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Meet the Mormons: from the margin to the mainstream
Commonweal, Nov 9, 2007 by Mathew N. Schmalz
The notion of inspired fiction reminds us that one doesn't have to accept the entirety of a religion's claims in order to take it seriously. In thinking about how to get beyond the limitations of popular Mormon talk in the classroom, I've been considering turning to the Book of Mormon and using its stories as a framework for discussing Mormonism as a religion. One story I have in mind is that of the mission of the prophet Alma to the Zoramites (Alma 31). According to the Book of Mormon, the Zoramites were once part of the nation founded by Lehi's faithful son Nephi, but they eventually separated to follow their leader Zoram to the land of Antinonum. There the Zoramites began to "bow down to dumb idols." The Zoramites had also placed a platform called the Rameumptom, or "holy stand," in their synagogues. One by one, Zoramites would ascend the Rameumptom and proclaim their own righteousness, only to go home and forget about God until the next service. In Mormon discourse, then, the Rameumptom is mainly a symbol of arrogance and hypocrisy, but it can also be a symbol of unwillingness to engage in genuine dialogue.
Today, this unwillingness may more deeply afflict those who talk about Mormons than it does Mormons themselves. At the Sunstone Symposium in 2004, after I presented a paper on my experiences teaching Mormonism at Holy Cross, the response was given by a professor from Utah State University, a Mormon who had taught moral theology at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution. He discussed how Mormonism combined aspects of liberal Protestantism with the magisterial elements of Catholicism.
As the conversation developed, many Mormons in the audience lamented that, compared to Catholicism, official LDS discourse lacks complex discussions of moral issues. A Mormon convert who once lived in a Benedictine community commented that while Mormonism values one's personal relationship with God, the LDS church has not clearly formulated how "the Light of Christ" within a person relates to external religious authority. Many Mormons particularly respect the Catholic Church as an institution that has balanced authority and conscience within its framework of theology and canon law. In the context of acrimonious debates over the church's sexual-abuse scandal, the disciplining of theologians, and the withholding of the Eucharist from prochoice politicians, some Catholics would find these perceptions of Catholicism deeply ironic. But they reflect Mormonism's own painful struggles with authority, most famously illustrated by the case of Sonia Johnson, a fifth-generation Mormon excommunicated in 1979 for supporting the Equal Rights Amendment.
As a religion, Mormonism is still quite young--but it is a religion. As Sunstone's Dan Wotherspoon told me, "Someone who views others in good faith would assume that these other people have gone through similar processes in sifting the wheat from the chaff of their religion." In other words, we share more than we might think at first. Talking about Mormonism in "good faith" does not mean accepting all--or any--of Mormonism's teachings. Instead, it means accepting that Mormonism is composed of real people who are best seen up close, not from high atop the Rameumptom.
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