From 1890, when scholars first started computing, until the 1930s, not once was an article in a mainstream secular or religious publication favorable to the Mormons.
In the 1930s their reputation began to change when, in the midst of the Depression, word went around that "they take care of their own." Mormon versions of communalism did mean that the poor among them were better off than many others. If it meant that they were not dependent upon the federal government, this was a mis-impression: Utah, their stronghold, received as much help as other such states.
In the 1950s, during the Eisenhower era, some of the articles turned positive: they were politically acceptable as conservatives; they were well known for their "family values" and practices; they came across as polite, well-scrubbed citizens. Culturally they were beginning to make their way.
As the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints expanded across America, it came to be regarded less as a hostile and to-be-hated group and more as a church with a good Tabernacle choir, sponsor of great tours in Salt Lake City, suppliers of FBI and CIA and Secret Service reliable employees, who hold to a strange theology. (To the non-religious, all religions and theologies are strange, but to the Christian majority, they were "different.") They became progressively espied as on the political right, in their opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and the like.
For the most part, they seem to be admired enough not to fall victim of the NIMBY phenomenon: "Not in my back yard," though they are often resented for aggressive efforts to proselytize: "Not at my front door." Minorities who live under strong Mormon cultural influences and in their spheres are often bitter, but their bitterness has not spread to a stage that Latter-day Saints get persecuted.
Today, with the growth of American pluralism, when everyone from New Agers to Hmong to Astrologers to Muslims to Pentecostals to Buddhists live "down the block," Mormons benefit from the protective coloration which such wild diversity promotes.
Those who most resist their status in the mainstream are conservative evangelicals, who admire much in their culture but fear that there will be confusion and destructive results because they are close enough to standard-brand Christianities to be acceptable and far enough from doctrinally more precise Christian traditions to keep them as objects of suspicion.
Please e-mail On Faith if you'd like to receive an email notification when On Faith sends out a new question.
Email Me | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
