![\"Nebraska's](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/07\/winter-quarters-temple-lds-772766-gallery.jpg\")
<\/a>(LDS.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I would like to wish everyone out there a happy Pioneer Day.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve thought from time to time about the significance of the pioneer experience for the culture and faith of today\u2019s Latter-day Saints, and here\u2019s one thing that occurs to me:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
That process of crossing the plains built a sense of \u201cpeoplehood\u201d that has, historically (and, I hope, still today), made membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> distinctly different from membership in many other churches. \u00a0Being a Mormon isn\u2019t merely a matter of denomination. \u00a0(Denominationalism is far less important in American Christianity today than it was even a generation or two ago.) \u00a0It\u2019s more encompassing than that. \u00a0Having a distinct geographical \u201chomeland\u201d in the Great Basin makes being Mormon at least slightly more like being Jewish than like being, say, affiliated with the Assemblies of God<\/a> or the United Methodists or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. \u00a0(A very distinctive doctrine and a quite different ecclesiastical organization are also factors, of course.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And the epic story of the early Restoration and the westward migration also give a unique texture to Mormonism, and to each family with that heritage. \u00a0We have a history \u2014 a historical \u201cmyth,\u201d if you will (by which I don\u2019t mean a \u201cfalsehood\u201d but rather an archetypal narrative) \u2014 that is exceptional in both its nature and its content. \u00a0Decades ago, while browsing through the then-new Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups<\/em> (or whatever it was called) in a library in Cairo, I was surprised and quickly\u00a0delighted to see that Mormons<\/a> were listed as an \u201cethnic group,\u201d which I thought very perceptive. \u00a0Years later, Joel Kotkin took the same insight in a portion of his fascinating book Tribes<\/em> and developed it in an interesting direction.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But recent converts also inherit the legacy of the pioneers, and the hymns and stories and art that go with it, creating a culture that has continued to expand and to assimilate\u00a0new arrivals. \u00a0(See this example<\/a>, a favorite of mine.) \u00a0The pioneer experience welded Mormons together as a people, such that even those who leave the Church remain, in many cases, distinctively Mormon. \u00a0I expect that few of those who, for whatever reason, leave the Episcopal Church spend hours each week running anti-Episcopal websites and posting anonymously on furiously bitter anti-Episcopal message boards.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Those are just hasty thoughts. \u00a0I have miles to go before I sleep today.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n