The antidote to correlation is … the Internet?

Remember when Russell M. Nelson was working his way through demographic groups, challenging them to do a social media fast? First it was children, then it was women. I was so excited for the men’s turn. As a regular general conference Twitter commenter, I was looking forward to being harangued about 90% less often.

Of course, that challenge never came. I wondered why the call never came to the demographic group that is the most abusive on social media but it had come to women who found community and connection on Twitter that I and many others hadn’t felt from IRL church in years

The fraught relationship between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the media—social, traditional and otherwise—is at the heart of “Mediated Mormons,” a new book by Rosemary Avance, an assistant professor of media and strategic communications at Oklahoma State University and published by the University of Utah Press.

Avance, who is not a member, studied the “Mormon moment” of 2012-13: Mitt Romney was running for president, the “I’m a Mormon” campaign was in full swing, “The Book of Mormon Musical” was a Broadway darling. More conversations than ever were happening, and the LDS church jumped in to drive many of those conversations. But what Avance noted early in her book, and what stayed in the back of my mind as I read, was this simple fact: The Internet allowed people to find each other, to share their thoughts, stories and hurts, to make their own community and plan their own lessons and talks. The Internet, she said, made everything more “uncorrelated,” in defiance of the church’s carefully correlated material, doctrine and image (37). Here are some other highlights.

The etic, or outsider’s view

Because Avance has never been a church member, her observations come only from what she’s seen. Without the ingrained language or knee-jerk reaction to make explanations or add something about the good intentions of a man who has done something hurtful, she just calls it like she sees it. Nowhere was this more jarring than when discussing priesthood: “A woman’s access to the priesthood and its power is limited to what she can gain secondhand through marriage or another close association with a male priesthood holder. The concept of priesthood authority not only sets Mormonism apart from other Christian groups but also creates a structure with the LDS culture that gives both spoken and unspoken normative authority to those with a divinely sanctioned voice. In practical terms, this means church leaders have more sway than congregants, that men have more authority than women, and that ultimately the refusal to accept or submit to counsel from leaders is tantamount to rejecting God’s chosen leadership and thus God himself. The stakes are high in a culture built on the concept of priesthood authority” (38).

None of this is revelatory to anyone reading The Exponent II, but to see it laid out so baldly made clear how dangerous such a structure is. Putting any man in such a position that he believes he is a stand-in for God—that his words carry the force of the words of God—is ripe for abuse. And it has been abused for all of human history. Abusing the authority of gods is as old as humanity’s belief in gods.

As someone who was an insider, with an emic view, who has now left and is moving to outsider, I appreciated these insights. I will never not have Mormonism in me; there is no way to excise the teachings and culture and traditions that have become part of my DNA in the last several decades.

Wear Pants to Church Day

Remember this day? I was a reporter in Provo, Utah, when the Facebook group appeared encouraging women to wear pants one Sunday in mid-December 2012. I watched as people melted down in rage at this proposal, as word of death threats spread, as people I knew demonstrated their “rightness” by insisting they would wear dresses. When the day came, I put on pants and went to church, grateful that we had a stakewide sacrament meeting and no other classes, so only my roommates noticed.

A decade removed from that, I regularly wore pants to church, including when I taught Relief Society and spoke in sacrament meeting. Sometimes it was to make a point, but sometimes I just felt like wearing pants. Other women—women who definitely were not progressive Mormons—also wore pants to church. Sometime in the intervening years, pants became a sartorial choice, not an activist one.

Avance’s discussion on wearing pants to church gave me a lot to consider. First, it shone light on the culture vs. doctrine discussion and how sometimes, or often, there is no difference. There is zero doctrine about what to wear to church, no policy, just a statement in a manual somewhere that you should wear your best to church. Yet people accused the participants of being radical feminists, which in Mormonism is a bad word, they accused female pants-wearers of stoking contention—and contention is of the devil!—and they reported the page to Facebook as hate speech so many times that Facebook removed the group (115-117).

What really stood out, however, were the comments that such a “protest” did not belong in sacrament meeting. It was not the time or place. That’s not what sacrament meeting is for. Which begs the question: What is the right time or place for taking a stand about inequality in the church? It seems, based on what I have heard, the correct time and place is never and nowhere. It’s not taking a stand at all. If something as innocuous as wearing pants, or sitting on the stand or holding a baby during a baby blessing, offends other congregants so much that they must be shut down, then there is no way to disagree. There is only one correct path, and that is agreeing, or at least submitting to, leadership, because it is from God and therefore is above repute.

To be clear, I do not agree with that—but if sacrament meeting is not the place to make any kind of stand, then perhaps when you are a speaker in general conference with some number of people worldwide listening, it is not the place to air your political opinions either?

Find “Mediated Mormons” at bookshop.org (support independent bookstores!), University of Utah Press or wherever books are sold.

Note: I received a free copy from University of Utah Press in exchange for an honest review.