Mormons are having a bit of a media moment right now. Perhaps it is just a continuation of the Mormon Moment identified by Politico in 2012, when Mitt Romney became the Republican nominee for the White House, Big Love and Sister Wives were breakout hits, The Book of Mormon musical achieved critical acclaimed on Broadway, and the five-part film adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series had achieved tremendous commercial success. Theree has been a flurry of Mormon-related media released in recent years: Murder Among the Mormons, Under the Banner of Heaven, two different Keep Sweet documentaries, American Primeval, Heretic, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, Heather Gay’s Bad Mormon book, multiple seasons of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and most recently, Trust Me: The False Prophet.

Mormons have also frequented the news headlines, and not for flattering reasons. Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow became a public spectacle when they disappeared, shortly after each of their spouses had suddenly died, and Lori’s children were nowhere to be found. When they were discovered honeymooning in Hawaii and the children were discovered buried in Chad’s backyard, the resulting trial and investigation became a true-crime sensation. The popular family vlogger, Ruby Franke, and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrant, drew attention when they were both tried and convicted for multiple counts of aggravated child abuse. And the Associated Press broke multiple damning stories about the systemic mishandling and cover-up of child sex abuse in the LDS church. None of these have made for comfortable conversations among Latter-day Saints.

All of this attention, much of it unflattering, has reliably produced what is now a pretty predictable pattern of online Mormon discourse. First, a new book, show, or story is released featuring Mormons in any manner less than flattering. Immediately, devout Mormons deride the new thing as ignorant misrepresentation or overt denigration, and an example of widespread anti-Mormon prejudice. The frequent refrains are: “That’s not us! Real Latter-day Saints don’t act this way! The church doesn’t teach that! We don’t believe those things!” Sometimes, even official statements through the church newsroom contribute to this discourse.

These interactions are interesting because they highlight two phenomena I’ve written about elsewhere. The first is dysphoric self-consciousness, which is a sense of being under intense evaluative scrutiny stemming from one’s perception of their social distinctiveness and insecurity of their social standing within a group. Those experiencing dysphoric self-consciousness are more prone to attribute hostile intent to the actions of others, interpret social interactions as disproportionately directed toward oneself, and be hypervigilant for threats to their person or reputation.

The second phenomenon is collective narcissism, which refers to exaggerated perceptions of the greatness of one’s social group and a conviction that it is not sufficiently appreciated by others. Collective narcissism is characterized by heightened sensitivity to in-group criticism or the lack of deferential recognition from others, stemming from a compulsion to proclaim in-group worth. Both of these concepts are useful for decoding Mormon discourse regarding their portrayal in the media, and for understanding how Mormons see themselves and create boundaries around the Mormon identity.

@thegrandscoobah Responses by defensive Latter-day Saints to the trailer for "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" premiering on Hulu on Sept 6, 2024. #mormon#lds#exmormon#secretlivesofmormonwives ♬ original sound – The Grand Scoobah

Don’t Call Yourself Mormon

Christopher Cunningham recently wrote an article for Public Square Magazine contending that those who no longer practice the Mormon faith have no legitimate claim to “Mormon” as an identity. The article takes special issue with the concept of “Mormon” as a cultural identity separate from faith. Chris argues that those who identify as Mormon but reject the faith are appropriating an identity to which they have no right, out of a desire to be associated with the exceptional reputation of Latter-day Saints, and engaging in a subtle form of racism by suggesting Mormon-ness is something ancestrally heritable.

Chris writes in the context of the LDS church’s lawsuit against John Dehlin and the Open Stories Foundation over supposed brand confusion stemming, in part, from the use of the term “Mormon” in the name of the Mormon Stories podcast. Since 2018, the LDS church has engaged in a programmatic effort to distance itself from the Mormon label—advising news and media outlets to not refer to “the Mormon church” and instructing members not to identify as Mormons or to allow others to identify them as such. Nonetheless, the new ecclesiastical administration has apparently decided they want to retain an exclusive privilege to use the Mormon label, or is testing their ability to leverage their copyright for its commercial use to litigate critics into silence.

This is the context in which Chris Cunningham writes in support of the LDS church’s legal filing and arguing that the use of the “Mormon” label extends far beyond just trademark disputes, but to individual religious and cultural identity. That is, no one except those actively devoted to the Mormon faith has the right to call themselves Mormon, but they really should not because that would be “a major victory for Satan.”

Though I no longer believe in nor practice the faith of my youth, I still identify as a "victory for Satan."

— 🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙‍♀️ (@tokensandsigns.org) November 29, 2024 at 9:26 AM

Apparently, No One is a Mormon

Chris opens his argument with immediate disdain for those who still identify as culturally Mormon whilst rejecting The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He then presents the first of many strawman arguments: the notion that those who identify as culturally Mormon are claiming an ethnicity based principally on ancestry and birth geography. He supports this by kvetching about the tendency among many disaffected Mormons to cite their “Latter-day Saint bona fides” when discussing their critiques of the church or reasons for no longer practicing the faith.

Why this the tendency exists is lost on Chris. ExMormons are accustomed to being dismissed as never having been truly converted to begin with, and so they often compensate by reciting a list of cultural markers demonstrating the degree of their former commitment. Ironically, the very gatekeeping of Mormon identity weaponized against exMormons by folks like Chris is responsible for the credential-listing tendency that he complains about. Notwithstanding, Chris spins this into something else entirely—an assertion that cultural Mormon identity is fundamentally about ancestry.

This is oversimplification of the concepts of culture and ethnicity seem to be either an intentional rhetorical device or a reflection of profound ignorance. First off, ethnicity is a concept far broader than shared ancestry, which may be a component but is not a necessary one. Rather, ethnicity is determined by a collection of many factors, including shared language, traditions, society, religious background, or other elements of culture. In communities that practice rigid endogamy (in-group marriage), shared ancestry may be a prominent feature. But it is not the only feature, nor even a primary one.

Moreover, when someone describes themself as ethnically Mormon, they almost always mean culturally Mormon. Although they may indeed have a multiple generations of Mormon ancestors, that ancestral link is far less important than their personal lived experience within Mormon communities. Someone is no less culturally Mormon if their parents were converts than if their ancestors converted in the 1830s. As someone with a parent in each category, I can attest that neither is more Mormon than the other.

But Chris goes even further. He claims that there is no such thing as a Mormon cultural identity. This is a peculiar claim, especially because he opens his article by listing commonly recognized features of Mormon culture—casseroles, church basketball, pioneer trek, EFY, green Jell-O, and dirty sodas. He even uses the phrase “ward culture.” What’s more, in an article he published only the day prior, Chris discusses Latter-day Saint cinema and the thrill he experienced when hearing his “own subculture reflected back from a movie screen.” So it seems that Chris recognizes such a thing as Mormon culture, so why not a Mormon cultural identity? That is a pretty peculiar inconsistency. But then again, Mormons are proudly a peculiar people.

Apparently, Chris wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, he wants to write about and relish Mormon culture expressed via the medium of film. On the other hand, he claims that because Mormonism as a faith has spread across the globe, there is no single Mormon culture. Rather, what is often identified as Mormon culture is merely an evolved pioneer culture—one of many cultures within a multicultural faith. That is a fair point. Except it ignores the colonizing effects of Mormon missionary work, wherein Mormonism and American-Mormon values are exported to foreign lands and converts are expected to assimilate into what Dallin H. Oaks describes as “gospel culture.” Chris even alludes to this when he describes converts in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as “learning to leave their own culture for the gospel way.” If converts must assimilate into the church by abandoning their native cultures and replacing them with Mormon customs, then “Mormon” represents a distinct culture.

Ethnicity and Religion

Taking his ancestry strawman further, Chris compares cultural Mormons to Americans who claim Irish identity by virtue of having Irish immigrant ancestors. “You’re not Irish. Maybe your great grandparents were Irish, but then they left, and you’ve been in America for a very long time,” he writes. As already mentioned, although Mormon ancestry may be one element among the many that may comprise Mormon cultural identity, it is certainly not necessary or even primary. Especially not for exMormons, who lived for some time—often the majority of their lives—as active, believing, practitioners of Mormonism. It is their personal lived experience. It is their memories, the way they speak, the way they think, the lens through which they view themselves and the world. In Chris’s ill-advised analogy, exMormons are the Irish immigrants, not their distant American-born descendants. And immigrants do not lose their previous identity just because they move to another country. They simply gain a new one.

But for Chris, “Mormon” is limited entirely to a religious identity. There is an irony here—by making religion the fundamental cultural element the defines Mormon identity, Chris is making the argument for Mormon is an ethnoreligious group, wherein members collectively believe that their shared religion is fundamental to their ethnic identity. That is, Chris argues that those who reject the Mormon faith also deny the Mormon ethnic identity. This is a pattern of ethnicity scholars term ethnic fusion, for which Mormonism is cited as a prime example (Hammond & Warner, 1993, p. 59). However, these same scholars also acknowledge that the very existence of the label “Jack Mormon” betrays the reality—Mormon is a cultural identity broader than religious adherence.

Do the #MomTok women well represent the population of active and devout Latter-day Saints? No, and I would be surprised if the show presented them as such. Does their unorthodox expression of Mormonism make them any less Mormon? Not in the least. "Jack Mormons" are Mormons.

— 🐝🐍The Grand Scoobah🔮🧙‍♀️ (@tokensandsigns.org) August 16, 2024 at 10:30 AM

Jack Mormons are, simply put, people who identify as Mormon but are lax in their practice of the faith. If adherence to the practice of Mormonism is the singular determinant of Mormon identity, there would be no need to distinguish between Jack Mormons and other kinds of Mormons—they simply would not be Mormons. Whilst Chris excludes Jack Mormons and ExMormons, he makes an allowance for members of other Restoration groups to identify as Mormon, even though they reject the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One wonders, where does Chris draw the line? Do those who believe that Joseph Smith fought polygamy and Brigham Young conspired in Smith’s murder count as Mormon? Do Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow count as Mormon? Does Whitney Leavitt? Mikayla Matthews? Taylor Frankie Paul? Where do you draw the line, Chris?

Apparently not where the LDS church draws the line. The church is more than happy to count Jack Mormons as Latter-day Saints. They will count exMormons too, unless special steps are taken to remove one’s records. So long as you do not draw attention that leads to your excommunication, the church will count you as a Latter-day Saint. Even if you are baptized and never attend or practice the faith again. Or until you turn 110 years old, if your records are lost—you are counted among the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Perhaps you convert to Buddhism, or Judaism, or Evangelical Christianity, or become an atheist. It doesn’t matter. They’ll still count you unless you force the issue. So if the LDS church is willing to identify millions of non-believers and non-practitioners as Latter-day Saints, why should those same individuals not be allowed to identify as culturally Mormon if they so choose?

Mr. Cunningham, Meet Mr. Kettle

Toward the end of his article, Chris makes a dumbfoundingly ignorant accusation. He argues that because the LDS church is increasingly comprised of foreign converts, people who call themselves culturally Mormon whilst rejecting the faith are guilty of a form of subtle racism. His logic builds first builds on the conflation of “culturally Mormon” with “ancestrally Mormon” and adds a second implicit contention—cultural Mormons deny or diminish the Mormon identity of foreign converts. Put simply, this isn’t a thing. Chris is projecting onto others his own inability to distinguish between Mormonism as a faith and Mormon as a cultural identity. Cultural Mormons are not telling converts that they cannot identify as Mormon, or that they are somehow less Mormon. This is simply something Chris has imagined. Converts are equally justified in claiming the Mormon identity, religious or cultural, as anyone who was raised in the faith since birth. The only person telling others they cannot is Chris.

By accusing cultural Mormons of racism, Chris reveals his own prejudices and the less than subtle racism of Mormon missionary work. Specifically, when he talks of “new converts learning to leave their own culture for the gospel way.” Chris echoes the teachings of Dallin H. Oaks, who in 2010 gave an address to African Latter-day Saints on “Gospel Culture” in which he touted the superiority of Mormon culture and admonished converts to abandon their false traditions, tribal practices, and native cultures.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have what we call a gospel culture. It is a distinctive way of life, a set of values and expectations and practices common to all members. This gospel culture comes from the plan of salvation, the commandments of God, and the teachings of the living prophets. [...] To help its members all over the world, the Church teaches us to give up any personal or family traditions or practices that are contrary to the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ and to this gospel culture. [...]

When it comes to giving up false traditions and cultures, we praise our younger people for their flexibility and progress, and we appeal to our older members to put away traditions and cultural or tribal practices that lead them away from the path of growth and progress. We ask all to climb to the higher ground of the gospel culture, to practices and traditions that are rooted in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. [...]

As we seek to establish the Church in Africa and other nations, we must have third- and fourth-generation faithful Latter-day Saint families in our leadership and membership.

Dallin H. Oaks, The Gospel Culture, an address delivered during a regional stake and district conference broadcast to Africa on 21 November, 2010.

Unstated in these teachings is that the “gospel culture” to which Oaks and Chris both refer is American-Mormon values and customs exported from Utah via its missionary and correlation programs. Indeed, the regional broadcast in which Oaks delivered this message is an example of how the church disseminates American-Mormon sensibilities straight from Salt Lake City to foreign converts, and admonishes conformity to those customs. Further, Oaks’s insistence that the church requires multi-generationally Mormon leadership in foreign nations is an ironic contradiction to Chris’s argument that exMormons are the ones invoking Mormon ancestry to claim special authority.

The Mormon Trademark

Chris is not done with poorly conceived analogies. He compares the LDS church’s trademark of the word “Mormon” to KFC’s retaining of their trademark on “Kentucky Fried Chicken.” He argues: just as someone cannot legally open a restaurant named Kentucky Fried Chicken, neither can John Dehlin legally operate a podcast named Mormon Stories. There are a few issues with this reasoning. First, Kentucky Fried Chicken was the legal name of the business that is now KFC. Mormon was never the legal name of the church and the church has always made a point of emphasizing that, even when they still embraced the Mormon label in advertising.

Second, the church’s trademark on the Mormon label is limited to specific purposes—genealogy and educational services, namely, providing classes, conferences, and institutes in the fields of history and religion. This trademark does not preclude the use of Mormon for any other purpose, including online discussions about the Mormon people or individuals sharing their personal Mormon experiences on a podcast. It certainly does not preclude people from identifying as culturally Mormon, no matter whether they believe in or practice the faith.

The official style guide of the church makes this more clear. Recognizing that nothing in their published style guide is legally binding—these are simply requests and stated preferences—the style guide carves out allowances for the use of “Mormon” in proper names or as an adjective in such historical expressions as “Mormon Trail.” Therefore, the use of Mormon as a proper name or adjective is recognized and approved even by the church. So, although the church requests that church members specifically be not referred to as Mormons (ignoring what individual members may personally prefer), the use of Mormon as a proper adjective—as in “Mormon history” or “the Mormon people”—is deemed correct and appropriate.

Importantly, the church’s style guide is silent regarding the application of the Mormon label to people outside of the church. It only requests that church members be referred to as Latter-day Saints, rather than Mormons. It makes no request regarding exMormons or members of other branches of the Smith-Rigdon movement, except to clarify that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not affiliated with polygamous groups.

What Makes Someone Mormon?

At the end of the day, men like Chris Cunningham, Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks, or anyone else are not the final arbiters of who may identify as culturally Mormon. Anyone who has been a part of the Mormon community within their lifetime has the right to identify as culturally Mormon, if they so choose. Active, believing Latter-day Saints are Mormons. It matters not whether they were born into the community or joined via religious conversion, they have equal right to claim the identity. The other communities of the Smith-Rigdon movement are also Mormon communities, as far as they choose to identify as such. Alice Cooper was raised in the Bickertonite community, a grandson of a President of their church, but does not practice the faith. If he wants to identify as Mormon, he has every right.

Mormon Fundamentalists are also Mormons, despite the LDS church’s chagrin at being associated. Being embarrassed by your weird cousins does not erase them as your extended relatives. Neither does excommunication negate someone’s Mormon identity. If anything, it only reinforces it. After all, only Mormons are excommunicated from the Mormon church.

ExMormons are also Mormons, if they choose to identify as such. Personally, I do not like the label “exMormon” because I do not believe one suddenly stops being culturally Mormon the moment they reject the faith. Further, attempting to un-Mormon oneself in every possible way is just another way to be Mormon—it is still a way of being that is influenced by, and in direct response to, Mormonism. That said, I understand why some may feel compelled or empowered to do so, and I would never presume to tell someone else how to navigate reconstructing their identity after rejecting Mormonism. All to say, exMormons may reject Mormon as their faith identity and separately choose to reject or retain Mormon as a cultural identity, and be entirely justified in either case.

And while radically orthodox Latter-day Saints like Chris Cunningham may reject the label Mormon—and we should respect their desires to be called by the term they prefer—they do not have special authority to decide who else can identify as culturally Mormon. If anything, by rejecting the identity for themselves, they forfeit what little authority they may have claimed to gatekeep who else can use the label. For a people who adamantly do not want to be called “Mormon” and will correct others for using the term, attempting to gatekeep who else is allowed to call themselves Mormon is an extremely Mormon thing to do.