Blog 5: A Mormon Political Identity?

Kiana Stewart

Political Science 150

Professor Hawkins

12 October 2012

Blog 5: Political Identity

                  With the upcoming elections, The Church of Latter-Day Saints and its members have been thrown into the spotlight. Anyone who has attended a church potluck can generally agree that there tends to be a separate “Mormon culture.” While many in and outside the church can concur with this assessment, the real question is whether differences exist large enough to argue for the existence of a political identity. An identity is “a subset of culture and refers to the ways that individuals categorize themselves, typically eliciting strong emotional feelings of attachment or loyalty.” Examples of identity include social class, ethnicity, gender or race. Political identity then is simply any identity that significantly shapes our political decisions. For instance, some of the controversial subjects up for debate this election are transforming gender into a strong political identity; specifically, women might now be influenced and vote based on their sex. That said, it is quite obvious to see that the church has some definite trends and analyzing this data some of those trends translate into political identity.

                  Because the church advocates for maintaining the traditional family unit, members tend to be socially conservative. In a survey done by the Pew Research Center’s Forum On Religion & Public Life 66% of LDS members labeled themselves as conservative, 22% as moderate and 8% as liberal. These percentages most closely resembled statistics for protestant white evangelicals. When it came to partisanship, 74% identified as Republican or leaning toward the party whereas only 17% as Democrat or leaning toward the Democrat party. However, the general public is more evenly divided with 45% Republican and 48% Democrat. Among all Mormons 75% favor smaller government with fewer services and 65% believe that homosexuality should be discouraged by society. 74% believe having an abortion to be morally wrong with 13% more think that it depends.

                  If one accepts that there exists a political identity among the population of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints then the next step is to pinpoint a cause. The textbook presents two options, primordial and constructivism. First, primordialism “assumes that identities are something people are born with or that emerge through deep psychological processes in early childhood, given one’s family and community context.” A strong emphasis is placed upon the fact that our identities don’t change with time and kinship bonds are the building blocks of identity. It is true that members try to ingrain principles and standards in their young children. As young children, family prayer, scripture study and even family home evening are all meant to impart a strong sense of testimony, which based on analysis might come with political identity. However, while a small amount of Mormon political identity could be the result of primordial origins, it is much more likely that the constructivism approach explains it. Unlike the primordial theory, constructivism maintains that “political identities are malleable, and an evolving political process rather than as a fixed set of identity categories.”Thus, while many members grow up in the church nearly all cite the foundation of their beliefs in their own experiences. This is especially true for those who are converts in the church and never grew up with church doctrine or the same type of influences from kinship bonds. Just over one-quarter (26%) of those in the LDS faith were converts and therefore cannot be explained at all by primordial theory. Also identities with primordial roots tends to have less motivation to strong action, such as support for a favorite sports team whereas religion will strongly influence people’s choices including where to live, education or even employment. All of these reasons support the theory that a conservative LDS political identity has constructivist causes.

Works Cited

"Mormons in America Infographic - Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life." Mormons in America Infographic - Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2012. <http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Mormon/mormons-in-america-infographic.aspx>.

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. "Mormons in America - Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life." Mormons in America - Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2012. <http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Mormon/mormons-in-america.aspx>.

Samuels, David. Comparative Politics. New York: Pearson Education, 2013. Print.