Mormons [heart] Bush

I’m trying to limit the religion posts to Sunday, but this one’s at least partly political. Here’s an article I found today (thanks to Billmon):

President Bush… has a positive job approval in just three of the 50 United States.

This according to 50 separate but concurrent statewide public opinion polls conducted by SurveyUSA for its media clients across the country.

Only residents of Utah, Wyoming and Idaho view the president favorably.

Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho… hmm. There must be a connection somewhere… what could it be…?

Ah. There it is.

Top 10 U.S. States with Highest Proportion of Latter-day Saints in the Population, 1990

State	Number of congregations	Number of members	Percent of state population
Utah	2,924	1,236,242	71.76%
Idaho	662	268,060	26.63
Wyoming	128	45,793	10.10

The data’s a little old, but the patterns are stable — it’s a Mormon thing. Seriously, what could the possible reason be for this unquestioning sheeptitude among Latter-day Saints?

You could say a lot of things:

• authoritarian religions make people unlikely to question authority figures
• religions are by nature conservative, and there’s bound to be some political crossover
• the intermountain West is naturally conservative, Mormon or not

But I think it’s really this: very religious people are not well-trained to base opinions on evidence, and so when more evidence comes, they aren’t able to update. Mormons, especially, go by ‘personal revelation’ — feelings — not facts. And so they continue to live in slumber.

Bush not only won Utah’s electoral votes in 2004, but did so county for county — one of only three states to do so (other two: Nebraska and Oklahoma). I have to admit that for me this fact was a latter step toward realising that the members of the Church, far from being the most spiritually enlightened people in this wicked world, were in fact the most benighted by any standard of Christianity. As a liberal, I had always been a minority in a conservative church, but I’d always brushed it off. It’s just politics, I told myself. But the 2004 election showed me that it wasn’t; this went to the heart of who the Latter-day Saints are. I could see it, they never would, and I realised that the chasm was too wide.