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This blog post at Rational FaithsSummary: The church needs an “us vs them” mentality to survive. If there is not opposition against us, the church will create something to rally the troops.
The obsession the church has with Sex and Gay marriage is pointed out as an example.
There is a fundamental difference between “us vs. them” and moral revulsion from not understanding something at all. I agree that opposition is important to religion (and, really, any organization), but I don’t see sexual orientation as a good example of it. I see that simply as revulsion based on inability to understand that has existed since the first 95-98 straight men couldn’t handle the thought of having 2-5 gay men around them. There is no manufactured opposition in this case; it is natural and biological.
Ironically, we are told we need to put aside the natural (wo)man, but very few members (or people, generally) understand that concept in its entirety, imo. If we did, we would be closer to what I believe constitutes Zion in its purest sense – where there is no us vs. them, even if there are differing beliefs and actions.
I have noticed a pattern in different meetings where a speaker digresses into a paragraph or two about how wicked the world is getting. The list all the bad things that represent wickedness is on the rise, and then connect it to whatever topic they happen to be speaking on. I think this is a way of legitimizing ourselves. And I’m not even sure how to measure wickedness — national crime rate? Percent of people who believe in God? Anyway — I don’t think the Us Vs Them paradigm is a conscious play on the part of our leaders. But I do think the binary thinking that dominates many church members’ thought processes has the effect Sheldon mentioned in his OP.
Sheldon wrote:This blog post at
Rational FaithsSummary: The church needs an “us vs them” mentality to survive. If there is not opposition against us, the church will create something to rally the troops.The obsession the church has with Sex and Gay marriage is pointed out as an example.
The article brings up the movie “The Village” which definitely reminded me of the Church when I first saw it because I think some leaders like to think of the Church as a safe-haven from the outside world and that whatever it takes to keep members from leaving is supposedly justified as if it is for their own good. Also I agree with the idea that porn is repeatedly used as a convenient boogeyman but in addition to being a way to fire people up I also think it is a way to distract from more serious problems (for the Church) because, for example, if young men don’t go on missions, fall away shortly after their mission, don’t get married in temple, etc. then porn is a convenient scapegoat compared to them possibly not liking the Church that much, not believing what it teaches, etc.
Personally I don’t believe the Church really needs to play up the us-versus-them rhetoric to survive as much as it simply being a case of the Church having become accustomed to a relatively high level of commitment and separation from the outside word and I think some of this is simply left over from times when the Church was relatively isolated from the mainstream society. All you have to do is look at other churches that don’t emphasize an us-versus-them mindset to this extent if at all to see that this isn’t really necessary as a matter of survival.
Ideally I think the best way to attract and retain followers would be to provide enough value in people’s lives and reduce the pain/costs/hassle involved enough that they would want to be a part of it simply because the benefits would outweigh the costs for average members. I see this us-versus-them rhetoric and some of the other manipulative tactics the Church relies on to motivate members as mostly cult-like gimmicks or short-cuts to get around some of the most common root causes of why people actually leave such as a general lack of appeal or interest for many individual members, relatively high costs in proportion to any tangible benefits, etc.
Quote:Ideally I think the best way to attract and retain followers would be to
provide enough value in people’s lives and reduce the pain/costs/hassle involved enough that they would want to be a part of it simply because the benefits would outweigh the costs for average members.Bingo — right there. For me, it stopped being worth the tithing and the time committed when there were really mean relationships, and no real solutions to the problems I faced in my life. In any other organization this would have not derailed me, but in the church — if it is supposed to have all truth, and be a huge blessing in my life, it needed to help me when I needed it. It failed miserably on so many counts, and heartlessly.
Working against us is King Benjamin’s discourse which sets up a deficit relationship between ourselves and God, and therefore, the church. That we can work ourselves to the bone and still not be owed anything from God, and by implication, the church.
Taken with the promise of blessings in a life we can’t see, and can’t verify (the invisible cheese/carrots), the current benefits outweigh the costs of being a member…
Two phenomena come to mind: 1. We all want to be unique in some way. There is a part of me that hopes the Church never changes so that my own peculiar stance on Mormonism REMAINS peculiar. I want to be special…to be different (though not TOO different). The Us vs. Them orientation reinforces a “similar” kind of uniqueness.
2. FEAR…we live in anxious times. I am amazed at the reactions of intelligent people to current events. In education, the Common Core is becoming a widely used guide for curriculum…and many people assume it will result in the indoctrination of their children. I know one family in my ward who will not allow their daughters to access Pell Grants for college for FEAR of government encroachment into their lives. I don’t even get me started on the reactions to the recent gay marriage Supreme Court decision. Fear makes us retreat and keeps the opposition at bay. I would guess most people’s fears are ill-defined and vague but they exist anyway.
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