2008: A Bad Year for the Mormons

Jan Shipps sums it up well, it was as has been often mentioned “A perfect storm”. The year started out appropriately enough (in a symbolic sense) with the death of Gordon B. Hinckley, the Church’s president and arguably the greatest public relations man in its history. Two months later, on the same weekend as the official sustaining of Hinckley’s successor, Thomas Monson as the Church’s 16th President, news broke of the government raid on a compound of the polygamist FLDS Church near El Dorado, Texas. It was an uncomfortable reminder of a past that the LDS Church’s public relations people, to put it mildly, wish to deemphasize.

Though it was by then only April the Church had already experienced one wake-up call, the humiliating and unexpectedly server trouncing of Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primaries. Coming into the race with perhaps the biggest fund raising advantage of any of the GOP contenders, Mitt Romney just had a heck of a time getting people to vote for him. This was particularly true of many evangelical Christians, who perhaps felt themselves saved from the existential angst of having to vote for a Mormon because he was the most socially conservative of the viables, by the appearance of the affable Baptist preacher/Frmr. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (who himself may have engaged in some subtle anti-Mormon pandering).

In deed by late spring it was obvious that anti-Mormon feeling was very much alive in this country, and stronger then many Church members had previously appreciated. But then came proposition 8, and all that came before it would seem as nothing. Though the lashing the Church took for its role in the anti-gay marriage initiative in California (previously dealt with on this blog) no doubt earned the church some sympathy from Catholic and Protestant quarters, they still remain theological enemies, and weary culture war allies. But it was the response from the left, already no fan of Mormonism, that so thoroughly cast the Mormons as enemies of tolerance and that will have the biggest long term impact. The media I think will not by on the LDS side for a long time to come, and that panicle year of Mormon media kudos, 2002, now seems much more then just six years past. Now we know how George W. Bush feels.

As this year also closed with the death of another Church leader born in the 1910’s, there has been speculation in some limited quarters that the selection Elder Wirthlin’s replacement in the 12 could have a large public relations element. Perhaps now would be a good time for Latin American Apostle, as that is the part of the world in which the Church has been experiencing the most growth for the past 40 years. Or maybe someone like Marlin K. Jensen, a favorite of the Church left and sympathetic outsiders. Though most likely it will be another white, conservative, gray haired lawyer, educational administrator or former business man. It probably won’t do much to make 2009 a better year for the Mormons.