Iâ??ve spent what is rapidly becoming nine years in New York City. Itâ??s been a total blast. But as a transplanted Englishman one thing to which Iâ??ve become rather sensitive in that time is which prejudices New Yorkers are permitted to express in public. Among my horribly overeducated and hugely liberal friends, expressions of racism are completely out of the question, Islamophobia is greeted with a slow shaking of the head and anti-Semitism is a memory associated with distant places that one sometimes visits â?? like France.
But anti-Mormonism is another matter. Itâ??s really fine to say totally uninformed things about Mormonism in public, at dinner parties or wherever. â??Itâ??s a cult,â? says one. â??With 13 million followers and counting?â? I reply. â??Polygamy is disgusting,â? says another. â??It was made illegal in Utah and banned by the church in 1890, wasnâ??t it?â? I counter. And so on. This is a casual prejudice that is not like the visceral hatred that plagued the early decades of Mormonism â?? lest it be forgotten, Joseph Smith was shot to death on June 27, 1844, by an angry mob who broke into a jail where he was detained â?? but a symptom of a thoughtless incuriousness.
There is just something weird about Mormonism, and the very mention of the Book of Mormon invites smirks and giggles, which is why choosing it as the name for Broadwayâ??s most hard-to-get-into show was a smart move. As a scholar of Mormonism once remarked, one does not need to read the Book of Mormon in order to have an opinion about it.
But every now and then during one of those New York soirées, when anti-Mormon prejudice is persistently pressed and expressed, and I perhaps feel momentarily and un-Mormonly emboldened by wine, I begin to try and share my slim understanding of Joseph Smith and my fascination with the Latter-day Saints. After about 45 seconds, sometimes less, it becomes apparent that the prejudice is based on sheer ignorance of the peculiar splendors of Mormon theology. â??They are all Republicans anyway,â? they add in conclusion, â??I mean, just look at that Mitbot Romney. Heâ??s an alien.â? As an alien myself, I find this thoughtless anti-Mormon sentiment a little bewildering.
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