Evan McMullin

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Thinking with Ryan Burge: Concerning young Latter-day Saints, third parties and life post-Trump

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Thinking with Ryan Burge: Concerning young Latter-day Saints, third parties and life post-Trump

There are times, when you are reading Ryan Burge on Twitter (which journalists should, of course, be doing) and you see signs that he has read some religion-news related item somewhere that has caused him to do that thing that he does — sift through lots of poll numbers looking for a new angle.

What we have here is a pair of tweets linked to a Christian Sagers think piece at The Deseret News that I had missed. The headline: “Are Latter-day Saint voters turning blue?”

That’s blue as in learning toward the Democratic Party, not feeling sad or depressed. That would be a huge news story hinting at other possible changes among centrists on moral and cultural issues.

Burge send me this comment containing what he thinks is the key question about this possible news twist.

The big question is: have younger LDS really abandoned the Republican Party? I don't think that we will ever know for sure until Trump is off the ballot completely.

So where to begin? Here is the overture in Sager’s piece, noting that a recent:

… Cook Political Report concludes that all four of Utah’s congressional districts are among the most Democratic-trending in the country. Latter-day Saint voters in Arizona doubled their Democratic turnout from 2016.

Meanwhile, a Democratic activist group with whom I spoke recently is optimistic about converting Latter-day Saint women, traditionally Republican, who it believes to be rejecting the GOP in greater percentages than other religious demographics.

That candidate Donald Trump fared so poorly among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2016 was met with astonishment in national media coverage and a flurry of conjectures that Latter-day Saints were up for grabs.

And yet, the political status of the Latter-day Saint voting bloc doesn’t fit into a tidy narrative. Yes, there are signs that some Latter-day Saints are reconsidering the modern GOP, but at the same time there are suggestions that Latter-day Saints remain reliably Republican.

Sure enough, there are other complications that need to be considered when looking at conservatives in this Donald Trump-warped political age.


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It's more 'Dog Bites Man' as religion-haunted 2020 campaign lurches into the fall

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It's more 'Dog Bites Man' as religion-haunted 2020 campaign lurches into the fall

GetReligion regulars will know that “Man Bites Dog” is news and “Dog Bites Man” is not.

This hoary journalism incantation came to mind at the close of the Democratic National Convention when 353 clergy and lay believers announced that they “choose hope over fear” and will mobilize religious voters so the Biden-Harris ticket can “lead us in restoring our nation’s values.”

Reporters will assess this for themselves, but to The Guy the Trump-biting endorsers of “Faith2020” (contact 657–333– 5391) look pretty much as predictable as the religious lineup boosting Trump-Pence. Faith2020 draws hallelujahs from former presidential nominee Al Gore, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Signers include workers for past Democratic candidates, abortion choice, LGBTQ concerns and various liberal causes.

In other words, it’s a familiar Religious Left all-star team.

Signer Jack Moline co-chaired Rabbis for Obama and is president of the Interfaith Alliance, founded in 1994 to counter the “Religious Right.” Despite continual hopes, building a politically potent Religious Left has proven elusive in an era when the big news (calling scholar John C. Green) is the emergence of non-religious Americans as a massive chunk of the Democrats’ constituency.

One sort-of surprise endorser is John Phelan, former president of the Evangelical Covenant Church’s North Park Theological Seminary. He joins alongside Faith2020 Executive Director Adam Phillips, whose former Portland, Oregon, church was forced out of that denomination in 2015 over LGBTQ inclusion in church leadership.

Other Faith2020 names of note: Frederick Davie (Faith2020 chair and executive vice president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary), David Beckman (former president of Bread for the World), Amos Brown (Kamala Harris’s San Francisco Baptist pastor), Amy Butler (removed last year as pastor of New York’s prominent Riverside Church), Joshua DuBois (who ran President Barack Obama’s “Faith-Based” partnerships office), Wesley Granberg-Michaelson (retired general secretary of the Reformed Church in America), Gene Robinson (whose elevation as a partnered gay bishop further split the global Anglican Communion), Brian McLaren (godfather of the “emerging church” movement), Talib Shareef (D.C. imam who leads what’s called “The Nation’s Mosque”), Ron Sider (Evangelicals for Social Action chair and Hillary Clinton endorser) and Simran Jeet Singh (Sikh chaplain at New York University).


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Could Democrats win more Latter-day Saint Votes? Here's where they diverge from evangelicals

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I’ve long been fascinated by the dynamic between Mormons and white evangelicals.

On the surface, the two groups look remarkably similar. Both communities are religiously devout, remain focused on evangelizing while maintaining strong social ties within their faith community and tend to lean to the right in American politics.

Under that veneer there’s been a lot of turmoil. It’s been my impression that Mormons have always felt a bit ostracized from the general American public. To combat this, the LDS church (or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) put together a media campaign called “I’m a Mormon” with the goal of normalizing their faith to the average American. I think, in some ways, that Mormons wanted to be seen as evangelicals.

But, many evangelicals want to ensure that doesn’t happen. Some of the leading voices in conservative American evangelicalism have labeled Mormonism a “cult.” Even the Billy Graham website once described Mormonism in cultish terms before the nomination of Mitt Romney in 2012. External similarities papers over the fact evangelicals and Mormons are some strange bedfellows, to be sure. But, do they really see politics in the same way? The data tells a pretty complicated story.

Let’s start broadly, with a look at partisanship and political ideology. In both cases, white evangelicals tend to be more apt to identify with the right side of the spectrum. For instance, 73.3% of white evangelicals identify as Republicans. It’s a bit lower for Mormons at 65.7%.


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Another sigh: Washington Post leaves theology out of big Mormon story containing theology

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The other day, I posted a piece that underlined a point that I have made several times during this long and depressing season of political/religious news. That headline: "Hey, Washington Post political scribes: So religion will have zero impact in GOP civil war?"

In that post, I argued (once again) that the political desk of The Washington Post just doesn't seem to get religion -- especially when it comes the role of evangelical Protestants, Mormons, traditional Catholics and others in the #NeverTrump #NeverHillary phenomenon. That's an important point to ponder as we prepare for the GOP wars that are ahead.

Some folks (including a former student who now works at NPR) were concerned that, while I said my target was the political desk, I had not done enough to note that other Post reporters (think religion-beat specialists) had done lots of coverage on other election-year religion angles, especially developments among evangelicals.

So let's stress that by making a similar point -- looking at two Post stories focusing on developments in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Can you spot the story by a religion-beat specialist?

The first story ran under this headline: "‘Mormon and Gay’? The church’s new message is that you can be both." It focuses on the content of an official LDS website with that title -- Mormon and Gay. As you would expect, the website supports the church's teachings on marriage and sex. Thus, the bitter debates about those teachings continue. The Post notes:

You can be gay while being Mormon, the new website says -- as long as you don’t have gay sex.
“They’re loved. They’re supported. They’re part of the church,” said L. Whitney Clayton, who serves on the Presidency of the Seventy, making him one of the most powerful leaders in the Mormon Church. “We want them to feel happy and included in the kingdom of God.”


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Hello? Hello? Mindy Finn is a Jewish vice presidential candidate, so where's the ink?

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Evan McMullin, a third-party candidate for president based out of Utah, is a Mormon and he's chosen a very interesting vice presidential candidate: Mindy Finn, a businesswoman and tech entrepreneur living in DC. She's an interesting pick, not the least because she's conservative and Jewish.

But don't expect any decent take-outs about her faith. Even though it's been two weeks since she was announced as McMullin's running mate, there's been very little done about her and especially her beliefs. I can excuse the secular media not getting too worked up over Mindy Finn’s faith as she and her running mate are long shots at making a dent in this election. But Jewish media should be ahead of the game on this one.

Typical of the coverage-lite out there is this piece from the Forward: 

Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin announced a Jewish running mate last weekend: Mindy Finn.
 
Finn is a veteran GOP strategist who runs a feminist non-profit. She and McMullin, a former CIA agent, see their independent candidacy as a conservative alternative to Donald Trump.
With their religious makeup — a Mormon and a Jew — and their outspokenness, the McMullin/Finn ticket has been gaining traction lately. Following Donald Trump’s struggles after the release of a tape on which he makes lewd comments about women, they might win Mormon-heavy Utah, where McMullin is now statistically tied with both Trump and Clinton.
Their candidacy is a long shot — they are not even on the ballot in all states — but there technically is a way how it could work. If they manage to win one state and then both Trump and Clinton fail to get the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president, the House gets to decide the election.
More realistically, Finn sees their campaign as the start of a new conservative movement. “We are a glimmer of light in what many have seen as a sea of darkness in this election,” she told Glamour.


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