The Power of Mormon Kitsch

Despite the pleas of a century of critics hoping to elevate the taste of Latter-day Saints, Mormons love kitsch. Mormon homes and meetinghouses display images of temples, portraits of church leaders, illustrations of the Book of Mormon, and depictions of Jesus (as imagined by Mormon artists) in all manner of media ranging from embroidery to screenprints to photography. I trace the origins of Mormon kitsch to the late nineteenth century when Latter-day Saints worked to rehabilitate their public image, moving past the stereotype of radical theocratic polygamists by fashioning themselves as tasteful consumers of anodyne religious imagery appropriate for respectable middle-class Americans. That strategy found so much success that Mormon visual culture subsequently came to epitomize the cliché of Latter-day Saints as friendly, folksy, and harmless, if a bit naïve—kitsch as cultural diplomacy. Yet behind the veneer of earnest but trivial and unsophisticated imagery, Mormon kitsch does important work in materializing religion and constructing social meaning. I explore how this body of imagery employs both narrative and visual strategies to argue for a conservative vision of Latter-day Saint political and social perspectives rooted in twentieth-century nostalgia. Whether reinforcing dominant Latter-day Saint narratives defining the proper expression of gender and sexuality, asserting historicity rather than metaphor as the essence of Mormon scripture, or defining “family” as a nuclear unit headed by a man, Mormon kitsch engages in contentious critical discourses in contemporary LDS society. No matter how cheesy, unsubtle, or overwrought, kitsch is a serious agent of social power in Mormonism.