I swear that was NOT an anti-Utah rant

I have larger points than just anti-Utahism. Just kidding. The rest of this is unrevised fat that I cut out of my GBH post above. I always start about three times as long and pare down. Usually I throw out the excess, but I didn't feel like it, for some reason, at least today. But it isn't like I am burning with this or any other issue that I prattle on about, as I am sure most of you know. (I am serious about the unrevised part, not even spell checked).

People often mistake me when I express concern that having any significant weight of church membership live in Utah isn't a good thing for the future of church membership. I obviously don't prefer Utah, but I wouldn't since I didn't grow up there. And so perhaps it is an outsider thing. Perhaps to me, not raised in Utah, I am mistaking a culture I don't understand for a lack of comparattive convert fervor. So I will allow for the possibility that those in Utah or OF Utah are just fine.

The other danger, though, is that for whatever reason converts and non-Utah Mormons, when they encounter Utah and those who have come from there, can get a fish-out-of-water feeling. Some are often disappointed that rather than being the Zion they imagined, Mormon West USA seems somehow to not let them in. The biggest mistake in those cases (and the biggest danger) is for those who feel that way to assume that there is something suspect about the religion they thought they believed. I would argue instead that rather than feeling a confrontation with their own LDS beliefs, which arguably are from New England and not the western USA, they are sensing a strongly regional culture, and also sensing their own foreignness to it.

Since I study kids acquiring language, I also have observed that the acquisition of cultural facility also has a bit of a critical period. If you haven't been exposed to a culture before say aged fifteen likely you will always feel an outsider to it. And THAT FACT is the danger I see. People KNOW they are an outsider from Utah, but some of them mistake it for being an outsider from the gospel. I warn every adult person before they have experience with Utah that there is a difference: you might hope to always be a Mormon, but unless you grew up there, you will NEVER be a Utahn, and so those hoping to fit may become dissillusioned.

And to that state of affairs I would add to Utah some members in other states, many who are Utah transplants, maintaining close ties with Utah and many hoping to one day return. It is a shame in my opinion, that the focus on a geographical point in the globe, which could have no spiritual significance whatsoever in the gospel that I know, becomes more an objective than trying to grow the roots in their communities that eventually add to whatever good name we can claim in the larger culture - which isn't much. President Hinckley encouraged us all to grow those roots because he knew that in a world with open opposition, the religious freedom we take for granted NOT actually forever assured, that our good name and reputation just may be the salt to preserve us one day.

And when the complacency of not having to do missionary work or be a good example has its full effect it is also important to ask, if the state of Utah isn't saying good things, how can it be saying good things about the church as long as there is a perception that it is its geographical seat? I will refer briefly to my niece Kate's observation that she is not sure why she lives there. She moved there as an adult, and it was too late for it to become home. She was a product of Oregon, and an Oregon that has 'needing conversion' as one potential excuse for its ills. Utah doesn't have that excuse, and thus in my opinion the fact that the state's divorce rate falls in the worse half of the U.S. states is a bit troubling to me. My first inclination of course, is not to blame the religion I believe in for this unhappy state of affairs. I would like to think there might be something GOOD about members of the church. So statistically, to account for the fact that they are actually quite average, there might be some problems to go along with those strengths.

President Hinckley was probably always on fire and inspired that feeling in those he interacted with, so he didn't perhaps notice the very real sense that Mormon West USA can be a bit of a fervorless place. Recent converts, who by contrast have recently decided to put the church at the very center of their lives, mentioning and giving thanks for it the first thing off of their tongues, might not recognize it. There are objective rationales for encouraging Mormons of various ages, but particularly young people, to leave the American West behind: Muslims learned hundreds of years ago that the way to make their young men more religious is to send them to a Non-Muslim country where they can learn, by the contrast, about the good things they took for granted when they were home. In a way I think part of the success of the missionary program is that it does this. But what it say about a religion if its members, rather than wanting to spread out to all the earth, seem to flee in hoards for refuge in the motherland? Single people progress there to get married and older folks to retire, with a brief respite in between sometimes, but sometimes not.

I am not sure what this might mean, but it is possible that some members feel the cultural pull of the geographic region more strongly than the one to live the basic Christian gospel, which might instead call for leaving everything comfortable behind. After all, we know that the future of the church is not anywhere near the Wasatch Corridor, so the desire to better practice the Mormon religion couldn't possibly be the reason for a possible reverse-exodous to 'the place' of Brigham Young. Recent converts might not flinch, but if we got the call to leave everything behind, and say goodbye to family for the last time, to move to Jackson County, would we go? It is possible that we would, because that would be one of those times where the religious impulse becomes conscious of itself, generating some amout of sustaining. But the bigger challenge is obviusly to practice our religion, not in these kind of tumultuous times, but in our own easy easy ones. We can all do by taking stock of our main goals when it comes to determining such readiness. Is most of our time in pursuit of feathering our own nests (which could include materialism but that is only one type of creature comfort among many), or is it trying to develop instead qualities of a fledgling that cares not about nests at all?

Another possible reason that clustering membership in a geographical location (kind of like leaving all of the yeast in a clump) is that many of us do the good things we do, first because they might be good or that we think they are, but also because we try to live a good example of what we believe. All of us with non-Mormon neighbors know that they are watching us to see what we do. They are waiting to tell their own friends and family what seem to be the first things they notice about the Mormons next door. When all neighbors are Mormon I think there is a bit of a letting-down of this guard, that can encourage members into lukewarm faith and perhaps even inactivity.

Other places in the world it is obvious that there is a need for the gospel, but it Utah (while the good effects tend not to draw attention to themselves in a world where people mostly notice another’s faults), it can strike one in a 100% Mormon subdivision that maybe there is no reason for all the fuss that causes us to go to church on Sunday, have callings, and be obedient. People in all-Mormon communities seem to be doing OK without anyone to provide them either service or a good example, which becomes obviously NOT the case most other places.

Please, those of you who live in Utah, of course I am not talking about you! I spent six years there myself and didn't apostatize and managed to be even more connected to the rest of the world than I am now, certainly.

I am talking about nameless, faceless Utah. Actually, that was going to be a joke at first, but it actually seems to be a feature of the place to some of us who weren't raised there. And for those died in the wool defendants of the place even if it comes at an expense of the church, I did intend (though I couldn't spare the length, haha) to refer to any problem associated with Utah or moving there, not as a geographical one but a metaphorical one. Any tendency to isolate inside what is comfortable, familiar, and pleasant is a tendency that anyone who professes a Christian faith at one time or another may find inconvenient.

But even for those people, who I will NEVER convince and don't intend to, I am not sure that it would hurt them to try to strengthen any non-Utah connection they might have or start forming them if they don't. Because if it is with the public affairs of the church in mind, doing so would be one way to avoid this problem and make more contact with those that are seeking.

But personally, I admit that I do see the benefits of having grown up in an area where it was not as likely to confuse the LDS religion with Utah culture. I think in areas like where I grew up, it is probably more likely for people to become religiously fervent or apostatize alltogether, rather than remaining in some middle ground where outward compliance, even zealous adherence to, a religion might be culturally reinforced.

One more note, though it doesn't really relate, is that in the case of my husband, I particularly do not feel like I could relate to him as I now do if he hadn't been mostly conversant in my own culture, from spending much of his growing-up years there. This could be a whole nother post, but I always worry for those who think it might be fun to marry someone 'different', maybe someone from a different country or S.E. background Anyone can be one of the lucky ones, and I wish everyone all happiness always, but cultural disparity puts a burden on any marriage, even if it is a small one, and it is true that statistically, many of them don't survive it. Luckily, though, Slade and I are both whole-cloth cultural products of the American West, me personally not even visiting Utah until I was sixteen. And as I believe it is the case for any human being around the globe, we are perfectly able to live the gospel without seeming like products of any regional culture, and I argue that if a regional culture DOES become overbearing, even if it is relatively benign, that is a problem.

Slade and I both, as do many in my family, speak a flawless Standard American Dialect, that if ever comes to speak for the church, in my opinion will leave fewer feeling left out.