Introducing "Mormonism and American Politics"

MORMONISM and American Politics

EDITED BY

RANDALL BALMER JANA RIESS

Introduction Randall Balmer and Jana Riess

The story of Mormonism in America is inextricably tied to politics. Joseph Smith’s youthful run-ins with the law over divination and treasure-hunting had political overtones, as did the accusations of his inappropriate behavior toward young women. Persecution fueled the Mormons’ peregrinations from Fayette, New York, to Kirtland, Ohio, to Far West, Missouri, where they ran into a buzz saw of political opposition, culminating in Governor Lilburn Boggs’s infamous “Extermination Order” of 1838 that chased the Mormons back across the Mississippi to Nauvoo, Illinois. Although Smith had negotiated favorable political terms for his Nauvoo settlement with Illinois authorities, his own political machinations hastened his demise. His run for the presidency in 1844, cut short by his murder at the hands of an angry mob on June 27, may have represented an attempt, however quixotic, by the perennial outsider to become the ultimate insider.

Politics, both internal and external, continued to buffet the Mormons.

Brigham Young’s emergence as leader of the majority of Latter-day Saints during the succession crisis following Smith’s death showcased his political skills, and his genius as a leader was never more in evidence than in the great trek to the Salt Lake Basin to create the political entity that Young called Deseret. Politics followed the Mormons there as well, especially

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when Deseret came under the jurisdiction of the United States at the conclusion of the Mexican War in 1848. The ensuing decades were replete with political tugs-of-war between the federal government and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over territory, jurisdiction, and especially polygamy.

The Mormon prophet Wilford Woodruff ’s Manifesto of 1890, which officially abandoned plural marriage, paved the way for Utah’s statehood six years later. The new state, populated then (as now) by a majority of Mormons, was entitled to send representatives to Washington. Although elected to Congress in 1898, B. H. Roberts was denied his seat in the House of Representatives because he was a polygamist. Reed Smoot, though not a polygamist himself, had to fight for his seat in the Senate from 1904 to 1907 as Congress conducted what amounted to a proxy war over the persistence of plural marriage. Despite the 1890 Manifesto, some Mormons had continued to practice polygamy through the turn of the twentieth century, but in 1904 Woodruff issued a second manifesto that made plural marriage an excommunicable offense. Smoot fi nally took office in 1907 and served until 1933.

By the middle decades of the twentieth century, Mormons were no longer outsiders in the political process. Ezra Taft Benson, who would later become president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, served the entirety of Dwight Eisenhower’s two presidencies as secretary of agriculture and exercised a significant role in strengthening the Mormon people’s political affiliation with the Republican Party. Throughout most of the twentieth century, Utah and many of the adjacent states in the socalled Mormon Corridor were represented by Mormons in Congress and in various state legislatures.

Still, the ultimate political office, the presidency of the United States, eluded Mormons, though not for lack of trying. Mormon aspirants to the presidency have ranged from the serious to the symbolic and have included Jon Huntsman, former Republican governor of Utah; Morris Udall, Democratic member of Congress from Arizona; Orrin Hatch, Republican senator from Utah; and Sonia Johnson, excommunicated Mormon feminist who ran a third-party campaign for the presidency in 1984. Two Mormons who mounted the most serious quests for a major-party nomination were George and Mitt Romney, father and son, both of them Republicans and both of them governors, who pursued their bids for the presidency forty years apart, in 1968 and 2008. Mitt Romney also ran a

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second time in 2012, clinching the Republican nomination after a bitter primary fight.

The papers in this volume, with the exception of three essays (John G. Turner on Brigham Young and “unpopular sovereignty,” Jana Riess on the removal of Congressman B. H. Roberts, and Randall Balmer on the contrast between George and Mitt Romney on the “Mormon question”), were fi rst presented at a conference on Mormonism and Politics, held at Columbia University, February 3–4, 2012. Pundits for months had been proclaiming the “Mormon Moment.” Just a few blocks to the south of the conference, The Book of Mormon musical was taking Broadway by storm.

Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah and former ambassador to China, had ended his quest for the Republican presidential nomination just a couple of weeks earlier, throwing his support to Mitt Romney, who would soon emerge as the presumptive Republican nominee.

In organizing the conference, we sought, first of all, to provide historical context for understanding the relationship between Mormonism and politics. We wanted a mix of Mormon and non-Mormon scholars, and we also wanted an interdisciplinary approach to the topic. We are confident that we were able to assemble the “A-list” of scholars on the topic. (If memory serves, only one person we asked to participate turned us down.)

On behalf of both the participants and the attendees, we should like to thank Emily Brennan, Chelsea Eben, and Joseph Blankholm of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life for their superb work in organizing the conference. We are grateful to Mark C. Taylor, chair of the religion department at Columbia and head of the Institute, for suggesting the idea.

Finally, we wish to thank Wendy Lochner, Christine Dunbar, Roy Thomas, and the other professionals at Columbia University Press for shepherding this volume to publication.

Mormonism and American Politics is organized chronologically, beginning with Richard Lyman Bushman’s analysis of Joseph Smith’s emphasis on freedom and equality during his abortive presidential campaign of 1844.

John G. Turner places Brigham Young in the context of nineteenth-century debates about popular sovereignty, and Jana Riess explores the antipolygamy rhetoric that bedeviled Mormons generally and effectively terminated the political career of B. H. Roberts. Matthew Bowman charts some of the progressive impulses within Mormonism in the early twentieth century.

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Following the Woodruff Manifesto of 1890 and Utah’s admission to statehood six years later, Mormons sought to integrate themselves more fully into American culture and politics during the first half of the twentieth century. Jan Shipps underscores the importance of Ezra Taft Benson in pushing Mormons away from the New Deal and toward the political right.

Russell Arben Fox demonstrates that, along with many other Americans, Mormons were enamored of American civil religion, and Philip Barlow’s essay explores Mormonism’s relationship to the discourses of American and religious exceptionalism. Randall Balmer contrasts the handling of the “Mormon question” on the part of father and son, George and Mitt Romney.

George Romney willingly talked about his faith, whereas Mitt Romney, in a very different historical context, studiously avoided the topic.

In the final section, David Campbell, Christopher Karpowitz, and Quin Monson employ social-scientific methods to analyze Mormons’ political attitudes and behavior. One might expect that a people who endured persecution themselves would assume a more forceful role in advocating for the rights of other minorities, but that has not always been the case. Max Mueller examines the vexing issue of race throughout the history of the Latter-day Saints, and Claudia Bushman shows that although Mormon women do not speak with one voice, many yearn for equality, fuller recognition, and leadership possibilities within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Joanna Brooks uses the notion of “undergrounding” to understand Mormon efforts to pass Proposition 8 in California and thereby overturn same-sex marriage. Finally, Peggy Fletcher Stack analyzes media coverage of Mitt Romney’s campaigns for the presidency in 2008 and 2012.

Collectively, these essays raise important questions: What is the status of the outsider in American political culture? What drives outsiders to seek a place at the table, and how does cultural acceptance affect their sense of identity? After overwhelming support for Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, for example, Mormonism’s surprising turn toward political conservatism in the mid-twentieth century might be seen against the background of Mormons’ political, economic, and cultural coming-of-age. That is, apart from the idiosyncrasies of personalities and politics, as Mormons became more assimilated into American life, they became increasingly conservative. They came to believe that they had interests to protect, including the protection of the traditional nuclear family and an investment in the American enterprise that lured them toward the right of the political spec-

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trum in the expectation (misguided or not) that more conservative policies might protect those interests. Mormons’ political views have changed with their shifting cultural locations, from the literal borderlands of the United States to the centers of power, thereby becoming insiders, invested in the political process and deeply committed to patriotism.

That turn toward the right was not always comfortable. George Romney would be considered a liberal by today’s political standards, and his son Mitt Romney’s governorship in Massachusetts was liberal in many ways, though he later actively disowned his accomplishments in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination. Mormon politicians, like all good politicians, know how to read the political winds and trim their sails accordingly.

For all of their political success, however, Mormons still fell short of capturing the ultimate political prize, the presidency of the United States, an office replete with both power and symbolism. Ever since the victory of John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, in the 1960 presidential election, various groups have viewed the presidency as the ultimate validation of their transition from outsider to insider status. For those inclined to see the glass as half full, the grand narrative of American culture, including American political culture, has become increasingly inclusive, and nothing illustrates that better than the election of an African American as president in 2008 and 2012. But as one group wins cultural acceptance, there’s always another waiting in the wings—women, Jews, gays, Hispanics, Asians, Mormons, and, perhaps in a more distant future, Muslims or secularists. All seek the legitimation of political success, which often pits one group against another. Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012 came at the expense of Mitt Romney, the first Mormon to win the presidential nomination of a major political party.

Despite Mormons’ success at local and state levels, no Mormon has yet captured the presidency. Joseph Smith’s unlikely campaign was more than a century premature, but the fact that Mitt Romney was a plausible candidate provides an index for how far Mormons have progressed from outsiders to insiders. The “Mormon Moment” of 2012 may not have culminated with the White House, but the opportunity to win the presidency, and thereby attain the ultimate prize and validation in American politics, will almost certainly present itself again.