The High Road

Both baffling to me considering our values and standards.

What would it take for Mormons to dump Trump?

                                                                     By Robert Rees and Clifton Jolley for the Tribune

Donald Trump famously boasted, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

He may have been right. He has done everything but that and appears not to have discouraged his mythic “base.” Including his many followers in the Great Basin (”Make Deseret Great Again!”)

Mormon Support of Trump is almost as high as it was for Brigham Young. A recent article in the Tribune reports that Mormon support of Trump is the highest of any religious group in America. A Gallup poll charts that support at 61 percent. According to Newsweek, “Mormons were the only religious group to overshelmingly approve of the president in 2017.”

How is that possible when even his supporters have stopped trying to deny his lying, sexual peccadillos, narcissism, and his curious camaraderie with Vladimir Putin and other plutocratic strongmen he admires and whose atrocities he excuses? How is it possible when he breaks all the principles and commandments we honor, refers to Mormonism as an “alien faith,” and disagrees with the First Presidency about whether or not infant children of immigrants should be separated from their parents?

Simple: Translation. If the Bible had not been translated from Greek, to most of us it would be, well, Greek. Mormons probably think 5th Avenue and New York are maybe a little too alien for us to be bothered about who gets shot there. So, let’s translate Trump’s analogy to our own place and people: “I could stand in the middle of North Temple and shoot a Temple worker … and I wouldn’t lose voters in Utah.”

We Mormons, like some Evangelicals and Catholics, seem to be open to a loose observance of our ethical standards to accommodate behavior in the president we would not tolerate in others (for instance: in Democrats!) Imagine the moral outrage of Mormons and other conservative Christians if tapes had surfaced during the Obama presidency revealing an affair with a porn star whom he had paid to keep silent!

According to religious historian Randall Balmer, “The religious right’s wholesale embrace of the Republican party and of Donald J. Trump, both as candidate and as president, has necessitated a rewriting of evangelical ethics.”

Given the ethical and moral pass many Mormons are inclined to give Trump, it is hard to argue that we have not done the same.

During the Republican presidential primary, our own Mitt Romney warned the nation about the danger of electing Donald Trump: “Let me put it very plainly. If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.” Romney justified his warning by enumerating the dangers Trump posed, including: his tax plan that “would balloon the deficit and the national debt,” his foreign and national security policies, his corrupt business deals, his boasting of sexual exploits, “the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third grade theatrics,” and his admiration for Vladimir Putin.

Romney concluded, “Dishonesty is Donald Trump’s hallmark ...There’s plenty of evidence that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake, a phony, a fraud ... He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.”

That’s the same Donald Trump who today enjoys inordinate support among Mormons.

We came into these valleys over 160 years ago to separate ourselves from a corrupt president, Congress and federal government. So, what will it take for us again to recognize a villain for who he is and dump Trump?

(Maybe it’s time to again get the wagons and oxen ready.)

Robert Rees is director of Mormon Studies at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

Clifton Jolley is a writer and president of Advent Communications in Ogden.

Mormons hate socialism, but only in the United States

By Johnny Townsend for the Tribune

Almost every day, one of my active Mormon family members posts some scathing comment on Facebook about the evils of socialism. One day, it’s a clip of Meghan McCain dissing democratic socialism. Another day, he makes fun of liberal idiots who don’t know the difference between democratic socialism and real socialism. The day after that, he posts a meme saying, “Socialism can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man that is better off than you are.”

I find his venom odd given that early in LDS Church history, the saints attempted to live the United Order. And during the temple endowment, Mormons agree to live the United Order again if ever required.

The Book of Mormon makes clear that the Nephites lived some form of socialism after Christ visited them, for a good 200 years — and that this was the only time in the entire book where the people lived in complete peace and happiness.

U.S. Mormons I know say that it’s OK if the church wants to implement some form of socialism, but governments are secular and will contaminate anything good they try to do.

That raises the question of why secular capitalist governments are to be praised specifically for their capitalism.

I don’t recall passages from the Book of Mormon lauding capitalist practices. If anything, the scriptures suggest that it was the return to nonsocialist practices that brought about the destruction of the Nephites.

The main reason Mormons in the United States rail against anything socialist is because so much of their “doctrine” is derived from the Republican Party.

Republicans hate any form of universal health care, not because it’s ineffective but because it’s socialist. Yet Mormons in England, and France, and Japan, and all the other countries with such programs, don’t have to denounce their country’s health care system and insist on for-profit health care in order to obtain temple recommends, do they?

Do Mormons in countries with tuition-free college have to travel to the U.S. for their education rather than accept the socialist-provided instruction at home? If they don’t, will they still be worthy to serve missions?

My Mormon family member also posts memes that clearly reflect the Republican influence on his moral values. One reads, “Can you still own a firearm with a straw conviction in California?” thus combining his disdain for environmental conservation with his refusal to approve even one solitary gun regulation that might decrease the massacres that take place routinely in the U.S.

Do Mormons who live in countries that promote renewable energy have to defy their countries’ emissions standards if they want to attend their child’s temple wedding? Must Mormons in countries with strict gun regulations buy guns on the black market to be set apart as bishop or Relief Society president?

In between his posts vilifying the left, my family member intersperses quotes from various church leaders. One from Bonnie Oscarson reads, “We must stop concentrating on our differences and look for what we have in common.”

Then come two posts ranting about how awful black athletes are who protest police officers killing unarmed blacks during routine traffic stops.

Republican Mormons in the United States seem to feel they have to support every cruel, inhumane and destructive “moral imperative” that the Republican Party endorses, even when those policies are in defiance of church history and scripture, even though Mormons in other parts of the world have little or no problem with socialist or democratic socialist or plain old mainstream ideas. Yet most Mormons in the U.S. would flatly deny their views are shaped by politics.

I think many Mormons are misquoting the statement at the beginning of this essay. I think the original must read, “Capitalism can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man that is worse off than you are.” It is the poor, the uneducated, the immigrant, the sick who must be denied a society that would make them equal in any way to “good” people like them.

Or: “Don’t love thy neighbor as thyself.”

People lament every day about those who put party over country. I’m looking forward to the time Mormons stop putting party over morality.

Johnny Townsend, Seattle, is the author of “Behind the Bishop’s Door” and many other collections of Mormon short stories.