As in: Why don’t people like us Mormons? Why do people seem to view the LDS Church quite unfavorably? This is based on a recent YouGov poll and post with the bland title “Americans’ views on 35 on religious groups, organizations, and belief systems.” Go spend a few minutes there. The results are terribly interesting. If you are active LDS, the results are surprising and somewhat humbling. They don’t like us. They really don’t like us. Right up front let me acknowledge that I came across this poll reading a post discussing it over at BCC. The post is worth reading, as well as all 61 comments. Below, I will quickly summarize the results and the LDS favorability score, then offer a few observations.
The results. The methodology looks sound (it’s a polling company, after all). They combine the responses into a net favorability rating for each of the 35 groups. The LDS Church scores a -21, which is not good at all. That’s a better score than Satanism and Scientology, which both come in at -49, but below Wicca (-15) and atheism (-13). So if someone asks you what people in general think of the LDS Church, you can now respond with: “Well, they view us more favorably than Satanism but less favorably than Wicca.”
Knock, knock. For a church that puts a great deal of time and effort into proselyting, these results should be concerning. Apparently a fairly large chunk of people on the other side of doors that missionaries knock on start out with a fairly negative view of the Church. No conversation on the doorstep is going to change that. Given that most people aren’t very happy about random people knocking on their door for any reason, the Mormon missionary practice of doing a lot of tracting (less than in years past, but still a lot) probably hurts rather than helps LDS favorability. There’s some discussion of this in the BCC comment thread.
Maybe not being Mormon can be confusing. The poll includes both the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Stories in the press are likely to refer to the first as the FLDS Church and the second as the LDS Church. Do you see a problem here? Previously, if someone asked the average Mormon whether Warren Jeffs was part of your church, the easy answer would be, “No, that’s the FLDS Church. We’re the Mormons. We’re different.” Now, following the LDS directive to shun that self-description, the answer would be something like: “No, you’re thinking of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We’re the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They use a hyphen and a big D. We use a hyphen and a small d. Big difference.”
Red versus blue? The YouGov presentation of results breaks out Republican versus Democratic results. Republicans really like Christianity (+54) and really really dislike Satanism (-70), Jehovah’s Witnesses (-42), and Islam (-41), with the LDS Church coming in at -12. Democrats like Christianity (+29) but like agnostics almost as much (+24). Democrats dislike the LDS Church (-27) about as much as they dislike Satanism (-32) and the JWs (-21). Interestingly, both have about the same degree of serious dislike for Scientology (-55 and -51).
A perceptive commenter at BCC opined that the LDS Church gets it from both sides of this divide. Democrats probably dislike the Church for the strongly conservative and anti-gay positions the Church and most of its members take. Republicans probably dislike the Church because many of them are conservative Christians who consider the LDS Church a heretical sect or a cult. Even mainline Christians are likely to view the LDS Church this way. While there are a lot of possible explanations for the strongly negative favorability score of the LDS Church, I think this factor is probably the strongest.
Why don’t they like us? Let me say right up front there may not be a clear answer to this. I’ll bet you can think of a movie or team or business or person that you just don’t like without having a clearcut reason you don’t like them. Think of the time you asked a friend about what they thought of some third person you are trying to figure out, and your friend replies, “Nope, don’t like him at all. Strongly dislike.” Then you ask why, and your friend responds, “He really rubs me the wrong way. I don’t know, could be this, could be that. But I really don’t like him.” That’s often how we humans are: we can generate strong likes and dislikes for a lot of things. It’s largely an emotional response. We often have a hard time giving good reasons for our strong likes and dislikes.
Another caveat about explanations. Obviously, most of the polling respondents were non-LDS. I believe non-LDS, to the extent they can give reasons for disliking the LDS Church, are likely to have different reasons for their dislike than an active LDS who objects to a thing or two about the Church or a former LDS who objects to several things about the Church. The whole thing about not baptizing children of gay couples, then reversing course and softening the policy? That bugs a lot of LDS and former LDS, but I doubt one out of a hundred non-LDS who don’t live in Utah or Idaho are the slightest bit aware of that policy kerfuffle. Inside the Mormon bubble there isn’t much discussion of the yellow shirt Helping Hands work, but I’m sure there are more than a few non-LDS who have had personal experience with this or who read a positive media story on it — and as a result move from unfavorable to favorable. It’s just really hard for an LDS person to get a handle on how non-LDS think of Mormons and the LDS Church. Well, other than the fact that it is clear they view the Church highly unfavorably compared to most other churches and groups. “Still more popular than Satanism and Scientology” isn’t much to brag about.
Explanations. I’m not even going to try a bullet list of possible explanations, there are just so many angles to this. I mentioned a couple in the above discussion: politically, we take flak from both sides of the aisle (for different reasons) and no one likes strangers knocking on their door, particularly after dark. I’ll just throw out two general inquiries:
- What do you think of the YouGov polling results?
- And why do you think Mormons and the LDS Church are viewed so unfavorably?
Wheat & Tares 
Dave, I pondered your questions when By Common Consent’s post on this was put up, and I still have no good answers today. We certainly don’t have a lot of social cachet, despite the great wealth of the Church, which results in a lack of empathy for us. Then, I guess if you top that off with increasingly unpopular conservative social positions and a heretical brand of Christianity that largely seeks to poach from other shrinking Christian denominations rather than proselytizing the non-Christian world, it’s not hard to get such a negative reputation.
I do have to say that I’m a little shocked that Judaism scored as high (+11, tied with the Amish, tied for third highest behind “Christianity” and “Protestantism”) as it did for all of the anti-Semitism this country has experienced in the last 150 years.
The door solicitations (and constant social media ads) are a big turn-off. When we lived outside of Utah, there was usually little distinction made between the JW’s knocking on doors versus the Mormons.
In a similar vein is the idea of ulterior motive. It’s like when you’re invited to a get-together, only to find out someone’s pushing an MLM. A lot of people get turned off and (later) suspicious if they’ve had bad interactions with church members. No amount of acting “normal and natural” as we “love, share, and invite” will override the negativity if people think we’re just selling a product.
Somewhere someone was making hay about Democrats viewing Satanism more favorably than Republicans do, and I’ll point out here where I did there, which is that the Church of Satan is a group that opposes the Christianization of public spaces by counter-proposing monuments to Satan. So if some Evangelical says “We should have a statue of Moses holding the 10 Commandments in the courthouse,” the Church of Satan will request a permit for a statue of Pan holding a pentagram while playing Stairway to Heaven on pan pipes or some such. They are doing important work if you value pluralism. They are opposing white Christian nationalism.
As to why people don’t like Mormons, I grew up where Mormons were incredibly rare, and the only things people knew about the Church were: 1) polygamy, 2) those annoying missionaries, 3) their pastors said we were a cult, 4) the Godmakers. People on the right mostly belong to religions that deride Mormonism, viewing it as a competitive threat. People on the left view it as the worst of what the right has to offer: white Christian nationalism, hate speech toward LGBT people, and colonialist views toward everyone else.
I think the main reason is because Mormons only seem to have Mormons for friends. If they can’t convert you, why waste time being with you besides you might drink coffee or have a beer and that would be uncomfortable.
One thing I have heard from non members when they think I am not Mormon either, is we are only friendly to convert people. I saw this in action with one of our neighbors in a new construction neighborhood. As new neighbors moved in, she welcomed with fresh bread and homemade cookies, then tried to sell them the church, and as soon as they told her they were not interested, she just dropped all contact and moved onto her next victims. Neighbors were warning each other ahead of her “friendship”, and I was left with a neighborhood full of offended people who wanted nothing to do with me either. I talked to a few of them trying to assure them not all Mormons were like her, but they just sort of told me to tell her off for them. People are left feeling like we think we are better than they are. Another time, I told no one where I worked that I was raised Mormon or grew up in Utah. My military husband got orders for Hill AFB in Utah, and when people found out we were moving to Utah, I got horrified reactions, of “oh, do you know what the Mormons are like?” They went on to inform me that Mormons wouldn’t associate with anyone who wasn’t Mormon, very unfriendly to others, only out to convert you to their religion. How they won’t let their children play with nonMormon children and how they think they are so much better than others.
Unfortunately, that is our reputation. People don’t like us because we are fake friends, unfriendly if they are not interested in joining our church. People don’t like us because we aren’t very likable.
Antipathy towards Mormonism is well earned. Mormons have cornered the market on intolerance, exclusivity and insularity. What else should be expected from leadership obsessed with building wealth (and temples) at the expense of meaningful dialogue?
Case in point: In March 2016, I hired a very well qualified person to fill a key executive position. After some negotiating, she agreed to move her family of four (including two daughters ages 11 and 14) to Utah. Prior to her move, we discussed the cultural aspects of a family from Connecticut moving to Holladay, UT. I assured her they would be welcomed into the community. Silly me.
After six months in Utah, she tendered her resignation. Although she loved the job, the total isolation from her new community and abysmal treatment of her daughters became too much to bear. She related how initial conversations with neighbors were always prefaced with “are you members?”. It got worse. Her daughters were denied friendships because they were ‘different’. There were no invitations to participate in activities or camps, just absolute shunning. All very Christlike.
I learned a painful lesson. Incidents such as this are all too familiar in Mormon communities. The rules of engagement within Mormonism are well defined – isolate the children and shun the inactive and non-members. And we act surprised at the results of the YouGov poll?
@Not a cougar
The favourable Judaism rating is the result of the hard work of the Israel lobby I think. They’ve spent decades collectively convincing Americans that any kind of criticism of the Israeli government is tantamount to antisemitism. And not just convincing people, but enshrining pro-Israel sentiment into law in some places. In Texas for example, you can’t even open a business if you’re not demonstrably pro-Israeli government. So despite the presence of the antisemitic MAGA faction, conservative lawmakers are very much in favour of Israel and Judaism despite being Christian. This probably because the Israeli government is their proxy anti-muslim weapon. They can just funnel money to Israel and let them do all the muslim un-aliving, that way no one in the USA has to be on the hook for it directly.
There is a link at the end of the article to crosstabs with age, gender, race, party ID, income, and census region for anyone that wants to look at lots of numbers. Before you look, take a guess as what age group you think likes Mormons the most. How about men vs women? High earners vs low earners? https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/v7tkzd5tem/poll_Favorability_of_Religions_20221122.pdf
Great post. I agree with Anna and Instereo that the perception that we’re only friendly in order to be able to convert people is pretty common among non-members. There are also many others, a few of which are:
1. The (relatively) rapidly progressing recognition over the last few decades that institutions (like the church) are largely responsible for the continued marginalization of a number of groups of people. Is there individual racism, sexism, and homophobia? Of course. But there is (and has been for a while) a growing realization that often, such biases are systemic and further, that religious institutions in particular simply use the excuses of “morality” or “doctrine”, etc. in order to continue marginalizing large swaths of the human race. More and more people are finding that the thin veneer of respectability or righteousness that covers the institutional sins of cruelty and contempt is simply a flimsy excuse that religions employ in order to keep hurting a lot of people. And a lot of folks now have no patience with such crap. Even I have found my fuse getting shorter about this. When a TBM in Sunday school or from the pulpit used to talk about the “sin” of homosexuality, I would try to give them a break and think charitable thoughts about how they were simply not capable of a more nuanced (and truer) version of Christ’s gospel; these days when that happens, I think of my LGBTQ family members and students and my only thought I have for the person spewing such bigotry is, “you can go f*** yourself”. Not terribly charitable or Christlike, I grant you, but my last bit of patience with institutionally created and mandated bigotry is now officially gone. And I reckon that’s the same for a lot of folks who don’t like the church.
2. The arrogance, the arrogance, the arrogance. Part of the reason why people think Mormons are so arrogant is because many Mormons themselves are only used to talking with other Mormons. So you get a lot of the whole “hey, we’re the only true church, we’ve got the truth” thing, etc. If you spend most of your time hanging around people who think the same thing about the church being the only true one, it’s going to be difficult to modulate one’s language (and one’s attitude) if one only occasionally hangs out with non-members. And of course, there’s also that very division: member vs. non-member. The very way we talk about folks who aren’t members of our church is astonishingly contemptuous and dismissive. Nobody wants to hear (or even just think) that a whole group of people don’t like them simply because of a difference of belief or thought. And this is what Mormons have a hard time seeing. We’re often so myopic and so obsessed with our own beliefs that many of us seem literally unable to comprehend or relate to folks who take a different approach either to religion or to life in general. It’s why no one actually believes us when we say we’re tolerant and respect other beliefs; people know that we’re just paying lip service to that idea and still secretly think to ourselves that we’re more awesome than others because of our “truth”. When religion is thought of in this way, it becomes an instrument of divisiveness, not of unity.
Remember when President Nelson said recently that “Prophets are rarely popular but they speak the truth”? That’s our problem. We are so truthful and righteous that we’ll never be popular. (note: this is not my personal opinion but it’s the opinion of many inside the bubble)
I think the un-favorability is almost entirely due to the association with polygamy and proselyting.
The anti-LGBTQ stuff is true of Christianity in general, the thing that really sets mormons apart from other Christians in the public sphere is the polygamy and door-knocking. Those are the two things that people associate with mormons.
And while it is true, that most poeple in the US won’t get proselytized by mormon missionaries, they don’t need to. The image of that is known well enough that people can have a unfavorable opinion of it even without directly experiencing it. The only thing more annoying than door-to-door salesmen after all, is door-to-door religion salesmen.
The association with poloygamy is probably something that we will never be able to get rid of. Even some sort of official deceleration saying that ‘we were wrong to do that’ wouldn’t help too much.
The proselytizing thing is more fixable though, in my opinion. If we just did a full-gear shift towards service missions I think that would do a lot of good. The little bit of good rep we have comes from this, but imagine if we had all of our full time missionaries dedicated to doing yellow-shirt stuff instead of walking around in their sunday best and annoying people? Imagine having a well funded army of young people in yellow shirts show up at every single disaster zone with smiles and emergency supplies or administering immunizations. Evening just removing trash from public spaces. Something like the Peace Corps but with (less) sexual assault issues and less directly connected to American economic imperialism. It would be a lot more wholesome and useful.
There is right now (in the USA) a small rise in explicitly leftist ‘no-strings-attached’ mutual aid networks and efforts that do this kind of stuff all the time, and honestly I think that’s the way of the future. If the Church could get in doing mutual aid networks but without all baggage that the current church welfare system has (you have to go see a bishop, you have to go church X number of times, or meet with missionaries) we could really do some good in the world AND improve our public image across the political spectrum. We already have the funds and manpower to do it, and do it well.
I don’t think the arrogance or insular nature of mormons and/or mormon communities is really a factor in our public image, because most people don’t encounter mormons or that situation, and it’s really as much of a ‘known thing’ in the the public sphere compared to polygamy and proselyting.
I think most people don’t even know that “””we””” think we have the only true church and that all other churches and religions are invalid. That’s only something you’d know from being exposed to significant doses of mormon rhetoric. And being excluded from mormon communities probably doesn’t happen that much outside of the jello-belt, and probably not enough that the general public is conscious of it.
Dua Lipa: the insular nature of Mormons, and especially Mormon leadership, is what prevents the Church from making meaningful changes that might help improve our image. I honestly think that it’s the same mentality that allows Elder Cook and others to actually argue that the Church’s small number is actually a sign that it is true.
@josh h
I agree 100% that it’s a root cause of a lot of this, but my point is that the general public doesn’t know that, as far as I can tell anyway. And thus doesn’t have a direct effect on the church’s public favourability rating.
In other words, most non-mormons rating the church as ‘unfavourable’ don’t know that we’re insular or that our leaders think it’s a feature rather than a bug.
I don’t live in Utah but the Mormons here are very insular. At swim meets, you can find all the Mormons under the blue pop up with a ‘Y’ on it. So I agree with Anna and Instereo. We can barely manage real friendships among our tribe (due to the performative nature of our faith as well as the cultural norms that don’t allow authenticity), so of course we are bad at it outside the tribe.
Dua Lipa, I’m well aware of the pro-Israel lobby, but if you’re going to make assertions like, “In Texas, you can’t even open a business if you’re demonstrably pro-Israeli government,” I’m going to need you to cite sources. The rest of your comment comes off as motivated oversimplification of a complex issue.
*not demonstrably. Problems with the keyboard today.
Schedule for BYU football just announced in the new league, Big 12 which includes West Virginia, Central Florida, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma. Might have happened earlier (2016) but there was some opposition coming from Iowa State.
Relevant here as the Cougars are now symbolically located in the Bible Belt (see the Red versus blue? point in the OP above. Wondering if the snide comments at the games will be different than the prior chants at USC, Oregon, Stanford…
@Not a cougar
here you go fam:
https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=85R&Bill=HB89
It’s that not complex of an issue, the US gives about $3 billion in weapons and other aid to Israel, they’re the US proxy state in the area, and the US looks the other way while the IDF does *specific activities* to specific non-Israeli people in specific territories occupied by the IDF. They can get away with this because the US will block any sanctions or any meaningful efforts at censure the UN might try to come up with. Ergo, Israel’s government is dependent on the USA to let it do the ”’questionable”” things it does. (They’re actually not that questionable). And that means doing a lot lobbying to keep the general population’s perception of the Israel’s government as favourable and conceptually packaging Israel’s government together with the Israeli people, and Judaism together as a singular gestalt-like unit in the public perception.
These include the various anti-BDS in several states, especially Texas (one of the Israel’s larger state-level trading partners), in which Texan governmental entities are forbidden from contracting with companies of 10 or more employees that ‘discriminate’ (broadly construed) against Israel (also broadly construed).
Hence, why Judaism was shown to be favourable in a sample of polling data data that also showed Christianity to be favourable. Sure there’s some extrapolation involved, but what other area of sociopolitical identities besides trad-conservative Christians would have a favourable rating of both Christianity and Judaism?
Dua, thank you for the link. I’d suggest you go re-read the act. The Texas act does not prevent anyone from opening a business in the state, regardless of the person’s stance on Israel. It merely prevents Texas state agencies from entering into contracts with companies that boycott Israel and prevents state entities from investing in companies that boycott Israel. That is a far, far cry from your initial assertion that you basically can’t open a business in Texas if you aren’t pro-Israel.
And we’ll have to agree to disagree as to whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex. The idea that IDF operations in the occupied territories is simply a U.S. proxy war ignores a lot of detail also sounds like an attempt to take away the agency and responsibility of the Israelis, Palestinians, and their neighbors as parties to the conflict.
My apologies to all on the thread jack, I’ll stop further comment.
Background: post-BYU, lived in Chicago, Los Angeles (8 years) and Philadelphia (the past 16 years). Stopped going to church 6 years ago. I’m a social creature and have always sought out friendships with pretty much anyone ( love my way smarter friends with PhDs and their bourbon as much as the guys I coached little league football with who introduced me to Miller-lites and Eagles football]
It has been FASCINATING to have my non-church member friends from the past three decades across all of these educational and socio-economical and various religious backgrounds slowly open up to me once they felt it was safe to do so and let me know what they really thought of my faith (I was visible as a Mormon and proud to be one, although never tried to push it on anyone ) so they held back the following despite some pretty good friendships:
1) I always thought they didn’t believe what I believed but “respected” Mormons for being kind, honest, and good neighbors to have. Absolutely not true. Almost to a person, my friends thought my religion was just as backwards and misguided as Scientology or any cult documentary they had watched on Netflix. Most non-Mormons are just too kind themselves to tell you just how little they respect the Mormon faith.
2) Going along with Point 1 above and as others have said in the comments above, my friends said they found most of us to be rather fake in our “kind act”. Here I thought everyone found Mormons to be warm and loving ( think the Winter Olympics – weren’t we just great!!!!) but no, they see it all as a production to recruit them and that we are rather shallow people who always want to just hang out with other Mormons when not in missionary mode. Dang! I had no idea. I still think that many people in the church really are some of the most loving people in the world, but I was truly shocked to learn that Mormons are pretty much despised. More than one friend thought about “rescuing me from a cult” but decided I had to figure it out on my own.
3) I’ve learned a lot from my Christian friends on the right about why they so adamantly reject Mormonism, and I get it now: this whole saved by grace after all we can do is pretty messed up. This quest for perfection in Mormonism -it really does eliminate the need for a savior.
4) no matter the education one has had, they will never stop thinking that Mormons still have some ties to polygamy (and they are not exactly wrong about that when the church leaders talk about their wives in heaven)
5) friends on the left consider the church a hate group (LGBTQ issues) and a threat to women, in general.
6) all groups despise our missionary efforts. Friends from Europe especially find it troubling that we make such an effort to disrupt families by trying to get people to change their faith and traditions to become Mormons and be as much like Utah as possible.
Note: not one friend told me it bothered them that I didn’t drink with them while I was a Mormon. People don’t care about that as much as I thought it might bother them.
As a nevermo, I don’t think it’s the missionaries–lots of groups have those. Your theology putting off both Dems and Reps is part of it. But I think the main thing has got to be the cult-like nature of the church. Sure, ordinary people are nice, but your founders were con artists, the church today is run like a not-very-ethical corporation (Catholics too, though), you’ve got a strong in-group / out-group thing going on, and there are relatively intense (and often kind of weird) lifestyle and financial requirements for being part of the group.
#Gavin’s response really resonates with me. I’m out almost 4 years. When I told a long time friend and a newer friend (who never knew me as Mormon) that I was no longer practicing they both had the exact same response: “Good!” I didn’t ask for the reasoning behind their responses, but I was definitely surprised. I guess this poll explains the why.
I used to live in the D.C. area. There was a respected local LDS community. Political figures. Lobbyists. Business people. They were known for their individual skills and efforts.
But, the Church itself was known for polygamy, and being a weird cult. Missionaries were considered annoying. And, the LDS community itself was known as incredibly insular. Utah was seen as an odd place with odd people.
Adding to the perception of weirdness . . Washington Post just put up a major story on a $500 million ponzi scheme targeting Mormons, out of Las Vegas. Here is a quote describing: “The investment was pitched as a nearly risk-free opportunity to earn annual returns of 50 percent by lending money to slip-and-fall victims awaiting checks after the settlement of their lawsuit.”
I didn’t see “goodie-two-shoes” syndrome listed above as a reason for our status. The harder we try to be perfect and deflect the centuries of attacks (we become clean-cut, Boy Scouts, poster people for toothpaste commercials) the more resentful people become..
Also, I have found that not drinking alcohol is extremely isolating and stigmatizing. With respect to “friends of Bill W”, they get props- serious props- for being dry, whereas we get no respect for being teetotalers.
I wonder if they bristle at us in part because our “holier than thou” abstinence harkens back to the days of prohibition with the bar-bashing-hatchet-wielding-Carrie-Nation-warriors? Despite the fact that UT voted out prohibition (what a pesky little fact most people don’t know!) we probably get lumped in with that failed experiment and the cultural/political/interpersonal pushback. Even if people don’t directly remember those days, it could likely I’ve left a bitter after-taste after-taste in the culture.
* Despite what the world thinks of our WoW, I think it’s wonderful for us. Furthermore, like vegans, vegetarians, or any other conscience-based food consumers, we have the right to do so. We hurt no one (and as a matter of fact- avoid harming others with reduced DUIs, reduced alcohol-based violence, reduced domestic abuse/violence.) So- all the haters can go on hating.
I’ve had a similar experience to Gavin and family women. When I was active in the church, my non-mormon friends were accepting, but then once I quit Church they made a few comments about how relieved they were that I was finally out. The one said he knew I was going to quit before I did. He was probably right.