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Background
Officially named The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Mormonism is a uniquely American religion. Founded during the Second Great Awakening by Joseph Smith after a transcendent experience in the woods, Mormonism has a rich history of resilience. With the passage of time, Smith’s small band of misfits eventually grew into a corporate institution and global religion.
In the present day, the institutional LDS Church claims to be politically neutral. As I later prove, these claims are false. When the LDS Church does take political action, it cites morality as the reason in an attempt to skirt the political neutrality claims. However, I argue that the real reason for political intervention runs much deeper, rooted in a longing for belonging in the broader political and cultural landscape of the United States.
From its early days, Mormonism necessarily intertwined with politics. From Joseph Smith’s run for President of the United States to the polygamy controversy, Mormonism has always been a religion riddled with political controversy. In order to look at the political nature of Mormonism during the first two-thirds of its existence, it is important to first understand prevailing attitudes toward Mormons in the United States. In the 1800s, the U.S. stood a primarily Protestant nation. Pluralism, especially religious pluralism, was not typical of this time period. Catholics were viewed with suspicion, as were other minority groups, including the Mormons. Preserving religious liberty was synonymous with preserving America’s Protestant identity. In 1878, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case regarding polygamy, thereby testing this standard.
The dominance of this Protestant hegemony is a major reason why, in Reynolds v. United States (1878), the court deemed First Amendment insufficient to protect the practice of polygamy within Mormonism. In it, the Supreme Court ruled that people are allowed to believe whatever they want, but that does not mean that they can act on all their beliefs. In other words, not all religious practice experiences protection under the First Amendment. For example, one is free to believe in cannibalism, but one is not free to go out and engage in cannibalistic practices. Therefore, the very existence of a group of people like the Mormons was a political statement in and of itself. While the practice of polygamy was eventually outlawed as part of the conditions for Utah’s admittance as a state into the Union, the Mormon Church continued and developed into a global religion in the 20th Century.
Today, the LDS Church’s official statement on political neutrality stipulates political neutrality. In this statement, the LDS Church claims not to “endorse, promote or oppose political parties, candidates or platforms,” “allow its church buildings, membership lists or other resources to be used for partisan political purposes,” tell members who to vote for, or tell current government officials what to do. Notably, the Church “reserve(s) the right as an institution to address, in a nonpartisan way, issues that it believes have significant community or moral consequences or that directly affect the interests of the Church.”[1] However, the Church uses this this qualification to offer itself wide latitude to integrate politics with the LDS religious experience.
Further, one of the sacred texts of the Mormon faith, the Doctrine and Covenants, seems to have inspired these policies of institutional political neutrality. Section 134 verse 9 of this text states, “We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied.”[2] However, as I will suggest, adherence by the institutional LDS Church to the policies they set forth and to the scripture that inspired them is not so clear. While its very existence no longer is political, some actions taken by the institution most certainly are. The cases of the Equal Rights Amendment and Proposition 8, as well as recent revelations released by MormonLeaks, make it apparent that though the institutional LDS Church claims to value political neutrality, it is not as often upheld in practice.
[1] “The LDS Church Believes in Political Neutrality.” Www.mormonnewsroom.org. Accessed February 06, 2017. http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/official-statement/political-neutrality.
[2] “Doctrine and Covenants 134.” Doctrine and Covenants 134. Accessed February 06, 2017. https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/134?lang=eng.
It is also crucial to mark a key distinction between the LDS Church and its members. When I refer to the LDS Church in this paper, in general I am referring to the institutional church and not necessarily to its members. This distinction is important because no mandate exists requiring political neutrality of individual members. This stipulation is only a matter of doctrine and policy for the institution as a whole and the individuals at its helm.
I also want to distinguish between the LDS Church in the United States and the global Mormon Church abroad. The primary focus of this paper is on the influence of the LDS Church on public policy in the US, and not worldwide. This is primarily due to the geographic tendencies of the intermountain west, especially the states of Utah, Idaho, and Arizona, to be enclaves of Mormonism. States with a relatively high concentration of Mormons present a greater potential for political influence of the LDS Church in local and state governmental processes. However, as evident in the case of Proposition 8, its influence expands into other states and regions as well.