If you saw me seven years ago walking down a street in L.A., you would have picked me out from the crowd as different. There was perhaps something special about me back then, something just a little extraordinary. For example, you may have seen me levitating ever so slightly as I tugged my knee-length skirt down a little further to cover my garments, otherwise known as magic underwear. Or maybe you would have noticed a halo that graced my head as I twisted my CTR ring (think WWJD) around my finger. Or maybe, as you craned your neck to spy the strange girl in the long skirt around the corner, you thought you saw me walk on water when I crossed over a puddle. Whatever the case, there was a modesty about me with my soft but firm voice, my strong values, and my reverent politeness that made me stand out as unusual. More than likely, however, you wouldn’t have identified me for what I was: Mormon.
Mormons aren’t that strange that they are recognizable as such (minus the Mormon missionary in a suit, on a bike, with his nametag, asking if you’d like to hear a message from God). Yet, Mormons are a far cry from ordinary and, therefore, not anonymous in daily life. Indeed, Mormons tend to stand out, as the American populace is witnessing with the race for the republican nomination for president. Enter Mitt Romney, a Mormon. It shouldn’t matter to me that Romney is vying for the nomination; I’m an ex-Mormon. Yet, I find comfort in the idea of a Mormon president namely because Mormons are, if nothing else, different.
As I write this article, it’s been exactly seven years, three days, and 14 minutes since I turned in my Mormon credentials, became an ex-Mormon, and set forth into the land of opportunity otherwise known as the United States. And precisely seven years, three days, and 15 minutes ago my disappointment with mainstream North American culture and its values erupted.
Values may be too strong a term. What I miss most, or maybe what I lost, since I hung up my Mormon hat and hit the road, is having a community of people I care about and who are concerned about my well-being too. In the United States, we live in an individualistic society. North American mainstream culture values the pursuit of power and wealth by individuals (who supposedly work hard enough) over a belief system that encourages empathy, interrelatedness, and caring—competition against each other drives us and drives the free market. And maybe a society that rewards the continuous pursuit of what we call the American Dream isn’t so bad. The idea of being an individual who could follow my dreams certainly attracted me from Mormon subculture to mainstream North American culture.
And Mormons aren’t immune to this individualistic society or the American Dream—most journey into that world every day to go to work or school. But what I found missing in this rather individualistic society was the lack of an ethic of care. As defined by feminist and scholar Carol Gilligan, an “ethic of care” is feminine. A woman, she argues, makes decisions according to her relationships and what is best for the people she loves, whereas a man is less concerned with nurturing people and more apt to make decisions based on rules (including the laws that uphold society); it thus seems that North American culture is masculine as we often discount the feminine ethic of care while promoting the fine print of the law. Gilligan argues that both views are equally good though different, but in the current state of the country, it seems an ethic of care is sorely needed as families fight for jobs and healthcare and compassion in general.
If, in fact, an ethic of care is necessary to right the country, a presidential candidate who can provide that ethic is needed. Yet it seems most of the politicians we encounter today rely on a constant competition for dominance, more concerned with themselves and their party prospering from conflict than with the good of the American people—this includes male and female politicians. And this is where my understanding, as an ex-Mormon, deviates from Gilligan’s perspective of the dichotomous ethical approaches of men and women. When I was a Mormon, my experience with Mormon men was that each had a high regard for the rules, but each was also as nurturing as any woman I ever met.
Caring for people comes first and foremost in Mormon culture, and it is this principle in the Mormon curriculum that instructs the values of Mormon men. One Church authority, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, said “We all need each other, for it is in sacrificing our time, talents, and resources that our spirits mature and become refined.” In other words, Mormons are encouraged to care no matter what gender a member of the Church is; both genders are responsible for empathy and compassion.
And I’ve personally been subject to the caring hands of Mormon men. When I was 12 and just out of grade school, I became sick with a mysterious illness. It didn’t seem that way at first—perhaps it was the flu, the type that pulls your insides out. But days went by and I didn’t leave the couch. In the moments I didn’t sleep I called out in pain for my parents, either of whom would come running, beleaguered from work and taking care of all six of their children, and especially me, their eyes full of worry for their oldest daughter. And then it was clear that it was not an ordinary illness. I was not going to heal by the mere passage of time.
That’s when the men came: father, Frank; our bishop, Bishop Brady; our home teacher, Brother Potter; and our neighbor, Brother Neiman. My blurry eyes strained to see each of the faces of these men who I knew cared about me. My father with his soft spoken compliments, my bishop who greeted me each week when I handed him my tithing money, my home teacher who checked in on my family monthly to make sure we were provided with all we needed, and my neighbor who trusted me to babysit his two girls. Each man had been called away from something—his work, a family dinner, a camping trip he was packing for—and each came without hesitation in a matter of minutes.
The men gathered in a circle around me. They placed their hands on my head, and they prayed. My father called out to god to bless me, to make me well. I remember their hands as warm and firm and heavy and comforting. I trusted them and their intent to heal me. With the closure of the prayer, the men picked me up, my father and Brother Potter together carrying me, wrapped in a quilt, to the family station wagon. They laid me across the backseat. I imagine the men stood in the driveway, as my father backed the car out, in order to make sure my father and mother didn’t require more help, and then Brother Neiman shuffled my brothers and sisters across the lawn to his house next door to stay with his family as my parents rushed me to the emergency room.
Whether or not one believes in a god, in Mormonism, or in prayer, what is undeniable about the men who came to my sickbed is that they cared about me, one young girl in a world of billions. Perhaps this ethic of care that I know to be fundamental to Mormon men is why I, a liberal ex-Mormon democrat, felt hope for the future of the United States due to a rather conservative Mormon republican.
I’m not endorsing Romney or pretending to know what’s in his heart. As a liberal my concerns with him are plenty. But I know the compassionate ethos of the Mormon men who took part in raising me. Those Mormon men were, after all, the men who I knew I could trust to take care of me when I was in need because they knew themselves as individuals but understood their identities as men responsible for their shared community. We need a president who is more concerned with nurturing a sick country than a politician who is only concerned with using legislation to create political leverage. Though I am no longer Mormon, I know that Mormon “ethic of care” belongs in the White House.
Jannifer Heiner was raised a Mormon in Salt Lake City, Utah and married in the Mormon Church at 19. She left the Mormon Church at 27 and now analyzes and writes about her life inside and outside of Mormonism. She holds degrees from UCLA in both English Literature and Women’s Studies and from Loyola Marymount University in Urban Education.
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