Theocracy in America - influence of Mormon Church on society in Utah

Washington Monthly, April, 2001 by Stephanie Mencimer

What Gentile life in Mormon Utah can teach us about church and state

IF THE GOVERNMENT HAD BEEN AS effective in eradicating religion from public life as George W. Bush likes to insist it has, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) would not have been able to turn public park benches into church pews. But that's pretty much what happened in 1998, when LDS leaders secretly persuaded then-Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini to sell a block of Main Street to the church for $8.1 million. The church had been coveting the downtown land for years, as it slowly snatched up all the real estate surrounding the Mormon Tabernacle, its religious capital.

Initially, the church said it would remove the street and build a landscaped park that would "bring a little bit of Paris to Salt Lake," complete with reflecting pool. The city planning commission approved the deal on condition that the new plaza be regulated as a public park. But the city council signed off on a slightly different proposal, which quietly granted the church exclusive rights to proselytize in the park and to keep out those it found undesirable.

As a result, people crossing the plaza on their way to Nordstrom can now be bombarded with religious brochures and broadcasts of LDS church president Gordon B. Hinckley droning on about the evils of "so-called gays and lesbians." Passersby, however, can no longer use the space to protest (as they did during the debate over the Equal Rights Amendment), listen to music, sunbathe, skateboard, smoke, or do any of the other things they used to be able to do on the city street and sidewalks. Mormon security guards will ensure that the poor schmuck smoking a Newport and sporting an "I'm with shithead" T-shirt finds another route to the mall.

I thought about those poor schmucks in January, when Bush announced his intention to create a White House office of faith-based initiatives. Bush believes that religion has been unfairly pushed out of the public sphere, and he created the White House office to ferret out roadblocks that prevent religious groups from receiving government money. As Bush railed against all the "obstacles" to religion in public life, I had to wonder if he'd ever been to Utah, where his walk to the mall could be accompanied by a voice-over from Prophet Hinckley.

Since Bush announced the creation of a federal religious office, we've heard a lot about Chuck Colson's prison ministry and the wonders of religious drug-treatment programs that could expand with some taxpayer dollars. A few civil libertarians have protested the constitutionality of mingling faith and federal funding, warning that prison inmates could be forced to read the Bible. But their worst-case scenario hardly signals the coming of the apocalypse. Plenty of nonbelievers, in fact, might actually see it as a good idea. At least inmates would be reading.

If you have lived, as I have, as a non-Mormon in a place whose population is 70 percent LDS, you would understand the real dangers in mixing too much church with state. I was born and raised in Utah, and my entire family still lives there. Every time I go back, from the minute I wade past the missionaries in the Salt Lake City airport to my first watered-down beer, I am struck by the fact that, while inmates may be able to duck Chuck Colson, the average Utah citizen has no hope of escaping the Mormons.

The world's sixth-largest religion and growing, the LDS church proselytizes relentlessly. If it fails to convert you in this life, it will try to get you in the next one by baptizing the dead. (Even Holocaust victims have not been spared this posthumous rite.) A financial and political powerhouse, the LDS church not only dominates most of Utah's social service agencies, but also the government, the public schools, and the media. It even runs the shopping malls. As a result, the church shapes the life of everyone who lives in Utah, Mormon or not.

Modern Day Zion

Not everyone in Salt Lake was thrilled with the Mormons' "little piece of Paris." The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the First Unitarian Church sued the city, arguing that the deal gave the "indelible impression that the LDS church occupies a privileged position in the community" and blurred constitutional distinctions between church and state. So far, though, they haven't made much headway. But what did they expect? The federal judge hearing the case was a Mormon, hand-picked by fellow church-member Sen. Orrin Hatch.

The Mormons have been fighting Gentiles for control of downtown Salt Lake for more than an hundred years, and the Mormons always win. (Mormons call all non-Mormons--even Jews--Gentiles.) Salt Lake is their Holy City, after all, the capital of the religious state prophesied by church founder Joseph Smith.

Smith founded the LDS church in 1830, in upstate New York, after the angel Moroni supposedly led him to a set of golden tablets inscribed with the ancient account of the "lost peoples" of North America. Using a pair of magic rocks, Smith eventually "translated" the tablets into The Book of Mormon, a faux King James-style tome filled with names like Shiz, Ethem, and Ahah. Mark Twain dubbed the book "chloroform in print," but it captured the imagination of many pioneers in the New World--perhaps because it was so, well, American.