In 1955, Louis Hartz published a famous and deeply influential book called “The Liberal Tradition in America.” In it, he argued that American politics actually functions on an extraordinarily narrow spectrum, that the American left and American right share far more philosophical principles than they would dare admit to their own followers (or to each other).
According to Hartz, American politics is dominated by liberalism, in the philosophical sense. Basically, Hartz maintains, Americans believe that freedom applies to individuals. People should be able to pursue the sort of education they would like to have, own the property they acquire legally, live where they want, and, in some sense, not be told what to do. Government should be basically responsive to its citizens. Put simply, people have rights.
Hartz was probably wrong. I could raise countless quibbles (there’s a long tradition, for instance, of Americans seeking to deny other Americans rights). But even if he’s wrong about politics, his wonderful image of American politicians squabbling over one square inch of real estate on a miles-wide political spectrum is fun nonetheless. And even if he’s overgeneralizing, it’s certain that liberal ideas permeate our society.
Hartz is also useful for thinking about arguments among U.S. members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
These members divide themselves up in a number of ways. Brigham Young University historian Richard Poll talked about “iron rod” and “Liahona” Saints. Many online conversations about the church distinguish between “TBM” (true believing, or true blue, Mormons) and “progmos” (progressive Mormons).
Of course, these categories are mostly familiar to educated, white, North American Latter-day Saints who talk about religion on the internet. As such, they also show how much these conversations are influenced by American liberalism. As in Hartz’s image, these commenters are actually battling along a fairly small spectrum.
Put another way, there’s far less difference between the ideas of the conservative, orthodox titan Bruce R. McConkie and the paladin of Mormon progressivism Eugene England than is often perceived. To be sure, they disagreed a great deal over specific issues — evolution and so on — but their arguments happen on a common stage.
Both iron rod and Liahona Saints, both TBMs and progmos, subscribe to a type of religious humanism pretty close to Hartz’s liberalism. All of them prize the notion of “agency” and emphasize individual choice. None of them buys into the idea of original sin. All of them celebrate the notion of “eternal progression” and human possibility.
The only real differences emerge in the application of these ideas. Some Saints use them to rail against institutional authority and celebrate human freedom. Others draw upon them to urge one another toward ongoing repentance and righteousness. Even McConkie manifested liberalism in his rigorous demands for moral behavior and insistence on toeing the line. He set expectations like these in the entire conviction that if you tried hard enough, you could indeed do everything right and never stumble. They were a manifestation of confidence in human potential. For him, the church was a vehicle for facilitating the instruction and discipline of the individual.
Progressive Mormons likewise celebrate that potential. They emphasize the importance of free choice, self-development and authenticity. They draw on the long American tradition of suspicion of institutions — one running back through the social upheavals of the 1960s to the revulsion toward Parliament that spurred the American Revolution. The liberation movements of the 1960s equated authenticity with rejection of institutions, and that calculation shapes how contemporary progressive Latter-day Saints grapple with the church.
Of course, these philosophical similarities should not obscure the real differences of policy and procedure that divide these camps. These exist, and, of course, they’re real. But the point is that they are just that: differences of policy. Because Saints are so fluent in the language of choice and expectations and behavior and rights, they don’t tend to think in abstract or structural terms. Maybe this is why church members talk about religion in stories — the narratives of conversion and de-conversion.
These continuities imply that the language of Latter-day Saint theological conservatism is indeed closely wound into American culture; they also illustrate that liberal Latter-day Saints may be speaking in a more deeply Mormon vernacular than they might realize.
They can also point us to at least two conclusions. The first is an opportunity. Any religion is far more than simply the ethics it prescribes, and when Latter-day Saints reduce what being a Saint means to simply a set of behavioral expectations, they’re missing a much deeper story. Latter-day Saint education should be a place to explore questions about what it means to be human, what agency is, and the conversation between the faith and the culture around it.
Doing that would illuminate my second conclusion. That is how narrow the conversation to date has been. It might be time for Saints to look over their shoulders at the sidewalk before and behind, and realize how much more space there is to think about these questions. The church’s expansion beyond being a largely white, middle- and upper-class American faith might point it in more radical and less liberal directions.Agnes Inyang, a Nigerian convert to the church, describes being a Saint in primarily relational terms. Rather than emphasizing individual behavioral expectations, she discusses how it has opened new ways for her to think about belonging to a family and a community. Plotino Rhodakanaty, a Mexican politician and 19th-century convert, understood it to be a manifesto for communitarianism and pacifism.
In short, as the church expands outside of the United States, it may also find ways to grow past the American social and cultural ideas that have shaped so much of how its followers have understood it to this point.
Matthew Bowman is Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University.
Matthew Bowman is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University and the author of 2023′s “The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America” and 2012′s “The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith.”