On Political Neutrality

On Thursday, 23 August 2018, members of The Church in Utah received an email “urg[ing]” them to vote no on Proposition 2, a Medical Marijuana Initiative (you can read information about the proposition and the full text of it here). There has been an ensuing conversation on twitter and throughout the internet that has been…um…frustrating. This conversation has been filled with accusations of a lack of the “separation of church and state” and a violation of the Church’s own “political neutrality” policy. There are definitely things to criticize here and to look at analytically, but these claims are dubious, so let’s get into it.
I’m not talking about the legality of the Church’s behavior in relation to tax laws and their status as a 501(c)(3) because I have close to zero training in that arena and anything I would say would be incredibly uninformed and irresponsible. I am interested in that conversation, so if you have insight please share. In the meantime, the relevant section of the tax code for your own perusal is here. This is an important facet of the conversation, but not one that I am able to weigh in on, so on to other facets.

Some historical awareness of Mormonism’s political past seems relevant. In reading through Greg Prince’s David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (one of the two most important biographies for Mormons to read, the other being Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling), I was struck by this paragraph talking about the wall between politics and religion in the United States:

“Within Mormonism, however, the wall has often been virtually, and sometimes actually, nonexistent. Joseph Smith envisioned a theocracy and came close to making it a reality in the brief period during which the city-state of Nauvoo flourished. Following the exodus to the Utah Territory, Brigham Young presided over both sides of the wall, simultaneously being church president and governor of Utah Territory.” (pg. 323)

The chapter goes on to detail the ways that the Church was involved in politics throughout McKay’s tenure as president. The chapter also discusses how as Utah was striving for statehood to address concerns that Utah would behave monolithically, they divided congregations in two, half assigned to be Democrats and the other half Republicans. By the time McKay was in the first presidency and then throughout his time as president, the Quorum of the Twelve was overwhelmingly politically conservative and I need to read more on how that all came about, but I know that this combined with McKay’s personal fears of communism led to then-Elder Ezra Taft Benson engaging in anti-communist political activities that solidified (dragged? Gave voice to the already dominant political views?) the Church’s present-day right-of-center alignment (at least within the United States, the political alignment of the global Church I don’t have a good handle on).

All that is to say that the Church has never been great at being out of politics and the founding of the Church is a melding of the political and the religious. There are obviously difficulties with that within a nation that separates church and state. This is probably where I should say that I think religious institutions not only have a right, but an obligation to be politically involved. If they are meant to be moral authorities, it strikes me as naïve and wrong to argue that they should remain out of politics. Any God worth believing in and worshipping cares about people and people’s lives are directly affected by political decisions, so churches and religious authorities should speak on political issues and the exercise of such speech is not a violation of the separation of church and state, which is about the theocratic governmental control, something that is NOT happening in Utah (at least not in the direct way prohibited by this idea, there’s undoubtedly a strong Mormon influence on the political scene in Utah, but it doesn’t strike me as any different than any majority group’s influence on their respective political environments).

All that said, there are undoubtedly concerns about the way “political neutrality” is understood by the membership and practiced by the institution. The ideal of political neutrality seems to be understood as the Church not taking part in politics unless there are clear, strong morals at play and that such issues are key to the very foundation of civilization. Essentially, that if the Church speaks up, the Church’s position must be supported or the world will collapse.

Rather than describe what the Church intends by the ideal of political neutrality, I’ll quote their own materials:

“The Church does not:

• Endorse, promote or oppose political parties, candidates or platforms.

• Allow its church buildings, membership lists or other resources to be used for partisan political purposes.

• Attempt to direct its members as to which candidate or party they should give their votes to. This policy applies whether or not a candidate for office is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

• Attempt to direct or dictate to a government leader.”

Essentially, this description of what the Church does not do seems to boil down to being non-partisan, rather than politically neutral, though I think there are some difficulties with maintaining that claim to non-partisanship, given the issues that are consistently spoken out on. Before we get to that, here’s what the Church does do:

“The Church does:

• Encourage its members to play a role as responsible citizens in their communities, including becoming informed about issues and voting in elections.

• Expect its members to engage in the political process in an informed and civil manner, respecting the fact that members of the Church come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences and may have differences of opinion in partisan political matters.

• Request candidates for office not to imply that their candidacy or platforms are endorsed by the Church.

• Reserve the right as an institution to address, in a nonpartisan way, issues that it believes have significant community or moral consequences or that directly affect the interests of the Church.”

As I’ve mentioned, I think the Church absolutely should speak on political issues and that God is deeply invested in political outcomes because they matter and influence how people’s real lived experiences play out. However, for the Church to claim the right to address issues “in a nonpartisan way” there should NOT be a fairly consistent political ideology underlying the political issues that are addressed. There’s also an undeniable US- and even Utah-centric nature to the political issues the Church chooses to speak about. (With this particular issue by my count there are 22 states that have already legalized medicinal marijuana and another 9 that have legalized recreational use and as far as I’m aware this is the first time they’ve issued an official statement about it [EDIT: it’s been brought to my attention that this has been addressed previously in 2016 when recreational marijuana was on the ballot in Arizona, California, and Nevada].)

The Church repeatedly speaks out about political issues that are associated with conservative politics creating the perception (accurate or not) that the Church is implicitly endorsing a conservative political agenda. This is damaging. If the Church wants to be politically neutral, if they want to be nonpartisan, they should speak out with the same force and specificity on moral liberal political issues, rather than the generalized statements we have on immigration or refugees. There are plenty of liberal political issues that can be talked about in moral terms without reversing any official Church positions—poverty, welfare, immigration, the opioid crisis, etc.
Alternatively, we could have an anti-Benson in the Quorum of the Twelve, placed in the Cabinet of a liberal President of the United States, who then advocates for and speaks from the pulpit in General Conference, while a member of the Q12, on radical leftist politics. I don’t see that happening anytime soon and not sure if it would result in the balance and nonpartisan outcome we’re going for, but hey, I’d be on board.