American Miracle

Filled cover-to-cover with survey data, investigative vignettes, and social analysis, American Grace sets out to make sense of the vibrant and often puzzling phenomenon of religion in America. Where I hoped to gain particular insight, though, was on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, colloquially known as “Mormonism.” Once seen as a kooky cult sequestered in Utah, the church, as the authors note, is now “[one] of the fastest growing religions in America….”
Mormonism has emerged as a booming facet of our country’s culture, as well. Perhaps most prominently, two mega-wealthy Republican presidential candidates (Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman) hail from Mormon backgrounds, and Mormons are the subjects of Broadway’s newest hit musical comedy The Book of Mormon. Brigham Young University, currently America’s largest religious university, is owned and operated by the church. Basketball fans will recall that the school’s team, the Cougars, recently rose to March Madness stardom. Right-winger Glenn Beck is a Mormon, as is Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid. So is the founder of JetBlue Airways, David Neeleman, and singer David Archeluta. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has even garnered a Grammy.
Overall, Mormons appear to be flourishing. So how do they fit into America’s religious mosaic? American Grace provides an overly politicized account of the Latter-day Saints, but overall provides an important glimpse of what’s starting to look like a major American movement.
The book frames its account of American Mormonism in a political context, noting a variety of opinions but concluding that the church is becoming increasingly right wing. Specifically, the authors document the church leadership’s support of the controversial Proposition 8 in California three years ago as alienating Democrats in the church. The authors’ tone is respectful, but I see a general trend of reluctance to consider Mormons qua Mormons—not as actors in some other narrative. Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, for example, recounts the admittedly controversial history of the Latter-day Saints movement, but does so alongside the story of a vicious double murder by Mormon fundamentalists. Even though Krakauer professes admiration for the Mormons he knew growing up, the juxtaposition of homicide with a chronicle of Mormonism in America darkens the reader’s perception of the church itself. While not as dramatic, the amount of actual religious anthropology devoted to Mormonism in American Grace is dwarfed by its largely anecdotal political demography; the context portrays Mormons as more of a voting block than the burgeoning national force it truly constitutes outside of mere party politics.
Nevertheless, the authors give us a succinct—albeit lopsided—snapshot of contemporary Mormon life in America. The book provides brief sketches of the church’s growing diversity when readers encounter a rather eccentrically festooned African-American convert. Fervent missionary efforts come off as an impressively global operation. And the church’s staunch commitment to the family gets it due at a warmly personal level: The book follows one family’s participation in the church’s Family Home Evening program, which “usually involves staying in on Monday nights and taking time to ‘pray and sing together, read the scriptures, teach the gospel to one another, and participate in other activities that … build family unity.’” Call it goofy, but at a time when many American households can’t even manage to congregate around a dinner table, “family home evenings” look like a domestic dam against today’s deluge of work, extracurriculars, and Facebooking.
The statistical picture that concludes the book is more troubling, however. Sifting through the data from their Faith Matters survey, the authors find that “Mormons like everyone else, while almost everyone else dislikes Mormons. Jews are the exception, as they give Mormons a net positive rating (suggesting that there is a perceived commonality, given that they are both minority religions).” Consonant with the preceding findings, “60 percent of Mormons report hearing disparaging remarks about their religious beliefs either often or occasionally…”—much higher than other mainstream sects. (I would venture to say that many American who profess any knowledge about Mormonism gleaned such factoids from South Park’s “All About Mormons” episode, which I might add concludes with an extremely perceptive moral to its story.)
But why? 98% of Mormon respondents—the most of any religious sect surveyed—even answered that “[people] not of my faith, including non-Christians, can go to heaven.” Plus regardless of this apparent conviviality, we’ve seen how the church’s adherents have evangelically permeated the public sphere.
Perhaps there is an American analogue of sorts between Jews in the 20^th century and Mormons in the 21^st. As American Grace notes, Mormons “resemble an ethnic group,” possessing a “high strength of religious identity” and sharing a “distinct culture.” Mormons subsequently have a high rate of intermarriage and associate closely with one another. While this sounds peculiarly like American Jewry, which comprises its own brand of “ethnoreligious” group, the historical parallels are even more compelling. Fleeing pogroms in Europe, Jews found refuge in America, setting up their own enclaves in places like New York City and Florida. Likewise, Mormons were violently run out of the American East-coast and Midwest (the book notes an 1838 extermination order by Missouri’s governor that embarrassingly stayed on the books until 1976), eventually settling the barren Utah territory in outposts like Salt Lake City and Provo.
For much of the preceding century, Jews faced prejudice throughout the country as an outsider group, while this century’s Mormons—although to a far lesser extent—continue to be the object of widespread disparagement as reflected in the book’s data. Yet through hard work and communal development, Jews were able to break through what the authors call the “stained-glass ceiling” of religious intolerance, rising to become senators, entertainers, heads of academic institutions, and CEOs of major firms. And, as the Faith Matters survey reports, Jews have managed to become the best liked of the country’s religious groups.
American Grace might then be catching Mormons midway on their national ascension. Like American Jews, the formerly marginalized Latter-day Saints have gone out and started their own companies, schools, and communities, and are taking leading roles across the cultural stage. If their countrymen’s acceptance ultimately follows—as it did for America’s Jews—it will likely be derivative from these Goliath efforts, ones that have moved many Mormons closer to the core of our country’s politics, business world, and media. With all this in mind, the miraculous trajectory of Mormons in America seems to have already shattered the stained-glass ceiling and be racing straight towards the heavens.