Soft Bigotry, Soft Secrecy: Noah Feldman on Mormonism

Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard University studies the connection between religion and government and recently penned an article in the New York Times entitled “What Is It About Mormonism?”  Feldman examines the history of Mormonism in the United States and creates new language for our discussions, such as ’soft secrecy’ and ’soft bigotry.’  The article was quickly enamored by the Mormon blogging community.

On Jan 15, 2008 Doug Fabrizio at KUER Radio West interviewed Noah Feldman (total time 52:14) with Ken Verdoia joining in the second half-hour.  Another treat is that Professor Feldman takes calls from listeners and responds.  I love the interchange between academics and the average caller.  Here are a few highlights from the program.

On Soft Bigotry

“First of all, I observed time and again among plenty educated, polite people who have Mormons as colleagues and as students and have a great deal of respect for Mormons personally would never discriminate against Mormons in any direct way, nevertheless if there are no Mormons around and the topic of Mormonism comes up, people are extremely dismissive and essentially prepared to laugh at Mormons in a way, that I would have to say the same people would never dream of laughing at Muslims, let’s say, or even Evangelicals, although there there might be more of a tendency to be willing behind closed doors sometimes to say nasty things. So that’s the first thing I’ve observed. It’s sort of surprising-it is one of the last remaining prejudices that people, who otherwise think of themselves as politically correct, allow themselves.”

“And I say it can’t just be based on logic because there is nothing logically more ridiculous or plausible about God revealing himself to Joseph Smith than there is about God revealing himself to Moses or to Mohammed. These are, by their very nature, beliefs that depend upon faith and are not provable by standard sources of rational proof. I don’t mean that religion doesn’t have a rational side because all religions do have a rational side. But the core premise of revelation is not something we can prove from our daily experience and its not something that most religions wants us to be able prove. Most religions understand that revelation has got to stand on its own feet. So I think that’s not the reason, that can’t be a good reason at least for disparaging of Mormonism, by people who otherwise wouldn’t disparage other religions. I think it is the newness that is doing the work here.” (08:00-09:50)

On Soft Secrecy

“This is a much more subtle question…What I try to argue though in the article is that in the last century, since the end of the official legal persecution of Mormons in the United States, what we’ve seen instead is what I call ’soft bigotry’ a kind of thought that as long as we don’t know too much about what Mormons actually believe maybe we’re happy to have them in elite circles and elect them to certain offices…but the more we know about Mormonism sometimes, the more we allow our soft bigotry to come out. And I argue that in response to this the Mormon church developed what I call a style of ’soft-secrecy’, which is not absolute secrecy, and of course there are tens of thousands of Mormon missionaries are out there in the world sharing the content of the faith, so its not that they are wholly keeping every element of it secret, to the contrary they are sharing large parts of it.”

“But what I have in mind by soft-secrecy is that unless pressed very hard, or unless they are in an environment with people who have already shown interest in the faith and are potential converts to the faith, that most members of the Church just try to keep the content of their religious beliefs out of conversation. This has worked pretty well at various points in our century. Ezra Taft Benson before he was president of the Church but when he was an apostle of the Church was Secretary of the Interior under Dwight Eisenhower and there were lots of other cases of very very successful Mormons in the mainstream, I would say, of American life, and that’s been accomplished mostly by deflecting attention from the most distinctive Mormon doctrines and I think and you hear this a little bit also in President Gordon [B.] Hinckley’s public statements, when he goes on a national talk show he doesn’t offer a detailed account of Mormon belief of a kind that would be immediately recognizable in every possible sense I think to the Mormon believer, he gives a version that’s designed for public consumption and that is the sort of thing that I have in mind.”

“Which by the way, I don’t mean to say that Mormons don’t have their own list of things that they believe, of course they do, and almost all LDS children memorize them, and they are straightforward and simple enough, but they are not designed to speaking to outsiders. I think that is the key point here. They’re primarily documents for inward expression of faith and they are not, most importantly, the sorts of language that mainstream Protestants have been able to say, ‘Oh, okay, we agree that you too are simply another denomination of Christianity.’” (14:50-18:05)

Ken Verdoia joins in the second hour and opines on the public perception of Mormonism in recent American politics:

“I think as Noah has so eloquently pointed out, this is not the rabid 19th Century Anti-Mormonism that exists, but it’s almost like a malarial trend that exists in mainstream America. There’s some lingering misgivings that sit as a low grade virus and occasionally they flurr. There is the general low grade concern with the secrecy of the LDS temple ordinances. There is a generalized resentment of a missionary program which seems to be overt, cohesion and organization being infused into neighborhoods and many religious organization are suspicious of that, not just Evangelical Christians. There is also this sense and discomfort with small groups being cohesive and interjecting themselves into a political process…then the notion of a small interjected group that is perfectly cohesive can have a powerful impact on the outcome of some of these important decisions that are made in the presidential primary season. All of these contribute to a suspicion of, ‘What do the Saints really want?’ And it’s nothing new but it is playing out in sharper relief with Mitt Romney because of the rise of the Evangelicals in political processes since George Romney ran back in 1968. This is really a 1980’s and beyond evolution of the political process where religion and religious identity has been brought more closely into the political process.” (42:15:44:00)

There is much more on the audio so I encourage readers who enjoyed Feldman’s article and want some more to take a listen.