A postcard from Utah

By Michael Paulson  |  April 5, 2009

SALT LAKE CITY - The semiannual Mormon General Conference, which began here yesterday and runs through today, is like nothing I've ever seen - about 20,000 people at each of five two-hour sessions, sitting quietly in their Sunday best listening to a string of earnest motivational talks from church leaders interspersed with hymns from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

I've been in Utah since Tuesday, primarily to give a speech at Utah Valley University, but also reporting a few stories that will appear in the paper in the coming weeks. But on the way, I've had a chance to do some journalistic tourism of Mormondom, and it's been an eye-opener - I visited Welfare Square and Temple Square, spent time with the choir, and got a chance to talk with a lot of Mormons inside and outside the church administration.

In Orem, where I spent two days at the university's ninth annual Mormon Studies conference, I was struck by the ideological diversity within a faith that often seems to lack much, despite its growth around the world. There was almost no ethnic diversity, but the crowd of students, faculty, and area residents who came to the conference included the publisher of a Mormon anarchist journal (who knew?) as well as a polygamy advocate (polygamy is grounds for automatic excommunication in Mormonism), and a variety of bloggers and opinion makers who span the political spectrum.

Friday morning, two Mormons on the margins spoke, including a legal scholar from Southern California who had opposed Proposition 8, the church-backed measure to ban same-sex marriage in that state, and a Utah Valley University Mormon studies professor who ran a quixotic, and unsuccessful, campaign for the Utah state Legislature as a Democrat in a solidly Republican area.

Both spoke about the consequences for lack of conformity. The professor, Boyd Petersen, said, "Many Mormon Democrats, such as me, experience frustration that we're not fully accepted into the Mormon Church tribe . . . Many of our fellow church members see us as apostates."

And the legal scholar, Morris Thurston, said that although some Mormons praised him, others "condemned me to hell for defying the prophet." The campaign "was very stressful for me, and the negativity took its emotional toll," he said, adding, "it's difficult to be seen as a heretic."

Salt Lake City was buzzing with the anticipation of the weekend's general conference, which Mormons around the world watch on TV or the Internet. I spent some time with the dozens of volunteer translators, who simultaneously interpret the conference into 79 languages for broadcast around the world. I also met a pair of sisters from San Diego who travel to Salt Lake City twice a year, sometimes without tickets, just hoping they'll find a way to get a seat in the gigantic conference center to hear their leaders speak. The conference highlight, for Mormons, was the announcement yesterday morning of a new apostle, Neil L. Andersen, who was "sustained" by the assembly without a single no vote visible among the 17,000 people in the room.

Andersen later choked up several times when talking to the press saying, "I pray that I can become what I must become."

Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge on Monday announced that the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale will be its new president, succeeding Bishop Steven Charleston, who resigned last year. Ragsdale is the vicar of St. David's Church in Pepperell, but is best known as an abortion rights activist who has sat on the boards of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. She is the president of Political Research Associates, a liberal think tank.

She is also openly gay in a denomination that is facing schism over its approval of an openly gay priest, V. Gene Robinson, as the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire.

Globe correspondent Rich Barlow profiled Ragsdale last month. She recalled that three women, spying her collar, once tried to keep her out of a meeting room for the National Abortion Rights Action League - even though she was a member of the league's board.

"I've experienced far more resistance and discrimination in the progressive community for being a Christian than I do in the Christian community for being a lesbian," she said.

Ragsdale, a 1997 graduate of Episcopal Divinity School, said of her appointment, "EDS's commitment to the full range of diversity and not merely to inclusion but to transformation is at the heart of my own values and commitments. I believe that EDS grounds that work in the context of deep, thorough, nuanced theological education. The thought of leading and supporting an organization doing cutting-edge theology and preparing lay and ordained leadership to serve God in the church and the world is very exciting."

But conservative bloggers are furiously criticizing the appointment, citing some of Ragsdale's remarks about abortion rights.