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Peculiar Portrayals: Mormons on the Page, stage, and Screen
Abstract
In a time when Mormons appear to have larger roles in everything from political conflict to television shows and when Mormon-related topics seem to show up more frequently in the news, eight scholars take a close look at Mormonism in popular media: film, television, theater, and books. Some contributors examine specific works, including the Tony-winning play Angels in America, the hit TV series Big Love, and the bestselling books Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith and The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint. Others consider the phenomena of Mormon cinema and Mormon fiction; the use of the Mormon missionary as a stock character in films; and the noticeably prominent presence of Mormons in reality television shows.
... If U.S. news can be said to be operating from within a largely Protestant religious paradigm on moral issues, then it would be natural for the news to make normative judgments on "good" religion and "bad" religion, albeit with caution. These normative judgments do occur and have been well documented in research on the coverage of Muslims (Farouqui, 2011;Poole, 2002Poole, , 2006Said, 1981), Mormons (Decker & Austin, 2010;Scott, 2005;Williams, 2011) and evangelical Christians (Haskell, 2007;Hardy, 2007;Kerr & Moy, 2002) in particular. It is fair to say that the role of religion and the role of journalism have been major subjects of discourse since America's founding. ...
... This example of the press attempting to mend religious conflict calls into question the notion that the press emphasizes negative narratives on religion (Decker & Austin, 2010;Marshall, Gilbert, & Ahmanson, 2008;Williams, 2011). Furthermore, narrative theory argues that humanity naturally narrates order (Foss, 1996). ...
... Our findings also suggest that the assumption that the news media emphasize conflict related to religion may be inaccurate. (Decker & Austin, 2010;Marshall et al., 2008;Williams, 2011). ...
In the Mormon doctrine of posthumous baptism, people can be invited into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) community through baptism even after their death. When it was reported that the LDS had baptized Jewish Holocaust victims, this caused an uproar in the American Jewish community. The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Victims deemed the Mormon practice disrespectful and inappropriate. This study analyzes the news coverage of the negotiations between the group and the Mormon church. While such negotiations would typically be ripe for conflict-privileging coverage, news coverage of these negotiations actually emphasized peacemaking. Using the lens of narrative theory, this study found that, in reporting on negotiations between American Jews and Mormons, the press attempted to mend relations rather than emphasize conflict.
... If journalism studies scholarship in this area argues one thing uniformly, it's that much religion reporting tends to be quite poor-a result in particular of the lack of religious literacy among U.S. journalists (Hoover, 1998). The misunderstood intentions from the evangelical rally from the introduction represents a not-uncommon situation in reporting on Muslims (Munnick, 2017;Said, 1981), Mormons (Decker & Austin, 2010;Scott, 2005), and evangelical Christianity (Haskell, 2007;Hardy, 2007). The most egregious examples of misunderstood intentions often occur where no religion specialists are involved as has been shown to be the case in sports (Ferrucci & Perreault, 2018) and gaming (Perreault, 2021). ...
The present study analyzes the role of religion reporting with the journalistic field. Personnel cuts within newsrooms and the development of “religion reporters” operating from religious institutions necessitate a re-exploration of the changing field. At stake is the coverage of religion, a topic particularly pertinent to residents in the United States, nearly 77 percent of which identify as religious to some degree. Simultaneously, the majority of the United States tends to think journalists cover religion poorly. Through the lens of field theory, this study analyzes 20 interviews with U.S.-based religion reporters who work for both mainstream and religious publications.
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