Anti-Mormon bigotry on the Atlas

[tmthforu94]

Speaking as one of Romney's most ardent backers and as a person who is friends with many in the LDS and has attended the church and follows many of their principles, I do find it discouraging. I noticed both among other Republicans during the primaries and with Democrats in the GE that it was occasionally used as a way to throw in an attack at Mitt. It expands beyond this forum as well - you rarely see backlash if a comedian or someone else makes digs at Mormons, whether it be their refusal to drink alcohol or their polygamous history.

Religion shouldn't be a major factor when it comes to politics. There needs to be an across-the-board understanding of that instead of the current "pick and choose" method many on both sides do.

[Napoleon]

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Mormons display an active disinterest in historical facts related to the indigenous peoples of North America. Why should I respect their disturbing cult when they give no respect to the well-documented histories of my ancestors? I have Mormon friends but I abhor their religion and I won't apologize for it. I also abhor snake-handlers, ultra-montane Catholicism and other primordial  denominations that reject modernity in favor of superstition, sexism and bigotry.

[Lief 🗽]

Wait, Kate Upton is a morwoman?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I've never met a Mormon who wasn't an incredibly decent, upstanding, and generally nice person.  Ever.  I'm not sure what is is, but the LDS does a good job stamping out some really friendly folks.

Mormons are conditioned to appear decent, upstanding and nice on the surface via their missionary experience. Once you come to know enough Mormons, you realize that Mormon politeness is an idiomatic peculiarity of their unique culture rather than a generalizable personality trait.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've never met a Mormon who wasn't an incredibly decent, upstanding, and generally nice person.  Ever.  I'm not sure what is is, but the LDS does a good job stamping out some really friendly folks.

Mormons are conditioned to appear decent, upstanding and nice on the surface via their missionary experience. Once you come to know enough Mormons, you realize that Mormon politeness is an idiomatic peculiarity of their unique culture rather than a generalizable personality trait.

Do you think anybody really thinks otherwise? The idea that adherence to a specific religion creates generalizable personality traits, as opposed to cultural peculiarities, in pretty much any circumstance is a little silly.

[Hamster]

Serious question - would people get their feathers similarly ruffled at "anti-Scientologist bigotry"? I really don't see much of a difference. There's a lot of open water between established religions that have been around for centuries and a creepy cult invented by a literal conman.

How old must a religion be before passing this test? At what point did Muhammad stop being just a creepy conman?

Would you genuinely be at all interested in the relevant sociological classifications here or is this a purely rhetorical question?

I'm interested.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Serious question - would people get their feathers similarly ruffled at "anti-Scientologist bigotry"? I really don't see much of a difference. There's a lot of open water between established religions that have been around for centuries and a creepy cult invented by a literal conman.

How old must a religion be before passing this test? At what point did Muhammad stop being just a creepy conman?

Would you genuinely be at all interested in the relevant sociological classifications here or is this a purely rhetorical question?

I'm interested.

One common model for this--which has its origins with Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch so, you know, take that for what it's worth (I'm suspicious of it but I'm suspicious of most other set typologies of this subject as well; memphis's question isn't actually a bad one at all except in its characteristically self-superior and intolerant phrasing and implications)--focuses on the role that a religion serves within the society or societies where people practice it, and is referred to as 'methodologically atheistic' but could as easily be described as epistemologically agnostic. A religion starts out as a cult when its tenets and practices are 'deviant and novel', but what constitutes sufficient non-deviance and non-novelty for a new religious movement to stop being a cult is unclear (like I said, phrased less derisively memphis's question isn't at all bad). Once a cult stops being a cult it can go through stages of being a sect--sometimes defined as a cult beginning to integrate itself into society in some way or another, sometimes defined as a cult that happens to have been formed as a protest against elements of an already existing religion--a church--a religious movement that dominates its host society, like the Latin Church in Western Europe in the Middle Ages or Islam in much of the modern Middle East and North Africa (obviously not only in those places)--a denomination--a church that's either splintered or lost its dominant status but maintained the good and more or less uncontroversial relationships with the rest of society that characterize churches--an ecclesia--a church whose hold on its host society has weakened or was less successful in the first place but that hasn't fallen or splintered into denomination status, like Christianity in most countries where it's still the state religion--or, depending on what sociologist's (or sociologists') work you're looking at, a few other, less universally recognized classifications.

Mormonism is, sociologically, almost definitely not a cult, because is has relatively good relationships with civil society external to itself; does not seek to entirely isolate its members from mainstream society and, indeed, seeks to influence mainstream society politically; is established as the predominant religious tradition of an identifiable geographic and cultural area; does not, despite the office of 'prophet, seer, and revelator', focus solely on the charismatic authority of any one living person but on a more diffuse, delegated set of authorities and a more or less set repository of oral or written material, in this case as in most others in the West written; does not function as a financial scam on its members or on others; has at least tolerant relationships with other denominations (although deviation from this can be the mark of an especially triumphalist dominant church as well as of a cult); is willing to accommodate at least some theological and liturgical disagreement and dissent; relies primarily on birth to replenish its membership, although it's still obviously aggressive about proselytizing; and is willing to accept or at least tolerate greater or lesser extents of involvement from different members depending on their situations and relative levels of devotion. FLDS is a cult because it doesn't meet any of these criteria except maybe not constituting a scam. Scientology is a cult because it doesn't meet any except maybe not having a single living authoritarian charismatic leader (it's unusually but not uniquely pernicious in seeking to both socioculturally isolate its members and influence society external to itself).

Islam as a whole is so obviously not a cult by any of these criteria that it's not worth discussing further, although certain movements within Islam have cult-like attributes, just as certain movements within Christianity do.

It's also worth noting that many sociologists of religion prefer the term 'new religious movement' because 'cult' in general use is so pejorative, especially those who reject some element of the above schema.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I've never met a Mormon who wasn't an incredibly decent, upstanding, and generally nice person.  Ever.  I'm not sure what is is, but the LDS does a good job stamping out some really friendly folks.

Mormons are conditioned to appear decent, upstanding and nice on the surface via their missionary experience. Once you come to know enough Mormons, you realize that Mormon politeness is an idiomatic peculiarity of their unique culture rather than a generalizable personality trait.

Do you think anybody really thinks otherwise? The idea that adherence to a specific religion creates generalizable personality traits, as opposed to cultural peculiarities, in pretty much any circumstance is a little silly.

Why are you nitpicking the part of my post that is the least interesting/useful? What I was trying to say is that Mormonism doesn't habituate a positive application of ethics, which results in increased politeness and friendliness as an outcome. It trains missionaries who must interface with the wider world.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've never met a Mormon who wasn't an incredibly decent, upstanding, and generally nice person.  Ever.  I'm not sure what is is, but the LDS does a good job stamping out some really friendly folks.

Mormons are conditioned to appear decent, upstanding and nice on the surface via their missionary experience. Once you come to know enough Mormons, you realize that Mormon politeness is an idiomatic peculiarity of their unique culture rather than a generalizable personality trait.

Do you think anybody really thinks otherwise? The idea that adherence to a specific religion creates generalizable personality traits, as opposed to cultural peculiarities, in pretty much any circumstance is a little silly.

Why are you nitpicking the part of my post that is the least interesting/useful?

The way I read that post you really only made the one point in it. I'm not sure what conceptual division between the first and second sentences you're going for here.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I've never met a Mormon who wasn't an incredibly decent, upstanding, and generally nice person.  Ever.  I'm not sure what is is, but the LDS does a good job stamping out some really friendly folks.

Mormons are conditioned to appear decent, upstanding and nice on the surface via their missionary experience. Once you come to know enough Mormons, you realize that Mormon politeness is an idiomatic peculiarity of their unique culture rather than a generalizable personality trait.

Do you think anybody really thinks otherwise? The idea that adherence to a specific religion creates generalizable personality traits, as opposed to cultural peculiarities, in pretty much any circumstance is a little silly.

Why are you nitpicking the part of my post that is the least interesting/useful?

The way I read that post you really only made the one point in it. I'm not sure what conceptual division between the first and second sentences you're going for here.

I just wanted to point out that missionary work has an impact on how Mormons are perceived in the wider world because it characterizes there mannerisms with the wider community and also their idiomatic tendencies amongst themselves.

I didn't take a Religion 200 class and I don't need to be condescended to because of it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I've never met a Mormon who wasn't an incredibly decent, upstanding, and generally nice person.  Ever.  I'm not sure what is is, but the LDS does a good job stamping out some really friendly folks.

Mormons are conditioned to appear decent, upstanding and nice on the surface via their missionary experience. Once you come to know enough Mormons, you realize that Mormon politeness is an idiomatic peculiarity of their unique culture rather than a generalizable personality trait.

Do you think anybody really thinks otherwise? The idea that adherence to a specific religion creates generalizable personality traits, as opposed to cultural peculiarities, in pretty much any circumstance is a little silly.

Why are you nitpicking the part of my post that is the least interesting/useful?

The way I read that post you really only made the one point in it. I'm not sure what conceptual division between the first and second sentences you're going for here.

I just wanted to point out that missionary work has an impact on how Mormons are perceived in the wider world because it characterizes there mannerisms with the wider community and also their idiomatic tendencies amongst themselves.

Okay, I understand better now. All I was asking was whether the stereotype of Mormon 'niceness' doesn't already implicitly recognize something like that (by being associated with Mormons, and since the white-and-black-clad missionaries on bicycles are the other big Mormon stereotype). If you do think that people fail to realize that I'll retract the question because you seem to know a lot more Mormons and people who live around Mormons than I do.

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I wasn't trying to condescend. I'm sorry if I ended up being condescending anyway.