Is there a personality type that is naturally more religious? If so, what are the characteristics that make it easier for a person to successfully engage in religion and conversely, what traits make it harder to enjoy involvement in religion? This seems to be a discussion that comes up frequently in online discussions among those who are deconstructing their involvement with religion.
First, there are some issues with this premise that need to be addressed. One that immediately comes to mind is the fact that being non-religious is a relatively modern phenomenon. For thousands of years, everyone in your community was from the same religion, and being non-religious wasn’t really an option; even the cantankerous folks who didn’t like to be told what to do would still begrudgingly bend the knee to the authority of the church which was also the authority of the state. Pluralistic societies, allowing for many different faiths to co-exist, also created mini-communities within a larger non-religious society. That’s how the US is theoretically supposed to work, although it certainly seems to be up for grabs again lately.
Additionally, different faiths exert different types of pressures on individuals in terms of belief and practice. Some are very loose, and others are tightly controlled or “high demand.” Some have political norms that are unstated, while others overtly require political fealty to a certain viewpoint. Some are more universalist, assuming a lot of personal freedom of interpretation, while others are more elitist, restricting who is eligible for divine favor.
Setting all that aside, not because it’s irrelevant, but because it’s too big to deal with in one measly little post, let’s get back to personal temperament as pertains to religion. Have you ever met someone and been able to readily identify their religion (or non-religious status) just by the type of person they are? Or have you ever been pegged as being “Mormon” by someone just because of your personality? Conversely, have you ever been found to be Mormon and had another person express surprise because you didn’t “seem Mormon” to them? These are all related to the idea that some people fit the expected norms for a religion while others don’t, and if you fit those norms, you might be more likely to remain in that faith rather than leave it.
On the NSQ podcast (No Stupid Questions), psychiatrist and author Angela Duckworth recently did a series on the five basic personality traits. There is a quick questionnaire on their website that you can take to get your own score on these “big five” traits, often shorthanded as “OCEAN”: Open-Mindedness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Negative Emotionality. The link to the test is at the bottom of this episode (I can’t link directly because I’ve already taken it) where it says “Big Five Personality Inventory.” If you’d like to listen to the episode, that’s here as well.
Several of the descriptions of these personality traits indicate that they correspond more with women than men, with younger people or older, with religious people vs. non-religious, or with conservative vs. liberal values. As with all personality tests, I feel it’s important to caveat (and it’s a big ole grain of salt) that the instrument relies on self reporting, which means that if you are lacking in self-awareness, or you think a specific answer is more desirable, or your mood today is out of character, or whatever, then your results will be skewed based on that, and given that some display an older or younger correlation, the expectation is that your results might shift as you age.
Having said all that, let’s dig into each of these five traits, what my results were, and whether or not the trait corresponds with what we observe as a tendency to be religious (Mormon specifically), or to disinvest from religion. Rather than showing the traits in “OCEAN” order, I’ll use the order that the NSQ site gives for the results. There is a longer explanation of the scoring of each trait when you complete the test on the NSQ site, but I’ll recap it here in my own words rather than copying the longer explanations.
Extraversion. A low score means you tend to be socially or emotionally reserved, don’t share your opinions or views openly, prefer to work independently rather than in groups, and likely avoid risky behaviors (alcohol or sexual). A high score means you are more talkative, energetic, assertive in groups, popular, athletic or sporty, and in general more women score higher than men do; hence, the “jokes” from members of the Q15 that women should speak up but not too much.(Misogny is hilarious).
- Mormon connection: I’ve heard introverts say that the reason Church didn’t work for them was a requirement to be more extraverted in order to be accepted socially, but I don’t know that I agree with that (see previous comment about women shutting up and getting back in the kitchen rather than saying things male leaders don’t want to hear).
- My score: 3.83 out of 5. I was honestly a bit surprised by this because I do feel like at least post-pandemic I am socially pretty isolated, but then I come online and share my opinions, and I do like to chat with our employees. I also am a person with a pretty good energy level for my age, and I bike daily, so there’s that.
Agreeableness. A low score corresponds with being blunt and direct, argumentative, competitive, skeptical of other people’s intentions, risk-taking, aggressive drivers, and also higher earning. A high score corresponds with being considerate, polite, cooperative, well-liked, gravitating toward the social occupations. It is also more prevalent among women, religious people, and older people. So, in theory, we settle the hell down as we age, although I can think of some readily available counter-examples.
- Mormon Connection: In an online discussion, someone floated the theory that disagreeableness (defined roughly as “not caring what people think of you”) correlated with progressives who found it easier to make church work for them. Again, I’m not sure I’m buying that exactly. In general, I think that people who place a high value on getting along with others are going to remain in communities, regardless the quality of their personal experience in that community. Their orientation toward relationships will bind them to the community in ways that not giving a damn about being accepted will just not. Here’s a theory, though. I suspect that those who score low on agreeableness might be more prone to be elevated to leadership which would strengthen their ties to the organization. So basically, heads you win, tails I lose.
- My score: 3 out of 5. This is kind of a middle of the pack score. I did a different personality score years ago, the FIRO-B, that basically showed I had extremely low FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and was not super concerned about what people thought of me, which I still think is pretty true, but I do in fact believe that everyone is the hero of their own story, so nefarious motives are few and far between, and I am no longer the aggressive driver I once was. I really do think this one has changed a lot for me in the last 10 years since I quit my corporate life.
Conscientiousness. A low score means you are more spontaneous, a big picture thinker, someone who jumps from task to task, tend to have more liberal political views, and may engage in risky behaviors (drugs, alcohol, sex). A high score means you are organized, responsible, goal-oriented, like to finish tasks, tend to have higher grades & job performance. These high scorers also tend to be more religious, conservative, more women than men, and older vs. younger.
- Mormon Connection: Hello, “Covenant Path”! That plus things like the Temple Recommend interview seem tailor-made for people who score high on Conscientiousness: it’s a literal scorecard to see if you are copacetic with God (eyeroll emoji). Anyhoo, this is one reason that my tagline on Twitter has been “Saving the world, one pointless act at a time” (a quote from Veronica Mars) because basically, I love the little dopamine hit I get when I complete tasks. It’s like swatting flies. If the flies aren’t swatted, they are just buzzing around bugging me. So while I have this trait, I’m personally skeptical that it’s really how God works. On the contrary, it seems to me that this is really just mental masturbation, not that there’s anything wrong with that, not actually the stuff of salvation. Also someone with scrupulosity or OCD would actually score really high on this, and it would be very unhealthy for them emotionally. That’s not me, but it’s definitely a potential correlation. (This scoring system is for sorting personalities, not for identifying abnormal or unhealthy extremes).
- My score: 4 out of 5, which is pretty high, but as I said, I am skeptical that the Mormon checklist has anything that is actually true or valuable going on in terms of personal growth or salvation. But my inbox is empty, and my cell phone battery is full, also things that don’t actually matter.
Negative Emotionality. A low score corresponds with being emotionally stable and resilient, calm in stressful situations, able to bounce back from negative events, and possessing a greater sense of well-being. A high score relates to having more ups and downs, mood swings, sensitivity, reacting strongly to negative events. It tends to be higher for women and younger people.
- Mormon Connection: Not totally sure, but I tend to think that some low-level anxiety helps people remain religious (in a superstitious sense), and would lead to more need for social support, but the description does not indicate a religious trend in the results.
- My score: 1.83 out of 5. I tend to be pretty unflappable. I’ll have opinions, and I’ll share them freely, but I also think of myself as either a twig in a stream, or if I’m anticipating something unpleasant, a person strapped to a conveyer belt heading toward a wood chipper. But what can I do about it? So I don’t get tied up in knots over things outside my control.
Open-Mindedness. Those with a low score usually value tradition, being down-to-earth, and prefer the familiar or conventional, time-honored ways of doing things. They tend to be conservative politically. High-scorers usually have politically liberal views, are creative, intellectual, curious, sensitive to art and beauty, and are interested in science.
- Mormon Connection: Certainly under a Nelson / Oaks regime, being lower scoring on Open-Mindedness is practically a requirement. It hasn’t always been so, but there’s a lot of downplaying of personal revelation and favoring institutional authority. While we are told that those with doubts are “lazy learners,” the opposite seems to be more consistent.
- My Score: 4.5 out of 5. This is my highest score, not super surprising, and probably something I’ve always scored highest on; it hasn’t calcified with age. Even as a child I remember thinking that the worst thing you could be is too provincial, too set in your ways, because you can’t learn unless you seek out new ideas and experiences. This also relates to my skepticism that if we all get our own planets, people who are just taking orders from on high like good little soldiers will be any good at it.
The idea that some of these traits correspond with religiosity is interesting, but perhaps not instructive. For one thing, fewer people change religions than remain with the one they were raised in, although the percentage is increasing (from 16% in 2021 to 24% in 2023–a pretty big jump!) The percent who leave religion altogether is also increasing slightly during that same time frame to its current high of 26% in 2023 (up 5% from 2013). These numbers reflect US results.
A Time article explains these shifts in terms of wedding partisan politics, specifically Trump-voting, with Christianity, and that for many MAGA enthusiasts, their so-called Christian affiliation is just a reaffirmation of their ethno-nationalism, not actual religious sentiment or activity. In fact, many of them have not attended a church in years, even though they do claim to be Christians. The article concludes that churches who embrace this alliance are doing it at their own peril:
Planting your beloved faith in the welcoming soil of partisan politics is like burying your loved one in Stephen Kingās Pet Cemetery. What returns is neither living, nor dead, but something else entirely. Potentially the stuff of horror movies. Time article
While the article is referring to the politics of the right, this caution probably holds equally true to a religion that is so closely tied to partisan politics on the left that it drives away those with a more conservative bent. After all, politics in Jesus’ day bore no resemblance to these current political parties or their views. Which brings us in a weird way back to the OCEAN five, and my own scores. My highest score is the final one, Open-Mindedness, and that’s often been my objection to conservative religion. There’s just nothing there for me to sink my teeth into. I’ve already been there, done that. I’ve also experienced the shift toward control, away from intellect, toward institutional authority, away from curiosity; it feels like it’s closing up, the minds that remain inside are more aligned with each other, but not with me, and not with how I perceive reality.
But enough about me. Let’s talk about you!
- What were your scores?
- Do you see any connection between these five traits and Mormonism? What do you see?
- How have you experienced these traits in your own religious life in the Mormon church or elsewhere?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Let’s look at just one thing: Extraversion. It’s hard to be an introvert in the LDS Church. Doing a two-year proselyting mission is a real challenge, from constant low-level anxiety and distress to full-blown mental health crises. Testimony meeting is a thrill for extraverts who flock to the stand to share their latest adventures; not so much for the quieter ones. Maybe there should be a sign out front of LDS chapels: Introverts not welcome.
I think blogging appeals to introverts. You get to interact with text on the screen and your keyboard rather than … real people. Social interaction without real people (or, if you prefer, interaction with real people mediated by screens and keyboards).
I always found home teaching excruciating, I’m guessing in part because of my introversion.
Also, I love that you included your own scores, Hawkgrrrl, because it’s fun to line them up with my impression of you, even just knowing you online. I am utterly unsurprised, for example, by your low score on neuroticism, as you’ve always struck me as someone who’s able to shake off bad news or experiences and move forward without excessive self-recrimination or rumination. I think that’s a really admirable and enviable trait, as I’m a more neurotic person, and it can be exhausting!
Only an extrovert would think that the church isn’t tailored to extroverts š The OP cites how women are treated as a counter example, but that is an aversion to women *leading*, not women being extroverts. Dave B already mentioned missions, which are about as extroverted as anything can be, but nearly everything at church pushes me to be more extroverted than I want to be. Ziff mentioned home teaching. Most callings are exercises in being thrown into a new social group with no warm-up period or training. You’re now the gospel doctrine teacher, go stand up in front of all these people and teach a lesson . . . job starts next week. Next you’re in the YW presidency, go be friends with these teenage girls you’ve never met before, and help plan activities where you all get together and socialize every single week. Last year my wife and I were asked to be Ma&Pa on a trek. Here’s 8 teenagers you’ve never met that you have to spend all day with for 3 days in the wilderness, and you’re supposed to get them to interact with each other and have a meaningful experience. (I got to do 2 of the 3 days as a single parent, too!) Currently I’m the choir director, and the number 1 part of that calling is begging people to come to choir. Before that I was the executive secretary which basically consists of talking to everyone in the ward constantly and asking them to come meet with the bishop. If texting were not an option there is no way I would have made it through that. And regardless of what calling you have, you’re going to get a new one shortly after you finally get comfortable around the people you interact with. In my adult life between moving and ward boundary changes I have spend the following number of years in wards: 2, 2, 3, 4, 1, 3, 2. If it takes me a year to feel relaxed in a new ward, then I’ve able to be relaxed for 10 of the last 17 years. If it I bump that to 2 years, then I’ve been relaxed 4 of the last 17 years.
Ok, that’s enough of that. Here are my scores:
Extraversion:Ā 2.5 out of 5 (this feels high. I don’t meet people well.)
Agreeableness:Ā 3.83Ā out of 5 (I hold many opinions that would be unpopular with TBMs, but I keep them to myself, because I don’t like conflict. Probably makes religion easier to do, as I’m not a pot-stirrer.)
Conscientiousness:Ā 2.33Ā out of 5
Negative Emotionality:Ā 2Ā out of 5
Open-Mindedness:Ā 3.67Ā out of 5 (This is what makes church the hardest for me, because facing the same talks and lessons over and over again is so unfulfilling.)
My scores:
Extraversion:Ā 2.33 out of 5
Agreeableness:Ā 3.17Ā out of 5
Conscientiousness:Ā 1.83Ā out of 5
Negative Emotionality:Ā 1.33Ā out of 5
Open-Mindedness:Ā 4.67Ā out of 5
I agree with Dave B that my tendency to be an introvert is challenging in the Church. Writing and blogging is a much more comfortable format.
I love the OPs take on how people with a low score on conscientiousness would tend to dislike the current focus on the “covenant path”. I personally find very little meaning in the covenant path–when I can actually figure out what “covenant path” means, anyway.
There was a quote (that I can’t currently find) from some sort of a non-Mormon religious expert floating around awhile ago, I think in the context of a discussion of Fowler’s stages of faith, where he said that Mormonism is really good at moving children through their faith progression to become orthodox, believing young adults, which is a fine and happy place for many people to live out their lives. However, he went on to say that while Mormonism is one of the best religions at helping its young people obtain an orthodox faith as young adults, it is also one of the worst religions for those adults who desire to explore ideas and potential personal beliefs beyond orthodoxy. I feel like there is likely a strong correlation between people who would score high on open-mindedness and those who might not be spiritually be fulfilled by a stage 3, orthodox type of faith.
I don’t think extraversion is a requirement to fit in, but I do think it is a requirement to get promoted up the leadership ladder. For many men in particular, that might feel like their version of “fitting in”. I imagine it could be different for women. The Mormon experience for a man is one of feeling like your standing with God is reflected in your leadership resume. (Officially that’s not supposed to be true, but I think every Mormon man has had those thoughts at some point.) I’m an introvert who hasn’t had many leadership callings, and yes, sometimes I don’t feel like I fit in, but my introversion feels like the least of the reasons for that.
I would expect distributions of some of those attributes among Mormons to roughly mirror the overall population. The two that I would expect differences would be in conscientiousness (higher than average) and open-mindedness (lower than average). It would be particularly interesting to survey those who have questioned their Mormon faith. There are subsets of that group who have stayed, some of have found other faiths, and some who have left religion altogether. I’d be interested whether some personality types are more likely to choose one of those options than others.
Extraversion:Ā 2.83 out of 5
Agreeableness:Ā 3Ā out of 5
This one is interesting for me within my church life as I have become more of a disrupter at times in Elders quorum and Sunday School. I generally don’t love conflict, but I have found church to be so mind numbing at times that I can barely help myself.
Conscientiousness:Ā 2.83Ā out of 5
I suck, (there is my nasty internal critic coming out) at being focused on and completing a single task. I read multiple books at the same time and sometimes struggle to finish them.
Negative Emotionality:Ā 2.67Ā out of 5
Open-Mindedness:Ā 4.5Ā out of 5
This certainly makes my religious experience difficult in a heavy top-down, dogmatic institution, that seems afraid of having their ideas challenged. For as much as the LDS Church preaches “revelation” and “restoration”, they seem curiously allergic to change.
I think that I self-scored higher because I have been working on social skills in the fields of “Extraversion”, “Agreeableness”, “Conscientiousness”, and “Open-Mindedness” for a very long time as an imposed and internalized survival mechanism. I think that the church community is a specific area where the gender-based expectations of “Agreeableness” and “Conscientiousness” are where the biggest mismatch is. I was a mostly “law-abiding, letter of the law, good” girl who “checked most of the literal boxes” for a very long time while being the type of person who didn’t really conform and asked the wrong questions. I * could * be the child who shouted out, “the emperor is naked” and most people knew that (and acted accordingly).
A key part of my faith transition was that “I was open-minded” enough to realize that I was presiding and leading in my home – and that I really wasn’t good at the “touchy-feely, cleaning, decorating side of nurturing” so I changed the framework my family operated under. I started calling out the “division of labor” to take advantage of my presiding skills and providing skills (bringing home the bacon AND resource management of bacon procurement) and demanding those skills be respected (with a healthy dose of “do not call me nurturing”) even though I am female. Church members I shared this with were baffled at what I was trying to say, offended/maybe threatened that I wanted to “re-write the script” (just like a lot of other women actually), and confused about what “my thoughts and feelings” in the conversation said about them.
Extraversion:Ā 4.17 out of 5
Agreeableness:Ā 3.5Ā out of 5
Conscientiousness:Ā 2.83Ā out of 5
Negative Emotionality:Ā 1.33Ā out of 5
Open-Mindedness:Ā 4.17Ā out of 5
I talk too much, which will get me in trouble. I wounder what the best numbers are for being a Bishop? I loved to meet and talk with people and learn about them. I’m quite messy!
First off, I score 4.83 on extraversion. I would have loved to be MORE involved with church leadership than I was but no one asked me, probably because of my obligations to my special needs children (at least that’s the excuse) but also because I will always tell you what I think honestly and authentically if I get the chance (and this is contrary to our community expectations that women will be quiet and defer). My feelings are just as important as yours. I speak up for my own mental health. If I don’t you will still see it in my face. I rarely pretend anything is different than it is. If you don’t like that, call someone else (and they did).
This may be connected to my high score for open mindedness, of 4.83. I do have a high score of 4 for agreeableness. I follow careful rules for interactions I believe are both Christ like and part of my mental health. I know I can read no one’s mind and they can’t read mine, so I work at communicating clearly and directly, even if it sometimes triggers other people (it isn’t my job to manage the emotions of others).
I never call names or cut others down. I avoid bringing up things about others unless they ask me, or if their actions affect me in some way. If something hurts me I believe it is my obligation to bring it up, rather than resent others. To me, this is just good emotional hygiene. It may have to do with being raised by two counselors. I score 4.17 for conscientious, but as you can see I have my own measures for evaluating myself, and at this point in my life, I find other people’s evaluations of me interesting; but I rest up on my own personal and spiritual authority to evaluate myself.
I only score 1.67 on negativity. I am a happy, strong person dealing with many challenges.
While I agree with the OP that women that speak up are seen as broken and sinful and unwelcomed into leadership, I want to add that men that are introverts are seen in a similar way. My husband and two of my children are introverts. Our community has seen us as broken. Men are supposed to be the ones that speak up and want to be involved and display leadership traits. Women are supposed to quietly defer. My parents raised me to believe I was an equal to any man. This resulted in years and years of misunderstandings between my husband and myself (both of us swimming in patriarchal waters we couldn’t even see) and when a misogynistic bishop involved himself in our troubles, of course I was the one to blame in his inaccurate estimation.
Thank you for the interesting post hawkgrrl
Seeing that so many commenters have a really high Open-Mindedness score (like mine) makes me wonder if being open-minded truly is antithetical to current church culture.
Extraversion: 3 out of 5
Agreeableness: 4.5 out of 5
Conscientiousness: 3.33 out of 5
Negative Emotionality: 2.5 out of 5
Open-Mindedness: 4.17 out of 5
This all seems about right to me. The conscientiousness seems a hair low, but most days the physical spaces I inhabit look like tornadoes have blown through. But then Iām managing a lot in life right now.
I am not proud of my high agreeableness score. That kind of wanting to make nice with everybody sometimes leads no where good.
And to Angelaās comment above: I think so. Unless you are in a very unique ward or can live with keeping your more open-minded views to yourself (see: too much agreeableness being a bad thing), church is rough. Is it worse than twenty years ago? The rhetoric from the top has ramped up, but church culture has never really fostered open exchanges of ideasānot in my experience.
E: 1.83
A: 3
C: 4.67
N: 4.33
O: 4
The extroversion is higher than I expected. The lack of agreeableness is probably connected, though not wholly. I can be quite blunt, and generally prefer not to go along to get along, though I do think people should be treated respectfully, I donāt think that means I have to agree with them. Conscientiousness and being neurotic are not a good combination, but I think the open mindedness tempers that somewhat, to the point I can accept that there are things that really donāt matter.
“Stephen Kingās Pet Cemetery“
Some Time copyeditor scored high in “conscientiousness.”
I wonder if anyone else gets a bit of a chuckle when Mike Maughan says things on NSQ that seem be quintessentially Mormon, to any of us who have been at all emerged in the culture? I am saying this meaning quintessentially Mormon in the best of ways. At least his on air personality seems like the type of open hearted, open minded person that I saw in so many of my friends who grew up Mormon and who served faithfully in the church for many years but have left now because the dogmatic folks like RMN and DHO have squeezed out all that was good and beautiful out of the church with their retrenchment.
So I find myself smiling inside when I hear Mike say something beautifully Mormony, because I remember why I once did love being Mormon.
Maybe I am misreading him in his progressiveness, but given that read on his approach to life, I was a bit surprised to learn that his familial connections were to Russell Ballard (I believe, maybe it was a different apostle) and the Bednars, which I see as the opposite end of the open-minded scale, But I guess the Packer family gave rise to both Lynn and Boyd.
Extraversion:Ā 1.83 out of 5
Agreeableness:Ā 2.5Ā out of 5
Conscientiousness:Ā 2.67Ā out of 5
Negative Emotionality:Ā 4Ā out of 5
Open-Mindedness:Ā 5Ā out of 5
I feel like more of an ambivert. At times I feel an energy being around people, but then it exhausts me. I’ve tried sales and missionary work. I hated both of those with a passion. I’m not particularly agreeable. Having an academic background I am inclined to find and hone in on areas of disagreement. I am a bit of a natural skeptic. I’m probably a bit more conscientious than the test suggests. I try to be polite and not step on others’ feet. But there are moments. Unfortunately, I struggle to keep negative experiences from grating on me endlessly and replaying in my mind. I went through a couple of extremely hard break-ups as a young adult, got a job where the boss turned out to be a criminal, have made loans to people who have completely screwed me over, and have generally felt disrespected and walked on in the work place. Additionally I have felt disrespected and looked down upon in my own family. I find comfort in heavy, angry music. I am a bit suspicious of people’s intentions and can be somewhat distrusting in general. Sometimes I wonder if I am a misanthrope. The plus side is that I feel very creative and open to new experiences and ideas.
Hawkgirl, I too noticed lots of open-mindedness. The closed-minded like rules and order to dictate their lives and find comfort within, even if the rules sometimes seem nitpicky and the demands can be heavy. The open-minded like questioning the rules. They don’t work well with church culture.
I really think it’s a shame about the open mindedness being unwelcomed at church, because, after all, who joins the church, but open-minded people? On my mission those were the people we looked for, people that would be interested in hearing about the mind blowing idea that Christ visited America, that there are prophets today, that a 14 year old boy could talk to God, and you can too! The people who listened to us loved hearing about a vision of God and Christ. They were the farthest thing from closed minded, or they would have remained Catholic and never bothered with the Book of Mormon.
I can’t understand how we can expect non-members to be open minded and doubt their own traditions, and pray about the Book of Mormon and consider changing their ways, and joining the church, when at the same time we are telling our own members not to really study, ponder and consider and think for themselves, but to just obey without allowing any doubts, and to only read church approved sources.
A member of the church retains their personhood and autonomy. Leaders that don’t respect and honor that dishonor our tradition, and disregard D&C 121, commiting unrighteous dominion. But it seems like they don’t think about that much.
In the MTC I was taught to “draw a circle that brings others in” instead of drawing circles that shut others out”. It feels rotten to find myself in a church that draws circles excluding people that are near and dear to me. I refuse to believe God would do such a thing. After all, in Primary wasn’t I taught that we are all God’s beloved children?
“Seeing that so many commenters have a really high Open-Mindedness score (like mine) makes me wonder if being open-minded truly is antithetical to current church culture.” – Hawkgrrrl
I think the following:
a) “Church Culture” is a framework including what is explicit passed down specifically from the leadership (talks, handbooks, etc.) and “Church Culture” is what everyone actually does/pays attention to. “Open-Mindedness” is likely a trait that the official keepers of “church culture” in leadership isn’t necessarily fond of because it creates more cat-herding situations and less sheep-herding allies. It would not surprise me that the “church culture that people actually follow” could contain more open-minded individuals because “success sells” – people who find a path to do something are noticed and can be treated as “subject matter experts” in that area.
b) I suspect that a lot of folks here are more open-minded and work on maintaining that trait in part as the “adaptive” survival mechanism. Being here inspires them and/or assists in solving problems and/or makes life a little easier – so they visit and attract others who are doing similar things.
“Our community has seen us as broken. Men are supposed to be the ones that speak up and want to be involved and display leadership traits. Women are supposed to quietly defer. My parents raised me to believe I was an equal to any man. This resulted in years and years of misunderstandings between my husband and myself (both of us swimming in patriarchal waters we couldnāt even see)…” – LWS329
This experience matches mine in a lot of ways. My husband doesn’t mind talking when he has something to say, but he is not interested in talking to connect to people or being involved with people. I have gotten into trouble for “failure to defer” many, many times – and I am still respectfully undaunted (and usually set up socially acceptable means of “non-deferral” whenever possible).
I grew up in a “comparative advantage” environment where the default authority/respect transfer was to “empower/create a subject matter expert of” whoever had the resources to do what needed to be done. I had a sibling born with severe heart problems (a genetic fluke), so “handicap/disability/accommodation” were concepts I knew about from firsthand experience and shaped a lot of my perspective.
I wound up as “an authorized authority figure” as a teenager because I insisted on contributing to my family in specific leadership ways and it was easier on my parents to go along with me and provide some guidance/supports rather then fight me about it (and they knew it).
My husband’s experience was different. He didn’t get to “share organization power” nearly as much as I did with my parents (to be fair – this is a higher bar). His mother “presided” and “provided” a lot in his family as a strong woman herself – but she could not be called either of those titles – she was “an invaluable conductor”. They did not have language around “accommodation” because there was no need for that at the time. His mother had health problems, but her “accommodations” were built into the “benevolent patriarchy pedestal” and she was a fairly private person who made them for herself without fanfare.
Thank you Amy. It’s good to hear other similar experiences. Living close to people with disabilities changes how you see the world and reality. My love for my family members with disabilities and differences causes me to reject any ideas that aren’t supportive of their unique needs.
A long time ago I led a Sunstone group. I had them take the Myers-Briggs personality profile test as they saw the Mormon Church. The Class voted on each question. Myers-Briggs has four categories, extroversion, need for rules, value of emotion, and need for completeness. There are obscure letters for each of these, but the categories are pretty clear.
The group was evenly split on extraversion. But on the other three, very certain: The Church needs rules. The Church does not value emotionality. The Church wants things done, no theorizing or experiments to make things work. In other words the Church has the personality of a brick yard manager.
My point was that those of us not like the brick yard manager find the Church disconcerting. It is been postulated that Jesus was the opposite. He loved people, he was OK with open situations like wandering around without a home, and he was all about new theories and new orientations. He was probably an extravert.
I’ve been thinking about the idea of “religious personalities” for some time.Ā Based on my own experience and observations, I’ve come to the conclusion that religion works well for some personality types, not so well for others–that some people are just not meant to be very religious, and that’s perfectly fine.Ā This conclusion, of course, contradicts the prevailing LDS narrative, which dictates that every human on earth, living or dead, is supposed to be not only devoutly religious, but devoutly Mormon, and absolutely NEEDS the LDS Church in their life whether they know it or not.Ā This arrogant idea seems to be the hill the current senior leaders of the Church are willing to die on, or at least are very reluctant to compromise on, even if they don’t expressly emphasize it much anymore.Ā And it will continue to harm the Church.Ā Ā
As it relates to my own personality, I grew up TBM, very introverted, and with the benefit of hindsight realize now that I had scrupulous/OCD tendencies. My logical brain loved the checklist, the certainty, the vending machine God (obedience in, blessings out) and the clearly-laid-out path to salvation and exaltation. But I was also in a constant state of anxiety and fear, that I was never doing enough, and always falling short of God’s expectations. All while being somewhat nerdy and socially awkward, instead of exhibiting the bubbly personality traits of all the “shiny happy people” in my LDS peer group (yet another reason to feel like I wasn’t “good enough”). Fast-forward to my thirties, when I embarked on a years-long faith deconstruction, and eventually determined that I’m much happier and healthier without a high-demand religious framework in my life, and that perhaps my introverted personality has something to do with it. Now in my forties, I’ve settled on being nuanced/PIMO for the time being, free to exercise my own judgment and critical thinking, occasionally engaging with the institutional Church as I desire, while discarding any part of it that I find distasteful, harmful, or simply not applicable. I don’t consider myself to be very spiritual at all; maybe I never was, but just convinced myself I was during my earlier TBM years, to my own detriment. In the very real universe in which we live, there is so much to be in awe of, and infinite mysteries and explanations yet uncovered, that we don’t need to keep leaning on ancient mythologies to provide implausible explanations about the origins of life, or what happens to us after we die. And certainly ridiculous that one tiny, obscure Rocky Mountain branch of American restorationist Christianity claims to have the final word and exclusive authority to those explanations. Spiritual beliefs simply don’t resonate with me, and I’m OK with that.
By contrast, my wife is a deeply spiritual person, despite being quite nuanced herself. For example, she has expressed belief in reincarnation and multiple probations, as well as claims of deceased relatives appearing to her in dreams (she has enough discretion to mostly keep these things to herself and never share them out loud in Church settings, as they would be considered just as anathema as my own non-spiritual beliefs). I don’t disagree with or mock her spirituality, but rather find it quite beautiful, since it is also probably influenced by her personality, which is night-and-day different from mine in almost every respect (she’s a big-time extrovert). Like me, she often chafes at the narrow-mindedness of official LDS doctrine, and believes it should aspire to be more expansive and inclusive.
Because of this, and many, many anecdotal examples I’ve observed of large devout TBM families who inevitably have one or more children that leave the Church in adulthood, the institutional Church is failing to embrace these personality differences as a feature, but rather sees them as a defect. Understandably, it challenges their long-held narrative that demands exclusivity and strict obedience to a one-size-fits-all organization. But not doing so will cause the institution to continue to decline, both explicitly (raw membership numbers) and implicitly (more PIMO and inactive members, lower temple attendance, less loyalty to leaders/institution). Only a small minority of active members will be of the narrow personality subset that truly love everything about the Church; meanwhile, people of various other personalities and temperaments will continue to be born into LDS families.
I have been having a āhang upā with this discussion, so I havenāt commented while sorting it out. There are different things that I think some here are mixing together. Religion is different than spirituality and both are different, but part of āchurch.ā But we talk about all of them as āchurchā and church contains all of them. But church is also both the organization itself and it is the collection of people. So, I want to separate some of what āchurchā is. For my purposes, letās simplify church down to just the organization, without what that organization teaches or any associated spirituality. Religion is the gospel, the theories, the things taught, the beliefs. Spirituality is harder to explain, but experiences of woowooo, emotionality, love, community. For example, for myself, religion is very important to me, I am also very spiritual, but church and I donāt get along. There IS overlap, but there are also differences.
So, someone who is an extrovert and likes rules may really like church without valuing intellectual religion much at all, or having any real spirituality. I know many Mormons like that. Church is so important to them they serve three senior missions and donate their whole estate to the church when they die, but ask them anything deeper than Sunday school pat answers or any deeper theological question and they look at you like you asked them to explain Einsteinās theories to youā¦ all of them. They do not know church history, they canāt really explain any theology, they hardly know the Bible, but they were bishop twice and in the stake presidency for 12 years. Church works for them. But they have no religious questions. This seems to be the biggest group of Mormons.
Then there are those who like religion. They donāt just go to church, but really study and can quote several hundred scripture verses right off the top of their head. They are mostly introverts, but church works for them because they get into it intellectually. They eat up books about the Bible, and know the history of the holy land and study stuff about their religion. They are respected for their scripture knowledge. They often get so deep into study of religion that they have a crisis of faith, or they become an apologist. Even when they decide they donāt believe, they hang around on Wheat and Tares and talk about it. They leave the church but canāt leave it alone because religion still fascinates them.
Then there are the spiritual type. They seem to be more emotional rather than intellectual or social. They can be extroverts or introverts.
These different people can all value church and stay in for life, but they may value different things about church
And of course people can value both religion and church or church and spirituality or any combination and those will be a different personality types than someone who mostly values one thing. I think people who value the three different things we associate with religion/church can be very different, and different things keep them in the church or drive them out. So, unless we differentiate what people value about āchurchā we canāt talk about what personality traits they have.
Jesus was a high-functioning introvert. He frequently left the crowd and sought solitude at times. Definitely an feeling/emotional person who connected with justice conceptually. I’d place him as an infj on the Myers-Briggs midel. When he refused to speak to a despicable leader (Herod) that is a classic infj door slam. Infj personalities are excellent teachers and leaders. But in today’s church, you’ll note they are easily marginalized by more materialistic and extroverted types.
Old Man: Yes, from an MBTI perspective, most church-goers (LDS anyway) are probably ESTJ, although women with an F preference seem to fit better in the stereotypes of nurturers. That’s also the type that fits more Americans than any others (different companies have different preferences). I think you’re onto something with INFJ for Jesus, although maybe INFP works, too. He wasn’t always much of a planner. Definitely a Feeler.
Anna: I think your framing is interesting and points to something I disliked in the NSQ descriptions (and a lot of descriptions lately). We’re at the point where “religious” is almost always paired with “conservative.” Maybe that’s becoming more true as the country becomes more secular, but it also just seems that, as you rightly observe, what religion is to the majority of active Christians nowadays is not what it has always been. Part of my observation about Church is that it just doesn’t allow for any interesting discussions, and the manuals are often wrong, cherry-picked, lacking in serious scholarship, or deliberately subverting the text to make some uneducated leader’s point. It’s impossible, IMO, to sit through these lessons and talks and take any of them very seriously. They aren’t even trying. The members for whom they work or are edifying are just not very thoughtful about religion, morality or ethics.