive and our people will prosper.” As long as we “trust in our God,” <a href="https://www.sba-list.org/newsroom/news/fox-news-trump-at-pro-life-gala-urges-supporters-vote-for-life">Trump said</a>, “then we will never, ever fail.” </p>
<p>The speech was recent, but the sentiments were not. Presidents have been uttering similar sentiments for <a href="http://www.nationaldayofprayer.org/history_of_prayer_in_america">decades</a>. </p>
<p>This may seem strange in a nation whose Constitution <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/estabinto.htm">declares</a> that the government will “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
But in fact, from my perspective as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KT0k4-8AAAAJ&hl=en">author</a> of the new book “<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674737631">Christian: The Politics of a Word in America</a>,” these presidential invocations of religion reflect the fact that Americans have debated what it means to be religious in politics throughout American history.</p>
<p>Because a wide majority of Americans have claimed some form of Christian belief, these debates focused on Christianity. And they continue today.</p>
<h2>Many Christianities</h2>
<p>From the very beginning of European settlement in the United States, a wide range of Christian faiths appeared in America. Roman Catholics, Baptists and Methodists <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ema95/finseth/evangel.html">saw their numbers rise</a> in the early 19th century. By the 20th century, Americans <a href="http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/NRM.htm">were claiming</a> a variety of religious identities. They joined the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-russia-is-afraid-of-jehovahs-witnesses-77077">Jehovah’s Witnesses</a>, Mormonism, black Pentecostal churches and Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, among dozens of others. </p>
<p>At the same time, however, the Constitution forbade the federal government from instituting a state church. By the 1830s, <a href="http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-29">each state in the Union had also abolished</a> state-sponsored churches.</p>
<p>This meant all these new faiths competed for membership, attention and prominence in American culture. Indeed, it is this sense of religious competition that has driven religious growth in the United States. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, began his church because, <a href="https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1912&context=etd">he felt</a> that “<a href="http://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-circa-summer-1832/2">there</a> was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament.” </p>
<p>His solution to the conundrum encapsulates the energies of American Christianity. A visionary experience led him to conclude that no Christian church in the United States possessed the true gospel – and so the answer was to found a new one. By the time of his death 14 years after he had founded the church, <a href="https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3025&context=byusq">he had attracted some 12,000</a> followers.</p>
<p>Other American religious innovators followed a similar path. They contributed new ideas, new sects and new ways of being Christian. Often these new Christianities had social and political implications. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223375/original/file-20180615-85830-1y0gxq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of Christian Science church founder Mary Baker Eddy, at the Longyear Museum, in Brookline, Mass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Julia Malakie</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, the escaped slave Frederick Douglass <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-february/frederick-douglass-at-200-remembering-his-radical-christian.html">denounced</a> white slave-holding Christians as hypocrites and became a preacher for the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a branch of Methodism founded by African-Americans. Mary Baker Eddy <a href="https://www.christianscience.com/what-is-christian-science/mary-baker-eddy">despaired</a> that no Christian church she could find sufficiently embraced the doctrine of faith healing, and so she founded Christian Science.</p>
<p>In other words, Christianity multiplied into Christianities.</p>
<h2>Multiple beliefs</h2>
<p>There are as many variants of Christianity in the United States as there are ways of believing that Christianity is foundational to American politics. </p>
<p>For instance, some Protestants argue that their faith’s emphasis on the individual means that <a href="https://mises.org/library/christianitys-free-market-tradition">Christianity supports the free market</a>. However, Roman Catholics, who emphasize community and institution, have long been much more <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/propernomenclature/catholic-worker-inspirations-dorothy-day-on-capitalism-part-1/">skeptical</a> of capitalism. </p>
<p>Such disputes have often <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/why-paul-ryan-fired-the-house-chaplain.html">marked</a> the national debate about what government policies might most or least express Christian principles. </p>
<p>During the black freedom movement, when African-Americans protested segregation and voting restrictions, black religious leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-65/martin-luther-king-jr.html">maintained</a> that Christian teaching mandated political equality for people of all races. On the other hand, some white Christian leaders <a href="https://www.clarionledger.com/story/journeytojustice/2014/07/09/sam-bowers-mississippi-burning-christian-identity/12394409/">argued</a> that Christianity taught that certain people were morally inferior to others and therefore segregation was desirable.</p>
<p>To American Christians, who still make up <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/">more than</a> two-thirds of the nation’s population, beliefs like these are fundamental to understanding how society should be organized. For many believers, a religion is <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/ReligiousStudies/chernus/4820-Nationalism/Readings/SUMMARYOFPETERBERGER.htm">more</a> than simply a moral code; it is a way of explaining the nature of the universe. It thus governs both how they think politics should work and what policies should be enacted. </p>
<h2>Christians and democracy</h2>
<p>White American Protestants have frequently <a href="https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/tocqueville-christianity-and-american-democracy">claimed</a> that American democracy derives from Protestant Christianity. They associate Protestantism’s emphasis on salvation through individual faith and the individual encounter with God with individual liberty in the political sphere. </p>
<p>They <a href="http://www.ebenezeroldhill.org.uk/articles/Christianity%20and%20Democracy.pdf">link</a>
the rise of democracy in Europe and the United States with the Protestant Reformation. For them, democracy and Christianity are inseparable from American roots in European history. </p>
<p>This assumption that Christianity is essential for democracy was <a href="https://www.politicalresearch.org/2018/04/06/christian-nationalism-and-donald-trump/">behind</a> white evangelicals’ support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. </p>
<p>Trump was widely <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/01/18/463528847/citing-two-corinthians-trump-struggles-to-make-the-sale-to-evangelicals">criticized</a> for his bungling of Christian scripture and his evident lack of adherence to Christian norms and behavior in his private life.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223417/original/file-20180615-85822-152cov7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Donald Trump, as he speaks during the Celebrate Freedom event at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, on July 1, 2017. Members of the First Baptist Dallas Church Choir are seated behind him.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But, at the same time, Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/5/16796892/trump-cyrus-christian-right-bible-cbn-evangelical-propaganda">assured</a> one group of anxious American Christians that he understood their fears. White American Protestant evangelicals, who believed that American democracy and their form of Christianity were linked, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/why-evangelicals-still-support-trump/">voted</a> for Trump. They <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/03/12/rep-steve-king-warns-that-our-civilization-cant-be-restored-with-somebody-elses-babies/?utm_term=.cac03e018dd1">feared</a> that immigration was destroying America’s European heritage, and that as white Protestantism waned, democracy itself would collapse.</p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/news/articles/a-christian-case-against-donald-trump.aspx">many</a> who have claimed that Donald Trump does not understand Christianity. I would argue he understands the <a href="https://wallbuilders.com/america-christian-nation/">turbulence</a> and <a href="https://www.christianfreedom.org/the-christian-faith-is-under-siege/">chaos</a> of the American Christian marketplace all too well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Bowman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Americans have debated what it means to be Christian in politics throughout their history. Those debates continue today.Matthew Bowman, Associate Professor of History, Henderson State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/953282018-05-29T10:40:36Z2018-05-29T10:40:36ZMormons confront a history of Church racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220510/original/file-20180525-51102-91bvr1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Mormon church is still grappling with a racial past.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On June 1 of this year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – or the Mormons – will <a href="https://www.lds.org/church/events/worldwide-priesthood-celebration?lang=eng">celebrate</a> the 40th anniversary of what they believe to be a revelation from God. </p>
<p>This revelation to the then-President of the Church Spencer W. Kimball – which is known as “<a href="https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/2">Official Declaration 2</a>” – reversed longstanding restrictions placed on people of black African descent in the church.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KT0k4-8AAAAJ&hl=en">scholar</a> of American religion and Mormonism, I believe this history illustrates the struggle the Mormon church has had with racial diversity – something that the church leadership still grapples with today.</p>
<h2>Early history of black priesthood and restrictions</h2>
<p>In the Mormon church, all men above the age of 12 serve in a priestly office, which Mormons call collectively “<a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Priesthood">the priesthood</a>.” Additionally, all Mormons, men and women alike, are taught that the sacramental rituals most essential to their salvation are performed in Mormon temples.</p>
<p>The most important of these rituals is a ceremony called “<a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Sealing">sealing</a>,” in which family relationships are made eternal. Though Mormons believe that virtually all humanity will enjoy some degree of heaven after death, only those in sealed relationships will enter the highest levels of heaven.</p>
<p>In the 1830s and 1840s, the earliest years of the church, under the leadership of founder Joseph Smith, African-American men <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng">were ordained to the priesthood</a> and historians have <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=95j4BQAAQBAJ&pg=PP187&dq=elijah+abel+temple+rituals&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjcw7CJ2aHbAhUzHTQIHZ7gBg0Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=elijah%20abel%20temple%20rituals&f=false">identified</a> at least one black man who participated in some temple rituals. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220512/original/file-20180525-51115-ld96rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220512/original/file-20180525-51115-ld96rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220512/original/file-20180525-51115-ld96rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220512/original/file-20180525-51115-ld96rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220512/original/file-20180525-51115-ld96rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220512/original/file-20180525-51115-ld96rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220512/original/file-20180525-51115-ld96rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=965&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Darius Gray, a contemporary Mormon African-American leader at the tombstone of Elijah Abel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under Smith’s successors, however, these policies were reversed. </p>
<p>In 1852 Smith’s immediate successor Brigham Young <a href="http://signaturebookslibrary.org/neither-white-nor-black-03/">announced</a> that black men could not hold the priesthood. In the following decades, both black men and black women were <a href="https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/byu-religious-education-student-symposium-2014/there-no-blessing-me-black-women-and">barred</a> from temple worship.</p>
<p>These policies affected a small number of black Mormons. A small number of <a href="https://history.lds.org/article/green-flake-pioneer?lang=en">enslaved black people</a> had been brought to Utah in the 1840s and 1850s by white Mormons and some were baptized into the church. Slavery was legalized in Utah in 1852 and remained so until the Civil War. There were also free African-Americans who became Mormon. Most prominent was <a href="http://www.blacklds.org/abel">Elijah Abel</a>, a carpenter who joined the church in 1832 and was ordained to priesthood office. He served several missions before his death in 1884. <a href="https://history.lds.org/article/jane-manning-james-life-sketch?lang=eng">Jane Manning James</a> was a free black woman who became a Mormon in 1841 and followed Brigham Young to Utah. Historians have found <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wn9cCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT448&dq=jane+james+%22no+blessing+for+me%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPsOyu2aHbAhUKGTQIHRE4CbMQ6AEIMTAC#v=onepage&q=jane%20james%20%22no%20blessing%20for%20me%22&f=false">records</a> of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=86CCAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT120&dq=elijah+abel+sealing&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxvs3K2aHbAhW2IjQIHUPcDJ0Q6AEIODAD#v=onepage&q=elijah%20abel%20sealing&f=false">both</a> Elijah Abel and Jane Manning James requesting permission to be sealed in Mormon temples. Both requests were denied.</p>
<p>More generally, after these restrictions came into place, Mormon missionaries <a href="http://signaturebookslibrary.org/impact-of-the-lds-negro-policy/">avoided proselytizing</a> people of African descent.</p>
<h2>Justifications for the restriction</h2>
<p>Young and other Mormon leaders offered various explanations for these decisions. <a href="http://jod.mrm.org/7/282">Young</a>, for example, repeated a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=e_QBDAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA141&dq=%22southern%20baptists%20were%20using%20Cain's%22&pg=PA141#v=onepage&q=%22southern%20baptists%20were%20using%20Cain's%22&f=false">long-standing</a> folk belief that black people were descended from Cain, a Biblical figure God cursed for murdering his brother. </p>
<p>Historical evidence <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/aaw/lewis-q-walker-1798-1856">indicates</a> that Young and his colleagues were distressed when black members of the church sought to marry white women. Young seems to have believed that <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/religion-of-a--different-color-9780199754076?cc=us&lang=en&">barring black men</a> from the priesthood and both black men and women from the ritual of sealing would prevent racial intermarriage in the church.</p>
<p>In the years that followed, other Mormon leaders offered other explanations for the restriction. Some said that black people possessed <a href="https://works.bepress.com/boyd_petersen/6/">less righteous souls</a> than white people did. Other Mormons as recently as 2012 suggested that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-genesis-of-a-churchs-stand-on-race/2012/02/22/gIQAQZXyfR_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3e28988556ab">black people had to mature spiritually</a> before they could be allowed full participation in the church.</p>
<p>As a result, Mormonism historically <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2015/07/history-black-mormonism/">attracted few black converts</a>. </p>
<h2>Global spread of Mormonism</h2>
<p>By the mid-20th century, church membership was growing rapidly all over the world, and it became obvious that the restrictions on members of African descent were styming church growth. </p>
<p>In the 1940s and 1950s, Christian faiths were attracting many converts in West Africa. In Nigeria, some of these African Christians discovered Mormon publications and began writing letters to Mormon leadership <a href="http://www.mormonpress.com/would_be_saints_west_africa_before_the_1978_priesthood_revelation">requesting baptism into the church</a>, claiming to be attracted by the church’s temple worship and teachings about heaven. </p>
<p>Mormon leaders in Utah were torn. As the church’s racial restrictions made it impossible to ordain African men, there could be no congregations established among black Africans. At the same time, the Nigerian government denied visas to Mormon missionaries. In the end, the church could not send missionaries or official congregations, but did dispatch Mormon literature in an attempt to guide African believers. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220513/original/file-20180525-51127-1ee005g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220513/original/file-20180525-51127-1ee005g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220513/original/file-20180525-51127-1ee005g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220513/original/file-20180525-51127-1ee005g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220513/original/file-20180525-51127-1ee005g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220513/original/file-20180525-51127-1ee005g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220513/original/file-20180525-51127-1ee005g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The spires of a Mormon temple, Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thisparticulargreg/514786296/in/photolist-8YHTGy-8YERF2-e7MT4v-2AVL5-urpsv-Muq2N-eG4thp">ThisParticularGreg</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The racial restrictions caused problems elsewhere in Africa as well. In South Africa, for example, converts had to <a href="https://www.lds.org/ensign/1973/03/the-saints-in-south-africa?lang=eng">document their genealogy</a> to demonstrate a lack of African ancestry before they could receive ordination to the priesthood or worship in temples. In 1954, Church President David O. McKay <a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/McKay,_David_O.">issued a directive</a> that unless converts’ appearance indicated black African ancestry, they would be allowed full participation in the church.</p>
<p>By the 1960s and 1970s, church missions were expanding in Latin America, particularly in Brazil. As in South Africa, Mormon missionaries were <a href="https://dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V38N02_91.pdf">confronted</a> with the issue of determining the ancestry of their converts in a nation where intermarriage was far more common than it was in the United States.</p>
<p>Pressures emerged in the United States as well. As the black freedom movement expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, criticisms of the church mounted. Through the late 1960s and early 1970s, university sports teams around the country protested or <a href="http://universe.byu.edu/2005/11/22/racial-issues-heat-up-byu-accused-of-racism-blacks-get-priesthood-in-70s/">boycotted</a> playing teams from church-owned Brigham Young University.</p>
<p>But the leadership of the church remained was divided over whether to end the priesthood and temple restriction entirely. It was in 1978 that the conflict was resolved when President Kimball announced he had received a revelation from God.</p>
<h2>The legacy of the restriction today</h2>
<p>Although the church has ended the restrictions against blacks, they have had lasting effects.</p>
<p>Today about <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in-the-us/#5">one in 10</a> converts to Mormonism are black, but surveys report that only about <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/mormon/">1 to 3 percent</a> of Mormons in the United States are African-American.</p>
<p>Despite the changes, African-American members say they still face <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/black-and-mormon/497660/">racial discrimination.</a> In 2012, for example, a professor at Brigham Young University <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-genesis-of-a-churchs-stand-on-race/2012/02/22/gIQAQZXyfR_story.html">suggested</a> that God had put the earlier ban in place because black people lacked spiritual maturity.</p>
<p>Today, church leaders have announced a celebration of Kimball’s revelation under the theme “<a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/be-one-june-celebration-priesthood-revelation">Be One</a>.” They have called for unity against “prejudice, including racism, sexism, and nationalism.” This language presents a vision of Mormonism far more inclusive than language used in the past. To some African-American members of the church, though, <a href="https://mormondom.com/abbreviated-transcript-of-the-zandra-vranes-sistas-in-zion-live-facebook-stream-1c1b2762d52f">such celebrations seem premature</a> given the persistent presence of racist ideas within the church. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, at a time when the church’s <a href="https://religionnews.com/2018/04/13/mormon-growth-continues-to-slow-especially-in-the-u-s/">growth rates</a> in the United States are slowing down and growth rates in the global South – particularly Africa and Latin America – are rising, the celebrations this June indicate a desire on the part of church leadership to acknowledge the value of its diversity. </p>
<p>Kimball’s removal of the priesthood and temple restrictions on people of color may have opened the doors to a modern church, but the decision to celebrate his declaration shows how the church is still grappling with its legacy of racial discrimination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Bowman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Forty years ago, the Mormon church reversed restrictions on its members of African-American descent. Today, the church wants to celebrate the value of its diversity.Matthew Bowman, Associate Professor of History, Henderson State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/943882018-04-09T10:43:39Z2018-04-09T10:43:39ZMormonism’s newest apostles reflect growing global reach<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213463/original/file-20180405-189830-bjdwwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People attend the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on March 31, 2018, in Salt Lake City.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At its annual General Conference held from March 31 to April 1, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as the Mormons), <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/new-asian-american-brazilian-apostles-make-mormon-history-n861741">announced two new members</a> of its second highest governing body, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: Gerrit Gong, the son of Chinese immigrants to the United States, and Ulisses Soares, a native Brazilian.</p>
<p>These two men are the first non-white apostles in the church’s history. From my perspective as a scholar of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&user=KT0k4-8AAAAJ">American religion and Mormonism</a>, these developments illustrate Mormonism’s transformation into a diverse, global faith.</p>
<h2>The Mormon apostles</h2>
<p>At its highest levels the Mormon church is run by fifteen leaders: a First Presidency, made up of the president of the church and his two counselors, and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who work immediately under the president. All serve <a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/additional-resource/succession-in-the-presidency-of-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints">for life</a>. </p>
<p>Apostles have always been chosen by the president of the church, and in turn the president of the church is the longest serving of the apostles. </p>
<p>Mormons had great missionary success <a href="https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/mormonism-and-the-making-of-a-british-zion/">in</a> <a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Scandinavia,_the_Church_in">Europe</a> in the 19th century and consequently the church has had a <a href="https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/prophets-and-apostles-last-dispensation/first-counselors-first-presidency/9-anthon-henrik">number</a> <a href="https://www.lds.org/liahona/2010/02/small-and-simple-things/elder-john-a-widtsoe?lang=eng">of</a> <a href="https://www.lds.org/liahona/2010/02/small-and-simple-things/elder-john-a-widtsoe?lang=eng">non-Americans</a> in these offices before. But there have never been non-European or non-white American men in these posts until now. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213465/original/file-20180405-189807-1nvv27y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213465/original/file-20180405-189807-1nvv27y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213465/original/file-20180405-189807-1nvv27y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213465/original/file-20180405-189807-1nvv27y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213465/original/file-20180405-189807-1nvv27y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213465/original/file-20180405-189807-1nvv27y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213465/original/file-20180405-189807-1nvv27y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Russell M. Nelson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is due to a number of reasons. One is that life tenure means that any sort of change in high church leadership happens slowly. Russell Nelson, a white man from Utah, the current president of the church, <a href="https://www.lds.org/church/leader/russell-m-nelson?lang=eng">became</a> an apostle in 1984. His predecessor, who died in January, <a href="https://www.lds.org/church/leader/thomas-s-monson?lang=eng">became</a> an apostle in 1963. The current apostles <a href="https://www.lds.org/church/leaders/quorum-of-the-twelve-apostles?lang=eng">range</a> in age from 58 to 89.</p>
<p>Another reason for a lack of diversity in church leadership is that Mormonism’s growth outside the white communities of the United States and Europe was for a long time sporadic. <a href="https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V23N01_41.pdf">Until 1978</a>, the church did not allow black members to hold priesthood or worship in temples, rites required for priestly leadership in the church.</p>
<p>In addition, though the church’s growth in Latin America has been rapid, it has <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23290495?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">traditionally</a> adhered to American cultural norms, which has meant that historically it has struggled to retain members in Latin America and Africa. For instance, Mormons expect that men will wear dress shirts and ties and women will wear dresses to Sunday services. The official Mormon hymnbook too is filled with 19th-century American hymns. Hymnals produced for non-English speaking countries <a href="https://www.lds.org/church/news/international-hymnbooks-unify-saints-around-the-world?lang=eng">consist of</a> translations of those songs into local languages. They contain only a small number of local songs. </p>
<h2>Presence in China</h2>
<p>However, the selection of Gong and Soares is an indication that the church has begun to take seriously the task of growing outside the United States.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213464/original/file-20180405-189795-1u0yrk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213464/original/file-20180405-189795-1u0yrk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213464/original/file-20180405-189795-1u0yrk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213464/original/file-20180405-189795-1u0yrk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213464/original/file-20180405-189795-1u0yrk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213464/original/file-20180405-189795-1u0yrk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213464/original/file-20180405-189795-1u0yrk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ulisses Soares, left, of Brazil, and Gerrit W. Gong, a Chinese-American.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because of its massive missionary efforts, there are now <a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics">roughly</a> 16 million Mormons in the world, and a healthy majority of those live outside the United States. <a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/brazil">One of every 15 Mormons</a> is from Brazil, where Mormon missionaries have found among their greatest success. </p>
<p>Indeed, this demographic tidal wave has been so pronounced that many Mormons have <a href="https://religionnews.com/2015/10/05/naming-of-3-new-mormon-apostles-raises-questions-about-race-international-diversity/">expected</a> a Latin American apostle for the last several vacancies. A number of Mormons <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2018/04/01/nelson-makes-history-with-his-choice-of-mormonisms-first-asian-american-and-latin-american-apostles/">greeted</a> the choice of Gong and Soares with excitement, seeing it as an important acknowledgment of diversity in the church.</p>
<p>And while Soares’ selection reflects the Mormon present, Gong’s may point to the future of Mormonism. </p>
<p>Mormonism <a href="http://www.mormonsandchina.org/">is not</a> one of the five official religions <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/religion-china">recognized</a> by the People’s Republic of China, but there are Mormon congregations in the nation, <a href="https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V13N01_42.pdf">built mostly</a> through expatriates and Chinese citizens converted by Mormon missionaries abroad. Official numbers are not reported, due to restrictions placed by the Chinese government. </p>
<p>The current president of the church, Russell Nelson, studied Mandarin as a younger man and has spent a great deal of time in China over his career. He was among the American heart surgeons who traveled to China to educate Chinese physicians about heart transplants. His personal interest in the country has recently been matched by signs that the church as a whole is interested in cultivating a higher profile there. For instance, the church recently launched a <a href="http://www.mormonsandchina.org">website</a> devoted to its relationship with China. Dallin Oaks, a member of the church’s First Presidency, <a href="https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/china-website-mormons">announced</a> that the church has been cultivating a “relationship of trust with Chinese officials.” </p>
<p>The new apostle Gerrit Gong is a Mandarin speaker as well. With a Ph.D. in international relations and stints at the State Department and Georgetown University on his resume, he could be an invaluable help in such efforts.</p>
<h2>Globalizing the church</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213466/original/file-20180405-189798-1v3wdvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213466/original/file-20180405-189798-1v3wdvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213466/original/file-20180405-189798-1v3wdvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213466/original/file-20180405-189798-1v3wdvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213466/original/file-20180405-189798-1v3wdvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213466/original/file-20180405-189798-1v3wdvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213466/original/file-20180405-189798-1v3wdvo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mormon leaders decentralized church administration and cut down on the bureaucracy and paperwork surrounding the practices of home teaching.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/moregoodfoundation/5139228994/in/photolist-8Q8TJs-8Q8Lg9-8Q8yAd-8Q8TLd-8Q8SYd-aqDJ11-aqAZga-aqCuyQ-8Q5Hhe-8PN1Mr-8Q5rL8-8PR2jw-9oVat6-8Q5Dm2-8Q8EaE-8Q5rpk-8Q8yR9-8Q5DEr-8Q8RrJ-8Q5rva-8Q5r9n-8Q5rR6-8Q5r82-8Q5Czc-8Q5Hfc-8Q5LEr-W82Xhj-aqCzWE-8Q8Kqw-8Q5zWa-8Q5KTF-2gpxCi-8Q5quX-8Q8HJG-8Q8DaG-8Q5qDZ-8Q5zEZ-7HsHhY-8Q5qbZ-8Q8yDS-8Q8yjy-6ZTzeb-8Q5q12-9cEgT3-8Q5Axt-hyNCMZ-8PMJ9Z-aqexHn-aqevH6-2W4p5x">More Good Foundation</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A notable development at the recent conference was a move by Mormon leaders to decentralize church administration, so as to strengthen local congregations worldwide. </p>
<p>One such announcement <a href="https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900014550/president-nelson-announces-major-changes-to-structure-of-lds-priesthood-quorums.html">consolidated</a> and simplified leadership in each local congregation. Another <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2018/04/02/no-more-mormon-home-and-visiting-teaching-outreach-will-be-a-holier-ministering/">discontinued</a> much of the bureaucracy and paperwork surrounding the practices of “<a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Home_Teaching">home teaching</a>” and “<a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Visiting_Teaching">visiting teaching</a>” in which congregants go and see each other monthly to ensure everybody in a congregation is doing well. Historically this work has been done according to procedures tightly controlled by church headquarters, which required regular reports. Now the church is allowing for more local autonomy.</p>
<p>Nelson’s final announcement of the Conference made the church’s interest in raising the international presence of the church explicit. He announced the church would be building seven new temples, in places as far-flung as India, Russia and the Philippines. </p>
<p>Mormon <a href="https://my.vanderbilt.edu/kathleenflake/files/2012/01/RSJ-Not-to-Be-Riten2.pdf">temples</a> are distinct from weekly meetinghouses. There are thousands of meetinghouses but only 159 temples worldwide. Ceremonies like sacramental marriage and an initiatory rite called the endowment are performed only in temples – which are rituals essential for Mormons to enter leadership positions in the church. Building a temple in a country is a sign that the church sees potential for strong local leadership.</p>
<p>If there were ever doubts that Mormonism sees a global future for itself, the events of this General Conference eliminated them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94388/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Bowman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mormonism is growing around the world: One of every 15 Mormons is from Brazil and there are congregations in China as well. Now the Mormon leadership is strengthening local congregations.Matthew Bowman, Associate Professor of History, Henderson State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/941562018-04-05T10:45:29Z2018-04-05T10:45:29ZWhy the Christian right opposes pornography but still supports Trump<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213262/original/file-20180404-189813-pdvtgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stormy Daniels, an adult star, at a local restaurant in downtown New Orleans.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Bill Haber</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many commentators have <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/evangelical-christians-trump-bill-clinton-apology/495224/">pointed out the hypocrisy of Christian leaders</a> who claim a moral high ground while supporting President Donald Trump. The latest scandal involving an alleged extramarital affair with pornographic film star <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/style/stormy-daniels.html">Stormy Daniels</a> proves no exception. </p>
<p>The Christian right that supports Trump has found ways to justify their support of the president, for example, with <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/26/17164268/stormy-daniels-donald-trump-bible-christian">analogies of how God used King David</a>, a man with personal flaws, for the greater good of the country. </p>
<p>All the while, however, evangelical leaders remain definitively opposed to pornography. <a href="http://www.faithwire.com/2017/05/10/christian-evangelist-issues-dire-warning-about-porn-youd-better-have-your-child-prepared/">In the words</a> of an evangelical celebrity and outspoken opponent of pornography, Josh McDowell, it is “probably the greatest problem or threat to the Christian faith in the history of the world.”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=erJnfJMAAAAJ&hl=en">sociologist</a> who studies <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520286337">how evangelicals talk about sex</a>,
I see evangelical Trump supporters’ reaction to the latest Stormy Daniels scandal as fitting right into how evangelical Christians have responded to pornography in recent history.</p>
<h2>The Christian anti-pornography movement</h2>
<p>Christian opposition to pornography has long been connected to larger efforts to impose Protestant morality onto American politics and culture. Sociologist <a href="http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/sociology_department_founder_joseph_gusfield_91_dies">Joseph Gusfield</a> would call it a “<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/83sbd7dy9780252013126.html">symbolic crusade</a>” – which is less about porn per se and <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/perversion-for-profit/9780231520157">more about broader social concerns</a> over changing gender roles, sexual norms and family life. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213264/original/file-20180404-189827-rgs7hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213264/original/file-20180404-189827-rgs7hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213264/original/file-20180404-189827-rgs7hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213264/original/file-20180404-189827-rgs7hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213264/original/file-20180404-189827-rgs7hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1248&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213264/original/file-20180404-189827-rgs7hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1248&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213264/original/file-20180404-189827-rgs7hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1248&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rev. Billy James Hargis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/File</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Long before the Christian right emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, Billy James Hargis an evangelical preacher and radio host, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/r-marie-griffith/moral-combat/9780465094769/">warned that pornography encouraged the spread of communism</a>. Hargis first gained national attention in the 1950s for preaching against communism in his radio program “Christian Crusade.” He was convinced that homosexuality, sex education and pornographers fueled a communist-friendly moral decay.</p>
<p>Later in the 1980s, evangelical Protestants mobilized against the sexual revolution of the 1970s. One of their targets was the pornography industry that had grown with the invention of the VCR and led to pornographic videos entering American homes. </p>
<p><a href="https://academic.oup.com/socpro/article/61/2/175/1672018">Along with other anti-pornography organizations</a>, the fundamentalist Protestant political organization, the Moral Majority, supported efforts to enforce and increase obscenity laws to regulate and reduce pornography. </p>
<p>The Moral Majority’s platform <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/perversion-for-profit/9780231520157">linked pornography with their other concerns</a>, suggesting that pornography, just like homosexuality or abortion, contributed to the moral decline of America. </p>
<p>More recently, evangelical and Latter-day Saints or Mormon politicians have been urging <a href="https://fightthenewdrug.org/here-are-the-states-that-have-passed-resolutions/">states across the country</a> to pass resolutions declaring pornography to be “a public health crisis.” </p>
<p>All these political efforts sent a straightforward message: Porn is bad. </p>
<h2>Evangelical self-help and sex advice</h2>
<p>But the story is not so simple. In the 1970s, an evangelical <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/saving-sex-9780199942251?cc=us&lang=en&">self-help and sex-advice industry emerged</a> that put a religious twist on a cultural obsession with personal and relationship satisfaction and happiness. </p>
<p>At the time, authors like conservative political activists <a href="https://www.zondervan.com/the-act-of-marriage">Tim and Beverly LaHaye</a> and Focus on the Family founder <a href="https://www.tyndale.com/p/bringing-up-boys/9781414391335">James Dobson</a> acknowledged that porn was a problem that Christians (almost always men but on <a href="http://store.purelifeministries.org/store/p/268-Create-in-Me-a-Pure-Heart.aspx">occasion women</a>) faced. Their writing focused on how pornography harmed marital relationships and personal well-being. At the same time, however, it described how devout Christians may be pornography consumers. </p>
<p>While clearly opposing the consumption of porn, self-help and sex advice book authors also normalized it. In their book, “<a href="https://bakerbookhouse.com/products/pure-eyes-a-man-s-guide-to-sexual-integrity-9780801072062">Pure Eyes: A Man’s Guide to Sexual Integrity</a>,” evangelical writers <a href="http://www.craiggross.com/">Craig Gross</a> (also founder of the anti-porn website <a href="https://www.xxxchurch.com/">XXX Church</a>) and Steven Luff asked their readers directly, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Are you ready to admit … that you struggle with something that almost any man could be tempted by?” </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How evangelicals relate to porn</h2>
<p>Today, there are evangelical <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Porn_Nation.html?id=9pI2mQEACAAJ">books</a>, <a href="http://dirtygirlsministries.com/">websites</a>, <a href="https://breakingfreesummit.com/">conferences</a> and <a href="https://puredesire.org/pages/find-group">small groups</a> to support evangelicals who are troubled by their own pornography use. </p>
<p>Such resources describe pornography as potentially “addictive” and a ubiquitous temptation in our technology-driven world. Indeed, as sociologist <a href="http://soc.publishpath.com/Default.aspx?p=991325&Add=Show+Post&Key=Show+Post&ContentID=2258383&PostID=1176706&shortcut=sam-perry">Samuel Perry</a> <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2017.1333569">finds</a>, even conservative Protestants who believe pornography is “always morally wrong” are only “somewhat less likely” to consume pornography compared to other Americans. He calls this “moral incongruence” and explains how conservative Protestants’ “avoidance of pornography does not (and perhaps cannot) keep pace with their professed opposition to it.” </p>
<p>This moral incongruence has changed how evangelicals relate to pornography. The moral conviction against porn remains strong, but there is also sympathy for its consumers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213261/original/file-20180404-189816-2vgh77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213261/original/file-20180404-189816-2vgh77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213261/original/file-20180404-189816-2vgh77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213261/original/file-20180404-189816-2vgh77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=324&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213261/original/file-20180404-189816-2vgh77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213261/original/file-20180404-189816-2vgh77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213261/original/file-20180404-189816-2vgh77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Evangelical logic supposes that giving into sexual temptations is part of the human condition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://theconversation.com/drafts/94156/edit">ruperto miller</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whereas non-evangelicals may observe a contradiction when it comes to supporting both Christian values and President Trump, I have found in my research that conservative evangelicals don’t have to see it that way. Their logic supposes that giving into sexual temptations is part of the human condition: People are prone to sin and must seek forgiveness and support. </p>
<p>A man like Donald Trump, in other words, could benefit from the pages of evangelical self-help books. But his sexual failings needn’t get in the way of conservative politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelsy Burke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Christian right’s response to pornography in recent history is complicated. The moral conviction against porn remains strong, but there is also sympathy for its consumers.Kelsy Burke, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Nebraska-LincolnLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/813842017-08-18T02:18:46Z2017-08-18T02:18:46ZExplaining polygamy and its history in the Mormon Church<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182446/original/file-20170817-28171-yv66yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Polygamy advocate Brady Williams talks with his five wives during an interview at their home in a polygamous community outside Salt Lake City. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The arrest of polygamist leader <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/15/533051035/lyle-jeffs-polygamist-accused-of-fraud-arrested-after-nearly-a-year-on-the-run">Lyle Jeffs</a>, <a href="http://local.sltrib.com/online/sw/short-creek-exodus/">evictions</a> of polygamist families and new studies on crippling <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170726-the-polygamous-town-facing-genetic-disaster">genetic disorders</a> among small ultra-orthodox or “fundamentalist” Mormon communities in rural Utah have made headlines this summer.</p>
<p>This spotlight on polygamy is likely to make the majority of Mormons who are nonfundamentalist <a href="http://religionnews.com/2016/07/20/mormon-women-fear-eternal-polygamy-study-shows/">uncomfortable</a>. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) – the mainstream Mormon Church with 15 million members worldwide – publicly rejected polygamy in 1890. But to this day, mainstream Mormons encounter stereotypes <a href="http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-seeks-to-address-public-confusion-over-texas-polygamy-group">of polygamy</a>. </p>
<p>As a scholar of Mormonism and gender and a Mormon myself, I know that the truth about Mormonism and polygamy is complicated and confusing. For more than 175 years, polygamy and tensions surrounding it have defined what it means to be a Mormon – especially a Mormon man. </p>
<h2>Beginning of polygamy</h2>
<p>Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, the Mormon movement from its beginnings offered a unique perspective on the religious role of men. </p>
<p>One of the most influential events in the life of Joseph Smith was the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-heaven-as-it-is-on-earth-9780199793570?cc=us&lang=en&">death of his 25-year-old brother Alvin</a> in 1823. In 1836, Joseph Smith had a vision of Alvin Smith in heaven. Based on this vision, he developed the Mormon teaching that families could be together in heaven if they underwent religious rites – called “<a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Sealing">sealings</a>” – in Mormon temples. Any faithful Mormon approved by church leaders could perform these sealings.</p>
<p>Due in part to this powerful role it gave to men in helping to save the people they loved and brought to heaven, Mormonism attracted proportionally <a href="http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4886/">more male converts</a> than any other American religious movement of the time. </p>
<p>In the early 1830s, Smith extended this view of the role of men to include polygamy as it was practiced by Old Testament prophets like Abraham. Smith taught that a righteous man could help numerous women and children go to heaven by being “sealed” in plural marriage. Large families multiplied a man’s glory in the afterlife. This teaching was <a href="https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/132">established as doctrine in 1843</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182449/original/file-20170817-28181-8wufpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182449/original/file-20170817-28181-8wufpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182449/original/file-20170817-28181-8wufpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182449/original/file-20170817-28181-8wufpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182449/original/file-20170817-28181-8wufpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182449/original/file-20170817-28181-8wufpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182449/original/file-20170817-28181-8wufpc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Smith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/zoovroo/2729956170/in/photolist-5aeJRQ-3AF8D-5aavgP-8PNw5i-dAbGkA-6CVKdy-e2Yexy-4tXUSf-7ohifK-6KZb6E-GphxM-4VtUVy-i5f1zK-f6CsHS-4ajTB8-nFUSEV-667mJT-7omcKS-66bB1h-obFoE2-7ohioK-667mAv-8Jo7vw-2aF1r-8PNDA4-RCsNh-81sjNi-nDVaoW-5Au4h6-6vNmXw-f1qSnj-f3LUqE-57togn-f1bupZ-4tGSZz-AwVjH-7ohiaV-objFg-4ajWoF-4tLU6d-e2YeV7-dAcmW3-99hJih-6CRzN6-4Ddyqw-xuxC2-77uDH-dA3KZ8-xuxBA-5Rd8PU">Stephen</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rumors that polygamy was practiced by a small cadre of LDS Church leaders spurred <a href="http://www.pbs.org/mormons/peopleevents/e_opposition.html">mob violence</a> against early Mormon settlements in Illinois and Missouri. In the face of this opposition, Smith counseled Mormon men to be “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=eUcRSIk-rjkC&pg=PA345&lpg=PA345&dq=King+Follett+crafty&source=bl&ots=TAa0ebmlVF&sig=lrn8VOim8LyjO34JY__IKUZe-Bw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE59bq5N7VAhUV32MKHVGzA4cQ6AEIRjAF#v=onepage&q=crafty&f=false">crafty</a>” – contemporary scholars have interpreted this to mean alert, wise and “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-heaven-as-it-is-on-earth-9780199793570?cc=us&lang=en&">resourceful</a>” – in their practice of polygamy and use of “sealings.” </p>
<p>After the murder of Joseph Smith in 1845, Mormons migrated to Utah territory in 1847, and there, under the leadership of Brigham Young – who succeeded Joseph Smith – brought the practice of polygamy out of the shadows. LDS leaders announced plural marriage as an <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-and-families-in-early-utah?lang=eng">official Mormon Church practice in 1852</a>. </p>
<p>Following Young, Mormon <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jBhgAAAAcAAJ&dq=Patriarchal+Order,+or+Plurality+of+Wives!+By+Elder+Orson+Spencer.+Being+his+...&source=gbs_navlinks_s">theologians heralded polygamy</a> as a core doctrine and as evidence of <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/23286316?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">patriarchal manliness</a>. By the 1880s, <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-and-families-in-early-utah?lang=eng">an estimated 20-30 percent of Mormon families</a> practiced polygamy.</p>
<h2>Polygamy laws, fundamentalist groups</h2>
<p>However, after the U.S. Civil War, a growing controversy over polygamy united Americans – in both the North and South. Politicians, preachers and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=EU54frPI40gC&printsec=frontcover&dq=polygamy+manliness+woodruff+gordon&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj2iL_fhczVAhVmsVQKHeaSCyEQ6AEIXjAJ#v=onepage&q&f=false">novelists</a> decried it as an evil equal to slavery. </p>
<p>The United States Supreme Court ruled in <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807849873/the-mormon-question/">Reynolds v. the United States (1878)</a> that polygamy was an “odious” practice. <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/reynoldsvus.html">The court said,</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people. At common law, the second marriage was always void, and from the earliest history of England, polygamy has been treated as an offence against society….”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The United States Congress passed the <a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Antipolygamy_Legislation">Edmunds-Tucker Act (1887)</a> authorizing the seizure of LDS Church assets and making polygamy a federal offense. Entire families went “underground” to avoid imprisonment. Mormon men were <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-viper-on-the-hearth-9780199933808?cc=us&lang=en&">stereotyped</a> as fanatics who exploited innocent converts to satisfy their “sexual degeneracy.” Mobs in the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-mormon-menace-9780199740024?cc=us&lang=en&">American South</a> in the 1880s attacked Mormon missionaries.</p>
<p>Under pressure, LDS Church President Wilford W. Woodruff <a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Manifesto_of_1890">announced in 1890</a> that the Mormon Church would no longer sanction plural marriages in adherence with the law of the United States. Still, such marriages <a href="https://www.lds.org/topics/the-manifesto-and-the-end-of-plural-marriage?lang=eng">continued to be performed</a> among Mormons in Mexico – some of whom emigrated from Utah to northern Mexico specifically to continue polygamy – or by rogue LDS leaders through the 1920s.</p>
<p>In the 1930s, seven leading Mormon polygamists banded together to form a loose confederation of <a href="https://gregkofford.com/products/modern-polygamy-and-mormon-fundamentalism">Mormon fundamentalists</a> to keep polygamy going. Several were excommunicated from the mainstream LDS Church and formed close-knit fundamentalist communities across the West – from Canada to Mexico – that survive to this day. </p>
<h2>New depictions of masculinity</h2>
<p>While fundamentalist Mormons broke off from the LDS Church in the early 20th century to continue their open practice of polygamy, those who remained members of the LDS Church made a hard turn toward the American mainstream and assimilation. </p>
<p>These mainstream Mormons developed <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=oMQgrBcI998C&pg=PA243&dq=creative+adjustment+arrington+bitton&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjApcSAhczVAhWms1QKHcfECs4Q6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=creative%20adjustment%20arrington%20bitton&f=false">new norms</a> of Mormon manhood that seemed safer to the American public. </p>
<p>Moving away from the stereotype that Mormonism was led by fanatical prophets with multiple wives and long beards, as Mormons assimilated, LDS Church leaders developed a more <a href="http://cdmbuntu.lib.utah.edu/cdm/ref/collection/upcat/id/1431">modern clean-shaven appearance and a bureaucratic, corporate style</a> of managing church affairs. </p>
<p>Between 1890 and 1920, LDS participation in the Boy Scouts (which began in 1911), bans on smoking and alcohol, and conservative sexuality <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2010.01624.x/full">helped to defined this new Mormon manhood</a>. <a href="http://donny.com/">Donny Osmond</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Young">Steve Young</a> and <a href="https://www.mittromney.com/">Mitt Romney</a> exemplify the modern Mormon norm.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182451/original/file-20170817-28163-qehkob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182451/original/file-20170817-28163-qehkob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182451/original/file-20170817-28163-qehkob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182451/original/file-20170817-28163-qehkob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182451/original/file-20170817-28163-qehkob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182451/original/file-20170817-28163-qehkob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182451/original/file-20170817-28163-qehkob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests in Utah in 2016 against a lawmaker’s proposal that would make polygamy a felony crime.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Rick Bowmer</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Still, it is my experience as a lifelong Mormon that LDS people with strong cultural and familial ties to the faith commonly believe <a href="http://religionnews.com/2016/07/20/mormon-women-fear-eternal-polygamy-study-shows/">that polygamy will be a fact of life in heaven</a>. The LDS Church publicly renounced the practice of polygamy in 1890, but it has never renounced polygamy as doctrine, as evidenced in <a href="https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/132">LDS scriptures</a>. It has always permitted and continues to permit men to be married in Mormon temples “for the eternities” to more than one wife.</p>
<p>This tension between private belief and public image makes polygamy a sensitive subject for Mormons even today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81384/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Brooks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, taught that a righteous man could help numerous women and children go to heaven by being ‘sealed’ in plural marriage. Norms have been revised, but tensions remain.Joanna Brooks, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, San Diego State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.