President Donald Trump holds up a bag of potatoes as he tours the food distribution center at the Welfare Plaza of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Salt Lake City.
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Evan Vucci, Associated Press
President Donald Trump holds up a bag of potatoes as he tours the food distribution center at the Welfare Plaza of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Monday, Dec. 4, 2017, in Salt Lake City.
Top leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dropped a bombshell in June 2023 telling their flock to vote for the Democrats, well, almost.
In a letter that local leaders read during worship meetings across the country, the church president and his two counselors instructed church members not to vote for just one political party. Latter-day Saints, often referred to as Mormons, have overwhelmingly supported Republicans in recent decades.
“Simply voting a straight ticket or voting based on ‘tradition’ without careful study of the candidates and their positions on important issues is a threat to democracy and inconsistent with revealed standards,” the three top authorities wrote of the church, referring to the writing of the Saints of the Last Days. .
These letters are often used to direct the faithful. For example, in 2008, similar letters mobilized Latter-day Saints in California to support Proposition 8, a ballot initiative against same-sex marriage. As the significant time and money that church members poured into Proposition 8 suggests, these letters can be persuasive due in large part to the unique role of leaders. Within the faith, leading LDS authorities are known as “prophets, seers, and revelators,” and members often speak of the need to “follow the prophet,” referring to the president of the church. There’s actually a catchy nursery rhyme with that title, featuring the repeated refrain “follow the prophet, don’t go astray.”
To the casual observer of American politics, it is certainly surprising to hear that LDS leaders are promoting the idea of voting for Democrats. But as a political scientist who studies religion, including the LDS church, I think the letter highlights an important trend in American Christianity.
GOP fans, but not always
Courtesy image
It’s true that Mormons rival white evangelical Christians in their support for the Republican Party, and they generally hold very conservative views. According to the Cooperative Elections Study, 60% of LDS church members identify as Republicans and only 23% as Democrats.
However, Mormons don’t always line up perfectly with the priorities of other Republicans.
For example, they are more moderate on immigration policy, and while they oppose abortion, the church has never called for a total ban. Despite a history of opposing gay marriage, LDS leaders approved a recent bill in Congress affirming the right to same-sex marriage, though only after ensuring that religious organizations would not they would be obliged to recognize these marriages.
Latter-day Saints never quite jumped on the Donald Trump bandwagon. In 2016, Trump won just 45 percent of the vote in Utah, a predominantly Mormon state, largely because third-party candidate Evan McMullin, a member of the church, ate into his support. Heading into the 2020 election, Trump had lower approval ratings among Latter-day Saints than among other heavily Republican groups.
Many members’ ambivalence toward Trump may stem from past messages from church leaders. In 2016, an editorial in the church-owned Deseret News called on Trump to withdraw from the race, even though he did not endorse his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Even more directly, church leaders issued a statement denouncing Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban.” An uncharacteristic move for the church, which reflected Latter-day Saints’ particular opposition to targeting religious minorities, given their own history of being treated as outsiders.
It’s no coincidence that the country’s most prominent LDS politician, US Senator Mitt Romney, has long been a thorn in Trump’s side.
Looking to the future
Why do leaders talk? One could argue that this is nothing new, as the LDS hierarchy has previously encouraged more bipartisanship. “We’re not interested in being known as a one-party church,” one elder told The Salt Lake Tribune during a 1998 interview.
A better question is why the highest church authorities are speaking out now. Part of the explanation likely comes from concern about the control that Trump, and the Trumpian approach to politics, has over the Republican Party.
But I argue that there is another explanation. The Latter-day Saints are known for their extensive missionary program around the world. Within the United States, however, the church has not been immune to the national decline in religious affiliation.
The church itself reports declining growth in official membership, which is based on baptismal records. Public surveys, however, find that the number of Latter-day Saints in the US is declining, not just the rate of growth. Even among self-identified Latter-day Saints, a quarter have considered leaving the church.
Research that I and other political scientists have done shows that one of the reasons so many Americans are turning away from religion is the relationship between conservative Christianity and the Republican Party. People whose religious views align with the religious right but do not share their politics often feel conflicted. In some cases, they leave the congregation where they worship for a new one. Others, however, are giving up religion, one reason for the dramatic growth in the percentage of Americans who have no religion.
While most of this research has focused on evangelicals’ entanglement with the GOP, it follows that, as a predominantly Republican faith, Mormonism is also likely to experience an exodus. Surprisingly, in her research into why people are leaving the LDS faith, religion writer Jana Riess finds that former members of the church are much more likely to be Democrats than those who remain in the fold.
Older Latter-day Saints continue to identify heavily as Republicans, but members under the age of 30 are much more likely to describe themselves as Democrats. If these young church members see their church as a bastion of Republicanism, they may decide that Mormonism is not for them, while more bipartisanship might keep them in the fold.
This recent call from LDS leaders could create a possible counterexample to a trend within the American religion. Increasingly, Americans are adapting their religious beliefs to their politics, rather than the other way around.
Here, on the other hand, is a statement from men whom Latter-day Saints believe speak for God, telling their co-religionists that they should break the Republican ranks. If ever there was a case for expecting religion to inform people’s politics, this is it, with eyes on the 2024 election.
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