Romney Lost. Is the Mormon Moment Over? And What Would That Mean, Anyway?

Mitt Romney hoped to be the Mormon JFK. Instead, he will now go down in the history books as the Mormons? Al Smith ? the Roman Catholic who was nominated for the presidency by the Democratic Party in 1928, but lost to Calvin Coolidge in part because of anti-Catholic prejudice.

But I?m not interested in how long it will be before we elect our first Mormon president. I?m more interested in the so-called ?Mormon Moment,? and what the end of Mitt Romney?s political career means for the place of Mormons in American culture. With Romney (and his ubiquitous political ads) out of the spotlight, will the Latter-day Saints now fade from the national stage? Will Americans forget about their odd Mormon neighbors and move on to lambasting and lampooning someone else?

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Lecture Report: Janet Bennion and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich on “The Faces of Eve: Varieties of Mormon Feminism”

On Thursday, October 25, Janet Bennion, Professor of Anthropology at Lyndon State College in Vermont, delivered a lecture, ?The Faces of Eve: Varieties of Mormon Feminism,? at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University. Professor Bennion is an expert on the contemporary practice of polygamy among Mormon fundamentalists, and the author of several books on the subject. Bennion?s lecture focused on her most recent book, Polygamy in Primetime: Media, Gender, and Politics in Mormon Fundamentalism, which she presented as a synthesis of her more than twenty years of research among polygamous groups in North America. Her goal, she said, was to produce a readable work that would educate the general public about these groups, as well as better preparing law enforcement officials to deal with them?and thus to avoid another event like the ill-managed 2008 raid on the FLDS Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas.

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Boston-area lecture: “The Faces of Eve: Varieties of Mormon Feminism”

We thought that some of the New England branch of the JI community might be interested in this upcoming event at Brandeis University:

?The Faces of Eve: Varieties of Mormon Feminism?

A lecture by Janet Bennion, author of Polygamy in Primetime

Thursday, October 25, 2012, 7:00 to 9:00pm

Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Epstein Building, Brandeis University
515 South Street, Waltham MA 02454

Media portrayals of Mormon women have focused on the potential for oppression and abuse within both the mainline church and fundamentalists sects. Drawing on her 17 years of fieldwork among fundamentalist polygamous Mormons, Janet Bennion argues that some “sister wives” find fulfillment and even empowerment through their domestic arrangements. In this lecture, she will be joined by historian Laurel Ulrich to look beyond the official patriarchy and find the subtle feminisms Mormon women embody.

Janet Bennion is a professor of social sciences at Lyndon State College in Vermont. Her latest book, “Polygamy in Primetime: Media, Gender, and Politics in Mormon Fundamentalism”, was published in 2012 by the Brandeis Series on Gender, Culture, Religion, and Law, a collaboration between the HBI and the University Press of New England.

Free and open to the public.

Parking in Epstein Lot.

RSVP encouraged: hbi@brandeis.edu

Larry Echo Hawk and Lamanite Identities

When Larry Echo Hawk was sustained as a Seventy earlier this month, he became just the second self-identifying North American indigenous person to serve as a General Authority. His call came over two decades following the excommunication of his predecessor, George P. Lee, and three decades following the church’s decision to discontinue its programs aimed at American indigenes: the Indian Student Placement Program, the Indian Seminary, and BYU’s Indian programs. Echo Hawk’s experience therefore presents a window into how at least one Mormon Native reared during the twentieth-century’s ?Day of the Lamanite? continues to appropriate and utilize a Lamanite identity, at least for a predominantly white audience. Since the early 1990s, Echo Hawk has commented on this subject in talks given at BYU, LDS Church News interviews, and his recent conference talk .

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Mormons as Part of the Pluralist Kaleidoscope

So when I created my fall course on American religious pluralism I built it around five units. In this post I thought I?d share those, and invite conversation about where Mormonism shows up in my course or where it could be discussed in a similar course.

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The Mormon Image Today

Sister Wives. The Book of Mormon on Broadway. And of course the presidential campaign trail.

Mormons are everywhere in the media in 2012, and by many measures the Mormon image is faring well in the early 21^st century. Yes, the Brown family encompasses more wives and children than the average American family, but Sister Wives showcases the seemingly very normal lives that Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine, Robyn, and their 17 children lead, struggling with relationships and weight and decisions about where to live or go to school. The Book of Mormon pokes fun at young Latter-day Saint missionaries, but in the end the show sings the Mormons? praises for the good they do in the world. In presidential politics, Mormonism is a virtually silent presence in Mitt Romney?s campaign, but when it is brought forward it underlines the candidate?s service, both during his mission in France and during his years as a bishop and stake president in Massachusetts, and the family values that supported his 40+ year marriage to his high school sweetheart and nurtured their five handsome, successful sons.

But in each of these current examples of Mormonism in the media spotlight, there is significant underlying negativity.

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Pragmatism and Progress: An Overview of LDS Sister Missionary Service in the Twentieth Century

President Thomas S. Monson?s announcement in  General Conference on Saturday, October 6, 2012, that young women can now serve missions at age 19 is no less than revolutionary.  This move might seem like a pragmatic attempt to boost global missionary efforts.  However, a brief historical overview of the last century?s changes for sister missionaries provides some useful context for how remarkable this  policy really is.

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Republicans, Romneys, and Mormon Moments: American Images of the LDS in the 1950s

Mitt Romney is a politician born not in the wrong place, but the wrong time. While his opponents in the Republican primary accused him of untrustworthy geographic origins and thus of not being a real Republican, in fact Romney is simply running sixty years too late. If this were 1952 instead of 2012, the ?Massachusetts moderate? would have enjoyed a political climate that twice elected Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower?the father of such massive government spending projects as the interstate highway system, who spoke openly of the value of organized labor for protecting working Americans [1]. As many have asserted during this election cycle, past Republican luminaries would not survive in their own party after its hard turn to the right in recent decades.

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Mormons and the Media: If a Carnivorous Crocodile and a Stripling Warrior Fought…

Professor Jared Farmer and the State University of New York at Stonybrook very generously posted a free e-book last week?Mormons in the Media, 1832-2012. Though the title should be “Mormons in American Media,” the 342-page book and the hundreds of images therein need to be seen. They are beautiful and brilliant?some impressively horrific in their full technicolor glory. Farmer builds upon a foundation established by Gary Bunker and Davis Bitton in their 1983 The Mormon Graphic Image, 1833-1914: Cartoons, Caricatures, and Illustrations and is able to radically enlarge it. The expansive scope of these pages can easily induce a little head spinning?the very best kind.

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Mormons Got Talent: the Choir Library Wayback Machine

My new calling as ward choir director came with the keys, so to speak, to the closet of old music. I cleaned it out, took it all home, and spread it all over the floor of our library to organize. I didn?t intend for this to be an archival research moment, but as I sorted and tossed I became drawn into the experience and starting reading slower and slower? it was, in a sense, a historical archive dating back at least to the late 1970s.

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