The Economist
Mormons
They're here, they're square, get used to it!
MY COLLEAGUE'S post below got me thinking about Mormons. There's a significant possibility that 2012 will be the year that America confronts the question of whether a Mormon can be president. It seems like a question with an obvious answer ("I don't know. Can he?"). But surveys in recent years have consistently found that a large minority of voters are set against the idea, and the prejudice may be even more deeply rooted among a Republican primary electorate that is, as my colleague puts it, "struggling to decide which it hates most—being a Mormon or being sensible."
I'd like to step back from the question of whether a Mormon can be president to take up a more fundamental query: why don't people like Mormons? No other faith, save perhaps Islam, catches so much flak in the United States. Even among Americans who aren't hostile to Mormonism, the default position seems to be scepticism or ridicule rather than anodyne appreciation for the varieties of religious experience. That's weird. Every other major religion can count on being defended by members of other faiths. Here's Mitt Romney, for example, in his 2007 speech on faith:
I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life's blessings.
Yet Mr Romney doesn't call out any special aspect of Mormonism; he only says the word once in the speech, and the editorial comment offered is that his faith is "the faith of [his] fathers." (That's actually quite similar to Jon Huntsman's tendency to refer to his "Mormon heritage".) I like Mormons, as it happens, and here are some of the reasons why:
• Mormonism is the only major world religion that originated in the United States, and the religion reflects some of America's flagship virtues as well as some of the country's notorious flaws. Mormonism has an entrepreneurial ethos, a willingness to break with tradition, a restless tendency to travel and a focus on the world outside of America's borders, a healthy dose of hucksterism and audacity, and an anti-authoritarian stance to government that is sometimes obscured by its paternalism at the family level. I'll leave it to the commenters to sort out which are the virtues and which are the flaws.
• Most Mormons are unusually upstanding citizens and, correspondingly, you rarely catch a Mormon doing something horrible. Except for Ted Bundy, a convert, the worst person on this list of "infamous Mormons" is Butch Cassidy.
• They are, as a group, really nice.
There are aspects of Mormonism that are objectionable, but not more so than we see in other religions. For example, they do a lot of missionary work, which some people find offensive, but that's not unique to the Latter-Day Saints. And some Mormon fundamentalists display grotesque personal behaviour, but that's true of some fundamentalist anybodies. The biggest difference between Mormonism and other widespread world religions is that Mormonism is relatively new; that may contribute to the scepticism about it, which contributes to the faith's insularity, which contributes to additional scepticism, and so on. I would hope that if Mr Huntsman is moved to make a speech addressing his Mormonism (or if Mr Romney does so again) that they talk in a bit more detail about their faith in particular. That could yield some insights. As a young man, for example, Mr Huntsman spent two years as a missionary in Taiwan. That experience seems to have spurred his lifelong interest in China, and led him to learn Mandarin, which helped him become the ambassador to that crucial country, giving him the base of expertise my colleague describes below. That's a valuable skill set in a top-level politician, and it was his religion that led him there.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/mormons
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