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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32403 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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I feel like the lack of an assumed/densely-correlated genetic component alters the calculus a little bit.

People do convert to Judaism, you know.

I guess, for that matter, Mormons have had an assumed, and do apparently have a somewhat densely-correlated, genetic component to their identity.

Among Scott Alexander's juvenilia is a piece called "Mormonism: The Control Group For Christianity?" It's an interesting bit for a number of reasons, but I suspect that it should probably be updated today to something like "Mormonism: The Control Group for Group Identity?" Or maybe "The Control Group for Unpopular Minorities?" Because America kinda hates Mormons--Republicans and Democrats alike have an overall negative view--far, far worse than America's (overall positive) feelings toward Jews and Judaism.

People don't really convert to Judaism. Judaism heavily discourages conversion, and people usually give up after waiting a couple of years. Simply put, they don't want people to join, and the law is that you should discourage anyone who tries to join. The optimal Goy doesn't convert to Judaism, they simply observe 7 commandments given to the son's of Noah.

Secular Judaism might include some highly inclusive conversion but it doesn't change anything in a meaningful sense. Assuming that the mother did some kind of inclusive conversion they are considered a danger because a couple of generations later someone might actually think they are Jewish, marry an actual jew who thinks that she's an actual jew, thus introducing non-jews who will give birth to non-jews who think their Jewish, and then their non-jewish daughters will marry jews and have more kids that they think are jews but actually aren't. Introducing this kind of faulty record keeping into the system is a big deal because it allows people to honestly make mistakes that result in the offspring of every daughter not being jewish. This is a genuine problem.

It is not the case that there are conversions into the Jewish genetic cluster in any meaningful sense.

Because America kinda hates Mormons

If you've ever read Arthur Conan Doyle's first published Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study In Scarlet, which came out in 1887 you'll know about the long digression of the second half set in America amongst the Mormons. And the Mormons don't come out of it like the nice, family-friendly version of today. He didn't have first-hand experience so he was going off reports, but the 19th century attitude does seem to have seen Mormons as the villains - after all, they were a cult at their very beginnings and cults don't tend to get good report from those around them.

It seems that the book was in trouble in one school district because it was "derogatory towards Mormons":

In August 2011, the Albemarle County, Virginia, school board removed A Study in Scarlet from the district's sixth-grade required reading list following complaints from students and parents that the book was derogatory toward Mormons. It was moved to the reading lists for the tenth-graders, and remains in use in the school media centres for all grades.

Is it derogatory? Here's a sample:

He had to seal his mouth on the subject, however, for to express an unorthodox opinion was a dangerous matter in those days in the Land of the Saints.

Yes, a dangerous matter—so dangerous that even the most saintly dared only whisper their religious opinions with bated breath, lest something which fell from their lips might be misconstrued, and bring down a swift retribution upon them. The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account, and persecutors of the most terrible description. Not the Inquisition of Seville, nor the German Vehm-gericht, nor the Secret Societies of Italy, were ever able to put a more formidable machinery in motion than that which cast a cloud over the State of Utah.

Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what had befallen him. His wife and his children awaited him at home, but no father ever returned to tell them how he had fared at the hands of his secret judges. A rash word or a hasty act was followed by annihilation, and yet none knew what the nature might be of this terrible power which was suspended over them. No wonder that men went about in fear and trembling, and that even in the heart of the wilderness they dared not whisper the doubts which oppressed them.

At first this vague and terrible power was exercised only upon the recalcitrants who, having embraced the Mormon faith, wished afterwards to pervert or to abandon it. Soon, however, it took a wider range. The supply of adult women was running short, and polygamy without a female population on which to draw was a barren doctrine indeed. Strange rumours began to be bandied about—rumours of murdered immigrants and rifled camps in regions where Indians had never been seen. Fresh women appeared in the harems of the Elders—women who pined and wept, and bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror. Belated wanderers upon the mountains spoke of gangs of armed men, masked, stealthy, and noiseless, who flitted by them in the darkness. These tales and rumours took substance and shape, and were corroborated and re-corroborated, until they resolved themselves into a definite name. To this day, in the lonely ranches of the West, the name of the Danite Band, or the Avenging Angels, is a sinister and an ill-omened one.

Fuller knowledge of the organization which produced such terrible results served to increase rather than to lessen the horror which it inspired in the minds of men. None knew who belonged to this ruthless society. The names of the participators in the deeds of blood and violence done under the name of religion were kept profoundly secret. The very friend to whom you communicated your misgivings as to the Prophet and his mission, might be one of those who would come forth at night with fire and sword to exact a terrible reparation. Hence every man feared his neighbour, and none spoke of the things which were nearest his heart.

Because America kinda hates Mormons

This is more "America barely understands religion", isn't it? "Christianity" is rated 19 or more points higher than any subset of Christianity? Jehovah's Witnesses' "we shun people who leave" (or more likely "we knock on your door and annoy you") is rated lower than FLDS' "we kick out teen boys to reduce the competition for child brides"?

"Christianity" is rated 19 or more points higher than any subset of Christianity?

This makes sense to me. All Christians will associate their own church most strongly with Christianity and thus rate it higher than any other faction besides their own. Also, people mostly associate weak Christians with Christianity and stronger/more pushy Christians with their particular denomination.

I think the FLDS church benefits from the association with the LDS church, and the LDS church is hurt by that association, which might explain why the FLDS church is rated higher than the Witnesses and barely lower than the LDS church.

I’m guessing recognition is a pretty big factor. Americans approve of Christianity especially because it’s a synonym for their particular sect and have reservations about that other one over their. Fundamentalist church of Latter Day Saints? If I didn’t know what it actually referred to, I’d have assumed they were a Calvinist or Pentecostal group(very few Americans use the term Latter Day Saints in ordinary conversation).

Every devout Christian is going to say they love Christianity; they just hate those heathen apostate Baptists or papists or Eastern Orthodox. Most nations have an ethnically rooted "state" religion, even it isn't one officially, so for most places I would imagine you'd find that approval of Christianity would mirror closely the approval of whichever sect prevails in that locale. Few places have the diversity of cohabiting beliefs that the USA has, and Mormons in particular are pretty universally reviled or at least discounted by most major Christian religious institutions, since they have fundamental dogmatic disagreements that most other Christians consider fundamental tenets to true belief. Additionally LDS and its offshoots as well as JW have, in my experience, the most vituperative exbelievers of any (US at least) semi-mainstream religions. Whether that's for good cause or not is left as an exercise to the reader.

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