Being an American Mormon makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, for me to be a tory. By toryism I mean a deep and genuine conservatism beyond the pastiche of semi-free market economics, heated battles over the public meaning of sexuality, and occasional bouts of half-articulated communitarianism that make up the GOP in the United States. I am talking about conservatism in a Burkean sense that sees meaning as primarily rooted in deep traditions, stable social institutions and hierarchies, and a preference for agrarian and local economic arrangements based on a deep suspicion of national and international markets. I am talking about a deep hankering for a kind of bucolic vision of deep history and tradition. Think of the Shire in Lord of the Rings. There is much about toryism that is appealing, but as an American Mormon I fear that any attachment that I might have to it suffers from three, extremely hard knocks.
First, toryism has had a hard time in American soil. To be sure we have had thinkers who have made a run at toryism on this side of the Atlantic — Calhoun in the 19th century and perhaps Wendell Barry in the 20th century; the fact that both are southerners is not accidental — but both the newness and the dynamism of American society have made toryism hard here. Turner’s thesis about the role of the frontier as the site for the formation of the American character is as good an explanation as any. A national myth that valorizes the man who pulls up stakes and braves empty territory to create a new life is not one that gives much solace to the tory soul. Hence, my Americanism — and perhaps in particular my western-Americaness — delivers a first and powerful blow to any tory stirrings in my soul.
Second, Mormonism itself delivers a powerful blow to tradition. By virtue of being a Mormon, I find myself in an ambivalent position vis-a-vis American history. My relationship to the historical geography of Northern Virginia perfectly illustrates this point. I live in the cockpit of the Civil War. My house is a short drive from Manassas and Bull Run. A drive down I-95 takes me past Spotsylvania Court House and Fredricksburg to Richmond and Petersburg. My genetic relationship to these stories, however, is complicated and compromised by my Mormonism. I am an American, so in a sense these battles are the stories of my people, yet because I am a Mormon, in a very real sense they are not. In the 1860s my ancestors were pulling handcarts to Zion rather than tramping the roads of the Old Dominion under Lee or Grant.
The third and most complicated hammer blow comes from the dynamic of Mormon history itself. Old Deseret seems like a prime candidate for a Mormon, tory acadia. I might ground toryism in Mormon history itself and sink the roots of my identity into the Great Basin geography of poplars, cottonwoods and irrigation ditches. The problem with this approach is that this historically and geographically rooted Mormon identity is becoming increasingly anachronistic in a church that defines itself in global and universalist terms. One may debate the extent to which Mormonism has disentangled itself from a Great Basin identity, but I don’t think that there can be any serious debate about the direction of evolution over the last century. Increasingly, if we ground our identity in historical myths they are not the local ones of pioneers, but the cosmic ones of the plan of salvation. Hence, quite apart from the economic and professional forces that have carried me far beyond the Mormon corridor, my commitment to Mormonism as a living religion rather than simply a form of nostalgia means that forming an identity rooted primarily in the Mormon past is increasingly difficult.
Hence, in place of the tory ideal of rootedness and belonging, I find that my political and social identity is largely defined in terms of being an outsider: first as a provincial of the American west far from the North Atlantic metropole, then as a Mormon partially cut off from the American story, and finally, as product of pioneer stock whose role in defining the Mormon mythos is becoming increasingly marginal. The result is that rather than toryism, I am pushed toward philosophical liberalism, the creed of the outsider estranged from history and seeking protection and formal belonging through ahistorical stories of liberty and equality. This is not, of course, an entirely satisfying solution to the dilemma, but the confused tangle of my more local histories and identities seems to prevent the formation of a political and social persona rooted entirely within a historical and traditional framework.
Maybe you could be a Whig.
Well, as a British Mormon….
These must be peculiarly American concerns, Nate, because my Mormonism seems pretty innate (no pun intended), but my toryism is pretty strong most of the time. Except that one is often deceived in thinking that to be a tory one must also be a Tory, if you get me.
Ronan: I was hoping that you would comment on this thread. I was trying to figure out if my ambivalence with toryism is a Mormon thing, an American thing, or a Mormon-American thing. I wonder to what extent ancestry is important here. For example, if my family had deep roots in the Virginia piedmont and my grandfather had joined the Church in the 1930s and been a stalwart of the early DC stake, would me relationship to the historical geography of Virginia be different? Would I then be more comfortable embrassing a kind of Virginia toryism. (And really, if you want a setting for American toryism look in the Virginia horse country or New England north of Boston.) As it is, I feel as though my Mormon identity complicates my American historical identity, and my modern Mormon identity complicates my historical Mormon identity.
ed: I basically am…
Ronan: Of course, toryism was made for England (literally), and I suppose that it is your liberal wanna-be’s who end up as tortured outsiders…
Very interesting post. Old Deseret seems an unlikely foundation because it’s one of the lay-overs before the sponsoring institution reseats in Jackson County/New Jerusalem. Maybe eternal progression also is geographical until the Millennium. I suppose we won’t have deeply-rooted permanence until being planted in one of the degrees of glory (or lack thereof).
“Being an American Mormon makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, for me to be a tory.”
I’m sorry.
“By toryism I mean a deep and genuine conservatism beyond the pastiche of semi-free market economics, heated battles over the public meaning of sexuality, and occasional bouts of half-articulated communitarianism that make up the GOP in the United States. I am talking about conservatism in a Burkean sense that sees meaning as primarily rooted in deep traditions, stable social institutions and hierarchies, and a preference for agrarian and local economic arrangements based on a deep suspicion of national and international markets.”
A good start, but you leave off just when Toryism begins to get interesting. If you just imagine that Tories long for the Shire, and leave it at that, then the sort of dismissals which you have so frequently engaged in–in which Rousseau is a frequent whipping boy–come easily. But Rousseau didn’t leave off after urging the adoptation a mode of politics in which legitimacy was tied to the general, willed expression of a culturally and economically bound community; he went on from that point, talking about the manner in which such a society is to be governed, how it should respond to technological change, what amount of religious diversity it can tolerate, and so forth. (There are four whole sections to The Social Contract; frustratingly, American liberals rarely seem to ever read past the first. Marx’s writings have suffered a similar fate.) This is not just some nostalgia game–the communitarians and conservatives of the world have not simply sat back and puffed on their pipes and groused about immigration. They’ve developed models; they’ve argued; they’ve engaged. For example, Toryism–which kind? Red Toryism, with its heavy dose of social egalitarianism? How about something more grounded in Catholic social teaching, employing the principle of subsidiariness? There’s lots to explore on the anti-liberal side of the aisle, and it deserves much more than a snicker about how some people want to eat sugar beets in Hobbiton.
“A national myth that valorizes the man who pulls up stakes and braves empty territory to create a new life is not one that gives much solace to the tory soul. Hence, my Americanism – and perhaps in particular my western-Americaness – delivers a first and powerful blow to any tory stirrings in my soul.”
All the worse for the many ways in which the American experience has been misinterpreted and abused. As it has been: the early American colonists, with few exceptions, certainly didn’t consider themselves radical individualists, and the opening of the American West, as any honest appraisal of the record makes clear, was characterized by collective, public action from beginning to end.
“By virtue of being a Mormon, I find myself in an ambivalent position vis-a-vis American history….I am an American, so in a sense these battles are the stories of my people, yet because I am a Mormon, in a very real sense they are not. In the 1860s my ancestors were pulling handcarts to Zion rather than tramping the roads of the Old Dominion under Lee or Grant.”
I don’t see where you’re going with this. Ok, so you don’t feel much attachment to the struggles of the 19th-century American community. So? This is a common mistake that people make in their appraisal of Toryism; they assume that it is built around a kind of nostalgia, and the fact that not everyone feels that nostalgia, or feels it differently, somehow proves that the whole communal project therefore founders. But a truly communal identity cannot, and should not, be understood solely in terms memory. To make perceptions of “what used to be” into the binding glue of a social order is to make that social order static, or as Christopher Lasch used to argue, sociological: it becomes a set of defined phenomena that can be abstracted from lived experience and used as data to judge what the level of “community-mindedness” is. Then, since the data of life of course must and will always change, of course all communities appear merely wistful. But belonging isn’t primarily a matter of remembering alike; it is a matter of participating alike. Didn’t you ever go to a Pioneer Day celebration in Salt Lake City? If so, didn’t you ever see people participating, marching, celebrating, who had absolutely no heretidary connection to the pioneers? Of course you did. Perhaps when they did they suffered from some kind of existential confusion, but there’s no reason to assume such. What mattered is that they’d settled in Salt Lake, for whatever reason, embraced its forms of life and celebration, and thus shaped their daily lives (including, for example, what they did on the morning of July 24th) around a story which they submitted to as now part of their own.
I can’t help but assume that you must do the same to the United States, even though your primary community once turned its back on the U.S. Do you ever recite the Pledge of Allegiance? Well, there you go.
“I might ground toryism in Mormon history itself and sink the roots of my identity into the Great Basin geography of poplars, cottonwoods and irrigation ditches. The problem with this approach is that this historically and geographically rooted Mormon identity is becoming increasingly anachronistic in a church that defines itself in global and universalist terms….My commitment to Mormonism as a living religion rather than simply a form of nostalgia means that forming an identity rooted primarily in the Mormon past is increasingly difficult.”
Again, I think your reading of what Toryism involves is making it much too easy for you to think in either/or terms–either Mormonism must teach us to be nostalgic for cottonwoods and the tragically gutted Logan Temple, or there must not be any room for a sense of embeddedness in Mormonism at all. As I said above, a living community is not and should not be constructed as a complete opposite to a community of memory. That be said, this criticism of yours is a very strong one. Does contemporary Mormondom have roots? Does the promise of Zion turn on any commitment to being placed, to finding an equal and loving space in the world? Or is it pure principle–“charity” and “obediance” and “love” conducted through a globalized interface of identical branches, wards, and stakes? Clearly it’s not completely that, and never could be. But there is, I fear, a tendency for our commitment to the “cosmic plan of salvation,” as you put it, to identify itself with a similarly cosmic sense of identity, allowing us to think that Mormonism is something that you can just pick up and take with you anywhere, at any time, in any fashion. Much of our doctrine of personal revelation (or “dialogical revelation,” as Terryl Givens put it) is tied up in this. I honestly don’t know how to make sense of it all–as I think I’ve admitted to you before, Nate, I don’t have any knock-down arguments to disprove Mormonism’s liberal essence. I don’t think such an argument can be sustained via our theology, but it may well be inevitable given the particular way in which our religion, as reflected in our recent (say, post-WWII) history, as indexed the universal to the individual. The prophets have spent their time encouraging private scripture study, not collective economics. Is that because we’ve become so sinful that the high Tory dream is no longer an option, and the Lord has told the leaders of the church to shelve the plans for communities of Zion for the time being? Or is because that dream–the whole idea of culture and nation and community–is just irrelevant to righteous living in the first place? I don’t think it is irrelevant, and I don’t want it to be irrelevant, but I’ve been wrong plenty of times before.
“I find that my political and social identity is largely defined in terms of being an outsider: first as a provincial of the American west far from the North Atlantic metropole, then as a Mormon partially cut off from the American story, and finally, as product of pioneer stock whose role in defining the Mormon mythos is becoming increasingly marginal.”
If all you’re talking about here is your own feeling of outsiderness, my only response is to suggest that you’ve never been an outsider alone–there is, as I’m sure you well know, a historically embedded and meaningful communal ideal which Westerners can identify with, as well as one the pioneers can identify with. Whether there is one which 21st-century globalized Mormons can identify with remains to be seen. But if you suggest that the history of Mormonism itself, or the history of America itself, constitute obstacles to Toryism on their own terms, I think you’re very, very wrong. The notion that our society and politics must necessarily be tied to some kind of marginality says nothing about the possibility of feeling like Shire-folk. The early American colonists were by every definition “marginal” to the British empire; yet, far from being primarily motivated by abstract ideas about liberty, their sense of identity was fiercely grounded in a sense of their civic connection to England–which is why they reacted so strongly to a Parliament and a King who, in their view, didn’t take their rights as Englishmen seriously.
“I am pushed toward philosophical liberalism, the creed of the outsider estranged from history and seeking protection and formal belonging through universal stories of liberty and equality.”
Please don’t suggest that communitarian and conservative philosophies are somehow lacking in theories of liberty and equality. And if you’re going to portray liberalism as a creed for those “seeking protection and formal belonging,” which I suppose it is (partly), be sure to add “individual self-interest” to the mix as well, just for completion’s sake.
Nate,
Nobody’s ancestors were pulling handcarts to Zion while Grant’s or Lee’s armies were tramping through Virginia. Lee’s armies were in Virginia (if you count West Virginia, which they did back then) as early as 1861. Grant didn’t take command of the Federal armies, including the Army of the Potomac, which was in fact commanded by Meade until the end of the war, until 1864. And, I think that the Martin and Willie company disasters marked the end of the handcart experiment. In 1856.
Just a quibble, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
The Willie and Martin companies were the fourth and fifth handcart companies. Five more followed. The last was the Stoddard company which arrived in Salt Lake City on Sept. 24, 1860.
It sounds as though my Swedish forebearers took wagons across the plains. The Danish ones arrived earlier and took hand carts — or so says family tradition. I rely on Mark B., of course, to correct me on this.
And the George W. Oman Company arrived on Oct. 1, 1851 (without handcarts).
” … [A]nd it deserves much more than a snicker about how some people want to eat sugar beets in Hobbiton.”
Southfarthing’s finest weed for me, thanks.
I don’t really know jack about toryism. I was raised in the most Republican county in the most Republican state in the US. We had a joke that we ran the last Democrat out when Roosevelt (mispronounced as Roooooosevelt, like a rooster) died. We don’t think about USUand a few isolated nests of Democrats there.
Anyway I am less than completely enthralled by the current direction that the Republicans are going. Not that I thought Kerry was any better and I am not looking forward with any glee to the Hilda-beast taking charge. But your description of those things that you associate with toryism sound so appealing to me and make me want to say “where do I sign up?”
Your three objections are well taken. But I think there are answers to each of them. First the American past will not and can not resemble the future. Americans conquered a frontier and that is definitely not going to happen again, here. The idea of The West is gone. So what did not flourish here in the past may succeed in the future. Second I have an ancestor who was a second generation Mormon who was slow to heed the call to come to Zion and was still living in Virginia in 1860 and he fought for the South during what we call here in Georgia, The War Fer Southern Independence. I can’t remember who my ancestor was tramping around with. I really don’t think it is important whether the handcart companies were exactly contemporary or what. I agree with you that it was the handcart mind set you are getting at and some of us think that too many members of the church are still pulling handcarts around, so to speak. And Georgians are still flying the Confederate Battle flag.
Finally the concept of old Deseret still burns brightly in the hearts of many Mormons. I think it burns brightest in those of us who have been displaced and do not live there any more and have not for many years and may never get back. This displacement I call the Mormon Diaspora. The birth rate in Utah so far exceeded the number of new jobs that could possibly be created that many of us were forced really, to choose between flipping burgers in Utah with post graduate degrees or else going somewhere else. Some of my relatives stayed and are amazing under achievers. But we who left for better economic opportunities have a hard time with the idea that we are no longer there. I call these feelings “The Pine for Zion” syndrome and I think it is very strong in many people, including myself. And the imagined Deseret is a place of sweet childhood memories with the less desireable parts conveinently deleted. Instead of trashy Cottonwoods growing on the irrrigation ditches, I remember Alpine firs growing by cool babbling brooks in the canyons where skii resorts now thrive.
What really concerns me are latter day rumors about the statistical disparity between youth raised in the Wasatch Corridor and those raised far away, say in the Eastern US. I heard somewhere that about 40 or even 50% of Mormon boys growing up in Utah serve full-time missions and that only about 10% from the eastern US do the same. Some large percent of Mormons who manage to attend college in Utah marry within the faith if not within the temple. Some large percent of the youth who grew up in Georgia attend other colleges and don’t as often marry within the faith or the temple. My uncle in Ogden Utah was inactive for about 60 years and came back; it is hard to imagine that happening to a boy who grows up in my ward. I doesn’t matter if some sound sociological study shows only the slightest differences, the risk is still there in our minds and if one of our children goes astray we will always wonder if it might have been different if we had not left.
I also do not think that “All is Well in Zion.” When times get hard for the church there is a tendency to think that the church will not always prosper everywhere. That it might actually dry up in some places, like maybe even here. And so we want to get out the ax and cut us some green wood and cobble together our handcarts and head toward the setting sun.
I would end this rumination with the hope that the future is bright overall and that we may go in new and wonderful directions.
Maybe it’s my Idaho roots coming out, but most of the Mormon-Americans that surrounded me during my youth could be described as Tories (as you’ve described them anyway). My parents’ (well, at least my father’s) and grandparents’ politics are defined by a traditionalism based in agrarian communities and a suspicion of anything national or international, whether you’re talking about markets or some sort of bureaucratic body. I’m surprised that this political ideology can even survive in a church that is both bureaucratic and global (increasingly so, as you point out), but yet it does. An interesting study would be to figure out how rural Mormons of this ideology are able to reconcile the two.
Nate, I agree with you. I don’t necessarily disagree with anyone else either. Keep writing about this stuff.
Russell: I think that you misread quite a bit of what I am trying to do here. There is no sniggering about toryism in this post. Nor am I suggesting that the implications of toryism — which you are so eager to delineate and seem so slighted about not seeing — are unimportant or trivial. It is simply not what this post is about. Rather, it is about trying to understand why I have a difficult time feeling emotionally or spiritually (in a sort of broad Germanic sense rather than a narrow religious sense) comfortable with toryism. A couple of specific points:
You misunderstand me to be making a point about individualism with me reference to Turner. I am not. Rather, I am talking about the relationship of the American experience to history. Even if the various errands into the wilderness were comunal exercises, they were nevertheless breaks with the past and the creation of new communities. No matter how you slice it, the historical roots of Omaha, Nebraska are not as deep as the historical roots of Caterbury, England. (BTW, although I am willing to concede that much of the western expansion was communal, this is complicated because many of the biggest “public” encouragements of settlement had to do with the structure of American real-estate law, e.g. squatter’s rights, the homestead act, etc., and for jurisprudential reasons I think that there are important differences between private law and other sorts of legal actions)
To say that toryism is not solely about memory is to confuse the concepts of necessity and sufficiency. I agree with you that it is not solely about memory, but also about participation, public ritual, etc. This admission, however, does nothing to the basic claim that memory is a necessary aspect of toryism. Obviously, you are touchy about the charge of nostalgia, but in your eagerness to refute the implied slander (or in this case libel) I think that you go too far. It seems to me that how one understands and feels about the past is a necessary part of toryism, particularlly that of someone like Burke. If community and personal identity are going to necessarily (if not sufficiently) tied up with memory, then it seems to me that current identies that render one alienated from important parts of the communal past create obstacles.
Your final point about being an outsider with others also, I think, confuses the issue. You are implicitly assuming that the distinction that I am getting at is between community and individualism. Hence, your eagerness to undercut preceieved claims of individuality. Yet the points that I am making here are not really about individuality and community, as much as they are about history and continuity. I agree with you that there is not an either/or choice to be had. On the other hand, I think that there comes a point at which tradition starts breaking down under the force of conflicting and complicating strands of memory. No doubt reactions to this phenomena are going to hinge as much on temperment as anything else, but this doesn’t mean that the phenomena itself does not exist.
As for your parting jab about liberalism and self-interest, it is a cheap shot and you know it ;->. I didn’t suggest that toryism is without liberty and equality, only that the liberty and equality of liberalism tends to be ahistorical and hence better suited for someone who can’t quite figure out which tradition he is to draw his identity from or how the multiple traditions fit together.
Interesting thoughts, Nate and Russell. Although the various strata of Christianity hold a place in (what I understand to be) the idealized tory locus, there is also a deep strain of Christian thought building on the Hebrew themes of exodus and exile that are more or less inimical to the kind of rootedness of the Burkean vision. Our hymn “I’m a Pilgrim, I’m a Stranger” transmits this strain of Christian homelessness, for example, which various features of Mormon history have adapted particularly well for American Mormonism: we’re only pilgrims on progress, passing through a world of sin toward the heavenly city where our mansions await.
Also, while Mormon notions of exaltation are, at heart, communal and social, the necessary communities seem to be more lineal than local: we’re saved with our kindred dead, not with our next-door neighbors.
It may be hard to draw a straight line between a ‘land of hope and glory’ toryism and mormonism, but I think that experience in the church tends toward producing, in many, many members, a very durable everyday toryism.
On the one hand, while we believe in striving for perfectability and perfection (writ large and vaguely), we also emphasize a natural man who–particularly when outside the gospel–has grave limits on perfectability. This understand of most men, or at least of ‘society’ and thus limited in their perfectability seems to me to make most oppose political utopianism, which is after all at the heart of most liberal theories in one way or another.
On the other hand, our own communities–that is, our wards, our stakes–socialize a number of tory norms. This is particularly important, I think, because these direct personal experiences are important for forming more general understandings of society: we can think of them forming the pre-political slate which frames later political life. How does this happen? Our wards are, in most cases, thought of as benevolent communities in which efforts are made to meet the needs of those who need help. Being of the community creates an extra-strong obligation to help those in the community, on the part of those able to give it. Moreover, though there is a fundamental, ultimate equality, that equality does not translate into equal roles in decision-making, leadership, or teaching. Rather, in most wards, some people–the currently called leaders, the once called, and the probably will-be-called comprise an informal and generally accepted elite. The bulk of the membership simply sees in these individuals skills or abilities or sometimes even a spirituality relevant to managing the wards affairs, and thus this elite is generally accepted, much as the community is, as benevolent. Crudely put, some people seem to make good leaders, and its best to let them do so. For the more introspective, the legitimizing text would probably be the doctrine of different gifts of the spirit. I’ve seen this phenomena in four very different wards–in Dundee Scotland, in the urban/suburban ward in Pittsburgh that my mom attended and in which I ultimately joined (having been raised in my fathers Catholicism), in my dear ward in the very rural Grundy Co TN, and in the midwestern singles ward where I now attend. It manifested itself in different ways, but, generally, it was just as strong.
Since the more philosophic tends against the socialized pre-political, it seems to me that this particular mormon toryism would manifest itself in the search for good leaders, good in the sense of being trusted to uphold the community, and in impassioned opposition to mistrusted leaders. Having relatively little connection to the ‘great basin’–but being a student of politics–it seems to me that this might be a fair description of Utah politics (with family name playing a role as cue-giver for how trusted the prospective leader might be). It certainly jives with the reactions among many church members that I’ve seen to both a fairly trusted leader–Bush–and one who flouted the community values through his all to public sex life–Clinton.
Impressive exchange of thoughts on an important topic. I’m sure I cannot express myself with as much brio, but still would like to add a dimension of the international Church. Where do Mormons abroad stand in their search for a new social and cultural identity as converts? There was a time where conversion implied this almost utopian vision of communitarianism in the American West. Conversion meant immigration and integration in the promised land of Zion. Nate remarks that his position in the modern American spectrum makes it increasingly difficult to identify with this, in his definition, toryism. Imagine then what it means for converts abroad who are told to stay where they are, but are still fed with hundreds of pioneer stories and the imagery of a Mormon Wasatch Front filled with chapels and temples and all the blessings of full Church programs. In contrast, many of them face a continuous dilemma, torn between their own cultural background and traditions on the one hand, and the often alienating requirements of the Church on the other hand. Some find the “balance”, though usually by sacrificing their belonging to the local culture. Many others don’t and this is part of the problem of retention, which is dramatic in the international Church. There are no easy answers to this challenge. But what strikes me above all, is that yearly still hundreds, if not thousands of international converts, find ways to “come to Zion”, driven by the old dreams, and mostly to provide their children the moral safety, imagined or not, and the Mormon marriage chances, very real, of the Wasatch front.
Nate,
As I both feared and kind of expected, my overwrought response to your post was more a function of my own pre-occupations that a legitimate response. My apologies for misreading you so thoroughly. A couple of rejoinders:
“Even if the various errands into the wilderness were comunal exercises, they were nevertheless breaks with the past and the creation of new communities. No matter how you slice it, the historical roots of Omaha, Nebraska are not as deep as the historical roots of Caterbury, England.”
True, but again I think this demonstrates that you have a limited grasp of that which lays behind what you call the “Tory” sensibility. So what if the settlement of Omaha is centuries more recent than that of Caterbury? What matters is that to inhabit Omaha is to (potentially, of course) embrace a founded settlement as one’s own. Granted, if the people who move there have the idea that Omaha isn’t a home, with a founding and an extant tradition which demands respect, but rather just a waystation, a locale that could just have well been anywhere (that is, if it is assumed that the lay of the land, the local history, and the demographics are meaningless, and that all that matters is that it has affordable subdivisions and a place to earn some dough), then you’re right that it cannot provide resources for Tory feeling–but, the same would hold true for Caterbury as well. Are there more communities in the American West which have been warped by such a mentality than in other parts of the country, much less England? Probably (think of Denver). But I would affirm that that has more to do with how the American economy has exacerbated a flawed mythology of the west, then anything structural about the fact that the non-native populations of the American West haven’t been there for very long. The pioneers had only been in the Salt Lake Valley for a generation or two by the turn of the century, and yet at circa 1900 a collective Utah patriotism was alive and well.
“It seems to me that how one understands and feels about the past is a necessary part of toryism, particularlly that of someone like Burke.”
True. But why is Burke the essential model of communitarian feeling here? Ok, granted, your whole post is about Toryism, the kind of mix of communal/class/cultural feeling which he is seen by American conservatives to have been kind of a godfather of. But the substance of your original post reaches far beyond Burke (you even de-capitalize Tory, implying that you’re reflecting on a general sensibility, rather than a particular frame of mind)–who was, don’t forget, himself an Old Whig anyway. Don’t subject all potential communal articulations to the requirements of one 18th-century Englishman.
“On the other hand, I think that there comes a point at which tradition starts breaking down under the force of conflicting and complicating strands of memory. No doubt reactions to this phenomena are going to hinge as much on temperment as anything else, but this doesn’t mean that the phenomena itself does not exist.”
Fair enough–I read a normative argument into what was merely a descriptive observation, and an undeniably accurate one at that. Again, my apologies.
Rosalynde,
“Although the various strata of Christianity hold a place in (what I understand to be) the idealized tory locus, there is also a deep strain of Christian thought building on the Hebrew themes of exodus and exile that are more or less inimical to the kind of rootedness of the Burkean vision.”
A great observation, and a true one. The theological/historical problem which Mormonism potentially poses to the very possibility of “embeddedness,” the one I started ruminating about towards the end of my original response to Nate, is in some ways fundamental to Christianity itself. Indeed, one of the more intriguing ways to read the Protestant/Catholic split (and then, subsequently, the split between “High Church” and “Low Church” Protestant denominations, to say nothing of the radical reformation churches), is to put them in light of efforts to deal with the old Augustinian insistence that Christ’s revelation makes both the City of God and the City of Man–Zion and Babylon, salvation and damnation–everywhere and nowhere on this earth. The church and the sacraments, he argued, are not a home; they are a waystation, nothing more, as we pilgrims await judgment and release. The whole Christian tradition has to a significant degree evolved alongside attempts to figure out how “cultural” or “embedded” Christians ought to ever actually want to be. It’s possible that Mormonism’s unique approach to revelation and the “interruption” of history presents an answer to that problem, or actually makes the problem moot. Then again, maybe Mormondom will have to go through the same developments that Christianity as a whole has.
Wilfried,
“Imagine then what it means for converts abroad who are told to stay where they are, but are still fed with hundreds of pioneer stories and the imagery of a Mormon Wasatch Front filled with chapels and temples and all the blessings of full Church programs. In contrast, many of them face a continuous dilemma, torn between their own cultural background and traditions on the one hand, and the often alienating requirements of the Church on the other hand.”
That puts much of my final contention to Nate’s original post in a much more explicit and practical context. If Zion is to be understood as a set of institutions and principles manifest in the various stakes throughout the world, and not in a specific located community (with an embedded history and story and founding), then what are we to do with the fact that those institutions and principles are still marked by a particular communal experience–namely, the development of the church in the American West? Do we attempt to elide cultural particularity entirely? (Is that even possible? Some of the apostles of globalization seem to think so, happy at the idea that “culture” becomes something easily transportable and disposable…which, now that I think of it, fits very well with your worries about “folklorization” in the church.) Do we simply wait for (and ride on the back of the gradual emergence of) a vaguely Americanized universal culture? Or do we try to figure out some way to allow worldwide Mormonism to remain particular? Important questions, all.
Mike, Brayden, TMD,
Interesting comments, all; thanks for making them. I think it is important to note that Mormon wards, whatever the implications or confusions of the history and theology which presumably lays behind them, are nonetheless, like every other sincere grouping, one of Burke’s “little platoons”–a bunch of people who bind themselves (or allow themselves to be bound) together, and thus are shaped and disciplined by the requirements and benefits of membership. This gives them a sensus communis to draw upon, a common agenda which reflects a real, lived in place, and thus makes them somewhat resistant to utopian universalism (as TMD notes) and provides some protection, at least, to traditional suspicions and priorities (as Brayden observes). Who hasn’t known a bishop who just kind of wearly accepts the latest directive from Salt Lake, knowing full well that things will continue to operate the way they’ve always operated locally, and (if you catch him in a honest moment) is entirely satisfied with that fact? Whether such is a paradoxical attitude in the present church is a rich question, to say the least.
I also really like TMD’s observation about the development of a leadership class within the church. It’s something that I’ve commented upon before, sometimes in frustration, but no one can deny that Toryism, and most forms of communitarianism, presume the existence of at least a limited amount of differentiation and hierarchy. How one balances such a need for order with the modern imperative of equal treatment is a major problem, one that has led to the legal undermining of many communal structures with the U.S. and abroad (with both good and bad results). It may be that, in resolutely insisting upon being (at least in the provinces) a lay organization, the church is in a position to maintain hierarchy with a minimum of social tension (though a gender-based perspective may seriously contest that claim).
I agree with everything that Russell Fox, TMD, and Kingsley have said. Not to say that I disagree with Nate Oman, not exactly. He is more to be pitied than censured.
Not to your point, Nate. But your mention of the Civil War and Mormons jogged my memory. Here’s the best Mormon/ Civil War story I know. Patience Loader was a young woman who came to Utah with the Martin Handcart company. Coming from London, she wasn’t that impressed when she first saw Utah Valley. She married a soldier with Johnton’s army. Trekked back to DC with the soldiers and sat out the Civil war in the camps around Washington, D.C. As I recall she then trekked back with her husband to Utah; he died on the return trip. Finally lived out her long life in Utah.
Let’s not forget the normative implications of toryism and liberalism for how individuals privately pursue the good life. Both philosophies can be viewed as ways of life as well as ways of government, and I think it’s the private implications of toryism that exert the most pull for Mormons.
Liberalism has arguably become identified in the modern American mind with a kind of moral relativism. Each person’s conception of the good life is as normatively valid as any other person’s, and each person has the right (and perhaps even the obligation) to determine for her or himself, based on abstract principles not necessarily derived from authority figures or community practices, the nature of the good life.
This coupling of moral relativism and liberalism may be completely indefensible. Classical liberalism was primarily a public philosophy. Locke, in his Letter Concerning Toleration, went out of his way to avoid the suggestion that all religions were equal in God’s eyes. But over time, the implication that every person has a right to follow the dictates of her or his own conscience has arguably morphed in the popular understanding into a normative respect for each person’s conclusions. Think, for example, how the debate over gay rights has become so muddled with the debate over the normative acceptability of homosexuality as a practice. Serious philosophers may not equate public tolerance with private normative acceptance, but much of the American public undoubtedly does.
I think what drives Mormons into toryism nowadays is a reaction against this privatization of public liberalism. Mormons feel strongly that a particular set of authorities and a particular set of community traditions establishes a universally applicable conception of the good life. This feeling is so strong that Mormons distrust even their own ability as individuals to discern the good life without the help of community and authority. Though the “dialogic/personal revelation” strand of Mormonism suggests weakly that each individual has the ability to discern the good life with only God’s help, we are told constantly that God will never tell us anything that conflicts with community norms or the teachings of authority. This sensibility may not be unique to Mormons. Orthodox Catholics undoubtedly feel the same way. But to Mormons steeped in this tradition, the linkage of public liberalism with private moral relativism is anathema.
Perhaps Burke didn’t feel the same attachment to a particular normative conception of the good life that I feel. But I’m siding with Russell here in refusing to confine this debate to Burke. And even Burke argued that public law ought to be accountable in some way to community tradition and authority.
Perhaps Mormons have trouble reconciling their private norms with the public implications of liberalism, as well as liberalism’s more modern private implications. A certain amount of cognitive dissonance is inevitable when we try to espouse a public philosophy that recognizes each individual’s right to discern the good unrestricted by community with a private philosophy that distrusts even our own ability to discern the good unaided by community. But the strongest pull to toryism is undoubtedly the private normative implications that have become attached to liberalism in modern America.
26. John, re your comment, “But over time, the implication that every person has a right to follow the dictates of her or his own conscience has arguably morphed in the popular understanding into a normative respect for each person’s conclusions. Think, for example, how the debate over gay rights has become so muddled with the debate over the normative acceptability of homosexuality as a practice. Serious philosophers may not equate public tolerance with private normative acceptance, but much of the American public undoubtedly does.”
Harold Bloom explains in “The Closing of the American Mind” how we came to this:
* The founder fathers established what they held to be the best of cultures.
* Liberal education encouraged the personal consideration of all cultures and values in order to determine the best elements to incorporate This was threatening to the established culture because it allowed the possibility of something better. [This echoes our proselyting proposal to consider the BoM].
* The acceptance of all cultures as equally worthy of consideration and personal choice of the best collapsed into the feeling that all cultures are equally worthy of acceptance [Because, I suppose, different persons selected different Bests], which means that there isn’t a single true Best to be discovered and adopted.
This path ends with many people in the state of “They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god… which shall fall.” (D&C 1:16) We know that there is unhealthy encouragement to arrive at this state: “And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none” (2 Ne 28:22)
Liberal education has value in trumpeting what you call “each individual’s right to discern the good unrestricted by community.” However, it offers wide freedom to seek the good without equipping the seeker to know when it’s found. “Good luck in the jungle. Did we forget to give you a liahona?”
I don’t follow your observation that we have “a private philosophy that distrusts even our own ability to discern the good unaided by community.” Our history and myths, and my own current experiences, have many instances in which the LDS individual discerns the good not only individually — no borrowed light — but contrary to the community’s “aid”.
Of course, the LDS view is that we each not only have the free agency to seek the good but that part of our purpose is to do so. We also have the means to discern it: “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).
I have learned much from this discussion of foundations, belonging, and supporting structures. I wonder, though, how this is an issue if we build on the foundation we’re given “… it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation” (Hel 5:12) I find real fellowship in the wards and branches of various economic and ethnic compositions that I visit. When I received personal counsel from the two-year-convert ethnic-Chinese bishop in Palos Verdes (usually spelled with $ signs), received priesthood blessings of comfort and counsel at the hands of the Black branch presidency in South Central LA, shared testimonies with the faithful in Hispanic branches, or even talked with saints from my own gene pool, I felt at home, welcomed, that I belonged.
I’m new to the ‘nacle, but I already have learned that there is much more good here than I first understood. I look forward to discovering more gems here. However, I wonder at the people here that seem to apply the liberal-education model, as I described it anyway, to eternal searching. They seem to unfound themselves from the spiritual guides, rely instead on their own intellectual abilities, and when that fails to satisfy, act as though it proves the insufficiency of the spiritual guides. This process and the hunger that it creates was foretold “When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and *it profiteth them not*. And they shall perish.” (2 Ne 9:28)
It is not more difficult to divine with our own intellect the answers to the issues and questions that become barriers to some people here; it is impossible “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: *neither can he know them*, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14) But it seems that some people here want to do try. I do not believe that is what is meant by “work out your own exaltation.”
If I’m missing something, I’d be very grateful for a deeper understanding that any of you could share.
27. Paragraph #2: Harold Bloom s/b Allan Bloom
What the hell happened to my previous comment?
Hello, I’m a lurker.
Kudos on the very interesting article. I have had perhaps the opposite experience of yours, Nate, in that I grew up in the South, joined the church at 15, and have recently moved to Utah. There is a very strong sense of “toryism” as you have defined it in the South, bordering on the fanatic at times, and there is also a strong sense of the same in the more active LDS-populated areas of Utah, something which I haven’t experienced as strongly anywhere else in the country but in the South. It’s been discombobulating to try to sort out my loyalties as to which toryism I belong to; the Mormon tory insists on having my highest priority and being one that, as mentioned (if one thinks about it hard enough), extends beyond the pioneers indefinitely, and my Southern roots, which pitifully beg that I maintain hold on my identity, less savory ancestral traditions and briefer (albeit colorful) existence.
So I can identify with your “stranger in a strange land” conundrum, but on opposite terms.
Manean, I believe you have hit the nail on the head with the reasons I am interested in, but not impressed with, Times and Seasons like discussions. They round out my “intellectual” side to understanding Mormonism. However, more often than not they are less than profitable as a spiritual expression.
To connect the above to the topic at hand, perhaps that is why Nate Oman is uncomfortable with troyism and Mormonism. A true religious existance goes beyond political pidgeonholing and traditional barriers. My guess is that is why he has also expressed discomfort with Republican party values even as he is a strong (I am supposing) supporter of that party. I know plenty of die-hard Mormons who are also die-hard Republicans, yet remain uneasy with the Republican platform. Yet, they are such strong Republicans because they see it as “God’s political party.” This discrepancy isn’t because of some blind acceptance of everything Republican. Rather, it is because they see the Republican party as a progressive conservatism with the Democrats (regardless of their idealogical identification with progressiveness) as stagnant liberalism. In other words, the Republican party is conservativly pliable while the Democratic party is rock solid liberal. That is the perception that I partly believe is reality.
I have been saying for years mostly to myself (although heard it once or twice other places), the Republican party would lose more than half its Mormon constituancy if there was a party formed that combined certain aspects of Democrat priorities. The party would combine a recognition of moral religious certainties with recognition of responsibility to community. More than once I have heard the comment (if only hidden by other ways of saying it), I would be a Democrat if they weren’t so Godless. I would put forth Hugh Nibley and Orson Scott Card as examples of Democrat Mormons who are still highly respected by Republican Mormons. Yet, Harry Ried is an example of a Democrat Mormon who is not respected by that same group because he is seen as supportive of the WHOLE Democratic platform.
Then, one would ask, why are there not more Mormons that are Democrat if HN and OSC are seen by many Mormons as holding ideal opinions? Responses to OSC’s conservative views by Democrats hold the answer very well. Democrats seem to be intrenched liberals that will not accept outside views without hostility. You may hold them, but you can’t say them (exmp. Harry Ried). Repblicans, on the other hand, may hold to a strong party platform. But, they seem to be more accepting of different political ideas beyond the core. For Mormons that translates into open to influence. I would go so far as to say that as soon as the Republican party becomes as strongly staunch evangilical Catholic/Protestant (a strange combination to be sure) as the media likes to portray, within a generation Mormons would flounder from the party. They would not flock to the Democratic party (as currently constituted), but simply drop out of voting in record numbers.
My point of rambling is this: Perhaps the Mormon ambivilance toward toryism isn’t about tory philosophy at all. Rather, it is about Mormon ambivilance to politics in general. Remember, one of the Republican platforms that Mormons seem intrigued by is the ironic distrust of government.
“I have been saying for years mostly to myself (although heard it once or twice other places), that the Republican party would lose more than half its Mormon constituency if there was a party formed that combined certain aspects of Democrat priorities.”
One of my fondest, most indulgent and fanciful political daydreams, Jettboy, is that one day some mysterious billionaire will donate about 250 million dollars to the Libertarian Party. Then, just as miraculously, that seed money will bring forth hundreds of hard-working, dedicated, principled but also practical libertarian activists and candidates, that will run and win races on the local, state, and national level across the country. In other words, I dream that, someday, libertarianism might become a viable political options for the great masses of voters.
What would happen next is, of course, obvious. The Democratic and Republican coalitions would irreparably shatter. All of those who are classical liberals at heart, who vote Republican basically because it promises low taxes, free trade and gun rights and for no other reason, would delightedly bolt the GOP, happy to be free of all those social conservatives. Similarly, all of those who are cultural liberationists at heart, who stick with the Democrats solely because they protect abortion, adultery, and pornography from intrusive legislation, would bail from the the Democratic Party in an instant, happy to be free of all that high-tax egalitarian nonsense. All of the great American individualists out there, whether of an economic or a cultural sort, would now have a single home.
I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t like anything such a new libertarian party would do once it got into power (and it would get into power, I’m sure). Moreover, the conseravtive/religious and egalitarian/communitarian minority interests which remained from the ruins of the two other parties probably couldn’t ever get elected to anything. Since I think libertarianism is bad for the country and the soul, I really shouldn’t wish this would happen. But there is at least a chance that it would finally allow a political party I could wholly support to emerge (some kind of Christian socialist one), and that’s got to be worth something.
Nate, et al:
What an interesting discussion! I have not been able to read every entry in detail this evening, so please forgive me if I address material that has already been covered:
Periodically, I find myself conversing with a friend who, for whatever reason, does not feel at home among the Saints, and the term that seems to eventually surface in such discussions is “culture.”
One of these friends is an African American, single, female, convert from a classic Southern Black Church background. As such, she has been both attracted to, and estranged by, the same elements of contemporary LDS worship. For example, as an investigator, she originally liked the peace and order characteristic of our Sacrament Meetings. But, as a member, she found the slow and reverent way we speak and sing our hymns to be boring. As an investigator, she liked the way she was fellowshipped and accepted as one of the household by certain white families. But, as a member, she frequently felt misunderstood and unappreciated by her predominantly white ward, and later stumbled upon elements of Church history and doctrine relating to black people that she found troubling. The question arising from her situation is “How can such a person find a feeling of ‘belonging’ in classic Utah Mormon culture?”
As I read your questions regarding toryism, I am reminded of her situation and persuaded that in some ways you are dealing with overlapping issues, the union of which might be entitled: “To what culture do we, as Latter-day Saints, ultimately belong?”
My friend’s story appears to be shaping up to have a happy ending. She has tenaciously stayed in the fight and the Lord has led the right people into her life at the right time. An inspired Stake President here, a loving General Authority there, a famous black Mormon role model here, a kind Mormon neighbor there, have all combined to give her a sufficient sense of common culture—Zion. All other cultures to which we may temporarily identify will eventually be consigned to the “ash heap of history.” This is true, no matter how meritoriously we may currently regard them. Thus, your angst may be well placed. Until our Master’s kingdom comes, we are all sojourners—strangers in a strange land. We do not belong here, and should not feel too comfortable.
As for how this translates into political affiliation, neither one of the predominant parties is going to be a perfect match. Our ideal is a Kingdom, presided over by Jesus Christ. How does that mesh with the liberal values of democracy that we cherish?
With regard to conservatism, it has been said that “a conservative is someone who loves dead liberals.” Thus, we witness the irony of the American political landscape. The Republican party, to which Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Feminism) and Frederick Douglas (Abolitionism) both looked to advance their causes, is now rejected by Feminists and Black activists. And, the two groups originally targeted by Republicans in their war against “the twin pillars or barbarism,” Mormons (Polygamy) and Southerners (Slavery), are now fully entrench in the Republican camp. Culture appears to be a moving target in this temporal world. Perhaps it is helpful for a disciple to be flexible.