Spectacular Mormon Politics: Sonia Johnson and the ERA in “The Society of the Spectacle”

When Sonia Johnson was excommunicated in December 1979, she became a media spectacle. She was excommunicated in relation to her activities opposing the activism of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). One observer described the excommunication and its aftermath as “perhaps the most conspicuous media event in [LDS] church history.”1 The primary theorist of the concept of spectacle, Guy Debord, developed the framing to analyze modern social life in the age of mass consumption and mass media. Debord described how, especially after the invention of advertising, forms of mass communication created images, communicated ideas, ideals, and images, and sold commodities to large portions of the population. Debord called the resulting culture “the society of the spectacle,” in which “all that once was directly lived has become mere representation.”2 The society of the spectacle was the context in which the LDS Church worked against the ERA and in which Sonia first emerged as a media darling when she began publicly opposing the LDS Church's activism.3 Over the next four years, she deployed herself as a spectacle to attract the attention of mass media. Sonia's use of the power of spectacle against the church made her a target for excommunication.In the society of the spectacle, technologies of mass communication and mass media facilitate the domination of representation and image over social life. Images disguise, distort, and supersede the materiality of lived experience. Representations of material items merge into “image-commodities” such that both images and commodities are valued primarily for what—the lifestyle, the idea, the ideal—they represent. In the society of the spectacle, these images come to mediate all social relations. That is, for Debord, “the spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people mediated by images.”4 It is not the mere presence of mass media that characterizes a society as a spectacular one, but the reconstitution of social relations the spectacle engenders. Within it, “everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear.”5 Debord frames the controllers of the spectacle as “the specialists of spectacular power,” and thus the levers of power are grasped by controlling or modulating the spectacle. Of course, none of this means that spectators are merely subjects of the spectacle and have no freedom, but in the society of the spectacle, freedom is defined by the choice not of whether, but of what images, to consume. This, for Debord, is the “dictatorial freedom of the Market, as tempered by the recognition of the rights of Homo Spectator.”6In such a context, good press is everything. Even religion is commodified, bound to sell itself to potential converts in the marketplace of public image. In The Mormon Image in the American Mind, historian J. B. Haws details how, though the LDS Church initially resisted the idea of “selling itself” in mass media, it had established by the 1970s a professional Public Communications Department that marketed the religion. Haws argues that the LDS theology of eternal families was central to a new media campaign the Public Communications Department called Homefront. In the words of one official, “When [LDS] missionaries knock on doors, we want people to immediately think, ‘Oh, yes, the Mormons. They're the ones who have family unity.’”7 The campaign included television advertisements, which played on 95 percent of television stations in the country, and print advertisements, the most notable of which was a series of multi-page removable inserts in Reader's Digest that emphasized the church's focus on traditional families as a way of drawing in potential converts.8 Haws also shows that this campaign, while not necessarily so designed, rehabilitated the image of the church after years of public protest against racist policies that banned Black members from participation in salvific temple rituals and of Black men from holding the church's lay priesthood, held by “worthy” males aged twelve or older.9 The church reversed the ban in June 1978 after years of public pressure.10While overall quite successful, by 1975 the church's Homefront campaign, with its emphasis on traditional families, had run afoul of an emerging national women's movement and set the church in opposition to a developing feminist consciousness. Church leaders worried that the ERA would threaten traditional families by creating a unisex society, “stifl[ing] many God-given feminine instincts,” and “nullify[ing] many accumulated benefits to women in present statutes.”11 In summer and fall of 1978, as debates about extending the ratification deadline for the ERA heated up, the church sent an official letter from the First Presidency, read in all Latter-day Saint congregations in the United States, “urg[ing] our people to join actively with other citizens who share our concerns and who are engaged in working to reject this measure on the basis of its threat to the moral climate of the future.”12 Within weeks, Latter-day Saint women established political organizations across the country dedicated to defeating the ERA. They joined an already illustrious group of conservative women, many of whom were Catholics or evangelical Christians who objected to the ERA on religious grounds. For the most part, the church's position on the ERA remained internal, primarily reaching church members—that is, until Sonia Johnson got wind of it.Like much of the debate over the ERA in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Sonia's celebrity and use of political theater took place in the context of the spectacle and was enabled and facilitated by it. Political studies scholar Davin Penner offers a useful distinction between the spectacle, the larger sphere of representation Debord identifies, and a spectacle, an instance, moment, or event judged worthy of representation to the masses. For Penner, individuals or groups can deploy, or perhaps even become, a spectacle, engaging both the processes and contexts in which mass media messages are produced and consumed, within the terms of the spectacle.13 Over the late 1970s, Sonia self-consciously exercised this sort of power. She created spectacles and made a spectacle of herself that many specialists of spectacular power found worthy of representing.When Sonia first heard of the church's opposition to the ERA, she and three other Latter-day Saint feminists, Hazel Rigby, Maida Withers, and Teddy Wood, founded Mormons for ERA (MERA). The organization received little public attention until Sonia gave an impassioned speech before members of the US Senate in favor of the ERA in August 1978. During the question and answer period, Sonia confronted Utah Republican senator Orrin Hatch about his statement that “you must admit that nearly 100 percent of Mormon women oppose the ERA.” She replied, “Oh my goodness, I don't have to admit that. It simply isn't true.”14 Members of the media sprang to attention as the discussion became tense and Hatch lost his temper. After the meeting, Sonia found herself confronted with microphones from every major press outlet.15 It was an introduction for Sonia to the power of spectacle to arouse mass media interest—a crash course in mobilizing herself as a spectacle within the context of the spectacle.While Sonia could not have known her excommunication would generate the amount of national interest it did—she thought it would remain a local stir—she was very aware of the power of spectacle and the importance of image.16 A year after her squabble with Hatch, one of Sonia's most controversial speeches showed an intuitive understanding of the politics of public image within the society of the spectacle. In Kalispell, Montana, she told a crowd of members of the National Organization for Women that “Mormons are a very proselyting bunch . . . and so we send out thousands of missionaries . . . knocking door to door finding people to preach the gospel to. That means you've got to have a reasonably good public image.” Sonia had watched the church struggle publicly with the temple and priesthood bans of Black members. With this in mind, she noted to the Kalispell crowd that the church's public image was “a very sensitive area with Mormons,” and pointed out their advertising campaigns in publications like Reader's Digest.17 Sonia remarked that she believed challenges to the church's public image had succeeded in reversing the temple and priesthood bans.She went on to tell her listeners that “because [the church is] spending so much money, they need to have a good public image and they're trying very hard themselves to promote one.” Sonia also referenced the church's Homefront campaign, though not by name, pointing to ads in Reader's Digest that emphasized traditional families. A bit sarcastically, she said, “The Mormons did not invent the family. Don't be intimidated by that. You know that you had a family before you ever heard of them . . . but somehow or another they're taking the credit for getting this organization together called the family.”18 For Sonia, the effect of the church's family-oriented media campaign was that it distracted people from the church's activism against the ERA.To combat this problem, in one of her most misquoted statements, Sonia recommended that audience members call and write church officials, telling them that their opposition to the ERA was hurting the church's missionary effort. She invited the crowd to tell church leaders they “wouldn't let one of your missionaries get one foot over my door.”19 Rather than telling her listeners not to allow missionaries into their homes, she was asking listeners who were already refusing to speak with missionaries because of the church's opposition to the ERA to simply tell church leaders this. Otherwise, Sonia believed, church officials would not know how much their position on the ERA was damaging the church's public image. She hoped that ERA activists could mobilize the power of image to compel the church to reconsider its position, just as she had seen civil rights activism result in a reversal of temple and priesthood bans.Relatedly, Sonia also suggested to listeners in Kalispell that it would be even more effective if attendees could mobilize the anguish of Latter-day Saint women who were pro-ERA for press attention: The press is more interested in Mormons telling what's happening in the world because it always represents an enormous personal struggle to have been, to have done it, to have been a Mormon and come out and said, “I'm pro-ERA and I think the church is doing a bad thing about the Equal Rights Amendment and I want to tell what they're doing.” . . . [T]he press is interested in this “family feud,” you see, and interested in this person who is going to come forward who is still a member who still has ties with all their hearts to that place, but on the other hand, can't fly in the face of justice. So that's a good story.20Mormon women's personal struggles to oppose their church was, Sonia believed, a spectacle worth watching. It was also a trope she herself would deploy for media attention as her excommunication loomed and she became, or perhaps created of herself, a mass media spectacle.Sonia's excommunication trial came to media attention almost by accident. The night she was summoned for her first trial, later called a “pre-trial hearing,” a family friend called, and she told him of the summons. By the next morning, and four phone calls later, the news had reached Peter Gillins, chief of United Press International in Salt Lake City.21 Within the next few days it made the national news, covered by most major news outlets. Though Sonia was initially a bit uncomfortable with the attention, as she felt a bit “sacrilegious” talking to the press about the excommunication, once she had press attention, she was happy to use it for the ERA.22 As though to counter the church's Homefront campaign, many articles about the summons featured photographs of Sonia reading to her youngest children.23Much to Sonia's chagrin, the more her excommunication impended, the more Sonia's spectacularity focused on the spectacle of a forlorn lone woman standing up to a patriarchal church. The substance of debates over the ERA and the church's role in working for the amendment's defeat therefore took a back seat to Sonia's “family feud” with church leaders. On some level Sonia regretted this focus, but on another, she was perfectly willing to deploy the trope, the image of herself as a lone, embattled Mormon suffering at the hands of insufferable church leaders. When she left the pre-trial hearing, she told her church leaders, “I want you to know that I will use it [the press] for the ERA as long as it's available.”24 When Sonia came out of the church building after her pre-trial hearing, she was confronted by reporters from at least forty news outlets, including national organizations like the New York Times, the Washington Post, People magazine, CBS, NBC, Newsweek, and Time Magazine. Sonia had indeed become a spectacle.Perhaps for this reason, church leaders did their best to make Sonia's excommunication a non-spectacle, even while they proceeded with the process. For months, most church leaders refused to talk to the press. The day of Sonia's excommunication, Jerry LeFevre, head of public relations for the church, fronted a lackluster press conference in which he read a statement containing the verdict, but said he knew little else about either Sonia's case or the church's organizing against the ERA.25 Sonia's visibility also forced a press release a month later that clarified that Sonia was not excommunicated because she supported the ERA but because she had lodged “a direct and irresponsible attack upon the church, its leaders, doctrines, and programs” and “misrepresented and held up to ridicule the leadership and membership of the church.”26 It was Sonia's public opposition to the church's position that got her in trouble, not her personal political opinion.Despite the church's effort to quiet the media storm, Sonia's ordeal captured print, radio, and television talk and news attention for the several months after her November 1979 pre-trial hearing. Three days after her trial, but before she was notified of the verdict, Sonia appeared in an episode of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show, a nationally syndicated news program. In the few days after she was excommunicated, the story appeared in 657 newspapers across the country. Within the next week or so, Sonia appeared on every morning news show. Perhaps Sonia's most important media spectacle was her appearance for a full episode on the enormously popular syndicated talk show Donahue. The episode was filmed on December 13 and broadcast in every region of the country in January and February of 1980. Over the next several months, Sonia appeared on dozens of radio shows. Her memoir of the experience, From Housewife to Heretic, first published in 1981, made the New York Times best seller list.27 Sonia made a spectacle of herself, deploying her pain at being excommunicated as political theater in the interest of the ERA.It was perhaps this deployment of anguish as spectacle that some spectators found distasteful. Many felt she was attention-seeking and self-aggrandizing and wanted to become a “martyr” for the ERA. Conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan was one media personality who felt this way. His article “Mormon is the Latest Media Martyr” was apparently circulated to local Latter-day Saint congregations by the church's public relations department.28 Sonia also noted that many letters from viewers on the political right accused her of being a “money-mad egomaniac doing all that I do for publicity and pelf.”29 Some of these letters contained quite vituperative language.30As interest in Sonia's personal and tragic confrontation with the church waned, as all interest does in the society of the spectacle, her post-excommunication public demonstrations became more intentionally spectacular. She intended even more deliberately to draw press attention with her outlandishness, and the press remained interested, though not as much as during her excommunication. When she and twenty-one others chained themselves to the gate of the Latter-day Saint temple in Bellevue, Washington (a suburb of Seattle), the story appeared in several newspapers.31 Sonia also chained herself to the fence of the White House. Her final spectacle in support of the ERA was in 1982, when she joined seven others in an ERA fast in the rotunda of the Illinois state capitol building, a spectacle also widely covered by the press. The Illinois state legislature's vote was the last gasp of life for the ERA and Sonia's last exhibition of spectacular politics on behalf of the ERA.To say that Sonia deployed herself as a spectacle is not to say that she was “inauthentic” in her public persona. It is only to say that within the society of the spectacle, whatever authenticity can mean is always already both shaped and captured by the spectacle. Sonia mobilized the power of the spectacle, becoming so spectacular that even to this day her celebrity disquiets many members and leaders of the church. At the same time, she did not challenge or undermine the broader phenomenon of the spectacle that disturbed her, but instead deployed herself within it as a spectacle for her political purposes. The spectacle itself, and the increasing power of image and representation within it, has remained unchallenged and unchanged since the Sonia Johnson affair. In the decades since, it has become even more powerful.