Pew's studies add to understanding of Latter-day Saints in America

Stop for a minute and ask what it is that the news media teaches about what we Latter-day Saints believe.

Chances are each article is a little different. Chances are some elements of our faith are highlighted over others because of the needs of an article. Often, chances are the reporting seems mostly accurate, but something, especially in the aggregate, seems missing. It's like looking at yourself in an old fun-house mirror — you can recognize yourself, but the view is distorted.

I thought of the funhouse mirror — an analogy I borrow from the great LDS scholar Richard Bushman, who used it in another context — as I read in detail Pew's new, much-reported study on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — of how we Latter-day Saints view ourselves.

Now, I didn't think Pew distorted our beliefs. The contrary. It is a groundbreaking and fascinating study in most respects. This excellence isn't surprising from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a group which routinely does some of the best scholarly work about religion. (I read this interesting musing on this study that is worth thinking about in making sense of the study's meaning, by the way.)

I thought of how the results of this study compare with the results of a second recent Pew study done on the national perception of Mormons — one that studied how Latter-day Saints are viewed by those not sharing the faith across the nation in contrast to how they were viewed four years ago.

In one of its questions, Pew uses a specific survey technique. It asks respondents to give the first word or two that comes to mind in association the word Mormon.

To my knowledge, Pew has asked this question three times in its research on Mormonism — once in 2007 to the a random sample of Americans, a second time in 2011 to a random sample of Americans and a third time to Latter-day Saints, as part of this newest survey. The question was: "Please tell me what one word best describes Mormons. Tell me just the one best word that comes to mind."

For Latter-day Saints, the most frequent mention they used in response to this question was something about Jesus Christ, with faith and family second.

When Pew asked the same question of America at large, the number one answer, by far, was "cult." Though cult was the second-most popular answer in 2007, the frequency with which people are saying cult in 2011 year grew by roughly 20 percent. Indeed, just under 5 percent used the word "cult" in referencing Mormons with this survey question.