‘Do Mormons think The Book of Mormon is funny?’

Public ridicule of a minority typically predicts a defensive response from the target of that humor. This is because public ridicule provides a polarizing spectacle, where the majority enjoys a humorous face reward, and solidarity, at the expense of that minority. Logically, we could expect a faith-based minority to be especially sensitive to public ridicule, since their face investment is greater, in inverse proportion to their social position and power, and because their group (and personal) identity is linked inextricably to what would normally be inviolable: a sacred text, a prophet, or deity. However, the official response from the LDS Church to the musical comedy The Book of Mormon defies this expectation. This paper analyses this response, in order to understand why a religious minority chose to creatively engage with what should have been a highly face-threatening satire.

Shades of Belonging: The Intersection of Race and Religion in Shaping Utah Immigrants’ Social Integration

Utah, USA, a state with a unique history of immigration and a distinctive religious context, provides a useful setting in which to study the intersection of racism and religious participation with immigrant integration. Utah is one of the Whitest states in the United States, with 4 of every 5 residents identifying as non-Hispanic White. It is also home to the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) which, until 1978, explicitly imposed race-based exclusions that prohibited or strictly limited Black members’ participation in church leadership, rituals, and ordinances. The state’s cultural, social, and religious history has contributed to widespread beliefs among modern Utah residents of Whites’ racial supremacy in contexts both mundane and divine. Much of Utah’s population growth since 1960, especially among non-White racial and ethnic groups, can be attributed to immigrants, who today compose nearly 10 percent of the state’s population. Given Utah’s religious, social, and cultural relationship to race, it is an ideal case to study the following question: how do race, religion, and culture shape integration among immigrants? Utilizing interviews with 70 immigrants who have lived in Utah for an average of 13 years, we find that both race and LDS Church membership influence immigrants’ social integration, creating a hierarchy of belonging among immigrants in Utah––with White LDS immigrants reporting the highest levels of integration and non-White, non-LDS immigrants reporting the lowest levels of integration. These findings suggest the power of cultural narratives––beyond explicit institutional policy and practice––in perpetuating racial inequality in society. Thus, efforts to increase integration and belonging among immigrants must not only include work to dismantle legal and structural inequalities but also efforts to actively change the cultural narratives associated with them.

Isolation and Integration: Case Study of Latter-Day Saints in South-Western Nigeria

Isolation and integration are two sides of the same coin, the former denoting negativity with the latter denoting positivity. The penetration of the LDS church into Nigeria in general and south-western Nigeria in particular has been faced with a considerable amount of opposition from the populace and the government. Nigeria is one of the most religious countries in Africa. Due to the vast demographic space, I am limiting our study to the south-western states, where it seems the church is growing more. The eastern region, to an extent, has also been experiencing considerable growth. Our queries are: what are the elements that depict isolation from other religious sects and society? What are the parameters for this phenomenon? Is there any evidence of integration? If so, how is this manifested? How are the male and female members of the LDS church trying to integrate into society and how has the response been? These among other questions are examined. Nigeria is originally a Catholic and Pentecostal religious environment, where open miracles, wonders and other phenomena are visible. These are hardly visible in LDS services, and this serves as motivation for non-members to oppose and isolate members of the LDS church from the fibers of society. The undetermined position of the LDS church and its non-registration with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has and continues to have relevant effects on the integration of the church and its members into the Christian circle of the country in general and the south-west in particular. I have discovered that, though the church’s growth in the south-west is visible, the possibility of integration has proven difficult. Due to the limited literature on this subject in the country, I have utilized semi-structured direct and indirect interviews of pioneers of the wards/units in the south-west, and also those who have investigated the church, many of whom still view the church as a cult. I also used an analytic approach that straddles critical discourse analysis and postcolonial theory. This paper proposes ways in which the members of the LDS church can better integrate themselves in a society that has a very different religious and cultural background to that of American society, where the church has more fully moved from isolation to integration.

Not a Country or a Stereotype: Latina LDS Experiences of Ethnic Homogenization and Racial Tokenism in the American West

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), also called Mormonism, has experienced rapid changes in its US demographics due to an influx of Latinx membership. The most recent growth in the US church body has been within Spanish-speaking congregations, and many of these congregant members are first or 1.5-generation immigrant Latinas. Using ethnographic data from 27 interviews with immigrant members living in Utah, Nevada, and California, LDS Latinas reported that while US Anglo members did seem to appreciate certain aspects of their cultural customs or practices, they also reported frequently experiencing ethnic homogenization or racial tokenization within US Church spaces and with White family members. Our findings indicate that the contemporary LDS church, despite some progressive policy implementations within its doctrinal parameters, still struggles in its ever-globalizing state to prioritize exposing White US members to the cultural heterogeneity of non-White, global LDS identities and perspectives. Latina LDS experiences and their religious adjacency to Whiteness provide a useful lens by which researchers can better understand the ways in which ethnic identity, gender, legal status, and language create both opportunities and challenges for immigrant incorporation and inclusion within US religious spaces and add to the existing body of scholarship on migration and religion.

Public Bioethics

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) ecclesiastical policy on health, medical, and moral issues has seldom addressed itself to the healing professions or to questions of public policy, an ethical insularity coherent with the principles of respect for moral agency and trust in the healing vocation of the professions. However, some issues reveal limits to peaceful compromise between ecclesiastical policy with both professional morality and public policy of the secular state and have prompted the LDS Church to forgo ecclesiastical silence and present a public witness of its values and positions on a policy question to a broader civic audience. This chapter focuses on two such examples, elective abortion and medical marijuana. The public square of moral reasoning within LDS teaching is constructed by principles of engaged citizenship, separation, and the moral core.

Tar & Feathers: Agnotology, Dissent, and Queer Mormon Polygamy

In 2014 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) updated their official website to include information about the polygamy/polyandry practiced by Joseph Smith, their founder and prophet, and his many wives. The admission by the LDS Church reconciles the tension between information that had become readily available online since the 1990s and church-sanctioned narratives that obscured Smith’s polygamy while concurrently focusing on the polygyny of Brigham Young, Smith’s successor. This paper entwines queer theory with Robert Proctor’s concept of agnotology—a term used to describe the epistemology of ignorance, to consider dissent from two interrelated perspectives: 1) how dissent from feminists and historians within the LDS Church challenged (mis)constructions of Mormon history, and; 2) how the Mormon practice of polygamy in the late nineteenth century dissented from Western sexual mores that conflated monogamy with Whiteness, democracy and social progression in the newly formed American Republic.

Institutions, the social capital structure, and multilevel marketing companies

In multilevel marketing companies (MLMs), member-distributors earn income from selling products and recruiting new members. Successful MLMs require a social capital structure where members can access and mobilize both strong and weak social ties. Utah has a disproportionate share of MLM companies located in the state and a disproportionate number of MLM participants. We argue that Utah's dominant religious institutions have led to the emergence of a social capital structure, making MLMs particularly viable. Utah is the most religiously homogeneous state; roughly half its population identifies as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The LDS Church's institutions foster a social capital structure where (almost all) members have access to and can leverage social capital in all its forms. LDS institutions encourage members to make meaningful social connections characterized by trust and reciprocity with other church members in local neighborhoods and across the world.