Religiosity, Gender, and Fidelity

It seems that we could have the same discussion concerning Mormonism. Who can authentically self-identify as a Mormon? What are the criteria for being able to do so? For example, do we say that church-going members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are Mormons? But what about “cultural” Mormons, those who don’t buy the supernaturalism in many of the historical claims of the church? What if I don’t believe the Book of Mormon was divinely revealed to Joseph Smith? Am I still a Mormon? There are many Mormons who would say that these are not “legitimate” or “authentic” Mormons because they don’t have the requisite faith-commitments. And some would say these could be labeled Mormon, but are “less-faithful” Mormons.

But it’s problematic simply calling anyone closely affiliated with mainstream Mormonism (the LDS church) as the only ones who can be called Mormon. Not to get into an FLDS discussion on this post, but in the past haven’t the leaders of the LDS church gone to lengths to discredit the FLDS and other break-off groups as not Mormon? Just like the term “Christian,” “Mormon” is a normative, complex designation, not simply a descriptive term of identification. It seems that Mormons sometimes use the same “disqualifiers” to discredit someone outside the main body of the Church as legitimately Mormon that mainstream Christians use to discredit Mormons as Christians. Or better said, Mormons sometimes engage in the same type of reasoning to do so, not necessarily the same particulars. This is a fascinating question to me; it’s a phenomenon that seems widespread across religious faiths.

Jacob, I think we have had lots of discussion of self-identifying as Mormon. There are lots of people who rarely attend Church, never pay tithing, don’t live the outward things that tend to characterize Mormons (drinking, smoking, drugs, pre-marital sex, etc.) but who self-identify as Mormons. Then you have the issue of break offs from Mormonism - although admittedly most of those groups are so small that in a national survey there will be inherent problems in measuring them.

Regarding self-identification and labels. I think many Mormons independent of the FLDS situation would cringe if some person who hasn’t been to Church in decades and who is outwardly problematic self-identifies as Mormon. Heck, I cringe when my wife watches Dr. Phil and some majorly dysfunctional family shows up who self-identify as Mormon.

Part of that is the decades of being persecution and wanting to be accepted. There is an insecurity in our community that I think was heightened by the reception Mitt Romney got and has been made worse by media conflating of LDS and FLDS. We thought in the last decade that we were finally accepted in America and I don’t think we really are. But a large part of us (and I include myself) want to be.

But when we see people identifying as Mormons who we feel make it less likely the country will accept us then we have a kind of neurosis hit us.

You don’t see this with Catholics. If a serial killer ends up being a Catholic with some seriously warped theological views you don’t see Catholics cringing. Maybe when Protestants were telling such harsh stories about Catholics and there was still anti-Catholic fervor in America then Catholics would have cringed in a similar fashion.