In August 2016, our family moved to Belgium for a year-long sabbatical. We had already participated in the Utah primary caucuses, and we used an overseas ballot to send in our vote well in advance of Election Day.
We are eight hours ahead of Utah, so when we woke up on the morning of 9 November, the final numbers were not yet in. But we knew enough Dutch to understand the radio announcers’ shock that Donald1 appeared to be winning. Music stations spent almost as much time talking about the United States’ results as they did playing songs, most of which were chosen to accompany the news, like R.E.M.’s “Orange Crush.”
Members of our LDS branch in Gent were stunned, and asked us to explain how such a thing could have happened. Especially how Donald could sweep Utah—how so many Mormons could have voted for him.
After all, Donald is everything a good Mormon should not be. Except rich. All good Mormons should be rich. It is a sign that they are righteous and have properly paid their tithing and faithfully served countless hours in church callings. And he does have a lot of kids. And wives. And he prefers that his wife (whichever one it is at the time) stay at home with the kid(s). And he wants his female staff to “dress like women.” But he is coarse and vulgar and mean-spirited. He gleefully causes contention. He makes some of his money and reputation from decidedly unvirtuous ventures, such as his casinos with topless dancers and his long-standing relationship with Playboy magazine. (Remember, for Mormons, porn is the new drug.) He promotes vices Mormons claim to abhor, such as lechery, abuse, and xenophobia.
But they’re right; Donald swept Utah. Why? He was the least popular candidate in my Provo, Utah Republican caucus by a long shot. My neighbors and I really did not want him to be the Republican nominee, but a sizeable portion of Utah voters chose to support him, many reluctantly. We were faced with the choice between our least favorite candidate from the large field of Republican contenders, the virtually unknown independent Evan McMullin, and Hillary Clinton, whom many regard with deep-seated distrust. Given those options, many chose to give Donald the benefit of a doubt. The most common justifications for this display of party loyalty were issues like abortion, Supreme Court nominees, “religious freedom,” and hope for economic stimulation.
So it seems that most Mormons, conservative and liberal, really aren’t all that excited about Donald running the country. However, his supporters are telling us to give him the benefit of a doubt. Even after an extremely turbulent first few weeks in office, they tell us we need to take the long view, that we’ll see the benefits of his presidency down the road.
This is actually something Mormons are used to doing. We give the benefit of a doubt to our religious leaders as a matter of course. We don’t really have a choice since we don’t get to vote for them. We say that they’re called by revelation, so we sustain whatever they do.
And by sustain, we usually mean that we don’t talk with them about our views of how things might run. We trustingly leave everything in their hands.
We tend to fall into the same pattern with the political leaders we agree with: we show our support by leaving them to their work.
However, this attitude goes against scripture, which tells us that we’re supposed to be “anxiously engaged” (D&C 58:27) in the process of maintaining our communities. To do otherwise, even if you think your leaders are the greatest people in the world, is to commit the sin of complacency—the sin of being a “slothful” servant.
I am guilty of this sin myself. I admit that I got a little too comfortable while Obama was in office. For the most part, he reflected my values, so I felt that I could let things alone.
But now a man who emphatically does not reflect my values is in office. How do I take seriously the political call to give the President the benefit of a doubt while also heeding the scriptural call to be anxiously engaged? I think it starts with revising the way we give “the benefit of a doubt.”
We need to start interpreting the phrase actively. Rather than benefitting our leaders with our invisibility, with a withholding of our insight, with non-communication, we should benefit them with our presence, with considered thought, with an assumption that their actions spring from constructive desires—even if those desires don’t match our own.
Because if we don’t communicate with them, they cannot possibly know what our concerns are and how to address them. If we are silent, we are checking out of the system and out of our responsibilities. It is then unfair (and unproductive) to blame them for not reading our minds and serving us adequately.
To truly sustain our leaders, we must consciously reject passivity. In both church and political matters, this is easier to do on a local level, where we can know and talk to our leaders in person. Not doing so allows authority to become top-heavy, crushing the body of the church and the body of the state beneath it.
On a political level, we must accept that we have a new administration and develop a relationship with these officials. We need to actively communicate with them. We need to learn what they are doing and let them know what we think about it and how their actions affect our communities. And we need to do so in a way that is not accusatory or condemning, but in a way that gives them “the benefit of a doubt.”
If they don’t respond to us then we can stop giving them this benefit, and put our efforts into other ventures: community building, non-profit work, seeking new candidates to run for office, perhaps even offering ourselves upon that altar.
The latest First Presidency letter on political participation includes this, “Participation in the political process affects our communities and nation today and in the future. We urge Latter-day Saints to be active citizens by registering, exercising their right to vote, and engaging in civic affairs.”
It seems to me that this is the perfect time to follow their counsel. Donald presents a particular challenge to the Mormon community. The moral values he promotes are opposed to Mormon values; his political values are difficult to pin down and don’t seem to align with traditional Republican conservative values. In other words, it doesn’t matter which party you affiliate with, you need to be actively engaged with this presidency. This gives us all a chance to start talking together, to find the nuances in each other’s views, to share insights with one another, to have our view of the world expanded. Such a conversation can potentially cause an amazing transformation within the Mormon community. It will become obvious that there is a wide variety of political opinion among Mormons, and we will find that this is actually a strength when it is built on the foundation of our shared faith and service to each other.
One of my favorite things about attending church abroad is that no one assumes that everyone in a church meeting shares an American conservative Republican political position. I hope that with this increase in conversation and political activity we will begin to value each other because of our political diversity rather than in spite of it.
Perhaps this presidency, where everyone is destabilized, will give the Mormon community the chance to come together in faith, hope, and charity to build something that looks a little bit more like Zion.