What role does politics play in religious affiliation? Dr Ryan Cragun gives us a few hints and discusses his upcoming book on the topic. We’ll also discuss his recent papers asking when women get LDS priesthood. Will Christ return before women get priesthood? Check out our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations with Ryan: https://gospeltangents.com/people/ryan-cragun
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Why Churches Grow in Global South
Interview
GT 00:43 I know there’s been a theory and maybe it’s gone out of style. I talked about this with Matt Bowman, that conservative fundamentalist religions that don’t allow you to drink, don’t allow you to dance, don’t allow you to eat bacon, things like that.
Ryan 01:04 High demand, high-cost religions, yeah.
GT 01:07 They retain more members than the progressive [churches.] Do you agree with that, or no?
Ryan 01:15 Yes, that is true. If you actually look at retention rates, they do tend to do a little bit better. I don’t want to crib too much for my forthcoming book, y’all need to just buy that book. We address a lot of those things. But yeah, there are some reasons why that might be the case. One: when you have really high costs, leaving is an even higher cost. When you’re raised in a religion that controls everything from what you can say and think and wear and eat, leaving becomes a much bigger challenge. So, it’s hard to leave a religion that is all-encapsulating, a strict or high demand or high-cost religion, that’s what they’re called. So, it can be much harder to leave. So, I absolutely get that, and I think there’s some truth to that. But we often don’t flip that around and ask, what I think is the more interesting question, which is, why are people attracted to those conservative religions? What is it about the conservative religion that actually has appeal versus the more progressive religions? The progressive religions are dying. Steve Bruce, that sociologist I mentioned in the UK, he projected at the rate of decline in the UK, I think this is in his 2011 book, United Methodists or the Methodist Church will be gone by 2033.
GT 02:32 Oh, wow.
Ryan 02:33 Gone.
GT 02:34 And they’re having a big schism right now.
Ryan 02:35 Yes. I mean, they’re struggling. So, I think flipping that around, why are people attracted to these conservative religions? If you live in a modern, fairly progressive country, like the United States, but you aren’t fully comfortable with, say, transgender individuals, or maybe you’re like, oh, I don’t know if gays should be allowed to be married or something like that. Where are you going to find validation for those views? Or if you’re like, my wife wants to stay home and raise kids. Are you going to find validation for those views in Hollywood?
GT 03:12 No.
Ryan 03:12 No. Where are you going to find it? In the conservative churches. So, there is still a niche market for these conservative religions. They attract people who hold very similar views. Because they hold those views, they can find affirmation and validation for their views in these conservative religions. There’s appeal there. And I don’t think that appeal is going to disappear anytime soon. I like to kind of joke or argue–it’s a little tricky, that the LDS Church is always going to be like 40 to 50 years behind everybody else. And that’s fully intentional, and I get it. I’m not going to say like, hey, no, you should just totally modernize. They have to remain fairly conservative, but still change. If you don’t change, you’re going to die. But if you change too fast, what’s your appeal? What’s the appeal of the LDS Church if it’s the same values that are espoused in Hollywood. There’s no appeal there, because what affirmation or validation do I get for my beliefs? Theres none.
GT 04:12 Well, it’s interesting you say that because I know, specifically, with the Community of Christ, the current pastor, she’s former LDS. It was following the 2015 policy, where the LDS Church says, ‘We can’t baptize children of gays. We’re not going to ordain them,’ that sort of thing. The Community of Christ in Salt Lake got rejuvenated, and is a really, pretty healthy congregation. Now, Brittany lives in Saratoga Springs. It takes her 45 minutes to drive up to Salt Lake to pastor the church. I know there’s a small one in Provo right now. But we are seeing these people that you talk about, “I’m not comfortable with the LDS Church on gays, women and priesthood, things like that.” And so, they have migrated to Community of Christ. So, there is that.
Role of Politics in Religion
GT 05:16 We haven’t really talked about politics. Has politics played a role in disaffection?
Ryan 05:24 Yes. We’re straight up stealing everything from my new book.
GT 05:29 Uh, oh, I’m sorry.
Ryan 05:30 This is not the one that’s coming out. That’s fine. That’s fine. So, we talked about in there why people are leaving. And we frame it as push factors and pull factors, which is the same thing that we argue with immigration. Sociologists or demographers who study immigration, we talk about why are people pulled to a country? And what is pushing them from a country? Well, you can think about religion and religious exiting or religious disaffiliation the same way. What are the factors that are pushing people out? What are the factors that are pulling them out of religion? And certainly, politics matters. I don’t want to overstate politics, but…
GT 06:04 Is it different in the US compared to Europe or other places?
Ryan 06:08 No, I think it’s pretty similar.
GT 06:09 Oh, really?
Ryan 06:10 Yeah. I think it’s the same general idea. I think Pope Francis just came out and said that Catholic priests can bless same sex unions, but they can’t perform weddings, and they have to make it very clear that it’s a blessing. And it can’t be in the context of a wedding. And it can’t use any of the same symbolism of a wedding, but they can bless same-sex marriages. So, this is like a sop for people who are more progressive.
GT 06:37 So, it can’t be in a Catholic Church, I’ll bet.
Ryan 06:39 Yes, it’s just really bizarre what they’re saying. But at the same time, they know [that] they have to modernize, too. Can you imagine where the Catholic Church would be today if Vatican II hadn’t happened, and Mass was still in Latin? They would be dead. It just wouldn’t happen. Some people love the mystique of Latin, sure, that’s great. But religions have to modernize. And so, they do. They will slowly modernize.
Ryan 07:05 I mean, imagine if the LDS Church today brought back the race-exclusivity thing. What would happen to the LDS Church? It is done. All you would have left would be, like 50 white supremacists sitting around with $150 billion. The church is over. You can’t do that. So, I’ve argued this in some of my papers…
GT 07:24 So is women and priesthood and LGBT coming?
Ryan 07:27 It’s coming. 100% it’s coming.
GT 07:2 Oh?
Ryan 07:3 Again, they’re 50 years behind the times. So, they will eventually get there.
GT 07:34 So, 2070…
Ryan 07:36 Somewhere around there, it’ll happen. Because they have to. They have to keep moving, otherwise, I mean, we know they’re losing…
GT 07:43 They’ll become the Puritans.
Ryan 07:44 Well, yeah, they’ll become the Amish or something like that. They’ll just be so obscure that no one will belong to them. They’re losing. The LDS Church is probably using losing 60 to 70% of young people. And it’s value misalignment. It’s a push factor. A lot of young people are like, I watch TV, I watch movies. There are gay people around. I have gay friends. I have all of these values that are just misaligned. Why are you going to stay part of an institution like that? And the weird part is the people who are leaving for those reasons, they see the LDS Church as immoral. That’s the part that I think gets left out of this conversation all the time. So, members of the Church are like, oh, you’re leaving, and you’re going to drink coffee and smoke or do whatever you do. That’s so immoral, you’re going to have premarital sex. You’re going to cohabitate. You’re so immoral. And all the people who are leaving, are like, actually, you’re the immoral ones. You’re the ones who are discriminated against a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people. You’re the ones who are discriminating against all of this. You want women to be lesser than men. It’s a morality argument at the end of the day, which is pretty fascinating, that both sides are like, you’re the immoral ones. No, you’re the immoral ones.
GT 08:52 And to throw in the fundamentalists, because I hang out with a lot of polygamists, and they’re like, ‘oh, the church is in apostasy. We’re doing the original 1877 endowment, long-sleeved garments.’
Ryan 09:05 Yeah, and how big is their niche appeal? Their niche appeal is itty bitty tiny. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I don’t judge, I’m value free. I’m a sociologist. Like, whatever, you do you. I don’t care as long as everybody’s a consenting adult, have a good time. I don’t care. But their niche appeal is never going to be big. Polygamists, Fundamentalist Mormons are never going to attract more than a very, very tiny subset of the population. Now, yeah, they might grow because they have so many kids. But how many people are really being attracted to these organizations? It may seem like a lot because it’s Utah and you know some and it seems, “oh, maybe they’re growing a little bit or whatever.’ These are insignificant.
GT 09:47 Well, the FLDS has dropped by 80 to 90%.
Ryan 09:51 Yes, That’s Warren Jeffs. Once he was arrested all of this stuff collapsed.
GT 09:55 He’s just running it into the ground.
Ryan 09:57 I know. It’s terrible. And that’s what…
GT 09:59 So, that’s an example of the Puritans, right?
Ryan 10:0 Absolutely. And you drive it in that direction.
2nd Coming Will Happen Before Women Get LDS Priesthood
Interview
GT 10:07 Well, this is interesting, because the other thing that I wanted to talk to you about was a paper you published earlier this year, about whether women would get the priesthood in the LDS Church. And, also, you compared that with ideas about returning to Jackson County, Missouri.
Ryan 10:26 Yes.
GT 10:2 So introduce us to that paper. And we’ll talk about this secularization of the LDS Church in 50 years.
Ryan 10:34 In 50 years, which is maybe. All of that stems from the Mormon gender something project. I was part of this big group. There were like, 20, 30 of us who had this idea back in 2013-2014, somewhere around there. Okay, so, even further back. For years, we’ve actually known that men in the LDS Church are more in favor of women getting ordained than women.
GT 11:06 I’ve noticed that.
Ryan 11:08 It’s just super weird. It always is, like, what is going on here? Now the numbers aren’t huge. It’s like 10% of women are in favor, like 16% of men are. But there’s a gap.
GT 11:19 Oh, is it that low?
Ryan 11:20 It’s not a huge difference, and it’s pretty small. So, the numbers are relatively small. But there were some researchers out there who said, “We think what’s going on here is actually a little bit weird. Because the LDS Church is a top-down, hierarchical institution, if the leadership came out tomorrow, and said, “Do you know what? Women are going to get ordained.” What percentage of members would fall in line? The problem with how we’ve been asking the questions is that we think about it as a bottom-up institution. So, we’ve been asking questions like, “Do you think women should be allowed to be ordained?” Well, that infers or implies that, that the local members can actually make that decision, and it’ll work its way up. That’s not how the LDS Church works. All of the decisions come from the top down. So, we had the idea, what if we fielded a survey where we asked if the leadership, if the First Presidency in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles decided that women were going to be ordained, how likely would you be to support this? It turns out, when you ask the question that way, support for ordaining women goes up to, like, 80%. There’s still a subset that are like, oh, I don’t think women should be allowed to be ordained.
GT 11:28 They’re going to go join the FLDS Church and stuff.
Ryan 12:31 Yeah, they’re out, that’s it. But it very quickly illustrates [that] the way you ask the question dramatically changes the outcome of some of these surveys. So, that was the bigger project. But while we were doing that, we’re like, okay, we’ve got some money. We’re going to field this smaller sample of like 500 Mormons nationally or whatever. But then we opened it up. And because we had a big group, and they did some really good marketing on social media, when we launched the survey as a non-random sample, we ended up getting close to 60,000 respondents in about two weeks.
GT 13:07 That’s crazy.
Ryan 13:08 It blew up. It went crazy. We ended up closing the survey early. AWwhen you get that many people, that was the only time in my 20 plus years of doing research, where somebody actually contacted my Institutional Review Board, my IRB at my university, and said [that] I was doing unethical research and to end the research. What my unethical research was, is I was asking whether people thought women should be ordained. That was the extent of what I was doing that was unethical. So my IRB Chair came to me, he’s like, dude, what’s going on? I’m getting all these emails from people in Idaho, and just random places around the country saying they need to pull my IRB, I did something unethical. And I was like, “Here’s the survey. You approved it.” He was like, “So what’s wrong? What’s the problem?” I said, “They just don’t want me to ask the question.” I don’t understand. They literally couldn’t understand what was going on. I had to talk to my PR department about that. They had people contacting the president of my university saying, “You’ve got to end this survey. This is unethical.” So they went through PR. I had to get called into all these things. And I was like, “Look. We actually got IRB approval at my institution. And Mike Nelson is at Georgia Southern. Both of us got IRB approval. We’re doing everything perfectly aboveboard. They just don’t want us to ask the question.” So, it’s kind of crazy. Anyway, all of that comes back. It was crazy.
Ryan 14:22 We included in the survey, the non-random one, so the random one, that was a smaller subset, we didn’t have space to do it because it cost money. But in the random one, the non-random one, it was just a snowball sample. We had so many respondents, we threw in these experiments, where basically we said, “Okay, what do you think the odds are, effectively, of women getting the priesthood?” Then we gave people timelines.” So, we said, “Do you think at any point in the future, they would get the priesthood?” So, at any point in the future, and then we gave them different timelines. So it was like, What about in 20 years, 40 years, 60 years, 80 years, 100 years, something like that. How we did that is different people saw different numbers. And because we had so many, we have, like, 2000 in each of those categories. So, they were able to allot it that way. And then we had two others. I’m going to skip one because I you didn’t put it in the paper. But the other one was, what do you think the odds are that members of the Church are going to be called to move back to Jackson County, Missouri, in preparation for the second coming of Jesus Christ? So, we had both of those, and again, same timeline: at some point in the future, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, something like that. The reason we put the Jackson County one in there, as we wanted to see, which was more likely. For members of the Church, are they more likely to think that the Second Coming is going to happen before women are going to get the priesthood? It turns out, they are. This is Mind blowing. For those of us who are doing this research, we’re like, really?
GT 15:55 Jesus is going to institute [women being ordained.]
Ryan 15:56 Yes, right. You really think that Jesus is more likely to return than women are going to get the priesthood. And that’s actually what we showed in the paper, which is shocking. But again, it reflects the way this works, which is the bigger, earlier paper. So, we did publish a paper on this showing, if you flip the question around and say if the First Presidency in the Quorum of the Twelve said, “We’re going to ordain women, would you support it?” It’s like 80% of Mormons say, yes. Anyway, it was a fun little survey, a fun little experiment that we did. And yeah, legitimately, they think it’s more likely Jesus is going to return that women get the priesthood.
GT 16:28 So, Jesus is going to return in 2070?
Ryan 16:32 It’s more likely for that, according to them, than women getting the priesthood. Sorry, I just do fun things. I mean, I think they’re fun. It’s entertaining to do this stuff.
GT 16:42 They are fun.
Ryan 16:43 Yes, research should be fun, ask fun questions.
GT 16:49 So how do you come up with these ideas? I mean, I guess you grew up here in Utah.
Ryan 16:53 I did.
GT 16:54 You’re in Florida now. These other researchers, do they have LDS backgrounds?
Ryan 17:00 Yes. So on this paper that just came out, Rick Phillips, it’s weird. So I grew up in Morgan, Rick Phillips is from Ogden. He’s about 10 years older than I am. So, we didn’t know each other. He’s now at the University of North Florida. I met him through the Mormon Social Science Association.
GT 17:13 Okay.
Ryan 17:14 So when I first started going, they meet at the same time as SSSR.
GT 17:18 When are you, are you guys meeting in St. George in April?
Ryan 17:21 We are.
GT 17:21 I forgot to mention that. That’s the day before [Juanita Brooks Conference.] Right?
Ryan 17:24 It is.
GT 17:24 So, come to Juanita Brooks. Come to this, too.
Ryan 17:27 So, we’ll do, like, a one day mini conference. And we haven’t been doing that for very long. We used to, actually, meet with UVU when they were doing the Mormon Studies Conference. We would do the day before that and have an MSSA meeting.
GT 17:39 How did I not know about that? I work at UVU.
Ryan 17:43 We don’t do a great job marketing. That’s probably on me. So, I met Rick 20 years ago now, something like that. And we just have so many things in common. He grew up in Ogden. I grew up in Morgan. We both have Mormon backgrounds. He served a mission, I think, in Louisiana, like Southern states. He’s basically out, as well.
GT 18:04 I wonder if I met him.
Ryan 18:06 You probably met him at the conference.
GT 18:07 Because we went to dinner after. Did he grow up in South Ogden?
Ryan 18:13 Ogden, I’m trying to think, right by Ogden High.
GT 18:15 I think he grew up in my neighborhood, but he’s older than me.
Ryan 18:18 I think he knows you.
GT 18:19 He’s older than me, and I think we talked to each other. I talked to him, yes.
Ryan 18:23 Actually, after the conference, we went to his brother’s house. We had red eye flights that night. And they both knew who you were.
GT 18:31 Oh, really?
Ryan 18:31 Yes, because you grew up there, right?
GT 18:33 Yes, I met somebody who grew up in my neighborhood, that I never knew, because he was older than me. It might have been him.
Ryan 18:41 I think it’s Rick Phillips. So, They both were like, ‘oh, yeah, we know that guy.’ I was like, okay, cool. So yeah, Rick, he’s basically out today. I’ll let him self-identify how he wants to self-identify, but I don’t think he’s formally resigned. Bethany, who’s another co-author on this piece, she is at Utah Tech. She also grew up in the LDS Church. Again, I don’t know if she’s formally resigned, but she’s kind of out, as well. I did formally resign, but that was like 2002.
GT 19:10 Oh, it’s been a while.
Ryan 19:11 So, I formally resigned over 20 years ago. That was in grad school. So, I left. But not everybody has. Mike Nelson is a good collaborator. He’s still a member of the Church. The Shepherd twins, I don’t think they would identify as LDS at all.
GT 19:25 But Jana Riess is in there.
Ryan 19:27 Yeah, Jana Riess is there. She hangs out with us. So, [at] all the conferences, we hang out. So, it’s mixed. When I first started attending the MSSA meetings, there were five or six BYU professors who would attend all the time. BYU doesn’t really hire professors to study religion anymore, which is interesting. But at the time, Tim Heaton, who’s kind of a big name, he’s a big demographer. He was down there.
GT 19:52 Is he at San Diego or South Dakota?
Ryan 19:55 He’s still there. He was. He has moved a couple of times now. He’s had sabbatical appointments, but he’s still at BYU.
GT 20:03 He’s a listener.[1]
Ryan 20:04 Is he?
GT 20:05 Yes.
Ryan 20:05 Oh. Shout out to Jon Huntsman. I like Jon. Shout out to Jon. He is a good guy. He’s a really good guy, but they had like five or six. And they’ve all slowly retired, except John. John, as far as I know, is the only one who still does religion in the sociology department. There are some people in other departments who do some stuff on religion. But in sociology, it’s died down quite a bit. So yeah, we’re a very diverse group. We’re cool. We hang out.
GT 20:25 Very cool.
[1] I think Ryan and I were talking about different people. The Tim Heaton Rick knows is a geologist and I don’t believe my Tim taught at BYU.
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