{"id":105608,"date":"2013-05-24T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T16:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/?p=105608"},"modified":"2013-05-24T11:42:21","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T15:42:21","slug":"mormonism-is-a-religion-not-just-a-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/05\/mormonism-is-a-religion-not-just-a-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Mormonism is a religion, not just a culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

For people serious about their faith, religious beliefs tend not only to influence other types of beliefs but they tend to be presuppositional. Believers adopt particular cultural and political beliefs because of<\/em> their religious views. For example, an evangelical who believes that abortion is wrong tends to adopt cultural and political views that flow from their religious convictions. Not all evangelicals oppose abortion rights, of course, and even those that do may have developed their position on the issue apart from their religious views. But those who are pro-life tend to be so in a way that is different than those who developed a secular-minded opposition to abortion. <\/p>\n

While this may seem too obvious to mention, it can lead to problem for journalists on the religion beat. <\/p>\n

A prime example from several years ago is how the media covered the Tea Party movement. There were at least three main factions of the Tea Party, and the main one could be described as a subset of the religious right. Despite the perception of the movement being comprised of economically oriented libertarians, the majority held social conservative views. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Tea Partiers polled in 2011 said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and only eighteen percent supported same-sex marriage. When the Washington Post<\/em> contacted 647 Tea Party groups, they found that less than half of the organizations considered spending and limiting the size of government to be a primary concern. <\/p>\n

The bottom line: By failing to understand the foundational beliefs underlying the movement, the media continually misunderstood (and misreported) what the movement was really about.<\/p>\n

To truly understand a cultural or political movement comprised mainly of religious believers requires understanding the presuppositional religious views that shapes it. But since it can be difficult to determine the motivating belief and cumbersome to explain, it\u2019s often easier to simply focus on the non-religious aspects. That is one of the reasons why so many religion stories become political stories. Journalists know how to write about politics, so if a story can be \u201ctranslated\u201d it becomes easier to tell. <\/p>\n

A similar process seems to have occurred in a recent New York Times Magazine<\/em> story focusing on Brigham Young University\u2019s film animation program, \u201cWhen Hollywood Wants Good, Clean Fun, It Goes to Mormon Country<\/a>.\u201d Instead of writing about religion-as-politics, though, it translates religion into mere cultural expression.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jon Mooallem does such an excellent job reporting on the program and its budding influence in Hollywood that it feels nit-picky to point out that it all but ignores Mormonism<\/a> as a religion. Here\u2019s an example of what sets the article apart from the stereotypical reporter-as-anthropologist style of religion reporting: <\/p>\n

Many of the students I met in Provo grew up in insular, Mormon communities. They came from what\u2019s dismissed as flyover country. They don\u2019t smoke or drink, and I noticed that one faculty member, for example, kept saying, \u201cHoly schnikeys!\u201d whenever he wanted to curse. And yet creative types in Hollywood kept raving to me about how much \u201cmore worldly\u201d these Mormons<\/a> were than the moody, Gen Y art-school grads coming out of New York and Los Angeles and how grateful they were to have them onboard. This cut against so many different stereotypes \u2014 of Mormons, of Hollywood, of tortured artsy kids \u2014 and at the oddest angles. By coincidence, it seemed, Mormon culture<\/a> was grooming its young people to be ideal employees of the same industry it predisposed them to be wary of.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just when you think you know where he\u2019s heading, Mooallem throws in a perspective-shifting, \u201cAnd yet \u2026\u201d <\/p>\n

My only complaint with that paragraph is that he doesn\u2019t explain what it means for these seemingly \u201cinsular\u201d young Mormons to be \u201cworldly.\u201d That would have been a fascinating area to examine. <\/p>\n

But while the article is respectful of Mormonism as a culture, the impression it leaves is that being a Mormon is primarily about being part of a monolithic monoculture rather than a member of a religion. The religious elements aren\u2019t exactly ignored, but they are certainly downplayed. For instance, here is how the mission of the animation program is described: <\/p>\n

The B.Y.U. program is designed to be a similar kind of ethical counterweight: it\u2019s trying to unleash values-oriented filmmakers into the industry who can inflect its sensibility. \u201cWithout being preachy about it,\u201d Adams told me, \u201cif we can add something to the culture that makes people think about being better human beings \u2014 more productive, more kind, more forgiving \u2014 that\u2019s what we want to do.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If this had been a story for an outlet whose readers are more familiar with Mormonism \u2014 such as the Deseret News<\/em>, which ran an article on the article<\/a> \u2014 then that might have been sufficient. But for readers unfamiliar with LDS beliefs (e.g., the typical New York Magazine<\/em> reader), it makes Mormons sound like adherents to a stringent ethical philosophy. <\/p>\n

A key theme embedded in the feature is that the young animators are driven to share a message. But the closest the article to comes to explaining what that message could be is a quote buried in a long paragraph:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the L.D.S. church,\u201d he told me, \u201ca really strong message is that everyone\u2019s a child of God \u2014 that they\u2019re a sacred individual. They\u2019re born into this world clean and pure and beautiful.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s easy to miss the significance of this quote \u2014 I missed it myself until I read the article a third time \u2014 and what it means for \u201cMormon culture.\u201d This is the type of presuppositional belief that drives not only the students and the animation program, but BYU and the larger culture of Mormonism. <\/p>\n

Hey reporters! Mormons don\u2019t avoid R-rated movies and coffee because its part of \u201cMormon culture.\u201d They do this because of beliefs \u2014 doctrines even \u2014 driven by even more foundational beliefs. <\/p>\n

Failing to understand this point and make it explicit doesn\u2019t ruin the article \u2014 it\u2019s still an entertaining and information feature \u2014 but it does reveal a missed opportunity to show that Mormonism is more than just a cultural expression of really polite people. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For people serious about their faith, religious beliefs tend not only to influence other types of beliefs but they tend to be presuppositional. Believers adopt particular cultural and political beliefs because of their religious views. For example, an evangelical who believes that abortion is wrong tends to adopt cultural and political views that flow from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,7,65,18,11,23,12],"tags":[1646,1645,1648,1644,1647],"class_list":["post-105608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-journalism","category-mormons","category-people","category-pop-culture","category-radio-and-tv","category-religion","tag-animation","tag-byu","tag-lds","tag-mormonism","tag-tea-party"],"yoast_head":"\nMormonism is a religion, not just a culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For people serious about their faith, religious beliefs tend not only to influence other types of beliefs but they tend to be presuppositional. 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