So I was real amazed the other day in my Sociology class... It made me laugh cause she was talking about ethnicity and she listed things that a group must be to be it's own ethnicity (ethnicity if different than race it's more about culture) as I am ready this check list it occurs to me that Mormons are an ethnicity! lol... Here's what it said:
Ethnicity: A collection of people distinguished primarily on the basis of a culture or nationally characteristics.
- An Ethnicity has 5 main characteristics
-Unique Cultural traits
-a sense of community
-Feeling of Ethnocentrism
-Ascribed membership
-Territory
So she went into depth on each of these characteristics. (this is the funny part)
-Unique Cultural traits: she defines this as Language, customs or holidays that they share different from others. I first thought wow we have Pioneer day, We have Church History day April 6, the anniversary of the founding of the LDS church and some of us even celebrate May 15, which was when John the Baptist's visited Joseph Smith. Do we also have our own language that we use? Things that come to mind would be; born under the covenant, Book of Mormon, branch, Celestial, Terrestrial, Telestrial kingdoms, Callings, First Vision, Gold plates... etc... There are hundreds and thousands of words we use that other people have either never heard or are also used in a different context then what the world knows it as. I think to some to hear "born under the covenant" would make people think were practicing some type of witch craft that allows people to be born into our clan or born a witch... lol... This also can apply to customs we have. We have customs coming out our ying-yangs! We have things like just the 3 hr. long church or the customs for a teacher to ask if someone has questions throughout our lessons and for us to all be so interactive. We have a custom that on the first Sunday of the month we fast and donate a fast offering. We also have two general conferences and two stake conferences and two ward conferences a year. We also have young woman's camp and scout camps etc... I think if nothing else we have unique customs.
I think this next one goes with out too much explaining a sense of community is what the people that just come to church with you for a day or a neighbor that knows you well but isn't a member will notice right off the bat.She defines the sense of community as the bond with others. Whether your Relief Society President comes over with food when your sick or you find a network of friends that you hang out with our sense of community is one of the strongest part of our ethnicity as Mormons!
Feeling of Ethnocentrism is defined as your pride for your heritage. As Mormons are we proud of our heritage? I would say we are. We even have a holidays to celebrate our heritage. Then you have those people who's family line dates back to Joseph Smith and I can attest they are VERY PROUD of their heritage as well. But, overall as a people we are proud of our religion. We are proud also of our culture.We even have funny songs that make it clear how proud we are of our religion (here song here) I would say as a whole we are very Ethnocentric.
Ascribed Membership by my teachers definition is that it is when you can be born into a group basically but you come to a point when you have to actually ascribe to it. You have to choose to belong to that group but rarely do those who were born into that group choose to leave. Now I realize that we all know people who were born Mormon but are now no longer practicing or have fallen away but of those many still consider themselves "Mormon" they still ascribe to the upbringing they had. There is However many that don't feel they are Mormon at all, they have left the religion and they are living a life completely separate from the church. This can happen in any Ethnicity. Consider those who are born Hispanic and move to another country and completely adapt their culture. It probably happens more to LDS members but it, I would say, is still an ascribed membership.
Territoriality isn't just where we put up churches but it's where a large population of the Ethnicity come together. We come together in may places but the most saturated number of members are usually found around where we have temples built. Then the mother ship would have to be Salt Lake City of course.
With all this being said, I think that we should have a little box on forms when asked Ethnicity where we could select LDS!!!
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