harmony wrote:I think you exaggerate, but no doubt your experience is different from mine.
We have a woman in my ward who wears muu-muus to church. Long flowing muu-muus. Not exactly mainstream, ya know?
We've had women who come in slacks, and men who come in jeans. And in one ward I've been in, the only guy who was clean-shaven was the bishop and the ones who were too young to grow a beard. The bishop was also the only guy who wore a white shirt and tie. All the other men wore plaid shirts and some of them wore overalls. (It was a ward 'way back in the hills near the Canadian border. Most of the cars were pickups, and all of them had a rifle in the window gun rack).
The organist in my ward attended the Julliard school of music. When she puts on a concert, the whole neighborhood comes out. I took my (non-member) mom and a couple of her friends to a concert sponsored by a neighboring stake last winter, of the Young Ambassadors from BYU. It was pretty amazing, as far as entertainment goes. I'm sure she didn't think it was representative of the blandness you're positing is rampant in Mormondom. When the Choir put on a concert in the stake a few years ago, they attended our ward. OMG. I've never heard anything like it, before or since, and I attend a lot of musical events (musically, they were much better than the Kenny Chesney concert I attended a few weeks ago, but I'm still holding to the idea that the Brooks and Dunn concert was the overall best I've ever seen).
I don't mind stereotyping, but at least see it for what it is. You're painting with a pretty broad brush. Not everyone sees Mormon culture with quite the jaundiced eye you do. I don't know of another culture where my kids could have had some of the experiences they did: road shows, dance festivals, talent shows, even the funny lip-sync contests were parts of their adolescence that most kids simply don't get to experience, let alone participate in them all.
Harmony, I have honestly never attended a ward like yours. When I was a very little girl, we went to church in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and I do remember a few eccentric women there, at least they seemed that way to my young mind, but after I was eight or so, I don't remember anyone wearing jeans to church, except one man who drove in periodically from the tiny country town where he lived, and he was marginalized in our ward. Very few men had facial hair, and those who did didn't hold leadership callings in the ward.
There was an active ward gossip mill in every ward I attended, and the subjects of gossip were the people who stood out by not conforming to the Mormon culture which permeated our ward. They were all very cliquish. I don't remember a single member of color, though there was once a black investigator to whom I took cookies (love bomb), but she didn't join. She would have been the only black in our ward. I know all wards aren't like the ones I attended, but without a doubt in my mind I can say that conformity is central to Mormonism.
Oh, and I had roadshows as a girl, but none of the other things you mentioned, and our roadshows stopped before I graduated from high school. I think the Mormon church is very different today than it was even thirty years ago. It's my opinion that it's become more centralized and bland since wards have had much of their autonomy stripped from them by the codgers in Salt Lake.
KA