Mormonkyrkan i amerikansk demokrati

Few religious denominations in the US enjoy the degree of central governance that Mormonism does. The biggest church within the religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, traces its roots back to the founding of the movement and the subsequent migrations across the contiguous United States. At the same time, the organization currently exists within a secular democratic system that does not bind itself to legislating according to the church’s will. This paper seeks to understand the church’s position within this democratic system. To this end, official communications from the church are analyzed using qualitative content analysis to place them within an ideal type of view of democracy, Habermas deliberative and Mouffe’s agonistic theory of democracy. This paper found that the church has undergone a shift from an agonistic to a deliberative rhetoric when speaking of itself in a democratic context. However, the data pool used for this could be expanded to produce a higher quality result.