Editor's note: This commentary from scholar J. Spencer Fluhman is part of an ongoing Deseret News opinion series exploring ideas and issues at the intersection of faith and thought.
Current events may catalyze a new political pluralism within the Latter-day Saint tradition.
Along with 18 colleagues from across the political and ideological spectrum, I am a proud co-signer of a brief filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that sharply critiques the president’s (blocked) travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries. I cannot speak for my co-signers, but I can speak to the historical moment that produced this singular move by scholars who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Generally, my colleagues and I rarely join the legal and political fray in this way.
I suspect each of us had varied reasons for entering the contentious debate over religion and immigration policy so conspicuously. For me, it wasn’t partisan political commitments that prompted my signature. Neither was it my scholarship, per se.
Did my work as a historian sensitize me to bigotry and religious stereotypes in the past and present? Inescapably.
Even so, my fundamental motivation sprang from a different source — my religious conviction that Islamophobia and racism are sins against the Lord God Almighty, Father of us all.
But where do my political, scholarly and religious convictions begin and end? Am I drawn to the oppressions related to race and religion as scholarly and political matters because of my conviction that these are deep offenses against a holy God, or does scholarship and politics shape also my religious sensibilities?
Was I scholar when I signed the brief or was I witness?
Scholars and pundits have not yet found satisfactory narratives for the complexities surrounding religion and the public sphere. Commentators on the left decry religiously motivated political action until they remember the religious foundations of the civil rights movement. Religious conservatives express repeated surprise (or betrayal) when members of their own religious traditions offer “progressive” views couched in treasured religious language or texts.
I use this contemporary and admittedly personal example to point to our particular moment’s gravity. For at least a generation or two, LDS political activity has veered toward the political and ideological right. Along the way, Latter-day Saints have crafted a language for political action around the concept of morality. If a particular political issue has “moral” dimensions or implications, Saints tell ourselves, then the LDS Church’s or individuals’ political activity is justified or even mandated.
For the most part, LDS political interventions have tracked parallel to the priorities of the “religious right” and have thus mired Latter-day Saints in the various skirmishes related to the broader “culture wars.” Notable exceptions exist, for instance with the LDS First Presidency’s opposition to the MX missile project during the 1980s, but journalists and historians alike have offered what are now well-worn narratives of recent LDS political action.
The current administration’s conspicuous ethical and moral failings have the potential to shape a reconfiguration of LDS political sensibilities. Utah came around for the Republican candidate during the election, but support was grudging and conspicuously late. “Millennial” Latter-day Saints are about twice as likely to be Republicans as their national peers, and more likely than their parents or grandparents, but there are signs that this administration was not what they were hoping for. They tend to favor small government, yes, but they trend with their church leaders’ direction on immigration, for instance, a traditionally progressive position. Perhaps as tellingly, LDS millennials appear to be leaving the faith in rates significantly higher than was the case with their predecessors.
In 2009, the LDS Newsroom published an essay titled “The Mormon Ethic of Civility.” It stated, in part, that the “need for civility is perhaps most relevant in the realm of partisan politics.”
“As the Church operates in countries around the world,” it continued, “it embraces the richness of pluralism. Thus, the political diversity of Latter-day Saints spans the ideological spectrum. Individual members are free to choose their own political philosophy and affiliation. Moreover, the Church itself is not aligned with any particular political ideology or movement. It defies category. Its moral values may be expressed in a number of parties and ideologies.”
Historians make poor prophets, but it may be that the current administration’s moral lapses and brewing scandals will propel the statement’s prescient vision of the LDS political future. Our moment might fully destabilize what Latter-day Saints have sometime offered as pat explanations of what constitutes a “moral” position. In the future, LDS political action will necessarily crisscross the partisan divide if a vibrant pluralism is to become a reality.
Dr. J. Spencer Fluhman is executive director of Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University. His opinions are his own and should not necessarily be attributed to the Maxwell Institute or to BYU.