COLUMN: Religious Orientalism: Boyd K. Packer et al.
“If they throw the word diversity at you, grab hold of it and say, ‘I am already diverse, and I intend to stay diverse.'”
I was sprawled out on the cold basement floor of my wife’s family home in Bountiful, my mind drifting in and out of sleep, when Boyd K. Packer’s fiery oratory caught my attention.
I snapped awake.
It had been, until then, a fairly nondescript session of General Conference, when all at once Packer jolted me out of my stupor. The statement was a scathing denouncement of what I consider the holy grail of modern American values.
He didn’t actually say that, I thought.
There wasn’t time for bewilderment. The Mormon leader’s censure of liberalism moved swiftly along: “If the word is tolerance, grab that one, too, saying, “I expect you to be tolerant of my lifestyle … If the word is choice, tell them you choose good, old-fashioned morality.”
In one fell swoop, Packer had all but dismissed decades of political progressiveness in favor of an archaic brand of ideological chauvinism. I was appalled, and more than a tad perplexed. Especially since I count myself among the reverential flock. What could have motivated this outlandish diatribe?
I’ve turned the question over in my head for a while now. And I believe I have an answer, though you’ll have to wrestle with it.
You see, Packer, like most Mormon faithful, is a fervent ideologue of what author James E. Talmage has called “The Great Apostasy” – the belief that the early church, following the apostolic period, “lost its power, authority and graces as a divine institution, and degenerated into an earthly institution only.”
That church, it is believed, was restored when the first Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith received heavenly instruction.
Consequently, the present-day adherents of other, perhaps more liberal religious faiths are seen as directionless heathen – Gentiles, if you will – who, misled by their respective creeds, corrupt the world with evil ideas, cloaked in political correctness.
Essentially, you’re either a conservative Mormon or the spawn of Satan. Period.
This is the narrow lens through which Packer and others of similar comportment view the modern world, and it is no different from, say, the Orientalist lens through which the Western world views Islam and its practitioners.
Allow me to digress for a moment.
In his monumental book, Orientalism, Columbia University professor and renowned literature scholar Edward Said, while criticizing the demonizing representations of Arabs in the mainstream media, points out that the hold these instruments have on the mind is increased by the institutions built around them.
Said explains: “This is the culmination of Orientalism as a dogma that not only degrades its subject matter but also blinds its practitioners.”
The comparison might seem a little odd at first, but try, as I did, to think of Packer’s brand of Mormonism as a kind of religious Orientalism.
Here, the Orientalist lens is replaced by the lens of Apostasy. The liberal “non-member” is now the Arab in Said’s theory – shady and debauched, blinded by faith in false doctrine. This liberal’s philosophies must be avoided or shunned at all cost.
The parallels are stark, to say the least.
What, then, is to be made of Packer’s small-minded world view?
Said wrote that rejection of Orientalist thinking “does not entail a denial of the differences between ‘the West’ and ‘the Orient,’ but rather an evaluation of such differences in a more critical and objective fashion.”
Packer’s opinions must be subject to similar analysis. In the end, an international church cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the intellectual diversity of its own makeup.
Leon D’Souza is a senior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to leon@cc.usu.edu.