I recently read a couple of books that had nothing to do with Mormonism, but which brought up ideas that I thought had interesting connections to Mormon ideas. The first book was Max Weber’s sociology classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. As the title suggests, Weber connects the rise of capitalism to the earlier rise of Protestantism (particular Calvinism) and its ideas around diligently working in the world as one of the evidences to show yourself as one of those God had predestined to be saved. I found it fascinating, particularly for Weber’s discussion of what capitalism is, and the traditional economies that it replaced, and how not inevitable the replacement feels in retrospect.
For this post, though, what’s interesting is that I found a few tidbits that seemed like precursors of Mormon ideas. Weber’s book was first published around the turn of the twentieth century, so it doesn’t predate the Church, but Weber quotes from some of early Protestant religious thinkers who do. For example, here’s a description of what I would think of as the pride cycle of the Book of Mormon:
I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and the love of the world in all its branches. How then is it possible that . . . a religion of the heart, though it flourishes now as a green bay tree, should continue in this state? For the [people] in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently they increase in goods. Hence they proportionately increase in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away.
Can you guess who Weber is quoting here?
It’s John Wesley, the found of Methodism! (Note that I edited the quote a little to obscure this: my ellipses leave out the words “Methodism, that is,” and where I substituted “people” in brackets, the original has “Methodists.”) Of course I have no idea where exactly lines of connection could be drawn between Wesley and Joseph Smith founding the Church, but they’re at least very close in time (Wesley died in 1791) and at a time when a lot of people were migrating from England to the United States. It’s interesting to me to see that this idea of religious devotion leading to wealth and pride leading to loss of religious devotion was out there in the world that Joseph Smith was living in.
The other Mormon-related bits that struck me in Weber’s book were about Protestant asceticism, especially the exhortation to work diligently but not consume or enjoy the fruits of your labors too ostentatiously. This next quote isn’t from an earlier thinker, but rather is Weber himself summarizing some of their thoughts:
[A]sceticism looked upon the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself as highly reprehensible; but the attainment of it as a fruit of labour in a calling was a sign of God’s blessing.
This reminded me of Jacob’s admonition in Jacob 2:18-19:
But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.
And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them;
One more time, here’s Weber summarizing older thinkers:
[T]he whole ascetic literature of almost all denominations is saturated with the idea that faithful labour, even at low wages, on the part of those whom life offers no other opportunities, is highly pleasing to God.
This feels to me like it connects with Mormon ideas about working hard, doing your duty, and not raising a ruckus about trying to improve your position if it seemed like life was stacked against you. I’m thinking of Thomas S. Monson titling a talk “Do Your Duty–That Is Best,” for example, or the oft-repeated quote from multiple Church leaders, “Whate’er thou art, act well thy part.” I’m not saying there aren’t also countervailing strains of thought that encourage self-improvement. But it seems to me that there’s a message of submitting to the authority of your betters and not complaining when your life is hard that runs through some Mormon messaging that reminds me a lot of Weber’s summary line.
The second book I read recently that had some bits that reminded me of Mormon ideas is Ruth Goodman’s How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves, and Braggarts. The title pretty much says it. It’s a history book about social norms that focuses especially on how norms were revealed when people broke them. It’s delightfully funny in places, especially in the first chapter, where Goodman discusses language in general, and insults in particular. For example, isn’t it helpful to know that “knave” was an insult more often said to someone’s face, while “ninny-hammer” was more often used to describe a third person? Anyway, like Weber’s book it refers to a time and place (England roughly 1550-1660) that’s before and geographically adjacent to Joseph Smith’s world.
In a discussion of the gendered nature of insults (e.g., men were knaves and cuckolds, women were filthy whores and slutty sluts), Goodman quotes a 1619 book that sounds just like Mormon gender role ideas right up to the present, although now typically cloaked in the language of chicken patriarchy to obscure the fact:
The man must be taken for God’s immediate officer in the house, and as it were the king in the family; the woman must account herself his deputy, and officer substituted to him, not as an equal, but as subordinate.
On another topic, here’s Goodman herself:
Promiscuity was also seen as a gateway activity. When women sinned in other ways it was generally assumed that illicit sex was at the bottom of it all.
This makes me think of how Church leaders sometimes say the reason people leave is that they want to sin. And sexual sin in particular seems like a favorite. It’s kind of a trope, but I think obviously based on some people’s actual experiences, that if you go to your bishop with concerns about the Church, he’ll ask how much porn you’ve been watching. (I sometimes read the Mormon Reddit, and when memes are shared with the American Chopper photos, where two men argue and one ends up throwing a chair, they typically end with one saying to the other “You need to stop looking at porn!”)
Here’s Goodman, again, on the silence of texts of the time on menstruation:
While popular ballads abound in references to people pissing, farting, vomiting, shitting, spitting, belching and even ejaculating, I have yet to find one single mention of, or even a vague allusion to, monthly flows in this format. . . . Only in a small number of medical texts can the menses be regularly found. Even here many try to skip over the subject of female bodies, presenting the male form as the pattern for mankind and shying away from discussing the female form in fear of “lewdness,” as if sex was located purely in the feminine.
Of course this ignoring of women’s experiences and bodies is far from unique to the place and time. I just particularly appreciate how she articulates this, especially her closing line, which is clearly exactly the line of thinking that leads to ideas like Dallin H. Oaks reminding young women that they need to avoid “becoming pornography.” Because it’s women’s bodies where sex and all the associated trouble is located. Men are just the default and normal, and if women didn’t tempt them with their alluring curves, men would be single-minded and holy.
I’m picking and choosing, obviously. Goodman also describes a lot of social norms that have no echo in Mormonism today, or sometimes that run entirely counter to it. For instance, she explains that there was a prevailing belief in Elizabethan England that women were insatiably sex-crazed, and it was the sane, rational men who were less interested in sex and therefore needed to keep the women under control. In Mormonism, of course, there’s kind of an opposite view, where women aren’t even sexual agents at all, and men are the ones who need to be kept under control. Another example is that, as has been frequently observed on the bloggernacle over the years, Dallin H. Oaks’s beloved proper prayer pronouns were actually the more familiar forms of address at the time. In fact, Goodman points out that Quakers caused quite a ruckus when they decided that because everyone should be equal before God, they were going to call everyone “thee/thou.”
I’m not a historian, looking systematically at texts to find likely transmission routes of ideas across time. But even as just a lay reader, I find it fun when I stumble on ideas out in the cultural milieu that Joseph Smith was born into, and that might have made it from there into his newly-forming church.
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If you’re interested in looking up any of the quotes from the books, all three Weber quotes are from Chapter V, the first two Goodman quotes are from Chapter 1, and the third is from Chapter 6.