“The Book of Mormon” has hit Broadway. Not the Book of Mormon published by Joseph Smith in 1830, launching an American-grown religious movement, but a musical comedy about two Mormon naifs in Africa, written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the brilliant satirists who created “South Park.” So far, the new musical is a hit among theater critics: “old fashioned” and “pleasure giving,” per the New York Times, and an “extraordinarily well-crafted musical assault on all things holy,” according to The Washington Post.
Some wonder if this musical assault is a political one, as well. According to columnist George Will, the GOP has only five “plausible” candidates for president, and two of them happen to be Mormons. Will Parker and Stone’s comedy create drama for Mitt Romney’s and Jon Huntsman’s presidential aspirations?
In the reviews, there is a signal of contrary possibilities. To Elysa Gardner of USA Today, “the most surprising thing about ‘Mormon’ . . . may be its inherent sweetness.” The Times exhorts the public to “hie thee hence . . . and feast upon its sweetness.” It’s been a long time since anything about Mormonism has been deemed sweet by the press. That may indicate something positive for voters, not just theatergoers, since we the people and we the Latter-day Saints are again being invited by presidential politics to dither about Mormonism. Is it Christian? Is it American? Is it safe?
In 2007, when Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, made a presidential run, many people seemed to answer “no” to those questions. Polls showed that a majority of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of Romney’s church; hence, his speech on religious liberty in December 2007. According to a Gallup survey that year, the only people less likely than Mormons to be put into the Oval Office were homosexuals and atheists. Also unwelcome, by only five fewer percentage points than Mormons, were thrice-married candidates. I suppose that equation fits Gallup’s other 2007 finding: The word most often associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is “polygamy,” a practice it abandoned more than a century ago.
Voters have consistently balked at having a Mormon in the White House. While there is no poll that has measured all of what Americans don’t like about Latter-day Saint doctrine, there are some safe guesses. Not least, I imagine, is their belief that God still speaks to them through prophets. For many contemporary Americans, claims to revelation are a definitive marker of irrationality. While Americans may be more religious than people in other wealthy nations, religion in America is nevertheless fundamentally modern, even among most fundamentalists. It is also about as rational as religion can get and still be religion.
Today, if you are a person of faith, God may inspire you generally or even, with Oprah-like generosity, prompt you to improve. God may find your next job or help you pass an exam. But God is emphatically not going to inspire you to write another scripture that improves upon the Bible or catalyzes a new religious movement. By now, God has said all there is to say about God, and the rest is, well, all about you. It may be that what Latter-day Saints believe is so fantastical to the modern mind that someone who does believe it is per se unbelievable.
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