Thankfully, it’s been a long time since I’ve been single. But I hear things about what it’s like being a single twentysomething in a religious community within a big city. In Los Angeles, Christians don’t feel pressure to marry — at least not from the church.
That definitely is not the case within the Mormon community living just outside our nation’s capital.
Michelle Boorstein has a fascinating story about this in The Washington Post. There were a lot of things I liked about this story.
To start, the story is about something novel: A church in Crystal City, which the reader learns has so many Mormons it’s known as “Little Provo,” that is exclusively for single Mormons in their 20s, 30s and 40s — i.e. those looking to hit the meat market.
Next, Boorstein does a great job of explaining why finding a spouse is so important for members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints. Why it is a religious imperative, in fact.
In a faith that calls getting married “graduating with honors” and believes that after death you live with your family forever, finding a spouse is central to being a Mormon… .
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as Mormons are formally known, teaches that all people have an afterlife, but one must be married, or “sealed,” to reach its highest parts. While Mormons believe it’s possible to be sealed in one’s afterlife, unmarried people are barred from key leadership positions in the church and often worship in separate singles congregations.
Just last month, a top Mormon official urged young people not to delay marriage or “waste time in idle pursuits” at a biannual churchwide meeting.
Then Boorstein discusses why Crystal City has such a high Mormon population — deep dating pool or proximity to nation’s capital and public service? — and some inter-communal criticisms of the pressure for Mormons to marry. And of course, she quotes a few single Mormons along the way.
While reading, I didn’t find myself wondering what was missing while reading this story. Instead, I felt like something had been revealed to me. I imagine this story was not so enlightening to someone within the Mormon community; maybe they would even notice some details that weren’t exactly right. But in general this story did what all good newspaper stories should do: It informed.
There was, however, one line that could be developed into its own story:
The chapel’s young professionals brag about marrying later than their Utah cohorts and being more independent, but also worry about being co-opted by Washington’s ambitious, individualistic culture.
That is an interesting potential phenomenon. It reminds me of incidence of infertility in the Jewish community that are tied to Jews staying in school longer and starting families later. (Here’s one source on that.) Bearing children, like marriage for Mormons, is a religious must. So how does one balance ambition and religious obligation? And how much more difficult is it for more career-focused Mormons?
Overall, though, this is a great story and one that doesn’t scrimp on newshole. It’s worth reading the whole thing.
IMAGE: Via Weddings-Paradise.com
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Comments (6) |
June 1, 2011, at 12:27 pm
Sorry but the phrase “meat market” is as appealing as having a toothpick shoved under a fingernail.
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June 1, 2011, at 12:36 pm
Exactly.
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June 1, 2011, at 2:15 pm
I thought a few quotes from David Neeleman (founder of JetBlue) might add to this post. In “The Mormon Way of Doing Business” Jeff Benedict writes about Neeleman talking about some members of the Church being scared to leave the sameness of Utah.
“I think there are a lot of things about the Church that hold people back from becoming a CEO” “There is a real focus on the family and a real focus on a certain kind of living in Utah. A lot of people who could have done great things or better things didn’t do it because they just didn’t fell like they wanted to leave the sameness of Utah” page 26.
I think there is room in the Church for members to pursue amazing careers in Washington or New York while still maintaining their faith and good standing as members of the Church.
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June 1, 2011, at 6:27 pm
The story reminds me of the New York Times earlier piece (did GR cover it?) about the Mormon virgin in Manhattan, “Single, Female, Mormon, Alone.” The title covers a lot of it. At the time I thought it very useful for conveying the wrestling of living faithfully in such an urban setting.
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June 2, 2011, at 10:57 am
Yes, Harris, like the “Mormon virgin” article, the WP article kinda’ seeks out people who are slightly outside the mainstream, which, while it makes good news, ends up giving a distorted view of Mormon culture. Break out all the stereotypes in your bag, but if they wear skimpy swimsuits, frown on marriage, or make sarcastic comments about marriage being “graduating with honors,” you’re probably outside the mainstream of the church. I was raised Mormon, graduated BYU, lived in Provo after that before moving to San Francisco, am still an active Mormon, and have heard very few “marriage lectures” in my life. I’ve never heard of “Crystal City” or “Duck Beach.” But I know it is a natural part of life that people want to either have a live-in boyfriend or a husband by a certain age, and that has nothing to do with religion. The article portrays “singles wards” as something pushed by the church, and they aren’t. They’re congregations for singles, and there’s no pressure to attend one versus a normal congregation—in fact the church has tried to limit specialty wards on many occasions. The church seems to only allow single’s wards most of the time, and foreign language wards, but 30+ year old singles’ wards barely exist. Today’s society says that you’re cool if you wait as long as possible before getting married, that motherhood is a “wasted life,” and some of these ideas creep into religious culture too. I mean, I’m sure your average single-but-devout catholic has probably been invited to Catholic singles’ events, and the watercooler talk at those events is probably all about how “I’m single on purpose, because I have this great career and I’m not just going to throw it all away to be a cookie-cutter Catholic.” That shouldn’t be a reflection on the religion, just self-conscious kids. I mean, to me it’s just a basic Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs discussion. Okay, talk amongst yourselves…
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June 2, 2011, at 9:18 pm
Not to take away any credit from Michelle, but others of us have written about this before: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/14/marriage-as-a-mormon-value/?page=1. Considering how hard it is to meet *any* single men in church, I thought the singles stakes sounded like a cool idea.
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