Salt City Sinner

In the United States, it’s no picnic being a member of a minority religious community. The US extends an enormous amount of privilege to Christians (especially White Evangelical ones). On the best of days, this ensures a level of political and legal insulation for Christians that is perpetually denied to Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and members of the eclectic and scattered communities of witches, pagans, heathens, and other freethinkers. This, despite repeated malfeasance on the part of majority faiths and structures of hierarchy ; this, despite the fact that fear of “the other” in America so often blinds communities to the wolves in their midst .

Posted on 5/2/2020 by Charles R. Bernard I spent my childhood in Bountiful, Utah, a small suburb of Salt Lake City. Nestled in the craggy bosom of the Wasatch Mountains, Bountiful (during the years when I lived there) was an intensely and devoutly Mormon place. My family isn’t Mormon, but as I grew up it was impossible not to absorb a great deal of the ambient culture of the place – including the peculiarly fastidious and fussy attitude the Mormon Church cultivates regarding words. Now, we’re not talking “expand your vocabulary” words here, although there is evidence that Mormons as a population are better-educated (and, I suppose, one would assume better-spoken) than average Americans, and that tracks with my own anecdotal experience. Vocabulary aside, however, I’m referring here to their attitude regarding swearing, obscenity, indeed, even words that a devout Evangelical or Catholic might be able to say without blushing. Mormons hate swearing.