Authentic Mormonism and Resource Mobilization

Speaker 1

Next up, we will hear from Joseph West. Joseph is a PhD candidate in sociology. At the University of Arizona, where he studies culture, religion, social movements, and social networks, and really has some fascinating insights into all of these areas. The focus of his research is on religiously motivated social movement mobilization and collective action. He has written on several related topics surrounding this theme, including congregation-based political mobilization surrounding gay marriage.

Speaker 2

insurgency conflict in Afghanistan and the emergence and institutionalization. It’s a tough word. Of the LDS Church. Joseph will be speaking on authentic Mormonism and resource mobilization.

Joseph West

He likes to say that the hand raised to finish off the dying god. is the sign of an oath and covenant to the resurrecting God? Maybe so but consider the lion who destroys the great dragon When the lion gnashes his teeth against those golden scales, ripping and tearing away the flesh, he is not experiencing any reverence or duty towards anything other than the will to destroy. The lion is the destroyer of values, nothing more. Fulfilment for the lion comes only when the destructive deed is done. The will to atonement with the God who rises from the stench and blood of blood and guts that remains is something that only becomes possible when the third transformation occurs. And we will do well to not take for granted the third transformation. That’s just the first point.

Joseph West

One of my personal and sort of academic heroes is a French sociologist named Pierre Bourdieu, who struggled all His whole career about balancing his place as a social actor, interested social actor, being involved in social movements, with his place as an analyst, as a sociologist coming from the outside. And this is a quote from him. He says, I am not Jesus Christ. I am a sociologist, not a prophet. I refuse the chalice that one extends to me, asking me to take upon myself all the misery of the world. And nevertheless, I can hardly keep from doing so, revolted but resigned to drink this bitter chalice to the dregs. And this is something that is a profoundly confused and conflicted sentiment, but one that I feel deeply.

Joseph West

And I guess the point of that is that I wish that I could give an answer to this question of how Does an authentic progressive Mormon social movement happen? You know, that’s like the thing that Lincoln is constantly asking me about. And grilling about is like, how do we engineer this? How do we and authenticity is something that can only come from the prophet or the charismatic authority, someone who has the ability to see The ways in which desires are conflicting and cultural systems are imposing upon those desires. And the Prophet has the ability to see all that. To reach into that chaos and create something, but it’s purely creative. So, as a sociologist, I can’t say, I can’t say this is the formula for doing that.

Joseph West

So what I’m going to talk about oh, 11 minutes. I thought I only had 12 total. Did someone not I’m right, that’s good? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Joseph West

So basically, I don’t have time to talk about resource mobilization. That was the title of my talk is Authentic Marmonism resource morbilization. I will just say that that’s just a reference to a theoretical tradition, the sociological study of social movements that which holds that the key to successful social movement mobilization is mobilizing resources that are needed to help to overcome problems inherent in collective action. Collective action is a very difficult thing to achieve. But anyway, I don’t have time to get into that other than just to make this statement. It’s like kind of almost a tautological statement that You’re just going to have to take for granted. I have a ton to say about it, but not today.

Joseph West

Is that within religiously motivated social movements, which is what this is. The key to that is this expression of authenticity. That’s where the resources flow to that. And there’s so many empirical examples of that. And so I want to break that down. And what I mean by authentic Has two parts that first and foremost, authenticity as an experience of an actor So group members experience the movement as resonant with their deepest and most profound experiences and interpretations of Mormonism. Okay?

Joseph West

So that’s this perf this subjective side to it. It’s also about authenticity is also always about this perceived connection to the past, to the authenticity of the past. And in this sense of authenticity, I would say that the MTA has been modestly successful, as evidenced by the fact that we’re here today. But I think that what is wanted is more than just a modest accomplishment, okay? I think the goal is nothing short of the construction of a temple for the lost children of Mormonism. And those granite cornerstones are heavy, and it’s going to take more than some commitment for some from some computer nerds and academics. to to to move those granite cornerstones into place. So um so um so okay, so there okay, now the second uh

Joseph West

type when I when I say authenticity, the second is a kind of more objective sense of the term. And this is something that can only be determined after the dust of history is settled. And the question here is, did this religious expression mobilize people? And so then authenticity in this sense is defined in terms of its ability to make people act, to inspire people. Under this definition, early Mormonism, which is I’m going to try to say is our example because it’s the tradition within which we are working, early Mormonism by definition, by that definition, was an authentic religious expression. Okay? So regardless of how you feel about the truth of the religion, empirically it resonated with people, it inspired people to collective action. And so I want to say, like, why was that? And I do have an answer to that that I’m going to get to. But even if we can answer the question of why that happened, we have to figure out how. This, as a movement, within that tradition, can harness whatever authenticity was there, and that’s the question that the That the analysts, that the sociologists, that the lion cannot answer. You need the childlike creator. You need the prophet.

Joseph West

Because look, and this is kind of like the difficult part, is that whatever authenticity was there in the origins of the movement is either failing or it’s already failed. And I mean that in the second sense of what I mean by authenticity. That the measure of that, if we’re talking about that side of it, is How people are becoming mobilized. And here I’m going to is, you know, so one brief measure, one way that you could argue is a measurement of that. Is looking at growth rates of the movement and growth rates specifically about the LDS Church. And there’s actually like a debate going on about that right now among sociologists and people doing statistical analysis. But in my review of that debate and that literature, the growth rates are in steady decline. They’re at the lowest. There’s probably attrition if you don’t account for birth rates. And

Joseph West

And it’s not just that, it’s not just the objective side of it, it’s also this experience, my own personal experience, and the experience of those who I care about who experience this lack of authenticity. In the status quo expressions of Mormonism. And so that’s what this is about: is like, how do we get back to that? How do we feel that and mobilize according to that authentic expression? Okay.

Joseph West

So one problem that the MTA has is that the MTA is a progressive movement, and progressive movements tend towards like a universalistic Sentiment, so trying to widen the tent, and that makes for weak symbolic boundaries. And along with weak symbolic boundaries come all kinds of problems. See, str strict churches, conservative movements have these strong symbolic boundaries and require these kind of sacrifices, and that solves all kinds of problems that are inherent in people getting together and doing things. Collectively acting. So it’s just like a highly improbable thing. I mean, a progressive, authentic, religious Social movement in the United States in 2013 is like it just strikes me as like very difficult. But

Joseph West

I think that the only thing we can say about that is how do we get to that? Well, we can look to the past and see how it was accomplished before. So for the rest of my time, I’m just going to try to present a conceptual apparatus. For orienting people towards thinking about that question, okay?

Joseph West

So, the first question is: what is culture? Some people argue that culture is a system of interrelated symbols and ideas, so just like a belief system, and there’s a logic to it. Like an example is like a scriptural canon. All these symbols sort of relate to each other and it orients actors to act in a particular way by informing their beliefs. But then on the other side of that is people who want to say, no, culture is local sets of practices. It’s like forms of interaction that emerge. And I think that what I would say about that is that culture is both of those things. So culture is the duality or co-constitution of Symbol systems and local sets of practices. And those two things, it’s like the spirit and the body. Those two things are always in an endogenous sort of like cycle with each other. And then religion is just kind of a subset of culture.

Joseph West

Religion is a specific kind of culture that I mean, I’d say We should define a religion as culture that inspires what William James calls the strenuous mood. So something like culture that Causes actors to experience a sort of righteousness in their disposition. I think that’s what religion should be understood broadly as.

Joseph West

And then the second thing is: what is a prophet? And I want to relate the Mormon understanding of what a prophet and what Mormon scripture has to say about what a prophet is, to what I think the correct sociological understanding of what a prophet is. And in the Scriptures, the spirit of prophecy is described as a testimony of Christ. And so, what I would say practically that means in the authentically Mormon humanistic interpretation of what a testimony of Christ should be. Is the ability well, it’s described in Mosiah chapter 18, where he talks about the wi it’s the will to Suffer with those that suffer, mourn with those that mourn. It’s the will to help other people to see their desires and to create a future in which those desires are fulfilled. And that’s exactly what I think the charismatic individual in society is capable of doing, is they’re capable of seeing the symbol systems and how it relates. And then creating something new, moving those symbols around in ways that resonate in new ways with people that didn’t before. And so

Joseph West

Uh Don Bradley’s w um uh article on um The Grand Fundamental Principles of Mormonism, I think, is like such a good article about the how Mormonism was an authentic religious expression. Okay? But I think that what is missing from that, it’s not a criticism at all, what is missing from that is that he’s talking about the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism. What were the ideas that resonated with people? But I think that it’s so much more important Not more important, it’s just as important to consider practice, to consider the practices. So as we look back, what is authentic Mormonism? How can we look at our past to make a measure of what that is? And I think that the things that just stand out that are so clearly obvious that people are uncomfortable talking about is the practices, the economic practices and the family practices. That were an essential part. Okay? And again, this is in this defining authenticity in terms of its ability to mobilize people. I’m not stating my opinion about About the practices that, I’m talking about the what they did inspired people and they created a whole new movement. And I just want a one last little point here.

Joseph West

If an authentic Mormon, if there ever was one, Leonard Arrington, in the book his book, he was actually an economist by training, and his original works were about communalism in early In the early church, and he’s and he, they, this is in this is a little quote from the preface to the second edition of his book, Building the City of God. And I just love this quote because. I’ll just, okay. He’s giving a preface and he’s saying, We didn’t change anything about this, okay? And he says, our review Of writing on LDS communalism since 1976 has led us to the conclusion that no essential revision of the original work is necessary for this edition. In 1985, two books, Lyndon W. Cook’s Joseph Smith and the Law of Consecration and Kent W. Hough’s Joseph Smith’s United Order, were published. Both are efforts to portray consecration and stewardship as fully compatible with liberal capitalism. Virtually every line of building the City of God offers evidence to the contrary. We thus are content to let the book stand as documentation of a heroic and poignant effort in a land where individual aggrandizement and material plenty had very nearly occupied the whole field of social aspiration. to pursue an alternative vision of sharing and mutual care, a city of God on earth. And the reason why that’s important is, first of all, I mean just like, ouch, if you’re those guys, you wrote this book

Joseph West

And you just got like torn asunder with one slice of this m of this intellectual giant. And when this line, when he says, when he says, Virtually every line of building the city of God offers evidence to the contrary, to the contrary of this idea that Mormonism is compatible with this neoliberal vision of and capitalist modes of domination, reproduction of culture. And he’s saying like, look, I don’t even have to say anything to you other than present this work that I’ve already done. And that’s what’s authentic about it.

Joseph West

The second example is the family practices that I I’m out of time, so I’m not going to but I’m not saying, okay, I’m not saying then we need to return to living communalism and living polygamy. I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is that we have to tap into what was authentic about that. Okay, now that’s the thing that I can’t do. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know what the answer to that is. Someone’s got someone’s got to come up with it, and we’d have to have the humility and will to recognize that when it happens. But I think that our orientation in trying to build a successful, progressive, authentic Mormon social movement should be about recognizing what was already in the past authentic and trying to magnify that.

Speaker 2

Thank you. That’s it.