Why Donald Trump personifies what Mormons don’t believe in

By ERASMUS and H.G. | SALT LAKE CITY

YOU can’t always draw a straight line between people’s declared spiritual beliefs and their electoral behaviour. In the current American election campaign, this disconnect seems to have widened. According to a poll published this week, some 61% of Americans now believe that elected officials can perform their public duties well even if their personal behaviour is immoral; that figure is up from 44% in 2011. Among white evangelicals, the conversion to this hard-boiled attitude has been dramatic; some 72% now take this view of things, compared with 30% who felt that way five years ago. Behind this figure, of course, lies the fact that many (by no means all) religious and clean-living Americans have resolved to vote for a man who has neither of those qualities.

But among devout, conservative and tradition-minded voters, there is one big exception, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Compared with other pious citizens, the Mormons are not tempted by Donald Trump, and their heartland, Utah, is the only state where a third candidate has a chance of doing better than both him and Hillary Clinton. What’s more, Mormons link their aversion to Mr Trump to particular aspects of their faith, ethos and collective memory. Above all, they are wary of a candidate who, even subliminally, plays on prejudices against vulnerable minorities.

Despite the economic and political power they now enjoy, Mormons have a vivid recollection of what is like to be pariahs. Their faith was born in New York state, in 1830; their forebears moved westward over the subsequent years as they became highly unpopular in one place after another. Their founder Joseph Smith was murdered by a mob in Illinois in 1844. After the Mormons settled in Utah and established a kind of theocracy, they were sharply at odds with the federal authorities, and the army fought a low-key military campaign in the 1850s to assert their authority over the state.

This keen sense of what’s it like to be confined to the margins of the nation helps to explain why Mr Trump’s calls to ban Muslim immigration, and build a wall to keep Mexicans out, have little appeal for the LDS. “I feel like Mormons can sympathise with the current refugee crisis, because their story was ours not too long ago,” says Curtis Sudbury, a 25-year-old follower of that faith who studies medicine. He cites a line from the Mormon scriptures: “He that hath the spirit of contention is not of me…” Another Mormon student, Noriko Millham, says her co-religionists take seriously the command of Jesus Christ to “love thy neighbour as thyself” and they discern no such quality in Mr Trump. “Supporting somebody who is not selfless” in the presidential race would go against the collective grain. As Ms Millham adds, her country already seems worryingly close to the state of affairs described in the Book of Mormon, her faith’s sacred text, when a society in the New World perished because selfishness abounded and people mistreated the land and one another. Under a President Trump, that trend could be exacerbated in a “scary” way.

Boyd Petersen, the editor of a Mormon journal, says adherents of the faith see in Mr Trump an example of a showy and unrefined lifestyle that is diametrically opposed to the kind of “virtuous, non-ostentatious” way of living to which they aspire. The fact that young Mormon men engage in missionary activity, with particular success in Latin America, means they are free of any chauvinistic aversion to foreigners. Given the high numbers of Latino Mormons, most followers of the faith “have experience dealing with people from other cultures” and “tend to be unfraid” of things foreign.

In a country where individual achievement is prized, the Mormon ethos presents an unusual mixture. They certainly excel as individuals, whether in business or the professions, but they have a strong sense of the common good, whether among Mormons or among the nation as a whole. Helping one another, and all needy people, in times of adversity is an important part of their religious culture.

According to Philip Barlow, who directs religious studies at Utah State University, Mormons remain very proud of the political achievements of Mitt Romney, a follower of their faith who was Republican presidential candidate in 2012 and a very successful businessman. They regarded Mr Romney as a cautious, respectful, family-minded character and Mr Trump “strikes many Mormons as the inversion of those qualities” or “a kind of anti-Romney”. Mr Romney’s strong and public stance against Mr Trump has reinforced that view.

As is pointed out by George Handley, a humanities professor at Brigham Young University, the LDS church does not endorse specific candidates or parties, but it does urge its members to engage constructively and courteously in politics, and to vote for leaders of upright character. To non-Mormons, Mr Romney could seem quite ostentatious and politically calculating. But Mormons do apply a kind of character test to would-be office-holders. It is one that Mr Romney passed, and Mr Trump clearly fails.