Ramah, Chiapas, and Vogt: What They Say about Mormons

As you drive around the little Mormon town of Ramah, New Mexico, close to the city of Gallup and Zuni Pueblo, you see a mailbox standing on a rustic post with an important name on it, Vogt. 

This name struck me again this morning, far from the Land of Enchantment, in an article celebrating the decades of the Harvard Chiapas Project. In it I not only learned more about the famous Evon Z. Vogt, of Ramah and his project, but also about Mormons.

Mormons, Ex- and Still-

Ex-Mormons, the very word suggests an absence.  

That ostensible absence, the missing center in a world of apparently isolated, secular individuals bereft of religion’s anchor and community was the subject of a paper read by researcher E. Marshall Brooks at yesterday’s meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Washington DC.  

An hour or so before a die-in claimed all who were in the central lobby of the Woodley Park Marriott, where the conference is taking place, Marshall convoked his panel concerning secularity and personal meaning.  He, a non-Mormon Ph.D. student at Rutgers University, had come to Utah to carry out ethnographic research for his dissertation.  

Church Power, Governance, and Private Voluntary Organizations

In her recent editorial about ecclesiastical actions and women, acclaimed author Terry Tempest Williams wrote, while referring to “spiritual patrimony” of “organizational misogyny”:

This kind of governance is not tolerated in the United States of America. And it should not be tolerated by those of us who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The word governance here opens an intriguing avenue of comprehending Mormonism.  This is particularly clear if we compare it with another term used by a contrasting writer (this time an attorney), Ashley Isaacson Woolley:  

A church is a voluntary private association based on shared convictions (one of which, for Mormonism, is the inspired calling of leaders).

In this sling-fest of contrasting terms from the conflict over so called “courts of love” these two ideas governance--something that seems to pertain to the state, versus  private, voluntary organization we see contrasting idea of what a Church is and does. 

In the Spirit: A Central Stage of Mormon LIfe

An aspect of Mormon life that has fascinated me for a long time is spiritual experience. Yet this is a difficult area to write about. Here I feel strengthened to write because of a moment in my field, anthropology, called the ontological moment. Most importantly, this moment does not grant priority to propositions that say the standard world is the only one, i.e. that there is not a singular reality out there per se.

Why this is important to me as I write will become clear, I hope, from the following vignette.

An I for an Eye

We had just met and were standing in the kitchen. She a woman about my age from Huancayo in Peru who had come to work in the household’s kitchen and I, well that is the story. 

“Are you a brother,” an hermano, she asked me. I hesitated. 

That word, hermano, has so many meanings in Spanish. I thought maybe she was asking if I was an Evangelical but that seemed out of context and strange.  

“What do you mean?”

On Religious Authority, Gay Marriage, and the Family

Elder Dallin Oaks’ latest bursts against gay marriage not only remind one he has spent a good part of his career as an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on a jeremiad to first define so-called “traditional” marriage and family, second to make them sacred, and third to impose them on a general public--far beyond the ranks of members of his faith. Though he has tried with his words and political activities to stop the flood of history on this issue, it seems he has failed. And, he fears the net result will be a decrease in the space allowed for religious leaders to influence publics.

While I can only imagine the anguish he must feel at the failure of his gargantuan efforts and the ways he must be cloaking it all in conviction and even notions of spiritual martyrdom, there are analytical issues here that interest me.

Mormons Abroad

A warm, sunny day in Cusco and I am sitting in a cafe, out of the bright light, slowly eating some ice cream.  Besides the waiters, only two other people claim space in the immensity of the empty cafe, though later it will be wall to wall people. 

They are an older couple.  The man’s face is gaunt and sharp, his hair closely cropped while the woman wears glasses and has her hair died a too light blond. Occasionally their conversation reaches me. It perked me up.  They are speaking with Utah accents and have mentioned places like Bountiful, Park City and Farmington. 

The likelihood the only three customers in this large cafe not oriented to tourists being from Utah seems remote.  But there are factors that could make it much less remote. 

On Mormon Identity and the Mormon Eye

I am in Peru, staying with a family with whom I have stayed before. They are not LDS and I have had little to do with the Latter-day Saint community here. 

My work in Cusco has been on food and on popular Catholicism including its relationship with native Andean religiosity. A housekeeper has recently come to work in the family’s home. She is Mormon and I feel things have changed for me. 

Are Mormons Passive Aggressive?

I am going to write something that will probably go against the grain, and may even produce conflict.  Why? Because I think there are lots of problems with the interpretation of MIchael J. Steven’s data showing Latter-day Saints in Weber county have a high preference for passive aggressive strategies of resolving potential conflict.

Stevens’ data are fascinating, if not surprising for anyone who has been observing Utah culture and, especially, LDS ways for a long time. Indeed, they correlate with work being d

Ideological Pressure and Social Science

As the bandwagon to censure Mark Regenerus and his work on marriage grows, following its harsh rejection by a MIchigan judge,  the hoard focuses on conservative funding of social science and attempts to create the appearance of a debate within the field for the purposes of public relations and for legal action.  Nevertheless, there is much more that should be considered. 

Let me first be a little personal.  In 1990 I went to Buenos Aires as a recently minted Ph.D., on a Fulbright grant, to help train a new generation of social scientists since their ranks had been decimated by the dirty wars, when voices raised in concern or opposition, and science that ran counter to official presumption, were silenced, often for good. At the time, it seemed to my naive self that the military government’s censoring of social science was a rare event. 

Fraud Accusations, the Exception, and Mormonism: Thoughts on the Study of Religion

My newsfeed trumpeted this morning that the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will not have to appear before a British magistrate to face fraud charges. From this news item surge issues that are analytically interesting, even without my having read the court documents. 

I am fascinated with the idea that religious preaching and organization could potentially be judged by transactional standards of fraud, or not. In either case, we see a division of the social world into different segments where divergent standards of evaluation ostensibly hold.