My stake president read the Church statement on political neutrality during High Council meeting today. He reports that the Church is re-emphasizing the importance of this issue as the presidential campaign gears up.
Interested parties can read a very complete description of the policy here.
My stake president is one of the most professional, tactful and spiritual people I have ever met. I have no doubt he was chosen for this position (he is in his mid-30s) specifically because he is so dedicated to the Church and so in touch with the Spirit. I think his primary motive in re-reading the Church statement is to protect the Church and make it clear what kind of behavior is acceptable and unacceptable as the political campaign continues.
I also think Church leaders, including most of the GAs, are being especially careful with Mitt Romney’s candidacy to remind members not to mix the Church’s mission with Romney’s campaign. This seems like incredibly wise counsel, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many stake presidents are reminding their high councils and bishoprics of the Church policy.
Here’s my personal take on some possible issues that may be taking place and how we as members should deal with them.
1)No church-related e-mail or phone lists should ever be used for campaign purposes. I’ve read some indignant comments from people on the Bloggernacle that so-and-so used a Church list to send out a politically related e-mail to support the Romney campaign (or another campaign). I think it’s more likely that many members have e-mail lists of their friends, and many of those friends may be Church members, and many members assume others in the Church think as they do, so they feel it is OK to send out politically related e-mails. My advice: only send such e-mails to people you know want to receive them, and definitely don’t use a Church-related list of any kind. My advice to the offended: send an e-mail to the person who sent you political stuff you don’t want to hear, and tell them very politely that you don’t want to be on their mailing list. You may even want to remind them that it is against Church policy to use any Church-related e-mailing lists.
2)The point I’m trying to make in number 1) is that there is probably no insidious plot by anybody to support any specific candidate within the Church. Most e-mailing is done out of naivete rather than bad intentions. If you feel there is some insidious plot, please bring it up with your bishop and stake president. The instructions local Church leaders are receiving from the GAs is that campaigning should not take place at Church and/or using Church e-mailing lists. The offending party will quickly be told to stop.
3)I have already experienced an excitable member of my ward bringing up the Romney campaign in the middle of a priesthood lesson. This person did so simply because he is enthusiastic about the Romney campaign — not because he is on some kind of sinister mission. He also loves to discuss football during priesthood meeting (especially now). I remained quiet during the meeting, but later on I mentioned politely to him it’s better to stay away from politics completely while at Church. My advice to all home teachers, gospel doctrine teachers, anybody in a position of authority in the Church, anybody speaking during sacrament meeting, etc is to avoid discussing politics while you are in a Church position. If you are bursting with enthusiasm for one candidate or another, bring it up after church with people who are not likely to be offended, or bring it to the bloggernacle where you can have fun bashing all of those who disagree with you politically and sending encomiums to those in your political column.
4)If you are one of those people who are offended by people talking politics while at Church, please just ask the person politely not to do it. If it becomes a problem, discuss it with the bishop and/or the stake president.
There are hundreds of journalists and people from rival campaigns out there searching for dirt on Romney and the Church right now. They would love to dig up a “scoop” that the Church is secretly behind the Romney campaign and that Romney is taking orders from Salt Lake City. It appears to me that the GAs are doing everything they can to make sure the Church’s mission is separate from Romney’s campaign — while at the same time giving individual members the freedom to express themselves, vote for the candidates they prefer and participate in the political process. It is an extremely difficult balancing act, but based on the actions of my stake president so far, I am proud of how the Church is handling it.
OK, some ground rules for those who want to comment on this post:
A)Anything off-topic (such as advertisements for one candidate or another or insults for Romney or any other candidate) will be deleted. That’s not the subject of this post. The subject of this post is, “how to maintain an environment of political neutrality when a Church member is running for office.”
B)Anything that insults the Church or tries to imply based on rumors or innuendo that either Romney or the Church really did do something sinister will also be deleted. Take such comments to another blog. If you feel that something sinister did take place, and you have evidence, please bring it up with your bishop or stake president, so it can be handled privately.
Thank you for respecting these rules.
Dude, Geoff, you obviously missed the memo they mailed to everyone last week — even those guys who haven’t been to church in twenty years — reminding us of our sacred responsibility to vote for the man whose name is spelled out with the first letter of each paragraph in Pres. Hinckley’s last General Conference talk. I’ll call the Church’s Office of Political Conformity and tell them to send you a new copy before you wander even further away from the Iron Rod, my friend.
Seriously, though. How hard is it to not talk politics at church? How hard is it to ignore people who let something slip out? The thing I think is most challenging is to avoid creating a politically charged environment or lockstep mentality in less formal situations: VT visits, sure, but also general talk while at the cannery and waiting for the Event Formerly Known as Homemaking to start and the like. Figuring out whether someone in your ward is willing to talk about politics may actually be harder than figuring out if you should bring up the Gospel right now with a nonmember friend. My rule of thumb is to let other people bring it up, honestly — or, if they go to my blog or my Facebook profile or see what books I’m reading before church starts, they’ll know where I stand. I have volunteered for a campaign get-out-the-vote event, once, where I ended out calling someone who I knew from church. But the list came from voter registration lists, and that was one of about a thousand calls I made that day. I almost asked for someone else to call them, though, just in case.
Incidentally, there was someone on the city council here in my ward and I didn’t even know for the first year, because no one mentioned it — and we found out that he’s running for reelection by reading the paper last week; he never brought it up in any of the meetings anyone in my family was in (he spoke in church today, and didn’t mention he’d ever been in politics.) We actually thought he might be sick of the gig by now, we heard so little from him in person. It’s harder to tell that he was on city council than it was to figure out which guy was the starting quarterback at the university, a few years ago in my singles’ ward. Maybe everyone in my ward is just really good at compartmentalizing?
My definition of Politics includes “LEGAL rules for social interaction”. My definition of the Gospel includes “MORAL rules for social interaction”. I believe it is good policy to not endorse a particular candidate, but total neutrality is impossible I believe because of the overlap of the above definitions.
Sarah, yeah, I think Mormons tend to be into self-flagellation sometimes. Baptist preachers get up all the time and tell people how to vote, yet I know people who get upset if you even hint that you support the Church’s publicly held position on the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Hope you’re sitting down, Geoff, because you and I completely agree on this topic.
Thanks, Mike. I’m heaving a big sigh of relief. 🙂
Interesting that the statement allows that a Mormon politician would be allowed to take the sensibilities and demands of his or her constituency into account when voting. Does this mean that a Massachusetts politician should be considering voting for a gay marriage law, even if privately he doesn’t agree with it, if he feels his constituency clearly wants it?
The Romney candidacy has provoked some discussion in our ward. Not about the merits of his candidacy butr rather the image of the church and the understanding or lack thereof of church doctrines. Some(rightfully I believe) see his candidacy as a missionary opportunity for the church regadless of his proispects or success.
There have also been some observations about his fidelity to his wife in a field of GOP candidates that has been noteworthy for infidelity.
I wonder how much Romney buying an LDS Living subscriber email list may have had to do with leaders re-emphasizing the neutrality policy?
Queuno, I sincerely hope you and all readers understand the difference between buying a private e-mail list from a private company — which is done by all well-run campaigns — and using an official Church list.
From the inside looking out the church really needs to politically neutral and for the sake of the spiritual growth of the members of the church this is very wise.
From the outside looking in all I see is the horrible contrast between the church and black churches that are outrageously political and seem to have a complete bye from the IRS on church funds and facilities and political activity. Of course when you realize that most black churches are funded through federal poverty programs (indirectly through contracts with the leaders) it makes perfect sense that they are political organizations.
I remember in 1990 when BYU beat Miami. Miami had ended 1989 ranked #1, and was #1 in the pre-season polls, and the game in Provo was their season opener. (Miami ended up ranked 3rd that year, and Ty Detmer received the Heisman.) It was an amazing, ecstatic night.
The next morning I attended worship services on campus with my BYU student ward. On the way home it occurred to my roommate “I didn’t hear a single person mention the game.” This was said with a measure of amazement and gratitude that we were able to not encroach upon sacred things.
I have had a similar gratitude and pleasure with my ward concerning current national politics. A few times it has come up in Sunday School and priesthood meetings that there is a Mormon running for president. Usually the candidate is left unnamed, and he is mentioned without any expectation that those in the room support him politically, and his candidacy is brought up to illustrate some other matter, usually something about how Mormons are perceived by the public.
Geoff, this came up yesterday, where a ward member was asking if the T&C of the LDS Living subscription entitled LDS Living to sell her email address.
Did Romney do anything wrong? Probably not. Did LDS Living? Maybe. Is there anything seedy about this? No. Should Saints be reminded about neutrality? ABSOLUTELY.
I think you grossly overestimate the ability of the average member to determine how email addresses should be used (given that my wife has received three invitations just today to non-LDS events on her email address that she set up specifically for LDS use).
Just so that we’re clear — whether LDS Living violated any subscriber agreements is not the focus of the comment I made. But there are a lot of upset people about it. I merely wondered aloud if that had anything to do with that.
I use various email addresses when I sign up for online services, and I am able to track when they have been sold, despite my not agreeing to such a service. I don’t subscribe to LDS Living, so I don’t know how their subscription model works and whether or not they give users the ability to opt-out of selling their email. But I have had two email address given to 2 different campaigns where they shouldn’t have been.
Queuno, to answer your oroginal question, there was a SL Tribune article about the LDS Living mailing list about a week ago. It’s possible that had something to do with the reminder on political neutrality.
Well, my wife has a subscription to LDS Living, and I’m encouraging Mitt Romney to spend as much of his campaign fund as possible on mailers to our home. [vbg]
I’m pretty sure relatively few people use lots of different addresses — I’ve had most of mine for more than five years, and my campaign to keep my Yahoo, Hotmail, and OSU email addresses separate (OSU for business, Yahoo for sign-ups, Hotmail for people I thought my spam me) lasted all of, perhaps, three months before it got messed up and I resigned myself to focusing on just one. I suspect most people are more like me, with one main address, and thus it’s typical for individuals to identify specific individuals with specific email addresses (like we do with phone numbers) — and it only takes one person slipping up anywhere along the chain (your RS secretary CC’ing everyone with her favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, the Mia Maid adviser who believes and passes on just one virus warning, etc.) just one time, for an address to get compromised for good. There’s nothing illegal (though it’s a little sad, and I wouldn’t do it myself) about mining CC lists for email addresses.
And, Mike, I’m convinced that direct mail sucks an incredibly disproportionate (to its worth) percentage of every marketing campaign budget that attempts to include it in their overall plan. There’s pretty much nothing more useless than sending my stepmother two or three requests for donations to the DNC a week (she actually donates less now thanks to the constant waste) and my stepfather is on the RNC’s lists with at least six different names (Mr., Mr. and Mrs., Mr. Wrong Spelling, Mr. and Mrs. Forgot the Middle Name, etc.,) which means we get six of EVERYTHING. And then they’ll send an extra one to every registered Republican or Democrat (depending) plus one to every registered independent/third party, which means that for a short time, our household was getting eight or nine copies of every RNC/Ohio Republican Party/etc. mailing, and there was a DNC/Ohio Democrats/etc. for both me and my sister, before we registered as Republicans in order to vote in their primary. On the one hand, yay for the guy you don’t like wasting money. On the other hand, I think it all gets canceled out, because every campaign of any significance seems to do it. Even if Ron Paul’s not doing it today, the RNC will do it on his behalf should he gain the nomination.
We use dial-up modem at home, so often some large e-mail attachment will take several minutes to download. Last week this happenned with an e-mail to BYU math department alumni, and the slowdown wasn’t due to some graphic file, but because the e-mail addresses of thousands of math alumni were all in the To: header. Any marketers seeking mathy Mormony targets, please see me or one of the thousands of other people who now have that list.
explicit endorsement is a no-no, but implicit is, like giving Cheney an honorary degree.
A comment that violated point A) above has been deleted. I would like to ask posters once again to keep on subject on this post.
I’m happy and greatful on our Church’s policy on neutrality. I also think it is respectful to leave such topics off church grounds. I’m on this facebook group for YSA’s in Florida, and there’s a particular member who keeps sending Mitt Romney invites to everyone in there. It is a Public forum for YSA’s in Florida, so I thought it was kind of breaking this rule, but then again I didn’t even bother with it and understood the position. I remember there was some type of Problem with Mitt Romney and the Church that came out on the Boston Globe, where supposedly Church’s buildings and high authority’s of the church were been involved.. I no longer know where that story went on, but it made the church to send e-mails to all the authority’s in the church reminding them about the Neutrality policy.
Geoff B and Mike Parker –
In case you are not BCC readers, you might want to get in on the discussion:
http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/09/mitt-romneys-prospects
Sarah –
I think that beyond political neutrality, I would like a leader to stand up and say something like this:
“Members, if the only way you obtained someone’s email address was at Church or through your Church calling, and you are not in fact conducting Church business with your email, then don’t send it. Don’t send them jokes, recipes, or invitations to a MLM party.
If you happen to obtain someone’s email as part of a personal interaction, then feel free to send them personal mail.
Leaders, learn to use the BCC field in your mail or, better yet, use lds.org for official communication.”
I am very much in favor of forcing leaders to use lds.org as a mechanism for distributing email to members. lds.org is explicitly opt-in. It also saves having to print member directories.
Queuno, re: you #21, has anybody ever told you you are a trouble-maker? 🙂
Geoff, I figure you’re the most pro-Romney Mormon I know (in real-life or virtually), so that thread could probably use your insight. And Mike was the Mormon I could think of with the most passionate feelings for Mr. Paul.
Troublemaker? Facilitator of discussion, I think. 🙂
Wow, queuno, you need to get out more. There are five people in my ward and several people in my family who are more pro-Romney than I am. Even on this web site I’ve defended Giuliani.
The trouble-maker reference was just a joking reference to my spirited debate with Mike. I thought you wanted us to take that to BCC just so we could have some more fun in another forum. 🙂
Another comment that violated point A) has been deleted. People, please keep to the subject of this post. Thanks.
Wow, queuno, you need to get out more.
We’ve got a lot of Romnuts in our ward (as I’ve heard them call themselves; Romuluns is also a popular nickname).
I think there needs to be more spirited debate on BCC. 🙂
I have to say, the debate on that subject is the most interesting I’ve ever seen on BCC (but granted I don’t read it that often). Thanks for thinking of me.
Personally? My rule is that it’s not a “personal contact” until someone gives it to me on a slip of paper asking for something non-Churchy (recipes, images I’ve created, photos from a YSA trip,) put it on their Facebook/MySpace and made me their “friend,” or, and this is the usual path (I have but 32 Facebook/MySpace friends): they send me one first.
But then, I’ve yet to send a non-church-related email to anyone in my ward, except the ones that live in my house. I’m just not a big emailer, I’m afraid.
(Felipe: I run the Ohio Mormons group on Facebook, and I’d encourage anyone posting on that group about their favorite politician to move the discussion to, well, the Facebook groups for those issues. But it’s more a matter of keeping a particular forum set aside for one function, than anything else — I’d ask them to keep requests for study buddies and queries for directions to the Nauvoo temple in the appropriate forums, too. And most people really do that already, and seeing as how none of the FB groups are any more official than M* or PrimaryToGo or HymnWiki, I don’t think that’s nearly the same kind of “political neutrality” concern.)
Geoff, I haven’t read the thread yet but I wanted to tell you how much I admire you doing this instead of jumping in to support the guy. I know how passionate you are about Romney right now.
I can’t understand the difficulty. Are so many Mormons really that obtuse that they (1) cannot separate their political opinions from their faith, and therefore believe that all their co-religionists must have the same political opinions as they have and (2) do not realize that this nation and every other nation under heaven (and its and their governments) are ultimately headed for the ash heap of history, when He rules whose right it is to rule?
There’s something worrisome about those who think that their faith precludes another person from different political views. It’s not far from that to divine right of kings or jihad.
I know it has nothing to do with the Church, but that was annoying enough that I took myself off LDSLivings email list.
Unfortunately in two of the four Utah wards I’ve lived in since voting age, there has been a obvious wink-wink when talking about political neutrality. One bishop actually read the letter one year then followed up with something like “but we all know that it’s almost impossible to find many Democratic candidates that will support our morals”.
I’ve learned not to participate in EQ political discussions because most of them aren’t discussions at all, they’re bash-fests against Democrats and democratic candidates.
In my experience, yes. There is the thought among most members I know in Utah (including some family members) that it is impossible to vote for a Democrat and still be considered a member in good standing.
One more reason not to live in Utah, I suppose.
Jjohnsen, re #30, I truly believe that bringing up politics at Church can do very little good. It just causes contention and makes people who don’t share the dominant POV feel out of place. I also think it could potentially hurt our missionary efforts. A lot of potential converts could be made to feel uncomfortable if we spend too much time on contentious issues. I love to discuss politics (obviously) but I really don’t do it at Church.