Despite warnings from other leaders that emotional sentimentalism “should never be leaned upon as a substitute for spirituality,” 1 Elder Holland used up a good couple of minutes of his April 2014 General Conference address to describe in detail how two sister missionaries had food spit and thrown at them in the routine course of their missionary efforts. Intentional or not, it’s placement at the beginning of the talk set a rather defensive tone for the entire discourse.
Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with pulling our heartstrings a little to rally the troops. But I’m hesitant to interpret my natural emotional response as spiritually instructive. Howard W. Hunter’s warning comes to mind:
“I think if we are not careful … we may begin to try to counterfeit the true influence of the Spirit of the Lord by unworthy and manipulative means. I get concerned when it appears that strong emotion or free-flowing tears are equated with the presence of the Spirit.2
We’re masters at refashioning emotional moments to build testimony. We dress up our kids in pioneer clothes and send them off on mini-treks so they can experience firsthand the sacrifice of being forced across the plains. Forget that most Mormon pioneers actually sang and danced their way to Zion in the summer sun, and rode unscathed in covered wagons. Heber Kimball managed to haul a piano all the way to Laramie. But instead, we epitomize the less than 10% that pulled handcarts and suffered from overzealousness and poor preparation. One Salt Lake Tribune reporter rode along with a mini-trek family in 2008, and recounted that around their last campfire, their “pa” told the kids:
“I know the spirit has been with you this week. The emotions – that’s not your mind playing tricks on you. That’s the spirit of God touching your hearts.”3
When we’re burning Nauvoo temple replicas, burying baby dolls, and having those children attacked by fake mobs while they sleep, it’s hard to make a case against playing with emotions. Not only is it historically inaccurate (handcart pioneers never saw the temple burning and never faced any mobs), it is simply embarrassing.
Of course, mocked up trauma bonding may be a valuable team building experience, but the manufacturing of actual persecution for the sake of solidarity isn’t much of a stretch. Take polygamy, for example. In the Gospel Topics essay at lds.org, we’re told:
“Plural marriage also helped create and strengthen a sense of cohesion and group identification among Latter-day Saints. Church members came to see themselves as a “peculiar people,” covenant-bound to carry out the commands of God despite outside opposition, willing to endure ostracism for their principles.”
To what extent was this the main purpose all along: to build loyalty and commitment by virtue of coming under attack? Laurence Moore of the American Historical Review says:
“It clearly identif[ied] individuals as members of a distinct religious community; leaving the group and blending into the world become psychologically and socially difficult…When a group practice also draws persecution from the world, group solidarity increases.”4
Mary Jane Tanner, an early plural wife, told a family member in 1882 “Aunt Cornelia says why do I defend polygamy so strongly I tell her because she attacks it.” Not a whole lot of cognitive processing going on there – she defended the Principle because it was attacked, pure and simple. Armand Mauss explains this predictable reaction to criticism:
“…the more they sacrifice, the more dependent they will become upon the rewards offered by their religion. The more ‘costly’ such products, in terms of member sacrifice, investment, and stigmatization, the more ‘valuable’ they become.” 5
The stigma doesn’t have to come from the outside, either. Steven Taysom interprets the fiery rhetoric of the Mormon Reformation of the late 1850s as more than just a call for unquestioned obedience:
“The Mormon Reformation should not be interpreted primarily as a response to an organic spiritual crisis. Rather, it was the intentional creation of a crisis by church leaders in an attempt to reinvigorate Mormon communal and religious identity at a time when the Mormons were between periods of major crisis with the outside world. … The Mormon Reformation stands as a synthetic crisis implemented by LDS leaders to reinvigorate reliance on LDS church leaders among rank-and-file Mormons at a time when external crises were absent…The catechism was an important tool of surveillance that served to inflict guilt and induce confession — a cathartic act that bound the individual Mormons to their leaders.” 6
So are we manufacturing emotional crises to induce obedience and loyalty today? Here are a few thoughts.
Obsession with Sex
I’ve pointed out before that our over-emphasis on sexual purity has the opposite effect on our youth (See my post at Doves and Serpents here, and some actual stats here.). If the church doesn’t talk about troubling history because it’s not uplifting, or because they don’t want people to go looking for it, why can’t we take the same approach to pornography? It’s well-known in behavioral psychology that micromanaged suppression often leads to full blown obsession. It seems we purposely create an impossibly strict sexual culture so that an all-consuming adolescent struggle becomes the source of a more committed membership. Stigmatizing natural tendencies leads to guilt, which leads to confession and ultimately dependence. As one blogger opines, it’s not about the sin itself; “it’s about having a boogie man to rally against.”
The Public Fight Against Gay Marriage
The church’s calculated steps in to the public spotlight from time to time over gay marriage has mostly served to reinforce an exceedingly overused us-versus-them worldview. And as long as we keep talking about it, bickering about it, and getting flack for it, the investment in attorney fees and public affairs officials who argue over a definition will be justified. Our fight against gay marriage, then, is our modern-day Mormon Reformation, “an attempt to reinvigorate Mormon communal and religious identity at a time when the Mormons [are] between periods of major crisis with the outside world.” The strategy is not without collateral damage, unfortunately.
Mauss summarizes nicely:
“Faced with assimilation, Mormons have felt the need since the sixties to reach ever more deeply into their bag of cultural peculiarities to find either symbolic or actual traits that will help them mark their subcultural boundaries and thus their very identity as a special people.” 7
And even before the sixties, we find examples of “peculiarizing” ourselves proudly. B.H. Roberts wrote of plural marriage:
“…[I] see nothing amiss in referring to it as possessed of a certain publicity value to the whole work of God. And I know of no single thing in the New Dispensation that has done so much to keep that dispensation and its major message before the world as this same principle of plural marriage and the practice of it by the church.” 8
When the flame of plural marriage was finally blown out in the early 1900s, a calculated effort ensued to replace the Mormon’s newly-jeopardized identity. Almost as if blowing old embers to provide the necessary spark of persecution, they turned to then little-known stories in early church history. Kathleen Flake comments on the pivotal moment: “New emphasis on the First Vision maintained a sense of religious difference and, as such, provided the equally necessary sense of internal cohesiveness and historical continuity in terms of persecution.” 9
The constant reminders of the “attack” on the family and the perils of “the world” remind me of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.
In what is supposed to be 1897 in a completely isolated Pennsylvania village, the adults occasionally dress up as monsters and stalk through the town while everyone, especially the youngsters, hide in fear. The attacks serve to remind the young villagers how dangerous it would be to ever leave the comfort and safety of the community and venture into the woods. 
In the end, it’s revealed that the village was actually founded in the 1970s as a refuge for a group of grief-stricken parents fed up with the harmful realities of the modern world. They purchased land and created a new life though their kids know nothing of the conspiracy; the only mechanism keeping them from knowing the truth is fear of what might exist in the woods, reinforced by the frightening visits from “those we don’t speak of.” The community couldn’t be sustained without the occasional crisis of fear, though entirely fabricated.
And so I ask, can a committed LDS membership be sustained without the natural tribalism forced by a modern crisis? Or perhaps a more relevant question, if the increasing tolerance of the modern world results in nobody even caring what the Mormon Church did or said, would there be any wind left in our sails to induce commitment?
Updated from original post at ZelophehadsDaughters in July 2014.
- Reynolds, Noel B., Reason and Revelation, BYU, Summer 1981. Full quote includes this gem: “We put ourselves in grave danger when we intentionally seek to create moving, emotional experiences as a substitute for the teaching of the Spirit…too much of the literature used, seen, and quoted in the Church today is just sentimental trash which is designed to pull our heart strings or to moisten our eyes – but it is not born of true spiritual experience.”
- The Teachings of Howard W. Hunter, 184 [↩]
- http://www.sltrib.com/lds/ci_10275733 [↩]
- American Historical Review 87 (April 1982): 390-423 [↩]
- The Angel and the Beehive, 10 [↩]
- Mormons, and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries (Indiana Univ. Press, 2011), 171, 180 [↩]
- The Angel and the Beehive, 77, 99 [↩]
- A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 6 vols. Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1930, 6:227-28. [↩]
- The Politics of American Religious Identity, 120
Fan-freaking-tastic article.
Wow! There are many layers to pull back here. Most importantly this article provided a mirror, trailhead, to my own inner ecology allowing me to uncover a few stumbling blocks that I hadn’t quite been able to put my finger on, like, really identify! Wow, just nailing it! My heart is screaming at me… thankfulness for the spark.
I am very impressed with this thought provoking article. I remember reading "The Village" as a teenager. Interesting parallels.
It’s a pretty ambitious project to distinguish between, and assign weights to, emotional, spiritual and cognitive responses. I believe this is messier than you seem to think. Per the scriptures, it is Satan who “stirs up people to do iniquity” and the prophets of God who “stir up” people to repentance; in Enos’ time this had to be done “continually”. Were the prophets wrong in so doing? What were they appealing to? When the Savior is described as being scourged, smitten and spit upon, what is being appealed to?
Unlike the adults wearing costumes as in the film you cite, there is a very real being named Satan who is literally trying to lead us to misery. We don’t need to dress him up in a costume. He is malicious and his influence is horrible. If the scriptures testify to anything, it is that the opposition of God and the World is constant and the gulf between them deep and wide. Check out the entry for “World” in the index to the scriptures and see what you find. Aren’t we supposed to be defending something? Standing against something? Surely there is something called “wickedness” and something called “righteousness”. They are in constant opposition, and it’s probably fair to say it’s an emotional, spiritual and cognitive opposition. There are things God wants and things he doesn’t want. When, at the Second Coming, there is “an entire separation of the righteous and the wicked” it will not be an artificial crisis.
And are you kidding about sex? Worldwide, kids, lots of them, are having sex as teenagers and couples are cohabiting by the millions because the world is constantly telling them to go for it. Enjoy without guilt! It’s fun! Who’s to say it’s wrong? Pornography is destroying marriages and families as fast as a horse can run. Ask women. A more sex-saturated world can hardly be imagined. This is what the world is offering to LDS youth; it is anything but an artificial crisis. It’s here, in its full-blown glory.
Your citing of the Church’s response to same-sex marriage seems out of place. You don’t seem to consider the possibility that the Church’s statement on the sanctity of marriage comes, in fact, from God and not from some institutional imperative. It’s a statement of principle God wants promulgated – and one we’re supposed to defend – and as such hardly fits under the same “emotional response” umbrella that also covers the Mormon Reformation.
In any event, here’s the bottom line: Because Gospel truths originate with God, not mortals, ways will part and at some point the Church is going to be an offense to the world and perhaps even within our families. Per Jesus: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.” If the first great commandment is to love God above all else, then a social cost to defending the Church is inevitable. So be it. The Church has a mandate from God to testify of what God wants and expects. And this is likely to cause emotional, spiritual and cognitive distress on both sides.
Recently, after a high-profile excommunication, there were a slew of editorials with this sort of carrot-and-stick reproach: “O, Mormon Church, you were doing so well in leaving that nutty past of yours behind. Why are you backsliding? Give up your peculiar doctrines, be progressive, become like us, and we will accept you.” Thanks, but no thanks.
Finally, I think you are mistaken in believing that the world is going to relegate the Church to the back burner. Satan is not going to let it. In addition to the benefits of tolerating previously marginalized groups, what the world is also very good at tolerating is sin. The the tolerance of the world is not going to result in apathy towards the Church; it’s going to result in persecution. And that’s not going to be an artificial crisis.
I think that the strong persecution complex created by always talking about and fearing Satan is another way that we manufacture emotional responses. Evil certainly exists, but the way we parade Satan out in so many of our religious discussions strikes me as a manipulation. Retrenchment brought about by fear seems temporary and desperate. Just my observation.
Oh, and I would argue that ‘loving God above all else’ is not synonymous with defending the church.
Tim,
I agree this is an ambitious project, but I believe you’ve fundamentally misunderstood the premise of my article.
I don’t attempt to write off the existence of Satan here.
I don’t argue in favor of pornography, but rather that our approach against it has the opposite desired effect and that in the face of this reality, the constant harping seems like “an important tool of surveillance” (ala Mormon Reformation) rather than an effective warning against the behavior.
“You don’t seem to consider the possibility that the Church’s statement on the sanctity of marriage comes, in fact, from God…”
I’ve considered this. I don’t believe I make any argument against it.
“If the first great commandment is to love God above all else, then a social cost to defending the Church is inevitable.”
I’ve read this over and over again, and I still don’t agree.
Tim Bone,
So, tell me, who gave Satan such power?
What was it that happened at Mountain Meadows, then?
Iniquity or repentance?
Dean,
In one sense, we do, by harkening to him. Lucifer, our common enemy, is allowed by God to tempt us and try us. We are here to gain experience and to be tested and we can do neither without opposites being present. Lucifer was allowed latitude in the pre-mortal world as well, right? We were all exposed to him then as well. No one was assigned to follow him. What did we do then?
During the Millennium, the righteousness of the Saints limits Satan – they will no longer listen to him (1 Nephi 22:26). Satan’s constituency, the wicked, were destroyed at the Second Coming, literally removed from the planet. Wheat and tares. His power increases, temporarily, at the end of the Millennium when some then living will hearken to him and will pay the corresponding price. Finally, the end of the line for Satan: Jesus has all power, “even to the destroying of Satan and his works at the end of the world. . . ” (D&C 19:3).
Corbin Volluz,
People also “stir up” themselves and each other. Every move we make each day isn’t a mechanical result of being stirred up at that moment by Satan or by a prophet. We aren’t marionettes; how we experience life and our internal mental world is complex. When you look at other people (or maybe if we look at ourselves), some things are simply unknowable.
As for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a bunch of people made very bad decisions that led to murder. Brigham Young sent a message to let the emigrants leave in peace, but it arrived too late. (When Isaac Haight got it, he burst into tears. “Too late,” he cried, “too late.) The perpetrators will one day stand before God. I don’t think it will go well for them. The victims need to be recompensed by justice as well, and God will see to it. The climate of the times in which the perpetrators lived was affected, in turn, by James Buchanan, Brigham Young, local Mormon leaders, the prior experience of persecution, fear – a lot of things. How exculpatory these factors will be I do not know, and to what degree the aforementioned persons will be held to account I do not know. And yet at the very same time as the massacre, the Holy Ghost was testifying to souls around the world that the message brought to them by the missionaries was a true one. Because I believe this to be so, I am not going to hold today’s church hostage over the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Great post, Greg. It’s an interesting line you draw between Trek and fighting gay marriage, but I think I can see what you’re getting at. It’s unfortunate that the Church feels the need to manufacture emotional crises for purposes of boundary maintenance or testimony building.
Dang Lucifer –
He stirred up confusion in me to come this site where a bunch of unorthodox mormons write stuff and made me read this awesome article which helped me feel the spirit this morning. Aagh, that Satan guys is so confusing.