Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Title:
Sloan, Richard P. 2008. Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine. St. Martin’s Griffin.

Rating:
8/10

Review:
Why look at the connection between religion and health care? Let me begin this review the same way the the book begins, by recounting the exploits of a Colorado surgeon:

“On February 22, 2004, the CBS Sunday Morning news program broadcast a segment about a Colorado orthopedic surgeon who prays with his patients. When does he pray with them? Not several weeks prior to surgery, for example, in an office visit when the decision to proceed with surgery is made. Not several days prior to surgery, during routine prehospitalization medical tests. Not even several hours prior to surgery. The surgeon “asks” if it’s “okay” to say a prayer when patients are gowned and on the gurney ready to go into surgery. Put yourself in the patient’s position. Would you feel free to say no to a physician dressed in surgical scrubs who is about to have your medical future in his hands, who is about to take a scalpel to your body?” (p. 3)

What Dr. Sloan didn’t add but I think drives this point home is: And what if the surgeon were a Hindu or Muslim, and not a Christian, which is what most people in the U.S. would automatically assume? Would you feel differently then?

So why did Dr. Sloan write a book about this? Because much of the “research” being done in this area is not scientific and the implications and recommendations are not ethical. Yet, those advocating including religion in health care seem to be winning this argument: the Bush administration just recently made it legal for all health care practitioners (i.e., doctors, nurses, secretaries, etc.) to refuse to perform health care activities they find objectionable on religious grounds and doctors are now being encouraged to evangelize their patients by conservative Christian leaders in the U.S. (p. 6). Richard Sloan’s book is a comprehensive resource for the large portion of the U.S. population that does not want to go to a doctor’s office only to be told that we should be going to church.

The book begins by arguing that the increase in animosity toward science (which actually followed a short-lived love affair with science after Sputnik launched in 1957) resulted from the New Age, self-help, and religious fundamentalist movements in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. What Dr. Sloan doesn’t recognize is that these movements are, like all fundamentalist movements, backlashes against globalization and modernity, but he does recognize why some people oppose modernity: it’s complex and not readily understandable (p. 58). Of course, modernity also means a decline in authority and power for those who have traditionally wielded it: white men. Science doesn’t (any longer) put the opinions of white men above those of anyone else, leveling the playing field. The predominantly white and male leaders of fundamentalist religions feel threatened and attack science and modernity as a result. One of the victims in this battle is science, “Surveys commissioned by the National Science Foundation have asked respondents to explain in their own words how to study something scientifically. The answers suggest that about two-thirds of all Americans do not understand what it means to approach a problem scientifically” (p. 47). Along with the decline in science advocacy is an increase in reverence for subjectivity at the expense of fact: people feel like their opinon, regardless of how ill-founded or illogical it is, should be respected (pp. 47-48). The ethos of “feeling validation” is pervasive enough to serve as the entire shtick of Emmy Award winner Stephen Colbert. Colbert’s reductio ad absurdum portrayal of this ethos via his rants against “facts” and “the truth” has landed him a wide audience (most of whom realize it is an act, like I do). This ethos is, of course, inimical to science, which does not respect feelings.

Another contributing factor to the pervasiveness of religion in health care is the media, which knows that religion sells, “There is little doubt that in the media, stories about religion sell. The Newsweek Education Program Web site reports that in 2001, the magazine’s issue with the cover story on Mormons sold 240,000 newsstand copies, in contrast to the issue with the Sopranos on the cover, which sold 158,000. In 2002, the issue with the cover story on the Bible and the Koran sold 203,000 copies, while the issue with the cover story on Silicon Valley sold only 90,000 copies. The site reports that cover stories about religious matters sell more issues of a magazine on the newsstand – in fact, they’re generally among the top issues for the year” (p. 64). Thus, whenever a study, regardless of how poorly it was conducted, comes out drawing a connection between religion and health, it receives top billing by the media.

In practical terms, what does this mean? Well, let’s ask this question another way: Do you, the reader of this review, think that religion makes you healthier? Dozens of news stories are published every year suggesting as much. But what does the evidence actually show? Well, it depends on the specific claim that is made. But unlike those advocating a close affinity between religion and health care, Dr. Sloan reviews the evidence (mostly) objectively. Dr. Sloan uses a summary of research findings from one of the better studies published on these connections (Powell et al. 2003) as the launching point for his review of the literature (see table below). The second column summarizes the findings of Powell et al. (2003) from page 139 in the book (the article is available online here). The third column summarizes the findings based on more recent research, Dr. Sloan’s review, and my interpretation of his review and the literature I have read.

So, based on the second column in the table, it looks like maybe religion makes you healthier. Again, the details and nuances matter. Dr. Sloan illustrates that even the review by Powell et al. in the American Psychologist (a reputable journal) is misleading. Based on their review, religion and spirituality clearly do not: protect against death, disability, or the progression of cancer and they do not improve recovery from acute illness. There is also no good evidence that religion protects against cancer or helps people cope. But what about the other possible claims?

Let’s begin with religious service attendance. Does religious service attendance protect against death? Indirectly, maybe. Directly, absolutely not. Early studies examining this connection failed to control for one obvious factor: sick people can’t go to religious services regardless of whether or not they want to. So, highly religious sick people were being counted as “not religious” because they didn’t go to services. Anyone else see the flaw? Thus, when comparing benefits of religious service attendance, it appeared as though those who went were healthier and lived longer. But this is an inherently flawed way of measuring the relationship: of course those who attend are healthier and live longer, that’s why they are able to attend. The causal argument was reversed: attendance doesn’t increase health (directly), healthy people are the ones who attend. When you control for whether people would attend, most of the difference disappears (p. 93). There is still a very small health benefit to attending religious services, but it comes from having a strong social network, not from being at church. You can get the same benefit from getting together weekly with friends to play cards.

What about religion protecting against cardiovascular disease? Again, details are important. If you just measure the religious against those who are not religious (depending on how you measure this), you’ll probably find some differences and the religious will seem healthier. But if you control for lifestyle factors like smoking, drinking, promiscuous sex, etc. the difference disappears. In lay terms: If you have two people who do not smoke, drink alcohol, have promiscuous sex, and who regularly exercise, if one is religious and the other is not, there will be, on average, no difference in their health. Religion doesn’t make people healthy, lifestyle choices and behaviors do. So, indirectly, religion may provide cardiovascular benefits if it encourages a healthier lifestyle. But it is not religion that does that, it is the indirect benefit derived from a healthier lifestyle that does it.

What about being prayed for? Turns out a few years after the Powell et al. paper was published an authoritative study on intercessory prayer (that’s what it is called when you pray for someone) was published (Benson et al. 2006). In that definitive study, those who were prayed for didn’t do any better than those who were not. And those who were told they were being prayed for did worse (being told they were being prayed for probably led them to believe they were sicker than they actually were). Ergo, intercessory prayer is completely ineffectual.

In summary, religion has, at best, indirect benefits to health. But this hasn’t prevented advocates from fudging the data to suggest that religion improves health. One well-known study that claimed praying improved AIDS patients’ health (Targ et al. 1998) was so flawed as to almost be humorous:

“When Targ and her colleagues began the study, their aim was to see if the prayer treatment could have an impact on mortality. However, during the course of the study, the researchers were blindsided by the development of the then new antiretroviral therapies that revolutionized the treatment of AIDS. As a result, only one of the forty patients in their trial died, making it impossible to determine whether prayer had an impact on mortality. The researchers then sought to determine if the prayer treatment influenced some of their secondary outcomes such as physical symptoms, quality of life, mood, and counts of immune cells. It did not. Only after they analyzed length of stay in the hospital and physician visits did they find that the treatment and control groups differed in the predicted direction: the prayer group had shorter stays in the hospital and fewer visits to doctors… after the researchers discovered the group differences on length of stay and physician visits, they were informed by another physician that these variables were not very interesting, because whether or not patients had health insurance heavily influenced these outcomes. Not surprisingly, patients with insurance were more likely to stay in the hospital longer and have more doctor visits… Following the recommendation of this physician, Targ and colleagues then sought to determine whether their two groups of patients differed on twenty-three AIDS-related illnesses that had been identified in a very recently published paper. Unfortunately, these illnesses had not been measured in the original study, so the researchers, after already knowing which patients were in the treatment and control groups, went back to the charts to collect information on them. It was this information that they presented in their Western Journal of Medicine paper. There was no mention of the failure of distant healing to influence many of the original measures. Nor did the researchers mention that they had assessed AIDS-related illnesses after knowing which patients were in each group” (p. 98).

This approach to “research” is called the “sharpshooter’s fallacy” and is very common in the literature that claims religion improves health: you look for any possible relationship until you find one, then claim that one exists. How is this a “sharpshooter fallacy”? The sharpshooter fallacy is when you draw the bullseye after you shoot the gun. You can’t miss if you change the target’s location after you start. And that is precisely what many of these studies do. In fact, the leading name in most of this “research,” Harold Koenig, has published a massive book (Handbook of Religion and Health) that is filled with studies like this, most of which he proceeds to gloss over or misinterpret completely. Here’s Dr. Sloan’s take on the book, “Ironically, the great strength of the Handbook is also its downfall: because of their thoroughness, Koenig and colleagues have assembled the most comprehensive list of research studies thought to prove the health benefits of religious activity. What they have done instead is to show us definitively how incredibly weak the evidence actually is” (p. 137). Dr. Sloan actually reviews all of the studies in just one chapter of the book and illustrates that they do not show what Harold Koenig claims in the book; they aren’t even close.

So, the evidence, when accurately interpreted and evaluated, indicates there are virtually no benefits from religion directly. But there are additional problems with advocating the inclusion of religion in health care. For instance, when you claim religion can cure people of illnesses, people decide not to turn to the health care system, “about 25 to 30 percent of patients who used prayer for chronic conditions or cancer were not seeing a physician. For patients with psychiatric conditions, 90 percent of those using prayer were not seeing a mental health provider. Presumably, they relied solely on prayer because they thought it was sufficient to treat the condition and no conventional medical care was required” (p. 189).

Another problem with advocating religiosity or spirituality “assessments” by doctors is that doctors have no expertise in this area. They receive virtually no training in religion and are no more qualified to discuss religious matters with their patients than they are qualified to discuss quantum mechanics. This is especially true if their patients belong to minority religious groups. Doctors are experts in what they are trained in, nothing more. They have no business dispensing religious advice (p. 196). Additionally, if doctors spend their time discussing religion, what are they not doing (p. 219)? Would that time be better spent discussing healthy lifestyles? Or addressing other concerns of patients? Patients actually think so; 47% of patients want no discussion of religion or spirituality with their doctor; 3% want less (p. 236). Additionally, when asked who their first choice would be to discuss religious and spiritual matters, only 2% of patients said their physician (p. 237). Patients go to doctors for medical care, not religious proselytizing or to worship.

One area where I actually disagree with Dr. Sloan is over whether we should even be studying these issues. Dr. Sloan seems okay with studying whether or not a general religiosity improves or worsens health outcomes, but he does not advocate asking which religious groups are the healthiest (p. 182), as the outcome will always result in bias against one group or another. I agree with Daniel Dennett on this point: if the religious are going to make claims about the benefits of their religion, they should be willing to subject those claims to empirical scrutiny. If Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, etc. believe they are the healthiest people, they better be able to show me the data. And if they can’t, then they should stop making such claims. If it turns out that some religious group has some key to health, I want to know. It’s unlikely that it has anything to do with the religion, but perhaps they advocate a particular lifestyle that correlates with improved health outcomes. That is worth knowing.

In the end, Dr. Sloan advocates religious privatization: be religious, use religion to cope, talk to your priest or pastor, etc., just don’t combine religion and health care. I don’t really disagree with him. In fact, I do think having chaplains in hospitals makes sense, so long as they are trained to be culturally sensitive and ecumenical. If people find comfort in religion (some do; others actually end up doing worse, medically, because of their religion), then why not give them some support in that. But doctors and other health care practitioners have no business discussing or advocating religion.

Overall, while a bit repetitive and long-winded at times, Dr. Sloan’s book is a long overdue skeptical look at the claims that religion has positive effects on health. I highly recommend it.

I should really be doing other work, but after reading the news this morning, it dawned on me that what I really wanted to do was write a short blog post about “The True Meaning of Christmas.”  (NOTE: For all the readers of my blog who are religious, this is your cue to stop reading now if you don’t want to hear me discuss the historical origins of Christmas.)

While other people have put similar ideas on paper before, I wanted something I could refer back to easily for future reference.  I also wanted to extend those ideas slightly.  So, I give you my version of the True Meaning of Christmas:

1) In pre-history, December 25th didn’t actually exist as a date, that had to await the invention of the Gregorian calendar.  Calendars were, of course, under development, but none of them had a pre-specified date for the birth of the mythical figure Jesus.

2) By roughly 4,000 BCE pre-historic astronomers and astronomers in early Egypt developed calendars, noting that the shortest day of the year (in terms of amount of sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere) is close to December 25th (actually Dec. 21st).  Their calendars obviously don’t include a month called December.

3) ~648-330 BCE – Using the Egyptian calendar and basing some of their beliefs on those of the Egyptians, the Persians developed a belief in a sun god named Mithras, whose birthday fell on or around the date we would now recognize to be about December 25th.

4) ~100 BCE to ~300 CE – Romans celebrate a winter festival called Saturnalia, which celebrates the opening of the temple of Saturn.  The festival starts out as a 1 day affair on December 17th, but eventually turns into a week-long affair, running through December 23th.  The festival is marked by giving gifts, feasts, and parties.

5) 274 CE – A new Roman festival is introduced called “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti,” which is basically Latin for the “birthday of the unconquered sun god.”  Solis Invictus was the name of the sun god and a celebration was held in his honor on December 25th, decades before Christians began celebrating Christmas.

6) ~200-400 CE (estimated dates; probably range much wider) – Prior to their Christianization, Germans and Scandinavians practiced polytheism (a.k.a. they were pagans).  One of their celebrations, possibly influenced by Roman celebrations, was the festival of Yule, which took place around December 25th (exact dates aren’t clear).  The festival included sacrificing animals, burning yule logs, singing yule songs, and decorating with evergreen boughs.  Other than decorating their temples and the men with the blood of the animals sacrificed, many of the traditions from Yule celebrations have been incorporated into modern Christmas celebrations (Too bad about that blood decorating thing…  I’m sensing a new holiday tradition here!).  Yule is also the root of the word “jolly.”

7)354 CE  – Historical records make first mention of Christians celebrating Christmas as a festival, probably near December 25th and overlapping with other Roman festivities.

8) During the 1200s CE, Christians began incorporating elements of the Roman festival Saturnalia into their new holiday, Christmas.  The festival of Saturnalia becomes the 12 Days of Christmas.

9) During the 1500s a character is introduced into Christmas celebrations named Father Christmas.  He serves a variety of roles, but he is generally just seen as a jovial old drunk guy.

10) In the 17th Century Protestants are disturbed by the raucous nature of Christmas celebrations (which are still similar to Yule and Saturnalia).  They ban all Christmas celebrations.  This includes Puritans in the US and religious groups in the UK.  Roman Catholics respond by trying to make Christmas celebrations more religious.  The bans are relatively short-lived.

11) Christmas undergoes little development until the middle of the 19th Century when popular authors like Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, and Clement Clarke Moore write about Christmas.  In their stories they invent many of the traditions and meanings that are now associated with Christmas – stockings, Santa Claus, family dinners, Christmas trees, gifts, etc.

12) The creation of the new traditions by 19th Century authors also begins the commercialization of the holiday, which is quickly embraced by the rapidly developing consumerist culture of the United States.  Corporations latch on to the idea of an end of the year spending spree, which is beneficial for their bottom line.  Smartly, they wrap this in altruism – it’s always good to give, right?

13) Also created in the middle of the 19th Century is the modern-day conception of Santa Claus, who was drawn by cartoonist Thomas Nast.  The idea is rooted in various European traditions of a gift giver, which is probably rooted in older traditions, perhaps representing the mythical magi who gave gifts to the infant Jesus and other Persian and Roman myths.

14) Christmas became a federal holiday in the U.S. in 1870.  It wasn’t until the late 20th Century, however, that religious fundamentalists in the U.S. began to decontextualize Christmas and turn it into a part of their culture war.  “Decontextualize” means they removed the context of the holiday.  The context is everything outlined above – the fact that it is based on various other holidays stolen or co-opted from other religious groups.  Once you remove the context of something you get to assert that it has only one meaning – a celebration of the birth of Jesus.  This is actually a very clever ploy by religious fundamentalists and political pundits to monopolize the meaning of a term and then use it against moderate Christians in their culture war.  It makes moderately religious people feel guilty.  My thought here is that religious fundamentalists want to use this to attract more moderate thinkers to their way of thinking, building their armies of followers.

15) Several years ago a group of atheists, agnostics, and humanists decided they didn’t like the consumerism associated with Christmas.  They also decided they didn’t like the religious themes now attached to Christmas. They created a new holiday that falls between the Winter Solstice and December 25th called Human Light Day. It is a celebration of humanity.  Some give gifts; some decorate in ways very similar to Christmas.  Some sing songs.  It’s basically a secular version of Christmas.  In a sense, December 25th has come full circle – it started out as just another day, became an important date for a bunch of mythological deities, and has now been returned to just another day.

16) So, do you want to know the true meaning of Christmas?  It can be summarized in one word: “syncretism.”  Syncretism is the combining, adoption, or co-opting of beliefs of one group by a new group.  Religious history is full of syncretism.  For instance, when Roman Catholicism came to the Americas, particularly Latin America, they forced the Native Americans to convert to Roman Catholicism.  As part of this process, many of the Native Americans carried their old religious views into their new religion.  At the same time, Roman Catholicism, learning from its thousands of years of forcing conversion of other groups, realized it is easier to co-opt the beliefs of a group than destroy them.  To facilitate this, Roman Catholics built churches over Native American temples, overlayed Native American gods onto saints, and co-opted holidays, like Dia de los Muertos.  As a result, Roman Catholicism in Latin America is quite different from Roman Catholicism in Europe, the US, etc.  It is a syncretism between Native American religions and European Roman Catholicism.

Syncretism is the key to understanding Christmas.  Christmas did not just pop out of thin air the day Jesus was born.  No one knows if Jesus actually lived and no one knows when this mythical character was born.  So, the holiday couldn’t just spring up to celebrate Jesus’s birthday given all the unknowns.  Also, the evidence suggesting Christians slowly pieced together a holiday out of prior religious festivals is quite compelling.  You can thank Scandinavian and Germanic pagans for: yule logs, Christmas songs, Christmas trees, and Santa Claus.  You can thank pagan Romans for gift giving, feasts, and parties.  And you can thank 19th Century authors and profit seeking corporations for: Santa Claus, gift giving, modern decorations, and the rampant consumerism of the season.

Now, for my contribution.  Given the fact that Christmas has been constructed, reconstructed, and even deconstructed by various groups over the years, that means the meaning of the holiday is fluid.  The claims of religious fundamentalists and political pundits trying to boost their ratings aside, the true meaning of Christmas is not the birth of the mythical Jesus.  The true meaning of Christmas is whatever you want it to be; religious, secular, whatever.  It’s your life; you get to give it whatever meaning you want.  No one has a monopoly on what Christmas can or does mean.  Yes, the word historically refers to “Christ’s Mass,” but there is no reason it has to in your own mind.  After all, how many Christians associate “Yule” with Odin?  You can turn Christmas into a purely secular holiday that includes no thought of the mythical Jesus, or Mithras, or Odin, or Solis Invictus, or any other god whose birthday has been celebrated on that day.

I think the true meaning of Christmas should be more akin to that created by secular humanists: A day to remember that we are all humans, to celebrate our relationships, both immediate and distant, and to reflect on our common goal to see our species survive.  That, to me, is what any holiday should mean.  But, the beauty of understanding that a holiday’s meaning is fluid is that you get to decide for you.  Yeah, you probably won’t hear me wishing people Merry Christmas any time soon, but I hope you do have a happy holiday season, whatever that means to you.

Here’s the complete history of Christmas in a single chart:

I created the chart in Powerpoint (1 and 2).

Not that I’m excited to post on here about Mormonism again, but I do think this turn of events is interesting.  One of the key people who set up the website “Signing for Something” opposing the LDS Church’s attempts to ban gay marriage in California is now being excommunicated for expressing his dissenting views.  He has put together a couple of videos on YouTube for people to see what’s going on (video 1, video 2).  He’s definitely an eccentric dude, but you have to admire his courage and gall.  Comments welcome!

Our trip to Southern Utah was pretty short, just 3 days.  My in-laws wanted to see the Shakespearean festival (though Cyrano de Bergerac is not by Shakespeare), Zion National Park, and Les Miserables.  I suggested Mountain Meadows and one other stop: Colorado City.  For those not familiar with Colorado City, Arizona, it’s a town literally on the border between Utah and Arizona (strategically placed to avoid authorities when required).  It’s also the base of operations for The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the increasingly well-known polygamist group, some of the members of which were the residents of the ranch in El Dorado Texas that was raided in April.  Debi and I recently wrote book chapters on the FLDS (the bookshould be coming out in the next 6 months or so), and I’ve heard lots of stories about the FLDS, so I figured stopping by Colorado City might be fun.  We originally planned to stop there after Zion National Park, but we spent more time in the park than originally planned, so we moved it to Wednesday and stopped there on our way home.

We didn’t really know what we wanted to see or what we could see in Colorado City, but we figured we’d drive around and see whatever we could and then hopefully stop for lunch somewhere.  Often Colorado City is referred to as Colorado City/Hilldale, as the town is kind of split right on the border – Colorado City is in Arizona and Hilldale is in Utah.  Since we were driving south from Utah, we passed through Hilldale first. Hilldale is, well, pretty much non-existent.  The majority of the city is in Arizona.  Only the very northern edge of the settlement is in Utah.  So, it really is more accurate to say Colorado City.

Without a particular plan of attack, we simply turned down a street and started driving around randomly.  As luck would have it, the best part of our trip happened at the very first house on the very first street we drove down.  I had heard stories that people in Colorado City are very distrustful of outsiders and that they will stop and stare at you if you drive into town.  I wasn’t sure if that was true, but it really is.  As we turned down the first street, we saw a woman dressed in the standard FLDS dress with her kids working on the lawn outside.  All of the kids stopped what they were doing and stared at us as we drove by.  We tried to get a picture that first time, but didn’t get a good one and felt pretty awkward doing so anyway.  So, we snuck up on them later and snapped this shot:

You can see the mother to the right, hoeing away.  The kids are all dressed in the standard outfits: girls in full-length dresses, boys in jeans and long sleeve shirts.  As we passed them this time, we waved.  Only the youngest kids waved back while all the others simply stared.  I’m not surprised by their response, but I am fascinated: the FLDS are definitely secretive and wary of outsiders.  I would kind of feel bad for my voyeurism, but I really am interested in them from a sociological perspective, so I can kind of justify snapping these photos.

We drove around the town for another 30 to 45 minutes, just seeing what we could see.  I don’t think anyone has written an article on this yet, but someone should definitely write an article on the architecture/urban planning of a secretive polygamist sect.  I was absolutely fascinated by what we saw.  If someone is interested in writing this paper, maybe the following will give you a good start (and then we can collaborate on an actual article).  I’ll begin with the most common house type we saw, something like the house in this picture:

It’s a very large home, which makes sense considering the sizes of families among the FLDS.  But there are several things that are noteworthy about these homes.  First, unlike homes for monogamous couples, they aren’t necessarily built for the aesthetic value but to maximize space.  This is particularly apparent in some of the other homes we photographed (see below), but also apparent in the above home – the more rooms the better.  Also, while you can’t see it very well in this low-resolution photo, the exterior of the house isn’t finished stucco but rather wooden particle board painted gray, which is pretty common among the homes we saw.  Second, notice the additions: the small building to the left is an addition to this home and there is a trailer to the right.  Neither of the two additions fit, aesthetically, with the larger home, reinforcing the idea that construction in the FLDS community is more about space than about architectural appeal.  I have to wonder if that is unique in residential communities.

This next photo does a better job illustrating the pragmatism of the FLDS.  Similar to the above home, but even more simplistic and less stylistic, this home is basically an enormous box with virtualy no adornments.  Also like the above home, the exterior is wooden particle board, this time painted brown, with no attempt at adding a finished exterior, like stucco or brick.  This is about the most utilitarian home you can get: it’s a massive box with tons of space for wives and kids.

Though slightly less common than traditional foundation homes, a fairly common sight was trailer homes like the one in the photo below.  There are hundreds of these homes scattered throughout Colorado City.  Again, this is probably a simple matter of utilitarianism: If you run out of space for your wives and kids, you buy a trailer and set it up in a field near your home.

The three homes above also illustrate the lack of interest in maintaining one’s yard, which was also very common in Colorado City.  Of the several hundred homes we saw, very few had any significant landscaping.  This is reaffirmed when you visit the town’s cemetery (which doubles as a monument to Prophet Leroy S. Johnson):

While we were in the cemetery there were sprinklers on and it was apparent some minor attempts at landscaping the cemetery had taken place.  But it remained mostly sandy soil and weeds.  There was virtually no grass and no clear lines demarcating sand from grass or walking areas from viewing areas.  I have a rather cynical theory to explain this that goes along with my assertions of pragmatism: The community wants to give the veneer of been clean, tidy, and well-kept, but the time required in simply handling the hundreds of kids is too much.  Additionally, while there are weak attempts at landscaping, the real interests of the community lie in maintaining their lifestyle and earning money, neither of which require nice landscaping.  Finally, maintaining a nice lawn in a desert area like Colorado City is probably both prohibitively expensive and time consuming.  It would require making that a priority, which is clearly not of interest in the community.  As a result, there is virtually no landscaping of note in the community.

Another point of architectural interest is the preponderance of abandoned homes like this one:

We probably saw one to two dozen homes just like this – framed up, but missing windows and inhabitants.  I don’t know what the explanation is for these homes, so I’m just going to propose a couple of possibilities.  First, the trust that holds the communal funds for the FLDS is now in receivership by the State of Arizona.  With limited access to the hundreds of millions in the fund, construction may have ceased on new projects.  Another explanation may be the reign of Warren Jeffs.  Once he took control of the religion he kicked out a number of men who were seen as threats.  These homes may stand as tributes to and reminders of the importance of obedience to the prophet.  I really am just guessing here, so if anyone reading this has a better explanation, I’d love to hear it.

Another element of the architecture of the community that is of interest is the preponderance of large privacy walls.  Of course you see privacy fences in cities and towns all over, but rarely do you see walls as imposing as this:

Walls like this were pretty common, though they weren’t all as tall as this one.  The walls are also pragmatic – to keep people like me from seeing what is going on behind them.

Despite having everything in common (supposedly), there are also clear class differences in the community, which are also apparent in the architecture.  Compare the home in the photo below to the homes shown earlier:

I’m guessing the quality of the homes reflects the religious hierarchy as well.

Another strange architectural feature is the lack of signage on most buildings.  By far the largest building in town, this massive white building, had no sign indicating its function.  From its architecture I’m inclined to believe this is the main church for the FLDS in the community:

The lack of signage is pretty common.  Again, I’m guessing this is a privacy thing: If you don’t know what the functions of buildings are, it’s hard to find people doing things in those buildings.  The lack of signage was also apparent on the restaurant/cafe where we ate lunch (which was the second most interesting thing we saw) – Vermillion Restaurant:

The sign is under the awning and not facing the street but between this building and another.  You really have to look for it to find it.

I knew they had a restaurant or two in town and was hoping to eat in town just to get a little bit of the experience.  We found this cafe near the center of town.  On the door was a sign that said, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”  Next to that sign was a sign that said, “Absolutely no cameras or video equipment permitted inside.”  As I was really interested in seeing how things functioned in the community, I didn’t take my camera in, though I would have loved to have gotten a photo of the inside of the cafe.  Inside was basically one large room with a counter at one end and restrooms at the other.  There were no booths, just very long tables with chairs.  It was completely open with no pillars, so you could see everyone inside.  You wrote your order on a slip of paper at the counter, they rang you up, then delivered it to your table.  The food selection was pretty interesting as much of it was simply frozen prepared food that they would heat up and deliver (e.g., mozzarella sticks, pizza sticks, chicken sticks, fish sticks, etc.).  We placed our orders and headed to a table to wait for them.

The owners of the restaurant are clearly FLDS – the woman who took our order was wearing the traditional dress and had the hairstyle that is common among the FLDS.  There were a couple of other tables occupied.  One was occupied by several men, all of whom were wearing long-sleeve shirts, jeans, and hats.  They all had cell phones and frequently made calls.  The other table was occupied by a mother with four kids, all girls and all under the age of about 8.  We were the only non-FLDS in the cafe.  It was fascinating to see the young girls respond to our presence.  There was one girl, probably around 4 or 5, who clearly recognized us as outsiders.  We were just as novel to her as she was to us.  She couldn’t stop staring at us.  She and her older sister kept running around our table to get a better look at us.  We smiled and waved and said hello, but she was reticent to respond.  We tried to be as cordial as possible, but the adults, who did glance at us furtively, didn’t really respond at all.

I did ask the person who took our order one thing about the community: I asked her if there was a monument to the 1953 Short Creek Raid.  The community used to be called Short Creek, but changed its name after it was raided by the State of Arizona in 1953 (very similar to the raid on the ranch in Texas).  If you read the entry on Wikipedia you’ll see that the polygamists in the town had forewarning about the raid and gathered in the local school to sing patriotic songs while the kids played around the flagpole outside.  I thought there would be a monument to the raid, as it was a defining moment in the community.  So, I asked her where it was.  She told us, but it was a good thing I asked or we never would have found it.  If it is a monument to the earlier raid, it is pretty neglected at this point.  Here’s a photo of the school:

The yard, like the rest of the community, is unkempt, but now it is also littered with trash and junk.  There is a sign indicating it is a historic location, but whoever is in charge of keeping it up is literally letting it die:

Debi and I got a picture at the famed flagpole, which was about the only area that seemed to be slighty well kept.  The rest of the place was really going down hill.

This was our last stop in the community before we headed back to Salt Lake City.  On our way home I asked my in-laws what there favorite part of the trip was.  Rosemary liked Les Miserables.  Gary, who didn’t understand initially why were going to visit a town on the border, said his favorite part was Colorado City.  I have to admit it was probably my favorite part, too.  It’s not every day that you get to visit a town in the heart of America that is inhabited by a people with a culture so foreign to regular Americans that you literally feel like are in a foreign country and are experiencing culture shock.  It was a fascinating chance to peek inside a reclusive, secretive sect and get a glimpse of the lifestyle that makes them so unique.

I try not to post on here about Mormonism very often as I don’t want to offend family.  Even so, I feel this issue is important enough to mention.  If you’re not aware of it, the LDS religion recently came out with a letter encouraging the members of the religion in California to work towards a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.  Surprise, surprise, I’m not very fond of this action.  But, I’m not alone.  Dozens of people have come together to express their disagreement with this bigoted action of the LDS religion on this website: Signing for Something.  Basically, the website is a place for people to post letters to the leadership of the LDS religion.  The people running the site will also personally deliver the letters the LDS headquarters in SLC.  As an additional option, many people are resigning their memberships in the LDS religion because of this action and to protest the bigotry of the religion.  I’m mentioning this here because I think everyone should take 15 minutes and read through some of the letters on the website.  A number of them are from gay members of the religion, from heterosexual current members who are resigning in protest, from former mission presidents, etc.  This position of the LDS religion is drawing ire and criticism from the group that most needs to criticize the leadership: the members.