I’m sure you’ve heard it all over the Internet by now. Latter-day Saint, (LDS) a.k.a. “Mormon,” culture is hateful and bigoted. It is sexist. It is racist. It is homophobic and transphobic. It needs to change and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints needs to change in order to do it. But, is this true?
It is without a doubt that people have experienced hateful things from Latter-day Saints. Some LDS men and women have been sexist. Some LDS men and women have been racist. Some LDS men and women have been homophobic. Some LDS men and women have been transphobic. But is that because they are Latter-day Saints and raised in a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic church culture or is there another reason that might explain why these people have acted the way they have? In seeking to answer this question I will not be seeking to address the specific charges of homophobia, transphobia, sexism, or racism. Each of those topics deserve entire articles devoted to themselves in order to be respectfully and fully addressed. Instead, I will here address and answer the question of whether the experience some people have of being subjected to racism, sexism, transphobia, or homophobia from Latter-day Saints is a product of a specific Church culture or not and explore exactly what “Mormon culture” is, what it is based on, how it plays out in the lives of the Latter-day Saints, and how it manifests in their communities.
The Critical Error
It is undeniable that some people have experienced these types of mistreatments from Latter-day Saints, but there is a critical error that people make in seeking to understand why these things happen and why some Latter-day Saints have acted in such poor ways. That error is this: They treat Latter-day Saints as if they were raised in a vacuum where their only social, cultural, historical, and political influences come from their religion. Thus anything people don’t like must come from Mormonism. This is, of course, complete nonsense. All Latter-day Saints belong to a host of communities and social groups which influence what they believe and therefore what they think and do. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn’t even close to being the primary influence on the life of a Latter-day Saint, not even in highly LDS Utah. In the course of a week an LDS youth spends two hours in church and two hours at a church based youth activity. That is four hours a week that the church has a direct influence over them, even less for most adults as they don’t go to activities outside of church on Sunday. Compare that to the six to seven hours a day that Latter-day Saint children are in public schools being taught their national culture, their national values, and their national prejudices. And that ignores what they have beamed straight into their minds while watching approximately 3 to 5 hours of television/online shows and movies a day. These project, teach, and reaffirm the values and prejudices of the culture which produced them in the minds of the audience through the methods of storytelling which make those values and prejudices seem objectively true.
For every hour in church or being influenced directly by the church people spend entire days being influenced by the worldly culture of the society in which they live. Is it so hard to believe that this is where the homophobia, transphobia, racism, and sexism come from and not the doctrines of the church? Take America for example. The long history of brutal and dehumanizing racism against people of African ancestry in the United States is well documented. The long history of sexism and discrimination against women in the United States is well documented. The long history of homophobia in the United States is well documented. The long history of transphobia in the United States has been well documented. What makes more sense to you – that people are most influenced by the racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist dominate culture that they grow up in and into which almost all their socialization causes them to believe in and support or the minority subculture that they spend a few hours with every week? I think the most obvious and logical answer is that the larger national culture of the United States has at least as large an impact, if not a larger one, on the lives of Latter-day Saints than their own religion does. Which is why every problem people talk about in “Mormon culture” is in no way isolated to “Mormon culture” but is apparent in the actions and beliefs of tens of millions of people at every socio-economic level and across the political spectrum. And this is true everywhere, not just in the United States. It has nothing to do with “Mormon culture” at all. It is national culture, worldly culture, in direct competition with “Mormon culture,” that is the problem.
(As a side note, I would argue this also explains the “cliquishness” some people accuse members of having. The ability to develop small cooperative groups where everyone contributes to and builds the group that limits the free rider problem by beings extremely suspect of strangers who aren’t part of that group – in other words, the propensity to form cliques of friends – is a universal human evolutionary adaptation. Calling it a “Mormon problem” is to ignore that it takes place at similar levels everywhere. Something so ubiquitous isn’t a “Mormon problem,” it is a human one. The interesting question is if Latter-day Saints are more or less cliquish than other groups because of the influence of Latter-day Saint culture. This seems to be the case as many would agree with TV personality Laurence O’Donnell that Latter-day Saints are “the nicest people in the world” and with Penn State researchers Dr. Ram Cnaan, Daniel W. Curtis, and Van Evans that Latter-day Saints are “the most prosocial members of American society [and] are model citizens” of our communities. Latter-day Saint culture causes to engage more positively on a personal and communal level with both people we know in our own groups and with complete strangers.)
What Then Is Mormon Culture?
All of this is not to say that there isn’t a “Mormon culture” at all. Rather it is to say that if we are going to determine exactly what is or is not a true Latter-day Saint culture, we first have to start by eliminating all of that which can be more easily ascribed to and derived from other larger and more influential sources. We have to start be excising everything “not-Mormon” in order to pare everything down to what “is-Mormon.” This task is even harder than it may seem when it comes to distinguishing between Latter-day Saint culture and American culture because the church grew up being led mostly by Americans immersed deeply in Americana and American nationalism (“American exceptionalism”) which is why you get so many, “The U.S. Constitution is the word of God like divine scripture, ” types even though nothing in our scriptures comes close to asserting such a thing. The best place to begin is with those things that are expressly connected to Latter-day Saint theology and then see how those things are acted out in the lives of the Saints.
So, what then are Latter-day Saints taught about how they should act? We are taught that we have a duty to try and take care of the poor and needy. Apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf has taught that our commitment to the welfare principles of the church and its mission to care for the poor and needy are “at the very root of our faith and devotion,” explained that both the “rich and poor are all under the same sacred obligation to help their neighbor,” and warned that those who do not “shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment.” Do we see this teaching at work in the lives of the Saints? Absolutely, in a multitude of ways! Utah, where the highest concentration of members live, is the most charitable state in the entire United States. It has the highest volunteer rate, the highest percentage of donated income, the highest percentage of population that donates its time, and the highest percentage of people who donate money. This has been the case repeatedly over the years. Further, the top three most charitable metro areas in the United States are all in parts of northern Utah with dense populations of members: first, the Orem-Provo area; second, the Ogden-Clearfield area; third the Salt Lake City area. Additionally, Utah has one of the highest social mobility rankings in the United States despite not having extensive state social programs or even a large number of formal charities, which Forbes explained is in large part to the influence of the doctrines of the church on Utah society. The church’s programs through Welfare Square have received international acclaim. All of this evidence would seem to suggest that Latter-day Saints do take the commandment to take care of the poor and needy very seriously.
Yet these stats aren’t comprehensive. They only measure in the ways that can be tracked formally and largely ignores the ways that work for the needy and poor are done outside of ways that can easily tracked. For example, none of those above metrics track the quiet, private, unreported welfare work that the church does among its own members and their communities. When someone goes to their bishop and asks for help paying their rent, repairing their home, or getting food they don’t just get money, an entire machinery of charity is kicked into gear. They don’t just get money or food, though those things are often abundantly provided to meet the needs of the person or family in question, but people are introduced to work programs, budget planning, and helped to adopt methods of self-sustainment to restore their own independence. Dignity is maintained as people are helped to get back on their feet in a way that makes the entire system self-sustaining as they contribute back into it when they are financially stable again. Everyone is capable of contributing and being part of the program of aid and help to their fellowman, and so everyone does. Then there are all the ways church members take care of one another, such as the way that dozens of men and women turn out to help families move and/or clean their homes, care for their children, and provide other forms of needed service. These volunteer hours are never logged in any form and cannot be tracked, yet if done would easily amount to hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in acts of service.
I have personally been the recipient of such blessings time and time again. When young my family was extremely poor. Before we joined the church we were on state welfare aid collecting food stamps and WIC, sometimes only eating what we grew or what we killed. There is a reason I learned to love deer meat as a child and mix meat fat with cornbread to make porridge. We didn’t waste anything because we couldn’t. But none of these helped us either. They, at best, allowed us to maintain the level of poverty we were living in, always on the brink of starvation without going over the edge. After joining the church my family was embraced into a networked that cared for its own by elevating them from their poverty. My mother was able to make better job connections that helped her improve her work skills and make more money. My family regularly volunteered at our local bishop’s storehouse where they volunteered to help can and disperse food to others in need, always coming home with a little extra themselves on top of whatever we may have formally been given through our bishop. I was only able to serve a mission because of the monetary donations from specific families in my ward that financed my work because we simply could not pay for it ourselves (even with a better job, making more money, my mother was still a single parent paying for all the needs of her family with a single paycheck.)
After I served a mission I came home and went to school for my degree. The church paid almost all the costs of my formal university level education. Right out of school and starting a family it took me six months to be able to get a job in my career field, during which time I worked multiple jobs and still couldn’t make ends meet. You know who did? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Our ward provided monies for rent, medical care, even transportation, on top of the abundant levels of food we got from the bishop’s storehouse ourselves. I’ve never shed such tears of humility, love, and joy as when the weight on terror was lifted off my chest knowing that the church was spending thousands of dollars to care for my family when we could not for ourselves. And none of this accounts for the numerous small acts of kindness and charity experienced from near or total strangers who I knew were members of the church for one reason or another (anything from seeing their garment lines, to Moroni stickers on their car, or wearing Y apparel, among dozens of other ways.)
There is a scene in the Prophet of the Restoration movie (around the 11:48 marker in this video) where a woman confronts Joseph Smith, telling him that while she does not agree with his religion she does thank him for his kindness. Joseph responds, “You might say that is our religion, ma’am.” That scene has always stood out to me for its absolute truthfulness. Kindness, service, charity, this is one of the distilled essences of “Mormonism.” Yes, some Latter-day Saints make act standoffish or insular at times, but there isn’t a question of why that happens. That is normal, universal human behavior. The question is why are we charitable and giving? What pushes us to try and engage with people, to meet them, to help them? That is a product of uniquely LDS teachings. That is our culture in action overcoming the influences of the world. And that is the case in every instance that people bring up.
Why is it that the American Latter-day Saints favored more immigration to the United States more than almost any other group in the country? Why is that American Latter-day Saints -” deeply conservative, deeply devout, predominantly white Utah”- would be asking for more refugees from non-white, non-Christian countries and proclaiming their humanity and value to the community? Why would the leaders of the church repeatedly call the leader of the United States of America to repent over his corrupt immigration policies? It isn’t a surprise when people react with fear and suspicion towards those who like, speak, and worship differently than them. Xenophobia has deeply biological roots and humans have literally evolved to be able to tell when others are different than us and to react to them with distrust, suspicion, and violence. That is literally the Natural Man at work. Why is it then that Latter-day Saints seem to overcome this to a greater degree than most other people? The way our doctrines create our culture. Nativism is normal human behavior, love for foreigners and strangers is Latter-day Saint culture in action.
This is a message I could continue to give examples from a variety of subjects, but it all comes down to the same process of cutting away everything that can be ascribed more easily to some other cultural influence until we come down to the bedrock of what Latter-day Saint doctrines teach about how we should live and how we put those teachings into practice. The outcomes are the same as well.
The Culture of Christ
Latter-day Saint culture, so-called “Mormon culture,” isn’t simply the things we dislike about some members of the church or even the way many members of the church do things. Not only are attitudes about differing topics (such as politics) not common across the United States, they aren’t common across the world. French, Russian, Japanese, Nigerian, and Brazilian Latter-day Saints don’t all agree on almost any of the major political, social, or economic issues of the present day. All of us have differing opinions and all of us have strong reactions for or against those with whom we disagree. You cannot say Latter-day Saint culture is all this one way because both within the United States and throughout the world, the 16 million+ Latter-day Saints which live throughout the world hold a diverse set of views on these topics. If we are going to address the issue of what is Latter-day Saint culture we must look at those things which are specifically Latter-day Saint in origin – that derive from our doctrines and scriptures – and which are replicated across the world and exist no matter where they exist or at what size of a group they exist in. We also must discount natural human behaviors as these are not Latter-day Saint in origins but are conditions which are common to all of humanity. Once we have done these things we discover a group of people with a very specific set of beliefs which they out into action in a variety of ways, the greatest counter-culture movement in history.
This counter-culture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of deep abiding faith in Jesus Christ and abiding love and service for their fellowman, even when there are significant differences in race, creed, religion, ethnicity, gender orientation, or sexual orientation. I know that some will argue that I simply cannot blame all the “bad stuff” on outside influences, but I would challenge them to actually demonstrate that the bad behavior they see is specifically because of Mormonism. They cannot because it is an assumption, one most often made without considering all the other influences in the lives of Latter-day Saints that are just as significant as their religion. Is the reason atheists are jerks to people, insular, standoffish, or rude because they’re actually Latter-day Saints? To me it seems like they are similar to patients who blame the doctor for sick people being in the hospital or for the fact that their first treatment didn’t immediately cure them of their chronic illness while still sucking down the very thing making them sick.
One may respond that Mormonism should then convince people to not be racist, but that is my exact argument. Latter-day Saint culture, once embraced, does away with all these problems. The challenge to Latter-day Saints today is not to jettison their culture but to embrace it whole heartedly and jettison the prejudices, bigotries, and biases that they have absorbed from the cultures of the world. We have no need to reform Zion, rather we must banish Babylon from our lives. In doing so we will be embracing our true Latter-day Saint culture, the true and original culture of the world – the culture of Christ. During the October 2020 General Conference of the church, Apostle Quentin L. Cook gave a talk where he spoke on this subject, teaching:
The culture of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not a Gentile culture or a Judaic culture. It is not determined by the color of one’s skin or where one lives. While we rejoice in distinctive cultures, we should leave behind aspects of those cultures that conflict with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our members and new converts often come from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds. If we are to follow President Nelson’s admonition to gather scattered Israel, we will find we are as different as the Jews and Gentiles were in Paul’s time. Yet we can be united in our love of and faith in Jesus Christ. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans establishes the principle that we follow the culture and doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the model for us even today.
Hearts Knit in Righteousness and Unity
In the next session of the same conference, Elder William K. Jackson taught extensively on the true Latter-day Saint culture, the culture of Christ, our need to embrace it to the exclusion of all others, and how doing so will only magnify what is already good and beautiful in the cultures we originated in while uniting us together in Christ. And though I quote an excerpt of it here, I highly suggest everyone read it as it goes much deeper than I could ever go here with more inspiration and revelation than I have. In his revelatory talk, Elder Jackson taught:
In most man-made cultures, there is found both good and bad, constructive and destructive.
Many of our world’s problems are a direct result of clashes between those of differing ideas and customs arising from their culture. But virtually all conflict and chaos would quickly fade if the world would only accept its original culture, the one we all possessed not so very long ago. This culture dates back to our premortal existence. It was the culture of Adam and Enoch. It was the culture founded on the Savior’s teachings in the meridian of time, and it is available to all women and men once again in our day. It is unique. It is the greatest of all cultures and comes from the great plan of happiness, authored by God and championed by Christ. It unites rather than divides. It heals rather than harms.
…In the culture of Christ, there is perspective—and eternal focus and direction. This culture is concerned with things of lasting worth! It comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is eternal and explains the why, what, and where of our existence. (It is inclusive, not exclusive.) Because this culture results from the application of our Savior’s teachings, it helps provide a healing balm of which our world is in such desperate need.
What a blessing it is to be part of this grand and noble way of life! To be part of this, the greatest of all cultures, will require change. The prophets have taught that it is necessary to leave behind anything in our old cultures that is inconsistent with the culture of Christ. But that doesn’t mean we have to leave behind everything. The prophets have also emphasized that we are invited, one and all, to bring our faith and talents and knowledge—all that is good in our lives and our individual cultures—with us and let the Church “add to it” through the message of the gospel.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is hardly a Western society or an American cultural phenomenon. It is an international church, as it was always meant to be. More than that, it is supernal. New members from around the world bring richness, diversity, and excitement into our ever-growing family. Latter-day Saints everywhere still celebrate and honor their own heritage and heroes, but now they are also part of something far grander. The culture of Christ helps us to see ourselves as we really are, and when seen through the lens of eternity, tempered with righteousness, it serves to increase our ability to fulfill the great plan of happiness.
The Culture of Christ
This is Latter-day Saint culture and the sooner we abandon every justification, political belief, or idea that would distract us from fully embracing the universal Gospel of Jesus Christ in its fulness, the sooner we will be able to manifest the culture of Christ in our lives and the communities around us. No matter what we may feel like we are giving up what we will be leaving behind is inferior to that which we will be adopting. In leaving the cultures of the world we will be adopting the greatest, most powerful culture in all of history, the culture of Christ. We will not be losing anything but Babylon; in doing so we will be gaining everything and building Zion. That is our “Mormon culture,” our Latter-day Saint culture; it is the culture of Christ and it is absolutely amazing. Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed of it and don’t let them convince you that it is the problem. The problems only come when we live according to the culture of Babylon. That we don’t often realize this is exactly why we often fall short of fixing the problems we see in our Latter-day Saint societies across the world. While we correctly diagnose the symptoms we often misdiagnose the underlying illness and therefore attempt to cure the wrong thing, resulting in us often getting nowhere fast. This failure we compound by blaming our own compatriots instead of recognizing we got the underlying problem wrong. Thus people become disgruntled, angry, and bitter, still accomplishing nothing of value or meaningful good. When we live according to the culture of Christ we are a blessing to the world, no matter how it may rage against us, and our actions and lives will only help to make the world a better place, healing its many problems with the power of the True Physician.