The news has been full, this election cycle, of Mitt Romney’s evangelical problem. The conservative evangelical Protestants who form the core of the Republican Party continue to be wary of Romney’s Mormon faith, and that wariness could translate to a lack of enthusiasm that drives down Republican voter turnout on election day—which could sink Romney’s bid for the presidency. This evangelical problem is particularly of note in swing states in the South, a red state region that has long been defined by conservative evangelical Protestantism. But as a Southerner and a scholar of Mormonism, I’ve long been puzzled by many Southerners’ suspicion of or even hostility toward the Latter-day Saints. For one thing, the two groups have been fighting the common stereotypes and biases of their fellow Americans for more than a century.
Most recently, the similarities between popular images of Mormons and Southerners have caught my attention thanks to TLC’s reality television line-up. On the surface Sister Wives, the network’s popular chronicle of of a contemporary polygamous family, and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a new offering that follows a child pageant contestant and her stereotypically country Southern family, seem to have little in common. But having reality TV shows side-by-side that highlight the weirdest and, in many cases, most laughable practices popularly associated with Mormons and Southerners is just the latest example in a long history of American representations that denigrate the two groups with the same stereotypes. Mormons and Southerners have long been reflections of one another in the American imagination.
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