Recently in Mormons Category

The prosecutors overreached...sez I.

...the go-to source is Joanna Brooks, over at Religion Dispatches. In the latest of her posts, Brooks explains why Mike Lee's victory in Utah's GOP Senate primary Tuesday was not the clear-cut Tea Party triumph that some--i.e. WaPo's David Weigel--imagine it to be. In Utah, Mormon roots run very deep, and you can't tell the players without a genealogical scorecard.

Bottom line: Lee's as hooked into the multi-generational Mormon past as you can be, while his opponent, Tim Bridgewater, is not. That's not to say that Lee didn't have some Tea Party support. But as Brooks points out, the movement has distinct regional variants, and in Utah it's got a strong admixture of Mormon establishmentarianism: "Call it Brigham Tea?"

For months and months, Harry Reid seemed about as likely to be reelected to the Senate as the Orioles are to win the American League East. But a new poll now shows him leading all three of his main Republican rivals. What gives?

As the folks over at TPM point out, the GOP candidates have done an excellent job of knocking each other down. But there may be a bit of a hidden religious factor at work as well. At the Mormon History Association meetings in Kansas City last weekend, the word was that the leadership of the LDS Church was putting out quiet signals that it would be a good thing if Reid retained his seat. No Mormon has ever held a higher position of authority, and even if virtually all of the church's general authorities (as they're called) are Republicans, keeping a Mormon Democrat as Senate Majority Leader is preferable to having him replaced with a first-term Republican.

None of the three leading Republicans are Mormons, and though a latecomer to the field, Chad Christensen, has been playing the LDS card for all it's worth, he's not given much of a chance. Anecdotally, Reid--who is an active and enthusiastic member of the church--seems to enjoy considerable LDS support.

How much of a difference does the LDS vote make in the Silver State? According to the 2008 Trinity ARIS, Mormons constitute only 5.2 percent of the population. (Thanks to emigration from California, that's down from 9 percent a decade ago.) Still, in a close election, a few percentage points matter, and turnout among Mormons is always high. 

Mitt Romney scored a huge and unexpected victory In the January 2008 Republican caucuses, racking up over 50 percent of the vote to Ron Paul's 14 percent and John McCain's 13 percent. Later that year, Obama beat John McCain handily, 55-43. With the quiet blessing of Salt Lake City, I wouldn't count Harry Reid out this year. 

In a comment, Marcus French of the evangelical--or, perhaps more accurately, evangelistic--Voice of Revolution website suggests that the problem with the No Mob Veto letter condemning anti-Mormon violence probably has to do with its last sentence, which reads:

Furthermore, beginning today, we commit ourselves to exposing and publicly shaming anyone who resorts to the rhetoric of anti-religious bigotry--against any faith, on any side of any cause, for any reason.

I'm inclined to agree. Is it anti-religious bigotry to attack a church as non-Christian for, say, supporting abortion rights? Or for embracing the Book of Mormon as holy writ? Or for performing same-sex marriages? As the letter itself points out, religious organizations that enter the lists on one side or another of a contentious public issue cannot expect to be immune from criticism. Where does such non-immunity end and bigotry begin? Condemning violence is one thing. Pledging to expose and publicly shame anyone who might be considered bigoted against a religion is quite another.

I'm a little surprised at the lack of comprehensiveness of the list of signers of the "No Mob Veto" letter published in today's NYT. To be sure, this protest against violence against and intimidation of Mormons for their support of Proposition 8 comes from the right side of the spectrum (the Becket Fund), but I would have expected signatures from the ADL's Abe Foxman and David Saperstein of Reform Judaism's Religious Action Center (even though they opposed Prop. 8). And nothing from Mainline Protestantism or Islam. Doesn't Becket know how to put together a coalition, or was there some other problem?

It is no small irony that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should now be the object of nationwide ire for exercising its ecclesiastical power on behalf of "traditional" marriage. Once upon a time, the church looked to the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm the right of its members to practice marriage according to their own distinctive lights, and had Reynolds v. U.S. gone the other way in 1878, there's every reason to think that Mormons in good standing would still be committing themselves to bonds of plural matrimony. In the gay marriage wars of the past few years, a standard rhetorical question of many opponents has been that if same-sex marriage is allowed, can polygamy be far behind? You wonder how often that question was voiced by the rank-and-file Mormons canvassing last month on behalf of Proposition 8.

In a conversation Friday, Peggy Fletcher Stack, the longtime Salt Lake Tribune religion reporter who has probably written more stories about the LDS Church than any journalist alive, allowed as how this had not been a very good season for a church that's highly sensitive to its public image. First there was the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, which roiled the evangelical dovecotes. Then there was the assault on the Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas that, if it hardly proved a big win for the Texas authorities, served as yet another reminder of Mormon polygamy to a public that may not distinguish too sharply between fundamentalist Mormons and their mainstream cousins. And finally this.

This, of course, the church brought entirely on itself. To be sure, it was part of a coalition of religious institutions promoting Prop. 8, and there's doubtless a temptation to ask why the much more numerous Catholics and evangelicals haven't drawn the bulk of the attention. That's got to be ingrained anti-Mormon prejudice, no? Maybe but maybe not. As we know from the election returns, most Catholics don't pay much attention to what their bishops say when it comes to voting, and as for evangelicals, there's no hierarchy that presumes to tell them what to do. It's a different story when the LDS Church sends out instructions.

There was a lot of shouting yesterday about the need to separate church and state, but under the law religious institutions, like other non-profits, are entitled to advocate for issues they care about without putting their tax exemptions at risk. What they shouldn't expect to avoid is denunciation and vilification from the other side. As the marriage wars continue, it will be interesting to see whether the famously nice folks in Temple Square decide to make nice or to double down.

Despite the candidacy of a prominent member of the church for the Republican nomination for U.S. president, there were virtually no political overtones in Monday's news conference in which officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that the new president of the church is Thomas S. Monson.

Bruce Olsen, the head of the church's Public Affairs Department, conducted the news conference which was held in the lobby of the Church Office Building on the central campus of the church in Salt Lake City. He opened with a reminder that the church takes no position in political contests. He also warned members of the press that questions touching on politics would be ruled out of order.

Richard Cullen of the Politico alerts those keeping track at home of Tuesday’s big contest to move Utah out of the Mike Huckabee column. According to Cullen, many Mormons still harbor great resentment from Huck’s “the Devil and Jesus are brothers” slight. In the general election against a Democrat, polls have the sunny Baptist losing 58 to 42 percent.
Worse for the GOP is that, as Bruce Webster shows, Obama has been reaching out into the Mormon community. Michelle Obama visited LDS headquarters today and sources have indicated that Obama is looking to steal moderate Utahans if the GOP nominates McCain.

Time's Dan van Biema has a piece on the significant legacy of LDS President Gordon Hinckley. The article relies on Spiritual Politics contributor Jan Shipps' expertise and hypothesizes that without Hinckley a Mormon's presidential campaign would not gain traction outside LDS locales. van Biema on Romney: "But were it not for Hinckley's relentless 20-year publicity campaign to assure fellow Christians that Mormons, as he insisted, were not "weird," Romney would have had a much more difficult time overcoming the impression that many have of his faith."

Gordon B. Hinckley, the 15th President/Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day, died on Sunday, January 27, 2008. He was 97 years old. For 73 of those years he worked full-time for the church over which he would come to preside in 1995. Although he only served as church president for a dozen years, from the time he was called into the church’s “First Presidency” in 1981 forward, Hinckley was the principal LDS administrative figure, the face Mormonism presented to the world.