How Much Influence Does the LDS Church Have on the Legislature? Depends on Who You Ask

Perhaps you will find no issue reflecting a greater divide among Utahns that whether LDS Church leaders have too much influence in the Utah Legislature.

A new UtahPolicy poll by Dan Jones & Associates finds that three-fourths of the faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say their church has “about the right amount of influence” on state lawmakers’ political decisions.

But when you ask the same influence question of non-Mormons, you find super-majorities – 79 percent of Catholics, 84 percent of Protestants – say the Mormon Church has too much influence on Capitol Hill.

Now, the question of LDS Church influence on the Utah Legislature is always present.

But it was at the forefront in the 2015 Legislature as members of the Quorum of the Twelve – the leading body of the 15 million-member church – first endorsed a gay rights/religious freedom bill and then attended the bill’s unveiling and gubernatorial signing after passage.

It was an unprecedented, clear involvement of LDS Church leaders in the legislative process.

Those events were highly publicized in Utah. And was followed up by a news analysis story in The Salt Lake Tribune by reporters Lee Davidson and Matt Canham after session’s end on the church’s lobbying of lawmakers over the years.

UtahPolicy and Jones decided to measure the public’s opinion on the church’s influence in the 104-member, part-time Legislature, whose members are around 80 percent faithful members of the Mormon Church – with a number of legislators having served in the church’s lay leadership positions, like bishops and women’s auxiliaries.

Asked if LDS Church leaders have too much, about the right amount or too little influence in the Utah Legislature, Jones found the following:

The gay rights/religious freedom issue was the main topic LDS Church leaders were involved with in the just-completed 2015 Legislature.

But in the past Mormon leaders have taken stands on liquor law, same-sex marriage, abortion and other issues church leaders say are “moral” in nature – and thus appropriate for their public expressions.

Mormon leaders steadfastly decline to endorse political candidates, and they encourage their church members to be good citizens, get involved in their communities, politically and otherwise, and vote.

Utah is overwhelmingly Republican. And polls by Jones and others continually show that most Republicans are Mormons, and many Mormons are Republicans.

It is well known that any major – and sometimes, even minor – changes in Utah state liquor laws don’t happen unless Mormon leaders stay neutral on the change or endorse it.

For example, it took a lot of work with LDS Church leaders for the Legislature several years ago to do away with private liquor clubs and allow liquor-by-the-drink in properly-licensed bars.

Part of that deal was the installation in new bars and restaurants of the so-called “Zion Curtain,” a 7-foot barrier that keeps patrons from seeing liquor bottles and alcoholic drinks being mixed.

Several legislators – both Mormon and non-Mormon – have since tried to repeal the Zion Curtain (Jones’ polling has consistently showed most citizens want the curtain law repealed), but LDS Church officials have not agreed to such a change and the bills have always failed – as one did in the 2015 general session.

Elsie mentions it's fifty seven percent Lds.

The article says:

...the 104-member, part-time Legislature, whose members are around 80 percent faithful members of the Mormon Church...

So the legislature is roughly 23 percent more Mormon than Utah is.

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You misunderstand a lot about state and local politics.

First, Salt Lake City is only about 40% LDS while the County is about 50% LDS. All the other counties in UTAH are about 75% LDS, some more and some less. When you have elections the majority of voters get to decide who represents them. In the vast majority of the state there is a majority of Mormons and they typically vote for people like themselves who happen to be Mormons. In the City of Salt Lake that is also the case but the majority is not Mormon in the city and the city makes up a large part of the state population. If not for the City and their below 50% Mormon population the state legislator would be 100% Mormon.

Like I said, in Rome, Italy the city council is 100% Roman Catholic, in Italy the Parliament is nearly always 100% Roman Catholic. While some of the Communists in Italy are really Atheist they call themselves Catholic so they can get elected.

I don't see the problem with Utah and their Mormon majority. I don't see a problem with the State Legislator of Georgia not having any Mormons on it or Kentucky, New York or many other states. People like to be represented by people like themselves. It sounds like someone doesn't like Mormons and wants to take away their opportunity to represent themselves in their own state.

People like to be represented by people like themselves. It sounds like someone doesn't like Mormons and wants to take away their opportunity to represent themselves in their own state.

Well...

Back in the Good Old Days...

OFFICIAL DECLARATION—1

To Whom It May Concern:

Press dispatches having been sent for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that the Utah Commission, in their recent report to the Secretary of the Interior, allege that plural marriages are still being solemnized and that forty or more such marriages have been contracted in Utah since last June or during the past year, also that in public discourses the leaders of the Church have taught, encouraged and urged the continuance of the practice of polygamy—

I, therefore, as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby, in the most solemn manner, declare that these charges are false. We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice, and I deny that either forty or any other number of plural marriages have during that period been solemnized in our Temples or in any other place in the Territory.

One case has been reported, in which the parties allege that the marriage was performed in the Endowment House, in Salt Lake City, in the Spring of 1889, but I have not been able to learn who performed the ceremony; whatever was done in this matter was without my knowledge. In consequence of this alleged occurrence the Endowment House was, by my instructions, taken down without delay.

Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.

There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably construed to inculcate or encourage polygamy; and when any Elder of the Church has used language which appeared to convey any such teaching, he has been promptly reproved. And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.

WILFORD WOODRUFF
President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

President Lorenzo Snow offered the following:

“I move that, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully authorized by virtue of his position to issue the Manifesto which has been read in our hearing, and which is dated September 24th, 1890, and that as a Church in General Conference assembled, we accept his declaration concerning plural marriages as authoritative and binding.”

The vote to sustain the foregoing motion was unanimous.

Salt Lake City, Utah, October 6, 1890.

EXCERPTS FROM THREE ADDRESSES BY
PRESIDENT WILFORD WOODRUFF
REGARDING THE MANIFESTO

The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty. (Sixty-first Semiannual General Conference of the Church, Monday, October 6, 1890, Salt Lake City, Utah. Reported in Deseret Evening News, October 11, 1890, p. 2.)

It matters not who lives or who dies, or who is called to lead this Church, they have got to lead it by the inspiration of Almighty God. If they do not do it that way, they cannot do it at all. . . .

I have had some revelations of late, and very important ones to me, and I will tell you what the Lord has said to me. Let me bring your minds to what is termed the manifesto. . . .

The Lord has told me to ask the Latter-day Saints a question, and He also told me that if they would listen to what I said to them and answer the question put to them, by the Spirit and power of God, they would all answer alike, and they would all believe alike with regard to this matter.

The question is this: Which is the wisest course for the Latter-day Saints to pursue—to continue to attempt to practice plural marriage, with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of sixty millions of people, and at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the Temples, and the stopping of all the ordinances therein, both for the living and the dead, and the imprisonment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the heads of families in the Church, and the confiscation of personal property of the people (all of which of themselves would stop the practice); or, after doing and suffering what we have through our adherence to this principle to cease the practice and submit to the law, and through doing so leave the Prophets, Apostles and fathers at home, so that they can instruct the people and attend to the duties of the Church, and also leave the Temples in the hands of the Saints, so that they can attend to the ordinances of the Gospel, both for the living and the dead?

The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice. If we had not stopped it, you would have had no use for . . . any of the men in this temple at Logan; for all ordinances would be stopped throughout the land of Zion. Confusion would reign throughout Israel, and many men would be made prisoners. This trouble would have come upon the whole Church, and we should have been compelled to stop the practice. Now, the question is, whether it should be stopped in this manner, or in the way the Lord has manifested to us, and leave our Prophets and Apostles and fathers free men, and the temples in the hands of the people, so that the dead may be redeemed. A large number has already been delivered from the prison house in the spirit world by this people, and shall the work go on or stop? This is the question I lay before the Latter-day Saints. You have to judge for yourselves. I want you to answer it for yourselves. I shall not answer it; but I say to you that that is exactly the condition we as a people would have been in had we not taken the course we have.

. . . I saw exactly what would come to pass if there was not something done. I have had this spirit upon me for a long time. But I want to say this: I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do; and when the hour came that I was commanded to do that, it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write. . . .

I leave this with you, for you to contemplate and consider. The Lord is at work with us.

(Cache Stake Conference, Logan, Utah, Sunday, November 1, 1891. Reported in Deseret Weekly, November 14, 1891.)

Now I will tell you what was manifested to me and what the Son of God performed in this thing. . . . All these things would have come to pass, as God Almighty lives, had not that Manifesto been given. Therefore, the Son of God felt disposed to have that thing presented to the Church and to the world for purposes in his own mind. The Lord had decreed the establishment of Zion. He had decreed the finishing of this temple. He had decreed that the salvation of the living and the dead should be given in these valleys of the mountains. And Almighty God decreed that the Devil should not thwart it. If you can understand that, that is a key to it.

(From a discourse at the sixth session of the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, April 1893. Typescript of Dedicatory Services, Archives, Church Historical Department, Salt Lake City, Utah.)

What kind of 'Leadership' is THIS???

compared to...

Hebrews 11:35-40
35. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection.
36. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison.
37. They were stoned ; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated--
38. the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

or compared to...

Acts 4:19. But Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God.

So much for an 'Everlasting Covenant' that thundered out of Heaven!!!

Well; it DID last about 47 years!

Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriage...

I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws..."

~ Wilford Woodruff, 4th LDS President

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Tell us, Mormons: What's a heaven minus Heavenly Father?