Is There Something Wrong with Mormons?

When I left the LDS church, a friend of mine, a Ph.D. in mathematics, said to me, “That’s good. I always thought you were too smart to hang out with that crowd.” I thought at the time (and still do) that his statement was rather unfair and ignorant. I realized that he was going mostly by his interaction with a rather uber-Mormon guy we both worked with. This guy was the stereotypical Mormon depicted by Hollywood: naive, sweet-natured, and altruistic (and these are not all bad things). But my friend had the impression that we Mormons lacked critical thinking skills, that somehow the church had drummed out of us the ability to look introspectively at our own beliefs.

A year or so later, two coworkers and my boss at another company were stunned to find out I was a former Mormon. “Cult,” was all one of them said. Later on a trip with my boss, I found her approach to Mormonism interesting. She had, she said, a very good friend who is a Mormon, and she had attended various church functions with that friend. She generally had a good impression of Mormons and their “family values,” but she surprised me when she said, “Still, something just seems off about them. I can’t really explain it, but you never feel like you’re getting the real person when you talk to them.” She also said that she couldn’t quite square the white bread image with the “bizarre” (her word) temple rituals and “holy underwear” (again, her words).

Admittedly, these are just my own anecdotal experiences, but they don’t seem far off from the broader society’s impressions of Mormons and Mormonism. A Pew Forum survey last December showed that the church has made some progress in being accepted and even admired by others. 53% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Mormons, against 27% who had a negative opinion. 52% believed that Mormons are Christian, and when asked for a one-word impression of Mormonism, 74% said “family” or “family values” (though, technicall, that’s two words).

But there are still some significant problems. On the one-word impression question, “polygamy” or “bigamy” was most common (75%), third was “cult” (57%), and fourth was “different.” If I were to venture a guess, my former boss’s impressions would match most people’s assessment of Mormons: good, kind, devout people, but maybe a bit off.

I’m not going to argue about whether these impressions are correct (and please don’t think I believe Mormons are “a bit off”), but I will say that these impressions I’ve heard (and from more than just these two examples) conflict with what I was taught all my life in the LDS church. People are watching you, I was told. They look up to your for your standards, and when you don’t live up to your standards, they notice, and they judge the church by that.

Imagine my shock in finding out that people aren’t really watching Mormons. Most people don’t care one way or the other if you are living up to the church’s standards; they understand what the church’s standards are, but they also recognize that people are human. Take, for example, the easily recognizable missionary uniform: white shirt, dark suit, conservative tie. Most of us believed that this dress code made our missionaries stand out and made them look like good examples (hence, the idea that bishopric members and other leaders should wear white shirts and should be clean-shaven). Many non-Mormons have told me that the missionary uniform is “creepy” and “cult-like,” which again was quite a shock.

I don’t know what the church will do in the future to improve their image; they have hired one of New York’s best PR firms, so it will be interesting to see what they come up with. But it’s going to be hard to overcome the stereotypes.