Is this an unrealistic fear, or am I on to something?

[creekster]

My fear is that President Romney would take a large amount of criticism if/when he tackles entitlements, government waste, tax reform, etc. We are a nation of special interests. Get rid of this social program but don't touch my mortgage interest deducation. The reforms the USA needs are extensive and any president who attempts to tackle the fiscal problems will be in the crosshairs of every special interest and many citizens.

I worry Mormons will take a Romney victory as an affirmation of their religion instead of keeping an arms-length distance. And when the sledding gets tough, a Romney presidency could become unpopular and subject to criticism. And by extension, that criticism will flow to the LDS church and its members because they so readily embraced Romney as a validation of their religion.

Yes, I get very unhappy and nervous whenever Harry Reid receives criticism!

[myboynoah]

My fear is that President Romney would take a large amount of criticism if/when he tackles entitlements, government waste, tax reform, etc. We are a nation of special interests. Get rid of this social program but don't touch my mortgage interest deducation. The reforms the USA needs are extensive and any president who attempts to tackle the fiscal problems will be in the crosshairs of every special interest and many citizens.

I worry Mormons will take a Romney victory as an affirmation of their religion instead of keeping an arms-length distance. And when the sledding gets tough, a Romney presidency could become unpopular and subject to criticism. And by extension, that criticism will flow to the LDS church and its members because they so readily embraced Romney as a validation of their religion.

Don't worry. If God wants Mitt to be the PotUS, then everything will go swimmingly. God is in charge.

[Portland Ute]

But I agree that it began earlier on with Obama. I don't know, maybe it has gotten worse over the last 20 years.

Really? It absolutely was NOT earlier on with Obama.

The rancor coming from Democrats following the close election and the recount and Supreme Court decision was deafening.

It started at a fever pitch before he took office.

Please.

GWB did get a bit of a breather after 9-11.

[myboynoah]

Really? It absolutely was NOT earlier on with Obama.

The rancor coming from Democrats following the close election and the recount and Supreme Court decision was deafening.

It started at a fever pitch before he took office.

Please.

GWB did get a bit of a breather after 9-11.

That's a good point, PU. The left went nuts after that election, breather after 9-11, then back to business as usualy by the next election.

[Jacob]

You may not be a registered democrat, but the fact that you tend to vote democrat puts you right in line with the rest of the democrats. The party registration is fairly insignificant. I believe, for most people, this loose affiliation with a party leads to the same biases that registered partisans show. It seems to me that your post demonstrates your bias in your inability to identify the anger, hatred and rancor shown towards Bush by democrats. Or the anger, hatred, and rancor shown by MSNBC et al. It is true that MSNBC is not nearly as successful as Fox News. But I'm not sure why that should mean that the intense partisan laguage etc, is less prevelan on one side than on the other.

I think your fear is unfounded. Political beliefs are much like religious beliefs in that people rarely change them despite all evidence that they are incorrect.

[Portland Ute]

That's a good point, PU. The left went nuts after that election, breather after 9-11, then back to business as usualy by the next election.

A lot of the left's rhetoric during the post election period was even more damaging, IMO, than anything levied against Obama.

Tons of stuff about Bush not legally being the president. That he was a fraud. That his presidency was illegal. That he stole the election.

Stuff that really dug at the foundations of the ideal of a democracy.

Now, Obama has had to deal with a *tiny* fraction of that kind of thing from the birthers, but not on nearly the same scale that Bush had to.

Bush dealt with some seriously sinister stuff leading up to and following his election. It wasn't just that his policy was bad or that he was a bad guy...it was that the republic was violated by election fraud. Serious stuff, IMO.

In the past, and even with Obama (discounting the very minor effect of the birthers) the opposition party has moved past the election results and moved on to attacking policies and character. Not so with the election of Bush. The very legitimacy of his election and the democratic process was questioned and put in doubt.

[Portland Ute]

I think your fear is unfounded. Political beliefs are much like religious beliefs in that people rarely change them despite all evidence that they are incorrect.

I think this is untrue. I think as people pass through life, just as you see here on CUF with regards to religious beliefs, people's views change in regards to politics. Often, they soften or become more nuanced. Sometimes, they become more certain and intolerant.

[RobinFinderson]

You may not be a registered democrat, but the fact that you tend to vote democrat puts you right in line with the rest of the democrats. The party registration is fairly insignificant. I believe, for most people, this loose affiliation with a party leads to the same biases that registered partisans show. It seems to me that your post demonstrates your bias in your inability to identify the anger, hatred and rancor shown towards Bush by democrats. Or the anger, hatred, and rancor shown by MSNBC et al. It is true that MSNBC is not nearly as successful as Fox News. But I'm not sure why that should mean that the intense partisan laguage etc, is less prevelan on one side than on the other.

I think your fear is unfounded. Political beliefs are much like religious beliefs in that people rarely change them despite all evidence that they are incorrect.

Here is one way to think about it -- it is far less likely that the vitriol is exactly equal than it is that it is lopsided. It makes no sense to argue that it is equal without also offering a measuring stick to use in justifying that position.

Also, not all angry feelings are equally poisonous. There is stuff in this world that should rightly make people angry. Watching Chris Dodd throw tantrums on behalf of the 'liberal' MPAA makes me angry. What a freaking clown.

[il Padrino Ute]

I've seen things posted here and elsewhere regarding the difficult time some LDS people have had with the church's strong stand on Prop 8 in California. I admit, it caused me some consternation, as I have a gay brother who is now married to a guy. I've been dealing with the church's stance against homosexuals for years now, on a personal level, and I have opinions and thoughts that don't coincide with the church's position on the issue.

`I think the reason I haven't registered as a democrat is that I don't buy completely into the party platform, just as I don't buy completely into the Republican party platform.

Maybe it started with Clinton, maybe Bush-Gore was the primary catalyst, but I think the political rancor between the parties right now is worse than I've ever seen. My personal opinion is that the rancor is stronger coming from the right toward Obama and the democrats - perhaps it seems that way because it's a democrat in office, but I don't think so. I think a lot of it comes from the proliferation of right-wing radio and television talk shows - there are just a lot more of those than there are for the left.

I remember when Bush was inaugurated following that hotly-contested 2000 election. But I don't remember the rancorous backlash from the left that I saw from the right after Obama was elected. I remember hearing talking heads calling Obama a failure, and recall thinking in response, "At least let him get through the first hundred days in office." My opinion is it was a designed effort to sway public opinion against Obama. There were old guys sitting at the post office and stores with posters of Obama-Hitler during his first year in office - I don't remember seeing anything comparable regarding Bush. Sure, there were probably things like that, but they seemed to me to be more isolated.

So after that long, rambling preamble, here's my concern. I have jokingly (but not completely) referred to the "Church of the Republican Party" for years. This is because I see people, particularly Republicans, turning Republican vs. Democrat into "Good vs. Evil." An extension of that is the the question I've seen debated many times on CB, "Can you be a good Mormon and a democrat" - there appear to be many LDS who answer that question with "No."

Because of this, particularly after the very polarizing Prop 8 campaign, is the political rancor, the close identification of LDS members with the Republican party, and the constant disparagement of "Liberals" and the "Left wing wackos" by the conservative media and public resulting in good people who have divergent political view to reconsider their religious beliefs?

Republican LDS members may not name call non-republican members directly, but those who aren't staunch Republicans certainly hear it all the time. Deny it if you will, but the ties between the Republican party and the church are extremely close, so much so that those with more moderate or liberal views (I can state this from my own experience) start to wonder if the church's principles are really in line with what they believe.

I know what some of you are thinking: well, the Democrat party's ideas aren't all in line with gospel principles, either. That's absolutely true. But then the Democrat party isn't ideologically aligned with the Church. I don't feel like rejecting the Democrat party is rejecting my faith; I can't say that regarding the Republican party.

My fear is that the close ties between the Church and the Republican party, as well as the hate coming from the far right toward "liberals" and others who lean left of center is having a negative effect on some LDS members' faith and alignment with the church. I fear that as the rancor gets worse, and as the ties become stronger (i.e. President Romney) it's going to become more significant.

Between the Church and the Republican Party or the Church and members of the Republican Party?

[il Padrino Ute]

A lot of the left's rhetoric during the post election period was even more damaging, IMO, than anything levied against Obama.

Tons of stuff about Bush not legally being the president. That he was a fraud. That his presidency was illegal. That he stole the election.

Stuff that really dug at the foundations of the ideal of a democracy.

Now, Obama has had to deal with a *tiny* fraction of that kind of thing from the birthers, but not on nearly the same scale that Bush had to.

Bush dealt with some seriously sinister stuff leading up to and following his election. It wasn't just that his policy was bad or that he was a bad guy...it was that the republic was violated by election fraud. Serious stuff, IMO.

In the past, and even with Obama (discounting the very minor effect of the birthers) the opposition party has moved past the election results and moved on to attacking policies and character. Not so with the election of Bush. The very legitimacy of his election and the democratic process was questioned and put in doubt.

[RobinFinderson]

To address SoCal's interesting thread, politics definitely played a role in my own religious unraveling. I really wasn't very political for most of my youth. I ran and won a YMCA-sponsored Montana gubernatorial race as a Republican, which I assumed I was on account of my parents. In college, I started to really think, critically, about politics, and I just couldn't believe what I was hearing from fellow Republicans about feminism (I joined the feminist club, because supporting a movement to advance the broader cultural acceptance of women in traditionally male-dominated social spheres, and to argue that women should be equally recognized for the same work as their male counterparts, well that just seemed like a no-brainer). There was also the Republican position that basically abdicated our social responsibility to take care of our poor (as one of the absolutely most basic moral principles of any society with access to the material means to do so), leaving the 'least among us' to suffer, live or die based on a random crapshoot chance that they run into some charitable individuals to sponsor them?

Look, it wasn't that I couldn't accept that there were many valid ideas coming from conservatives. The truth is, I nearly voted for Bush2. I'm a libertarian at heart, so there are some conservative concepts that I find very appealing. But the dumb vitriol that I was hearing at BYU, directed against 'liberals,' feminists, and gay people... it was all so obviously horrible, and based on such gross mischaracterizations of who each of those groups of people really are, that it curdled my faith in the Republican party.

Anyhow, to cut to the chase, it was politics that awoke in me a kind of criticality of moral and ethical claims. I eventually turned that critical eye to the church, and decided that it was a deeply morally flawed institution (at that time, primarily due to its treatment of gay people and women). I still wanted to be a part of the church, because I felt a deep cultural attachment to it, so I struggled to find personal interpretations of scripture and customs that could provide enough of a spiritual rock for me to cling to. This was my religious state of mind when I graduated from BYU and left Utah.

Then something unexpected happened. The farther we got from BYU, the less I felt the need to attend church. I didn't go completely inactive during grad school, but it got down to once or twice a month. I realize that that is very active by some people's standards, but it was enough distance from the church for me to realize that I didn't really need it in my life, and that I could enjoy the benefits of associating with people who understand my cultural bearings via the internet. That was my religious state of mind when I finished grad school and we moved to California.

In California, I hopped back into the church thing. I became a very popular Sunday School teacher in a big ward. I had my doubts about all of the truth claims of the church, but I still hadn't decided to call my skepticism 'atheism,' and I had no problem teaching passionately about Christ's teachings regarding our moral responsibilities to care for one another. Part of my original desire to stick with the church sprang from the hope that I could work to change the culture of the church from within, and teaching Sunday School seemed like the perfect place to do that. Prop 8 was just getting started, and that is where that lovely little ward I had grown to enjoy turned into something very frightening. The testimonies I heard from men and women I had come to really care about, and see as my religious 'brothers and sisters,' were so vicious and beyond the pale in reference to gay people. One man stood up and bragged about stealing anti-prop8 yard signs with a member of the bishopric. It was unbelievable. The homophobic stuff that got said in the relative privacy of Elders' quorum was even worse than the stuff that came over the pulpit. While I know that I wasn't the only person who felt absolutely sick about all of this, I never felt that it was my place to say anything. It was really Prop 8 and the church's response that made me realize that I needed to sever my formal ties with the church.

So the church's political bent played a couple of roles in that story.

[Sleeping in EQ]

So after that long, rambling preamble, here's my concern. I have jokingly (but not completely) referred to the "Church of the Republican Party" for years. This is because I see people, particularly Republicans, turning Republican vs. Democrat into "Good vs. Evil." An extension of that is the the question I've seen debated many times on CB, "Can you be a good Mormon and a democrat" - there appear to be many LDS who answer that question with "No."

Your concern is legitimate. I think general-level Church leaders share it, and they may be getting a clue that it is becoming more of a problem (it is).

However, there are more pressing problems at the general-level. Not the least of these problems is a division in the Church rooted in correlation.

As access to information has weakened correlation's influence on some members, leaders have responded by ratcheting up the rhetoric of sticking to manuals and rallying around shared nouns. This increased rhetoric contributes to the rise of the obnoxious Mormon simpleton, and to the sometimes hyper-critical reactions of the uncorrelated. I've seen absurdities on both sides of this split, but those absurdities are symptoms of a Church that is in an impossible situation in terms of correlation.

On the one hand, the Church is trying to account for some of the dissonant facts by making available Joseph Smith's papers, works on Mountain Meadows, and so on, but on the other hand, any member who evidences knowledge of dissonant facts from these same works risks being alienated by the most fervently correlated members.

In my view, the Church is going to need something other than correlation to hold it together.

In the past, establishing the Church, and Deseret, and railing against persecutions and the federal government contributed to cohesiveness. Today, I believe the Church may try to replace the diminished efficacy of correlation with political activism in the name of religious freedom. That's certainly one way forward.

If this is so, brace yourself because unless general leadership sucessfully communicates a concern for alienating members politically, and has a strategy that makes people of a variety of political persuasions genuinely welcome, the political problem in the Church will worsen.

[Green Monstah]

My fear is that the close ties between the Church and the Republican party, as well as the hate coming from the far right toward "liberals" and others who lean left of center is having a negative effect on some LDS members' faith and alignment with the church. I fear that as the rancor gets worse, and as the ties become stronger (i.e. President Romney) it's going to become more significant.

In general, your fears are legitimate: political views can lead to marginalization in the Church. I wonder if this is any more/less true today than in years gone by. I met a woman on my mission who was raised in SLC and got caught up in the 60s (sans the drugs), but was anti-war, pro-love, feminist, etc. She felt completely shunned her last two years of high school because of how she dressed and her political stances, went to college in Oregon and never attended Church again. She claimed she still read her scriptures regularly, became an artist and lives a nice life in a pretty swanky town in Oregon. At any rate, I can't say whether the risk is higher or lower than another time/era, but I can say that the risk is there.

Also, for those of us in college/university in 04 and 08, I found the left to be far more aggressive, condescending and degrading than the right has been, but maybe that's just because I felt like the "only" conservative in a sea of liberals (well, in 08 I did; in 04 I was @ BYU). I think this may be what you're experiencing at church.

[cowboy]

I think there are a couple of issues to address here. While the church takes positions from time to time on specific policies, this is not an endorsement of any party. The church encourages members to be engaged, and as they become engaged they become passionate. This, along with common positions on church-advocated policies produces an outspoken core group that emits a more homogenous feeling than I think actually exists, and leaves the impression that the church is pushing the GOP on its members.

While the church has certainly been involved in specific issues, I don’t ever recall specific endorsements of a political party at any level in church. That doesn’t mean that members aren’t overwhelmingly Republican/conservative, but I think that’s mostly a function of the church’s positions on the specific issues of abortion and marriage. I think it’s important to point out that the church doesn’t discourage Democratic/liberal leanings, and I doubt, for example, that Harry Reid is getting much pressure from the brethren to become a Republican, etc.

While the church hasn’t explicitly taken a stand on ideology, it has taken a stand on some issues, and It seems reasonable that the majority of members will align with the party whose platform is on the same side of those specific issues. Still, I think that there is a large portion of the church membership that is not 100% behind the GOP platform. In fact, I think if you strip party affiliation and stupid talking points away, we are pretty diverse in our ideology.

The problems arise when people are too insecure or socially aware to understand that everybody has the right to an opinion, and that two contradicting opinions can both be based on logical foundations. Unfortunately, ignorant and insecure people on every side tend to demonize or belittle people with different ideology. In church, it is an unfortunate fact that those types of folks will 1) be conservative because most members are, and 2) get away with spouting their crap because everyone else wants to avoid confrontation in church.

More than a church thing, I think this is a training thing. Leaders and teachers need to be taught to avoid political discussions in church. They also need to be taught how to get brother Jackson to shut his pie hole when he starts spouting off about how the UN is trying to take control of the country and force us all to speak Swahili.

Oh, and Robin, don’t be an idiot. You know darn good and well that the vast majority of conservatives have no intention of “leaving the 'least among us' to suffer, live or die based on a random crapshoot chance that they run into some charitable individuals to sponsor them.”

[Indy Coug]

I love Harry Reid. Because of him, I can prove that

1. Not all Mormons are Republican.
2. I won't automatically vote for someone just because they're Mormon.