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Pew Polls Mormons About Being Mormon.

January 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

With the contest for the GOP Presidential nomination leaving the more tolerant American northeast (New Hampshire) and heading back into evangelical territory with the South Carolina Primary, Mitt Romney’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint  faith (aka “Mormonism” or the “Mormons“) is back in the news.  The Pew Research Center, in anticipation, has released a new poll on Mormons.

…or rather, a poll of Mormons themselves.  Essentially, it’s an outside look at how Mormons see themselves.

I know. Interesting, right? Who doesn’t love a good case of ompholaskepsis? I mean, besides the Kardashian sisters and the Jersey Shore crew? (Yes, I did just manage to get a ten-dollar word in the same line as a reference to the Kardashians and Snooki. There must be some kind of blogger bingo reward for that).

Tell us more about that poll…

According to Washington Post, it is “[t]he first major independent poll of U.S. Mormons” and it “describes a conservative, devout community highly concerned about being accepted even as it embraces beliefs about gender roles, premarital sex and religious commitment that are well outside the mainstream.”  Auspicious, eh? There’s a reason Mormons often find comfort in the biblical description of God’s people as “peculiar” relative to those around them.

“This sample looks like very busy, hyperactive Mormons,” said Marie Cornwall, a Mormon sociologist at Brigham Young University, to the Washington Post. “Who are these people? Many of us are really surprised at how religious this group is.”

Specifically,

  • “Seventy-four percent of Mormons say they lean Republican, compared with 45 percent of Americans overall.” (Shocker…)
  • As it regards the presidential contest, “Romney has overwhelming support among Mormons: 86 percent view him favorably. Even Mormon Democrats view him as favorably as do Republicans overall.” That doesn’t apply to just Romney. Less ardent in his LDS faith, but a Mormon none-the-less, Jon Huntsman gets favorable views from half of Mormons. Not surprisingly, President Obama only gets a nod from 25%, which matches up well with previous bullet point.
  • Seventy-nine percent said sex between unmarried adults is wrong, compared with 35 percent of the general population. Others have pointed to this high level of pre-marriage chastity as a reason for Mormons’ lower than average levels of divorce. Which leads to the next observation:
  • “Two-thirds of Mormons are married compared to just over half of all Americans, and eighty-one percent of all members say being a good parent is one of the most important life goals. Only half of Americans in general say the same. Almost three-quarters of Mormons put the same high priority on marriage, compared to one-third of the general public.”
  • How do Mormons feel about perceptions of their faith? 97% see themselves as Christian, but “the fact that many Americans — one-third, polls show — don’t see them as Christians is one of their primary concerns.” Ironically, “white evangelicals, with whom Mormons share many attributes, are the group least likely to see Mormons as Christians.”  Could that be a result of competitive envy?

Looking at the specific findings, LDS Church spokesman Michael Otterson notes that Mormon’s embrace a distinctiveness, as in “peculiarity,” that they cherish and that is not unlike the “committed evangelicals or [...] our Catholic brothers and sisters who show special devotion to their own understanding of the Christian faith.”

Wait! There’s more!

English: Governor Mitt Romney of MA

The poll isn’t the only place where the Mormons are making headlines. Today has seen a small burst of LDS centered news.

[Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life] [Washington Post] [Old Testament] [Salt Lake Tribune] [Fox News] [LA Times] [Chicago Tribune]

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Nationwide Poll: Most know that Mormons are Christians, but especially Republicans.

December 22, 2011 by 2 Comments

Most people consider Mormons–members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints– Christians, says a new nationwide poll by the Salt Lake Tribune. That’s interesting, and it’s also probably good news to Mitt Romney, whose biggest liability is not the health care reforms he signed as Governor of Massachusetts, but his religion.

What’s more interesting, at least to me, is who questions Mormons’ Christianity. It’s not those “crazy” conservatives; rather, it may be Democrats and Independents.

Check out the screen shot of the Salt Lake Tribune’s poll below:

At #1, the red circle, you see the percentage in the poll that consider Mormons to be Christians (which, by the way, they are). It’s just over half at 52%.

However, when that percentage is broken down into smaller segments, controlling for political affiliation, it becomes clear that the lack of acceptance is stronger on the political left.

Go to #2, the blue circles. Whereas almost 63% of Republicans believe Mormons are Christians, that percentage drops 14% among Democrats. It drops even further to 44% with independents, or people claiming no political affiliation.

What’s the upshot? The difference may not matter. Democrats and Independents don’t care about religion or belief in God as much as Republicans do.

“Clearly, religion is much more important to Republicans,” said Brad Coker, of Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which conducted the Dec. 12-16 survey for The Tribune.

Further,

The partisan split is likely attributed to the larger number of secular Democrats, said Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which studies public policy through a Christian viewpoint. He said while most Democrats are people of faith, the party “just has a lot more nonbelievers in it.”

English: Governor Mitt Romney of MA

Image via Wikipedia

So, controlling for “more nonbelievers” to the left of Republicans, and considering that any Republican candidate whose faith might be questioned (i.e. Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney) is facing a Republican primary, we really need only look at Republicans’ perceptions of candidates. And, according to what we see here, Republicans care about a candidate’s faith, belief in God, and Christianity.

Especially the evangelicals. Says the article

White evangelicals often are seen as one conservative group most likely to criticize the LDS faith, but the poll found that 50 percent see Mormons as Christians, though 29 percent said they were not, the largest among any of the groups polled by The Tribune.

Are evangelicals shifting? Are southern preachers like Robert Jeffress losing their bigoted war against the LDS faith?

These are signs indicating that such may be the case. I’m still waiting to see. Until the Republican Presidential race shifts from New Hampshire to South Carolina and Florida, I’ll hold my judgement on whether the nation is ready to accept as one of their own a member of the LDS faith.

[Salt Lake Tribune]

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Such a thing as bad press for Mormons after Jeffress?

October 11, 2011 by 1 Comment

A political consultant I once worked with, after we saw our candidate’s name appear prominently in a less than flattering newspaper article, made the following comment:

“Did they get his name right? We’ll take it.”

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with free press. (A caveat might be carved out for when that press involves dead interns, but other than that…)

Right now, thanks to a hostile baptist preacher, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka the “Mormons“) are receiving a lot of free publicity. Oh, and so is Mitt Romney, candidate for the Republican nomination for President. I wonder if that’s what Robert Jeffress intended when he slammed Mormons for being a “cult.”

Here’s a quick review of the myriads of free press the attack has and is garnering:

The Salt Lake Tribune takes the chance to promote their favorite candidate for 2016, or 2020, Jon Huntsman:

Jon Huntsman is right. The question of whether The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a cult or is Christian is a political sideshow. The race for the Republican presidential nomination should be about important policy issues, not about which candidate or which denomination is Christian.

Charles Haynes of the Senior scholar at the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum in Washington, says that anyone familiar with US history would find it ironic that a Baptist preacher is calling someone a cult, especially given their history of being called a heretical and dangerous “sect” in the 18th century. Further

Mormons running for president, however, still face name-calling and bigotry from those who believe putting a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the White House will somehow threaten their vision of America as a “Christian nation.”

Theological differences, of course, matter to people of faith – and there is a time and place for open and honest dialogue about competing definitions of the “true church.” But that debate has no place in the political arena, especially when inflammatory labels are employed that deepen our divisions and fears.

It’s a sharp and insightful piece, and you should read it.

You should also check out Slate, which calls religious bigotry the “prejudice of our age.”

Cain and Perry showed no such clarity a week later, when Robert Jeffress, a prominent Baptist pastor speaking at a national family-values conference, called Mormonism a non-Christian cult and urged voters to support Perry over Romney because Perry was a “genuine follower of Jesus Christ.” Cain, again appearing on two Sunday shows, refused to say whether Mormons were Christians. “I’m not getting into that controversy,” he told CNN’s Candy Crowley before implicitly affirming the distinction: “I am not going to do an analysis of Mormonism versus Christianity.” When CNN asked the Perry campaign whether Perry would repudiate Jeffress’ statements, the campaign said Perry “does not believe Mormonism is a cult,” but it ignored the pastor’s other allegations.

The gap between these two episodes—clear condemnations of racism, but silence and ambiguity about anti-Mormonism—illustrates a fundamental weakness in our understanding of bigotry. We’re always fighting the last war. We hammer a politician’s connection to prejudice against blacks, no matter how symbolic the prejudice or how old, distant, and tenuous the connection, because nearly everyone recognizes this bigotry as bigotry. Denouncing it is easy. What’s hard is speaking out against a bias that isn’t so widely recognized. It’s politically difficult because challenging a common prejudice could cost you votes. And it’s morally difficult because the biases of your era are hard to see.

From evangelical Richard Mouw, the President of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California:

“We evangelicals and our Mormon counterparts disagree about some important theological questions,” Mouw continued. “But we have also found that on some matters we are not as far apart as we thought we were.”

Apparently, Jeffress’ “theological” interpretation is not as firm as he had thought.

William McGurn, writing in the Wall Street Journal, said that the “Cult of Anti-Mormonism” needs to end, on both the left and the right:

Here’s some advice for Republican candidates appearing at Tuesday’s presidential debate at Dartmouth College. When you are asked, as you will be asked, what you make of the Christian pastor who called the Mormon faith a “cult,” there’s only one appropriate answer.

It comes from the last sentence of Article VI of the Constitution, and it reads as follows: “[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

and

Hannah Smith of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty puts it this way: “At the heart of the First Amendment is the freedom to participate in the political process regardless of faith,” she says. “When people of any faith face retribution—either through violence or intimidation or loss of their livelihood—as a direct result of that participation, America has lost something.”

So it’s good to see Republican feet now being held to the fire on an issue the Founders resolved in 1787. Even more encouraging would be a press willing to give attention to very real concern among politically active Mormons: whether a Romney nomination would mean LDS members staying on the sidelines out of fear of the kind of attacks on their property and their livelihoods that their co-religionists experienced with California’s Proposition 8 and its aftermath.

So amid all the coverage given to Pastor Robert Jeffress, ask yourself this question. If you were a Mormon, which would you consider the real threat to your liberty: what some Dallas Baptist says about your faith—or organized attacks intended to intimidate and drive you off the public square?

McGurn notes that while this debate is happening mostly among Republicans competing for the Presidential nomination, polls show that Democrats are more hostile to a Mormon presidency than are Republicans.

But back to Article VI of the Constitution: Justin Hart agrees–there should be no religious “litmus test”‘ for President– even while he participates in some “secret handshakes” of his own.

I could spend this post defending Mormonism from attacks - like the one hurled today by Pastor Jeffress during his introduction gf Governor Perry at the Values Voters Conference or I could simply point out the obvious: a religious litmus test is both unconstitutional in character and imprudent for a political stragegy.

Even the Utah Democrats got into the act, going to bat for the underdog (yes, in answer to your question: there are Mormon Democrats):

“As Latter-day Saints — and Democrats — we are appalled and disappointed by Jeffress’ statement that Mormons are not Christian,” stated McAdams and Young-Otterstrom. “As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we know that the foundation of our belief is the divinity of Jesus Christ. Members of the LDS Church are compassionate, caring individuals who seek to follow the example of Christ to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

Finally, someone looks at the political ramifications of Jeffress’ remarks. The comments will hurt Rick Perry, said Karl Rove, even if Perry didn’t make them:

This is a terrible mistake on the part of the Pastor; it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t belong in politics. We want our candidates, we want our leaders to be people of faith, but we don’t get into and we haven’t gotten into since at least the 1960 presidential election in the determination over whether or not somebody’s professed faith is acceptable to the vast majority of Americans.

And that, ultimately, is what matters: this it the kind of thing that doesn’t belong in politics. It’s not American, and it represents everything that our founding document–the Constitution–is intended to end. That is why, in the end, I think we will see this kind of religious bigotry backfire.

Read more about the Mormons, aka “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” here.

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Anderson quotes Mormon.org, Jeffress has “grintegrity,” & religious bigotry rears its ugly, cowardly head.

October 10, 2011 by 4 Comments

Newsflash: Baptists are a part of historic Christianity, but Mormons are not.

I wonder what the Catholics think about that. I’d certainly like to see Politifact fact check Jeffress and his historical revisionism.  Here’s the clip:

The best part comes when Cooper tries to nail Jeffress on why he doesn’t think members of the “Church of Jesus Christ” aren’t Christians. He gives a quote from the LDS Church website that almost exactly mirrors what Jeffress had said only seconds before.

Anderson Cooper (3:03): Reading from Mormon.org “… Jesus Christ is the only way that we can return to live with our Heavenly Father.”

Robert Jeffress: [pregnant pause] “Yeah…well…and we could get into a theological discussion, put everyone to sleep down there–”

Please, do put us to sleep. If we’re going to start using words, maybe we ought to defend what those words mean. Because really–what Jeffress is saying is that he can call Mormons whatever the heck he wants and no one can criticize it as long as he asserts a definition of his own choosing. Nevermind that it’s a definition that doesn’t hold up internally. Or externally, for that matter.  It’s a pejorative, and you know it, no matter how much you try to talk around it.

I would ask Jeffress:  if it’s a theological debate, why bring it up? Why insert it into politics? If it doesn’t matter, why make it matter? Or are you suddenly caught in a contradiction and unsure how to respond?

All the while, Jeffress keeps his “grintegrity.” Learn it. Know it. Fear it.

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When the LDS Church shows up for a press conference, does it jeopardize tax exempt status?

March 16, 2011 by 3 Comments

I’m expecting an Utah paper editorial separation of church and state any day now. I’d bet dollars for donuts that it’ll be in the Salt Lake Tribune, too. The Deseret News just doesn’t roll that way.

Yesterday, the LDS Church openly supported Governor Herbert’s signing of HB 116 by sending Presiding Bishop H. David Burton to the ceremony. While many detractors will argue that the Church regularly engages in political activity, citing the Proposition 8 battle in California, it is actually quite rare for the LDS Church to openly engage in politics. Typically, the LDS Church prefers to work in the background, if at all, when it feels the need to support or oppose legislation. (I do not believe that the Church has supported, in recent memory or indeed the last century, any candidates for public office).

When it does engage, actively or otherwise, it is usually because the cause aligns with what LDS Church leadership believe is in the interests of the Church membership. In California and Proposition 8, it was defense of the institution of traditional marriage. In Utah and HB116, it was the family.

Proponents of the bill were grateful for the LDS Church’s support. Sen. Stuart Reid, R-Ogden, told the Tribune that

There is no question that the Utah Compact, with the church’s endorsement, made a significant difference to me and others in the Legislature who helped craft immigration legislation. It provided the inspiration for our efforts to negotiate and compromise, enabling us to create principle-based legislation the majority of the Legislature eventually supported.

Paul Mero, Director of the Sutherland Institute, speculated that if Utah had been in legislative session right after the Arizona law passed last year, we would have seen an Arizona style enforcement law passed here.

But this is not about immigration. This is about the LDS Church’s involvement in the issue. Almost immediately after the press conference featuring Bishop Burton, questions began to arise, on Twitter and Facebook: did the LDS Church cross the line? Can it engage without forfeiting its tax exempt status?

http://twitter.com/curtbentley/status/48106635754881024

It’s an issue that comes up every few years, at least here in Utah. Uniquely in this country, Utah is dominated by members of the LDS faith. No other state is so religiously homogeneous and few faiths, with perhaps the exception of Catholicism, place such a value on following the guidance of church leadership. They believe that they are lead by a prophet and apostles that are, like the ancient Christian church, called directly by God and are in communication with Him. With that kind of faith, every action taken by LDS Church officialdom is given that much more credence than might otherwise be granted. As is often said in Sunday School–usually about gospel doctrine, not religions–”when the Prophet speaks, the discussion is over.”

The Salt Lake City LDS Temple in the heart of downtown Salt Lake, with the state capitol up the hill behind it.

So what happens when a prophet speaks about politics? Although it was only Bishop Burton at the signing, and not a declaration from the LDS Church’s current prophet and president, Thomas S. Monson, it was a clear signal about where the LDS Church stands on immigration, and it will change the political discourse in the state, if it has not already.

Legally, the LDS Church is not permitted to support of a candidates for public office under any circumstances. The LDS Church is a tax exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. The IRS website states that such organizations cannot participate in support of a candidate for public office without risking tax exempt status.

The law, however,  is more lenient with regards to lobbying, which in this case would be what the LDS Church did for HB116. Again, the IRS website on lobbying for 501(c)(3) organizations:

In general, no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying).  A 501(c)(3) organization may engage in some lobbying, but too much lobbying activity risks loss of tax-exempt status.

At what point does “some lobbying” become “too much lobbying” and risk loss of tax-exempt status? What is a “substantial part” of its activities? The IRS explains that the “substantial part” test looks at

Whether an organization’s attempts to influence legislation, i.e., lobbying, constitute a substantial part of its overall activities is determined on the basis of all the pertinent facts and circumstances in each case. The IRS considers a variety of factors, including the time devoted (by both compensated and volunteer workers) and the expenditures devoted by the organization to the activity, when determining whether the lobbying activity is substantial.

So were the LDS Church’s efforts a “substantial part of its overall activities” or not?

Previous to Bishop Burton’s appearance at the signing, the LDS Church’s support has been minimal. The LDS Church did support the Utah Compact, the guiding principles upon which the bill was written, but actually avoid public appearance or direct support when it was announced. There are allegations that Bill Evans and John Taylor spent a significant amount of time at the Capitol during the last ten days of the session; however, the presence of two lobbyists looking out for the LDS Church’s interest is hardly a substantial part of the LDS Church’s efforts. As Curt Bentley noted on Twitter

http://twitter.com/curtbentley/status/48112712072429568

With tens of thousands of missionaries world-wide, millions of members, a laity priesthood, farms, dairies, canneries, and charities, the work of two lobbyists is hardly substantial.

So, in the present case, the allegations against the Church retaining its tax exempt status will probably fail. When a church provides guidance to its members, whether lead by a prophet or by a pope, it may indeed present some internal conflict for those who do not agree with it but who ascribe to its faith. However, church’s aren’t founded to make people feel good about themselves–their purpose is to help them become better people. If that means they have to be more compassionate about their fellowmen–including those who were not born here or do not have a legal status here–then churches should, and ought, to do that.

On the other hand, whether the law will survive federal constitutional review is an entirely different question. On that, Democratic state Senator Ross Romero may have the right stance.

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What I’m reading: Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness”

September 21, 2010 by 1 Comment
Whittaker Chambers, American writer, editor, a...

Whittaker Chambers testified against Alger Hiss and was a former communist. Image via Wikipedia

A passage from the book I’m reading, “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers, in the opening pages, that I found evocative in its comparison of Communism and religious faith:

[Communism] is not new.  It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith.  Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind.  Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God.  The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.

It is the vision of man’s mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man’s liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man’s destiny and reorganizing man’s life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in His image, but because man’s mind makes him the most intelligent of animals. Copernicus and his successors displaced man as the central fact of the universe by proving that the earth was not the central star of the universe. Communism restores man to his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God.

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Christianity and the Common Law

February 23, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Of all my posts, the question I tweeted a few weeks back about Christianity and the common law has gotten the most views, much to my surprise.  Despite the attention, I have no idea whether Christianity is a part of the American legal system’s common law.  Justice and mercy, and crime and punishment, the language of contracts and torts can all find correlating vocabulary in the Christian syntax and doctrines.  But is Christianity itself a part of the common law?  And has it ever been?

Naturally, my first stop to find out was Google.  My search was something along the lines of  ”christianity as part of the common law” and nearly all my results referred back to Thomas Jefferson.  Interesting…

Apparently, according to some sources, in the early days of the American republic the question of whether or not Christianity was part of the common law was a point of discussion in the legal community.  Thomas Jefferson mentions it repeatedly in letters to associates and in his notes as early as the 1760s and on until the 1820s.  In a celebrated letter to Major John Cartwright, Jefferson argued that Christianity was not part of the common law but had been foisted into the law as an act of judicial legislation (what we now call judicial activism).  Incidentally, this is the same letter that gave rise to Jefferson’s famous quote about a “wall of separation”  between church and state.  The argument against Christianity as a part of the common law was that because the common law was rooted in Anglo-Saxon history to before the advent of Christianity in Britain, it was a late comer to the legal system and had therefore never been a basis for the common law.

Justice Story, of the US Supreme Court and a devout Unitarian, did not agree with Thomas Jefferson, and in 1833 he rebutted Jefferson’s attack on Christianity in the Cartwright letter.  However, his response was regarded as largely weak.  For example, he noted that reviling was the root for the English common law doctrine of criminal libel.  However, Story’s argument is often seen to have boiled down to a support for legislation that prosecuted for blasphemy, the very thing that Jefferson argued was not prosecutable in his letter to Cartwright.

Other quotes at the time seemed to support Story’s perspective, viewing Christianity as a way to guide and provide for the virtues that would protect society.  Matthew Hale said “Christianity is part of the Common Law of England.”

For a look from Jefferson’s work on the topic, check here,  here and here.

Despite the dissent from Christianity as part of the common law by Jefferson, the discussion and application to Christianity as part of the common law persisted until at least 1927, when it last was cited in a case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Some might suggest that there are those today who see Christianity as part of the common law.  The US Supreme Court’s chambers has a large image of Moses on its fascia and on its wall among the great law givers of history. Recently, a decision by the Supreme Court allowed a monument depicting the 10 Commandments to remain in on an Alabama court’s property, ruling it was not an endorsement of Christianity but of the supremacy of the rule of law.

James Madison, the bookish and quiet little man we call the Father of the Constitution, was the champion of the Bill of Rights.  Of the 19 amendments to the constitution that he proposed, only 10 were passed, but among those the most important to him was the First Amendment with its grant of the freedom to worship according to the dictates of one’s conscience.  Despite this, it was 1833 before the last state did away with any established religion under state laws.  Today, we take it for granted that religions do not receive any preference from government.  But asking the question–is Christianity a part of the common law?–raises the question of whether there are roots of todays legal system in the past, even the distant past.

Do you see Christianity in the common law?

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