Because their religious roots are embedded with a history of violent persecution that is continually revisited, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continue to be shaped by their history in different ways than their Christian counterparts, according to one observer.
Mary Ellen Robertson, a systems associate at the California Institute of Technology, told an audience at Utah Valley State College on Thursday that the "telling and re-telling of these stories" of early Latter-day Saint leaders and converts "are very real for contemporary Mormons and informs the Mormon view of violence." Her paper, entitled "Still Circling the Wagons: Violence and Mormon Self-Image," was presented as part of a two-day conference on Religion and Violence sponsored by the school.
The stories are repeated not only in Latter-day Saint folklore, but in curriculum materials produced by the church that are used to teach Sunday School, seminary and other formal coursework. Their telling is based on a presumption that early Latter-day Saints were "without sin," according to Robertson, failing to acknowledge that their actions "may have provoked some instances of violence directed against them" based on the social and political climate in which they lived.
"It's easier to think that they were innocent victims than that they may have been part of the problem, too," she said.
As a result, many Latter-day Saints have adopted both a "siege mentality" and a "herd mentality that stresses conformity above all else" and cultivates an "us versus them attitude" that is "still the attitude taken by many church members and leaders," she said. "While the persecution is long behind us, the mindset is not. . . . Perhaps it's time we came out of the bunkers."
Often Latter-day Saints "seem to anticipate mistreatment from their non-Mormon peers" and are particularly sensitive to criticism from outside the church.
She offered her own story of being told she must rewrite her master's thesis while attending graduate school outside Utah, and having her family react that her adviser "had to be anti-Mormon to make that request."
Latter-day Saints also have a "longing for uniqueness" and at times, that quest results in a "chosen people syndrome," wherein Mormons consider themselves more blessed, more special, more protected and more righteous" than others.
Such a mentality came to the fore recently as the dust was settling after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she said. While many Latter-day Saints didn't react much differently than other Americans to what occurred, she said, "some responded in a more unique fashion" by circulating rumors on the Internet of how Latter-day Saints had been miraculously saved from death.