Is This How It Starts? – That and stuff picked up during the time off.
Ben Smith, yesterday, in his Politico blog had this tiny little item:
From the no-stone-unturned department: Tomorrow’s schedule says the president will meet Latter-Day Saints Church President Thomas Monson, in the company of Senate
MinorityMajority Leader Harry Reid, a Mormon.Obama’s likeliest 2012 foe, Mitt Romney, is a Mormon whose political organization has long drawn support from LDS, but that’s evidently no obstacle.
There are two things overwhelmingly notable about that piece. One is that it is based on the press’ continued misunderstanding that religious people, and especially Mormons, are somehow bloc voters. In the case of Mormon that misunderstanding is especially problematic because it contributes to”brainwashed cult” image that most non-Mormon have of Mormons. Secondly, there is no news there other than the word “Mormon” – which means there really is no news there at all. But again, the press misunderstands how this whole religion/politics thing is supposed to work. It is natural that the leader of an institution that includes a large segment of the population of the nation, would meet with the president at some point during his term in office.
Romney is increasingly emerging as a strong possibility for 2012 as Smith notes. I take this as a clear sign that The Question has not played out, and should Romney run, is likely to be with us again.
*SIGH*
While we were gone…
…any number of items appeared that are worth pointing out and discussing. I am not sure time will permit us to give them all they are due here, but we will endeavor to do our best as vacation is officially over.
Two pieces appeared about a week apart in Dan Gilgoff’s blog while we were out that are quite striking when laid next to each other. The first concerned Sarah Palin’s future:
What do religious conservatives know about Sarah Palin that everyone else doesn’t?
While most political folks are wondering aloud about the outgoing Alaska governor’s next move—and while Palin herself admits she’s foggy about future plans—conservative Christian activists are expressing confidence that she’ll stay in national politics.
The other concerned efforts by the “Religious Right” to soften its image:
Members of a generation of evangelical leaders who’ve stepped onto the national political stage in the last decade have gone out of their way to define themselves as outside the Christian
right, their socially conservative views notwithstanding. Think Rick Warren or Joel Hunter.
Such figures have two big beefs with the Christian right: its single-minded focus on hot-button issues—more or less ignoring social justice issues like fighting poverty or HIV/AIDS in Africa—and its belligerent approach to politics. (In the 1990s, Ralph Reed, then director of the Christian Coalition, said his enemies wouldn’t be aware of his vast grass-roots army “until you’re in a body bag.”)
The Warrens and Hunters of the evangelical world broadened the evangelical political agenda and avoided slash-and-burn tactics and rhetoric.
Fascinating, isn’t it. What we are seeing in those “backing” Palin, and Huckabee as well, are the dying vestiges of the “slash-and-burn tactics and rhetoric” crowd of the “religious right.” Who knows if Palin will run, though the rumors tend towards “yes” – and Huckabee’s going to run, not for real, just for face time, and it is this group of “turn or burn” types that will back them. Huckabee loves these people, and they love him, but I think he is now a proven loser, even to them. Like Pat Robertson’s second run, Huckabee may not even rise to asterick status in 2012.
Palin is a different story. There is real potential there, though she seems highly disorganized at this point. Two things factor against her. One, at core, this hardcore group are misogynists – she was acceptable as a VP candidate, but they are going to have to swallow hard for the lead of the ticket. I think they view her as a placeholder more than a reality at this point. Secondly, this hardcore group is increasingly marginalized – They can only take a cadidate so far then they represent more liabaility than asset (ala the Huckster in 2008). If Palin is seriously considering a run, she will have to divorce herself, loudly, from this bunch.
And speaking of the end of the “religious right,” somethings out there are truly hastening its demise. Mark Sanford’s continued use of the American press as Christian group therapy would be one example. Sanford is a man with serious emotional and psychological problems, and his need for public attention is part of that problem. I am sure if I bothered to troll Kos of other leftie sites, he would be example on of the “what religion does to you.”
And then Al Mohler is playing the role of Jeremiah as concerns evangelicalism. I have some agreement with Mohler here on a purely religious basis, but “Evangelical” is a word that has both religious and political meanings. It has been the insistence of people like Mohler to maintain a “religiously pure” meaning of the word that has limited the political success of the movement. In the pulpit yes, but in the court of public opinion, we have let to much good go undone trying to maintain this religious purity for me to accept it completely. What I find truly dumbfounding is that every job whether in politics, or digging trenches, at some point calls on us to view thngs in a secular fashion and to choose the lesser of two evils. That is simply the nature of living in a fallen world.
Finally, a question – Why is it necessary for the CJCLDS to “broaden its image,” while this sort of horrific scandal inside traditional Christianity never seems to leave a mark?
There is some more stuff in the stack from vacation, but that is enough for today. It’s good to be back.
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coltakashi on 20 Jul 2009 at 2:47 pm #
On the single topic of Mormon “image broadening”, I think it would be more accurate to describe the topic of the Salt Lake Tribune article as avoiding making Church members outside the US feel like they have to accept the USA and its culture as part of Mormon culture. The fact is that for many people in other nations, that association increased their curiosity and willingness to talk to the Mormon missionaries, but there is clearly no need for someone to become immersed in US culture to be a Latter-day Saint.
The identification of the modern US with the lands where the Book of Mormon took place is largely a tradition that does not hold up under a careful reading of the Book of Mormon, which instead describes an area no more than a couple of hundred miles on a side. The usual entry for the “whole continent” view has been the identification of the modern Hill Cumorah with the Hill Cumorah identified in the book as the repository of the ancient library from which the book was drawn. But in fact there is no more reason to think the Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, New York, is the same as the Hill Cumorah in the book, than there is to believe the city of Palmyra is the same as the ancient Palmyra in Syria. There is nothing in the statements of Joseph smith to even give the name “Cumorah” to the New York hill until about 1842, when it had become a custom among the Mormons.
So what Ms. Stack describes in her article is not so much a modification of real Mormon beliefs but making a distinction between what is Mormon and what is simply (US) American. It is similar to the process the Church has had to undergo of distinguishing what are Mormon beliefs from the views that are simply part of the culture of the US and British people who dominated the early 19th Century Church. For example, Mormon depictions of the Apostacy of Christianity from the First Century Church have drawn heavily in the past on Protestant Reformation critiques of Catholicism. Similarly, some Mormons have adopted the views of fundamentalist Protestants about the meaning of Genesis descriptions of the Creation and the Flood without really considering whether they are mandated by LDS interpretation of the Bible and other LDS scripture such as the Book of Abraham and Book of Moses.
The need to simplify the church programs in areas where there are few experienced members and few resources for typical American programs like Cub Scout Pinewood Derbies has led to the Church stripping out surplus information that is not essential from curriculum and guidance documents.
Back in the 1940s, there was a time when it was considered necessary to indoctrinate a person for a full year before they could know enough to become a Mormon. This was in great contrast to the early Church. Modern Church programs are designed to bring those who are willing into full Church membership in a matter of weeks, largely by stripping out the non-essential stuff that is not needed to gain a conviction of the basic truths of LDS doctrine.
I think Stack is overstating the number of Mormon missionaries who are Americans. President Spencer Kimball in 1974 asked for more emphasis on members in each nation providing their own missionaries. That is why so many missionary training centers are now outside the US. In Japan a third or more of the young missionaries are natives of that country, as one can see from the pages of the Japanese language Church magazine.
As for the Americanisms that filter over from American missionaries, or from fellow students when foreign Mormons attend one of the BYU campuses, it should be compared to the American vices that get transmitted through marketing US films and cigarettes. Most local nation missionaries learn to speak English during two years of service alongside Americans, but that is generally a highly useful skill these days, and one that is rare in Japan, where english language instruction is ubiquitous but almost uniformly poor in engendering spoken fluency.
CarlH on 20 Jul 2009 at 8:20 pm #
On the meeting between Pres. Obama and LDS Pres. Monson, I have to say that the political angle that some people would like to make of it looks very thin indeed. Here’s a report on the meeting (including the purpose of the meeting) from the LDS Church-owned Deseret News:
Pres. Monson gives Pres. Obama family history book
Statements from the Church, the White House and Sen. Harry Reid’s office all go no farther than that. But there will always be those trying to find and read tea leaves that may not even exist. For example, in this report from Utah’s KSL TV and radio website, Dan Jones, a long-time Utah political pollster (whose wife happens to be a Democratic Utah state legislator) claims to discern political messages for Mormons–and perhaps even a dig at Rush Limbaugh. Am I too cynical in supposing this could be a whole lot of wishful thinking? Arghhh. Given the fact there was a bit of a dust-up earlier this year about LDS genealogy and Obama’s mother (which the media made a lot more out of than the White House–surprise), this could also be viewed as an effort at bridge-building.