Religious Memetics: Institutional Authority in Digital/Lived Religion

Article

Religious Memetics:Institutional Authorityin Digital/Lived Religion

Benjamin Burroughs1 and Gavin Feller2

Abstract

Recently leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon)

faith have called upon members to “sweep the earth” with positive religious mes-

sages through social media. This digital moment in Mormonism exemplifies the inter-

relation and concomitant tension between everyday lived religion, technology, and

religious institutions. While studies on digital religion have emphasized the push of

participatory culture into everyday lived religion, this research on religious memes

contributes to an emergent vein of digital religion scholarship focused on institutional

authority. In our analysis of the “doubt your doubts” meme and antimemes we

theorize religious memetics as a space for the reconnection of the everydayness

of religious practice, which boils down meaningful moments of faith into facile,

nonthreatening avenues for sharing religion. While this is beneficial for institutions,

the reflexive and metonymic function of religious memes ruptures routine, offering

participants momentary pauses from the demands of orthodox religious life.

Keywords

meme, digital religion, religious memetics, mormonism, lived religion

Speaking at a Brigham Young University devotional, David A. Bednar—anapostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS)—strongly

Journal of Communication Inquiry

2015, Vol. 39(4) 357–377

! The Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/0196859915603096

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1Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies, College of Urban Affairs, University of Nevada,

Las Vegas, NV, USA2University of Iowa, IA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Benjamin Burroughs, Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies, College of Urban

Affairs, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 South Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV 89154-5007,

USA.

Email: [email protected]

urged his Mormon audience to fully engage social media:

What has been accomplished thus far in this dispensation communicating gospel

messages through social media channels is a good beginning—but only a small

trickle. I exhort you to sweep the earth with messages filled with righteousness

and truth–messages that are authentic, edifying and praiseworthy–and literally to

sweep the earth as with a flood. (Bednar, 2014)

Bednar’s exhortation, delivered to a live-streamed audience of nearly 23,000(plus live broadcast on BYUTV), epitomizes the LDS Church’s recent shifttoward social media and lived religion in digital space. Mormon leadersare considered to be divinely appointed, which gives their words normativesway within Mormon culture. The prophet, who also serves as the presidentof the LDS Church, is believed to be called by God and guides and directsthe church membership. Bednar’s call for members of the LDS faith to“sweep the earth” invites the audience to engage with social networks asMormons, thus serving as a proselytizing tool for the institutional authority.This digital moment in Mormonism exemplifies the interrelation and concomi-tant tension between everyday lived religion, technology, and religious institu-tions. This article examines how religious congregations and institutions useInternet memes and social networking within the context of digital religion.An analysis of religious Internet memes articulates the multiple tensions andfissures religious individuals and communities increasingly encounter through agrowing presence in digital spaces. Here, technology and tradition meld andmesh as digital religion.

The study of religious memetics is a unique site for the understanding of notonly memetics in popular culture but also the everydayness of religious faith andthe increasing articulations of religion in digital contexts. Religious memesshould be understood on their own terms and can differ in substantive waysfrom normative iterations of popular culture memes. This is not to say thatreligious memes are not constantly in dialogue with the memes of popular cul-ture; however, religious memes articulate particular meanings unique to religiousinstitutions and religiosity. Within our study of religious memes, we focus onthis digital moment of Mormonism, connected to the LDS General Conference.

LDS General Conference memes focus primarily on the Internet memes gen-erated by the LDS Church during its semiannual General Conference held inSalt Lake City, UT. General Conference is a two-day meeting featuring roughly40 sermons (“talks”) by the hierarchical leaders of the church delivered to anaudience of approximately 21,000 people in the LDS Conference Center andbroadcast live via satellite to local meetinghouses in the United States andstreamed online at LDS.org for the remaining worldwide membership.Members of the Church voluntarily raise their right hands in regular Churchmeetings as a ritual and public expression of support and are, therefore,

358 Journal of Communication Inquiry 39(4)

expected to follow the counsel and teachings of those called to lead them. Thus,the words spoken by LDS Church authorities, particularly during GeneralConference, establish the divine role of church authority within Mormon cul-ture. Generally, memes generated during General Conference weekend featureparticularly pithy, catchy, and poignant quotes from the ongoing sermonslayered onto straightforward pictures or plain backdrops. Official LDSChurch memes often feature a quote and author, without the full churchname. These memes originate from the LDS Church’s official Facebook pageand Twitter handle regularly throughout the Conference weekend. This is arecent shift in the Church’s public relations strategy, as the institution embracesthe potentialities of new mediated spaces, evidenced by the use of official con-ference hashtags such as #ldsconf and a call for members to spread the gospelonline (“Mormon Hashtag Recommendations,” 2014).

We begin with an overview of current literature related to memetics and thegrowth of digital religion scholarship in religious communication. A culturallineage of Mormonism and media is presented as a precursor to Mormon meme-tics with particular attention placed on “Mormon Ads.” The current LDS/Mormon context is addressed through an analysis of the “doubt your doubts”memes (both institutional and user-generated iterations) surrounding a sermondelivered at the Church’s General Conference to a worldwide audience by DeiterUchtdorf, a high-ranking LDS Church leader in October of 2013. The sermonand the Internet memes that rapidly followed show the ability of memetics todeal with religious doubt and criticism at both institutional and individual levels.Connected with questions of Mormon history and recent trends in religiousdisaffiliation more generally, we analyze a subcategory/genre of religiousInternet memes we refer to as antimemes because of their explicit criticism ofreligious ideologies and attacks on specific institutions. Their widespread andargumentative tendencies make antimemes an integral part of both the memes-cape and digital religion.

The timeframe for this study covered the years 2012–2014 during the semi-annual LDS General Conference. A thematic or genre analysis (Wall, 2005) wasperformed on thousands of collected meme postings embedded within socialnetworks and divided into the three main groupings: institutional, user-generated, and antimemes. Theoretical sampling was employed (Altheide,1996), and exemplary threads related specifically to LDS Conference memes,LDS user-generated memes, and antimemes were drawn from interpretive andtextual analysis.

Beyond popular culture memes, through our analysis, we show how religiousInternet memes play an important role for those within religious networks byoffering individuals a way to connect and critique faith tethered to the everydaydigital practices of lived religion. Beyond individuals, we argue institutions arebeginning to adopt memetic communication as a means of rearticulation withinthe mediated flow of social networking and digital media.

Burroughs and Feller 359

Literature Review

The study of memes has quickly become a source of much academic researchand debate (Gal, Shifman, & Kampf, 2015; Milner, 2013; Phillips, 2012a;Shifman, 2013, 2014; Wiggins & Bowers, 2014). As memes continue to increasein circulation and visibility, memes also are influencing particular areas of popu-lar culture and social practice (Phillips, 2012b), such as sports, politics(Burroughs, 2013a; Scott, 2014), and even religion (Burroughs, 2013b;Cheong, 2012). Knobel and Lankshear (2007) offer a definition of the uptakeof the term meme within popular culture defined as “a popular term for describ-ing the rapid uptake and spread of a particular idea presented as a written text,image, language ‘move,’ or some other unit of cultural ‘stuff’” (p. 202).Moreover, this article proposes that the field of memetics needs to account forinstitutional memes in addition to individuals’ generation and circulation ofmemes. Institutions, not only individual users, can be thought of as actorsspreading memes. Herein, religious communication becomes a fertile site forunderstanding the tension between lived religion, emergent technology, andinstitutional power.

Articulating a clear definition of the term meme has become increasinglydifficult (Shifman, 2013), with multiple competing definitions vying to takehold within academia. Richard Dawkins (1976) originally coins the termmeme in his influential publication The Selfish Gene, which argues from a bio-logical evolutionary perspective that memes, akin to genes, act as replicators ofcultural information, including religion, catchphrases, jingles, and fashion.These memes will either propagate like an infection as they attract more hoststhrough competition, variation, and selection or become extinct. Within thismode of thinking about memes, religion is treated as a part of an evolutionarylandscape (Atran, 2002). Recent research on memetic culture in relation todigital media complicates this evolutionary approach in favor of a critical-cultural engagement with memetics.

Within religious communication scholarship, there is a growing body of workon digital religion (Campbell, 2010, 2013; Cheong, Fischer-Nielsen, Gelfgren, &Ess, 2012). This connects with Ammerman’s (1997) conception of livedreligion—the daily enactments of religious beliefs and actions. Digital religionscholarship, in conjunction with a broader turn in Internet studies, needs toaccount for the shift from online communities of religious worship to socialnetworks wherein lived religions become “components in wider collectives ofdigital and local religious activity, and as connections in the self-constructedreligious networks of their visitors” (Hutchings, 2012, p. 221). Within thisshift, Campbell (2010) suggests the “religious-social shaping of technologyapproach” (p. 62), which calls for the recognition of religious users active par-ticipation and negotiation of technology shaping religious, social life. Digitalreligion is defined by Campbell as both a technological and cultural, blended


space where the online and offline coalesce (Campbell, 2012). For Campbell,technology is not simply a neutral conduit or supreme force structuring religion,but an interplay of these competing forces. Cheong, Halavais, and Kwon (2008)point to multiple mediated platforms and resources used by bloggers that col-laboratively build religious knowledge and networks outside of the purview ofthe central church. Hutchings (2012) echoes this claim in his study of Christianusers of Second Life he theorizes as a “networked religious collective” (p. 218).This active participation can be seen in the use of “faith tweets” (Cheong, 2010,para. 2) as “ambient religious communication” (para. 17), which produce thebonding of social capital among religious social networks.

While studies on digital religion have emphasized this push of participatoryculture into everyday lived religion, an emergent vein of digital religion schol-arship focuses on institutional authority (Cheong, 2013). Cheong (2014) pointsto the “mutual flourishing of social media and religious authority” (p. 5) byanalyzing the tweets of megachurch leaders who use scripture to reconstitutereligious authority through sacred, yet, digital texts. Campbell (2012) discussesthe Vatican’s adoption of YouTube channels and subsequent attempts to con-trol the media form and flow of information. Cheong, Huang, and Poon (2011)note that actual clergy have become guides and curators of religious knowledgein physical and digital space. This follows Cheong’s (2012) framework for dif-ferent conceptualizations of religious authority; disjuncture and displacement,continuity and complementarity, and dialectic. Religious memes, from an insti-tutional standpoint, fit Cheong’s dialectic perspective, as memes enable “boththe weakening and strengthening of religious authority, offering possibilities forconflict, yet also for understanding and accommodation” (p. 82). Our analysisattempts to balance user engagement, technological affordances, and institu-tional authority as competing forces within the recontextualization of religionin digitality.

Despite the rapidly growing body of scholarly work on Internet memes, verylittle research has been conducted on religious memes. Cheong (2012) refers tomicroblogging, primarily tweeting, as “faith memes,” which rapidly transmitand spread religious ideas. Bellar et al. (2013) released a preliminary report onthe connection between participatory culture and memes in lived religion.Religious communication and digital religion scholars should study memesbecause they circulate religious messages as part of participatory culture, butmemes also make salient certain critical values and beliefs in the interplaybetween institutional doctrine and individual worship.

While there is an established field of Mormon Studies scholarship (Bowman,2012; Givens, 2007; Mauss, 1994), a recent branch of Mormon studies hasemerged connecting digital technology and religion. Chen (2011) looks at theMormon Church usage of search engine optimization and other LDS mediainitiatives, which blur the line between institution and user considerably.Avance (2013) focuses on Mormon communities of online worship, and


Burroughs (2013b) studies digital rituals within Mormonism such as the live-tweeting of General Conference. Burroughs sees “digital rituals” as lynchpinsthat interanimate central authority and personal worship as “techno-faith.” Ourstudy of LDS institutional memes, user-generated memes, and antimemes eluci-dates the negotiation between institution and audience facilitated through theaffordances of digital memes—serving as ruptures that allow for religious life tobecome rooted in everyday practice. By bringing attention to the LDS Church’sinstitutional efforts to engage in Internet memetics, we aim to mark the complexintersection of top-down (LDS Church authorities) and bottom-up (LDSmember generated) processes of memetic production and circulation. Thus,our examination of LDS institutional media efforts, in connection with LDScultural practices, serves as a starting point for understanding how contempor-ary religious memetics operate.

LDS Media: History and Context

Far from common Luddite characterizations,Mormonism is best understood as a“media religion” (Peters, 2015). This cultural lineage of Mormon media presentssignificant antecedents to contemporary Mormon memes. From the publicationof the Book of Mormon to modern adoption of Twitter and Facebook, the LDSChurch has usedmedia as tools to think with; as channels for proselytizing; and asmeans to organize time, space, and power (Peters, 2015).

The history of LDS institutional, outward facing media can be broadly clas-sified as functioning to establish, defend, and extend Church teachings (Feller,2013). Mormonism did not officially begin until its foundational medium was inplace; less than a month after publishing the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smithofficially established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Givens,2007; Peters, 2015). The Book of Mormon has since been used as the LDSChurch’s primary proselytizing tool and is seen as the keystone of the religion.As the LDS Church grew, print media worked to establish a geographic com-munity as well as a cultural and religious identity. Along with encouraging cul-tural cohesiveness, print media also controlled and curated the flow ofinformation in the early days of the Church and its leadership.

Upon arriving in Utah after the Mormon westward trek led by Smith’s suc-cessor, Brigham Young, the telegraph offered a welcomed administrative solu-tion to the challenges of LDS geographical dispersion and the need to maintaindoctrinal discipline (Baker, 2006). Young used the telegraph to connect a bur-geoning number of frontier Mormon communities; at the time of his death in1877, nearly 1,200 miles and 68 stations of the Church-owned Deseret Telegraphwere in operation (Baker, 2006).

The adoption of radio and television in the early 20th century as means fornetworked communication solidified institutional control over the expandingreligion. The Church has since invested heavily in a sophisticated satellite


system connecting meetinghouses all over the world: More than 6,000 satellitereceivers operate in 83 countries linking Mormons everywhere to the LDSChurch’s headquarters in Utah (Baker, 2007). Rather than a medium solelybuilt for entertainment, the satellite network functions primarily as a means ofestablishing and maintaining hierarchical authority.

Beginning in the early 1960s, the LDS Church made significant organizationalchanges through a period of “correlation and consolidation” (“ChurchHistory,” 2003, p. 562). Through the correlation movement, worldwideChurch operations, including everything from independent publishing budgetsto gospel Sunday school lesson manuals, were centralized and streamlined fromChurch headquarters in Salt Lake City, UT (Bowman, 2012). In 1967, throughthe creation of the Bonneville International Corporation—and its subsidiaryBonneville Communications—the LDS Church consolidated its film, radio, tele-vision, and public relations efforts, separating commercial broadcasting fromspiritual and ecclesiastical functions (Feller, 2013). Memes work for the institu-tional operations of the Church precisely because they are correlated andcurated.

Given the LDS Church’s history of institutional media use, its digital pres-ence and continued correlation efforts should be no surprise. The LDS Churchruns three primary websites, all with very different purposes: LDS.org,Mormon.org, and FamilySearch.org. LDS.org is an internal site for membersof the Church offering access to scriptures, modern teachings in video, text, andaudio format, authorized administrative manuals, teaching aids, and leadershipresources and news. Mormon.org was launched in conjunction with the 2002Utah Winter Olympics; the site is designed specifically as proselytizing platformaimed at introducing outsiders to the Church (“Media Timeline,” 2014). It fea-tures a live chat room operated by full-time missionaries and a database ofthousands of “I’m a Mormon” profiles. FamilySearch.org serves as the primaryhub for the LDS Church’s mammoth family history project, offering users fromaround the world access to genealogical records.

By the end of 2011, approximately half of the LDS Church’s 17,000 meet-inghouses worldwide had Internet access (Knapton, 2011). Like satellite tech-nology, the move to standardize Internet access across LDS meetinghousesdemonstrates the value the LDS leaders place in using the technology internallyto maintain control and unity.

As the history of LDS institutional media usage elucidates, hierarchical gov-ernance and information control have guided traditional Mormon media pro-duction. However, because of the LDS Church’s structure, which relies on thevolunteer efforts of it congregants, its institutional production and regulation ofmedia is only one part of the picture. In their participation as lay leaders andeveryday participants, members of the LDS Church have developed uniquemedia practices embedded within differing articulations of LDS culture(Figure 1).


It is this connection between institutional and cultural uses that best explainshow modern Mormon Internet memes function. There are significant culturalantecedents to these contemporary memes such as the New Era “Mormon Ads.”Like Bonneville Communications, the New Era magazine—a publicationintended for teenage Mormons—grew out of the LDS Church’s movement tocentralize worldwide operations (Bowman, 2012; Mauss, 1994). Twelve yearsafter its establishment, New Era created its first “Mormon Ad:” a message inprint reading, “the greatest how-to books ever written,” overlaying a picture of astudy desk with the Bible and the Book of Mormon surrounded by paint brushes,tools, a jar of pencils, a calculator, and a bookshelf of do-it-yourself books.From 1983 to today, these Mormon Ads, which began as full-page magazine“advertisements,” have become an integral part of Mormon culture. Due to theirpopularity, some were turned into posters displayed in Mormons’ homes; othersbecame the object of “Sunday School” lessons, and some were printed as post-cards for distribution to family and friends. The power of these Mormon Adscomes from both their form as combination of textual rhetoric and visual ima-gery as well as their metonymic function: In referencing well-known Mormon

Figure 1. The first “Mormon Ad” September, 1983.


teachings and social practices, each represents larger pieces of insider Mormonculture. More importantly, the Ads made their way into the everyday social livesof young Mormons, acting as memorable reminders of Church teachings andculture.

The highest authorities of the Church are increasingly urging members to“make sharing our faith online more a part of our daily life. LDS.org,Mormon.org, Facebook, Twitter—all provide opportunities” (Andersen, 2013,para. 30). Following Pope Benedict XVI and other international religious leaders,the LDS Church Prophet and 12 apostles now have individual Facebook pagesand Twitter handles. Official Church websites such as LDS.org and Mormon.orglink to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and even Pinterest. These handles, how-ever, are not dialogic forums for deliberation over church authority. Churchleaders do not communicate with church members; leaders speak to members.Although LDS leaders have Facebook and Twitter pages, their communicationflows are still one-to-many and not dialogic with members. The Church has evengone so far as to list recommended hashtags for tweeting about the Church, itsleaders, and events such as General Conference (see “Mormon HashtagRecommendations,” 2014). Not surprisingly, search engine optimization hasalso become an integral part of LDS social media efforts (Chen, 2011).

The LDS Church is also tapping into the affordances of memes, capitalizingon their rapid transmission, popularity, convenience, and ubiquity (Shifman,2014). While memes normatively operate as playful, sarcastic, and irreverent,in order to serve the LDS Church’s institutional goals, these memes often strikea seemingly uplifting tenor when repeating the words of Church leaders. LDSinstitutional memes offer Church members another sanctioned resource for con-necting member social networks to Church doctrine and information. In orderto maintain control of teachings and doctrine, these specific memes often appearless organic and spontaneous. Within this techno-faith, church members aregenerally not encouraged to create their own iterations of memes (such as chan-ging the words of an apostle or prophet). Members, through the sharing ofmemes, add their own digital signature as a form of digital witnessing or testi-mony bearing to an official LDS meme. This endorsement circulates the mes-sages more widely within the fabric of digital religiosity. Here, the Church, as aninstitution, leverages the collective networks of its membership while still invit-ing them to participate in a spirit of coauthorship.

LDS institutional memes also connect sermons from important religious ser-vices, such as the Church’s semiannual worldwide General Conference, withonline participation and thus move between radio, television, satellite, andInternet broadcast. These General Conference memes in particular function ascentral nodes within a sophisticated religious social network. By entering thisspace and joining the existing cultural practices, the LDS Church and otherfaith-based organizations are calibrating a religious form of memetics thatworks to preserve and build faith online while maintaining doctrinal authority.


LDS Church-Generated Conference Memes: “DoubtYour Doubts”

The “doubt your doubts” meme originates from LDS apostle and FirstPresidency member, Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s General Conference address onOctober 5, 2013. Uchtdorf begins with a list of reasons why someone wouldwant to join the LDS Church. He then speaks to those who have left theMormon Church and possible reasons for disaffection, including strugglesover “unanswered questions” (Uchtdorf, 2013). Anxieties surroundingMormon disaffection tied to online information, primarily regarding Churchorigins and early leaders, have become a growing concern for the Mormoncommunity in recent years (Fletcher-Stack, 2012; Henderson & Cooke, 2012)(Figure 2).

Mormon studies scholar Terryl Givens has called this era of Internet-facili-tated faith crises an “epidemic” (Fletcher-Stack, 2012). Conversely, LDS ChurchHistorian and General Authority, Marlin K. Jensen, states, “I think we are at atime of challenge, but it isn’t apocalyptic” (Henderson & Cooke, 2012, para. 7).In his talk, Uchtdorf states “that in nearly 200 years of Church history—alongwith an uninterrupted line of inspired, honorable, and divine events—there havebeen some things said and done that could cause people to question.” He arguesthe Church “would only be perfect if it were run by perfect beings,” whileadmonishing Mormons to not leave the Church over imperfect people andunanswered questions. He pleads for members instead to “doubt your doubts

Figure 2. An example of a “doubt your doubts” meme.


before you doubt your faith.” This last line almost immediately became a meme,posted, reposted, and shared throughout the Mormon blogosphere, known col-loquially as the “bloggernacle.” The LDS Church responded quickly by creatingits own picture meme posted via Facebook and Twitter; the Facebook post was“liked” by over 12,000 people and shared 3,620 times (as of February, 2015). AnInternet image search with “doubt your doubts” in February of 2015 returnedthousands of results; the majority of which employ the basic macroimage memeform featuring the quote and authorial attribution on various backgrounds sup-porting the faith-promoting message. But not everyone appreciated Uchtdorf’schiasmus. It stirred significant controversy within discussion boards where manydisaffected Mormons critiqued the quote as nonsensical and a double standard.

Uchtdorf’s “doubt your doubts” sermon reveals the LDS Church’s approachto the ongoing challenges it faces in the increasing quantity and accessibility ofuncomfortable historical information about Mormonism online. Uchtdorf’smessage signals the LDS Church’s efforts to confront more specific historicalcontroversy, primarily through its official website. Only weeks after the “doubtyour doubts” talk, the LDS Church began publishing a series of 11 essays overthe course of a year aimed at contextualizing the prickliest issues of Mormonhistory, including Church founder Joseph Smith’s plural wives, the translationof the Book of Mormon, and the restriction of Mormon priesthood from Blackmen prior to 1978. The essays, which represent a collaboration between LDShistorians and public relations specialists—as well as independent scholars, lar-gely take a neutral position on the controversies outlined, providing historicaland cultural context as opposed to apologetics. However, rather than a publicrelease, the essays appeared almost mysteriously on an obscure “Gospel Topics”page within the official Church site, LDS.org. Nearly a year later, after signifi-cant online discussion and news media attention, the Church released a state-ment explaining the motivation behind the essays:

We live in a world where there is so much information available on every topic.

And particularly in the age of the Internet, there are both good and bad sources of

information. As a Church, it’s important for us to research and provide official,

reputable, historically accurate information about our history and doctrine.

(“Church Provides Context,” 2014)

Although the essays and the issues they deal with are arguably at the center ofcurrent concern within the Mormon community, Church officials insist they are“meant as a personal resource for members as they study and teach about thehistory and doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”(“Church Provides Context,” 2014; emphasis added, para. 6).

In addition to the LDS Church’s institutional efforts, the memes that fol-lowed Uchtdorf’s message reveal its cultural uptake within members’ social net-works and the affordances of religious memetics. The technological affordances


of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter serve tostructure audience participation. While it may seem a relatively harmless gesture(functioning as a simple “______ was here”), “liking” another’s message or postcan be seen as a form of implicit endorsement or ignoring an act of noncon-frontational disagreement. The sharing of a social media post/message and theattached prefatory text are deliberative actions that communicate one’s stancetoward an Internet meme—one’s position in relation to “the text, its linguisticcodes, the addressees, and other potential speakers” (Shifman, 2014, p. 40). Inthe case of the “doubt your doubts” Facebook meme, “stance” modifies anindividual digital signature, preface, or disclaimer attached to the meme as itis passed along through social networks. What is stated and importantly what isnot stated (here, any reference to controversial LDS Church history) can beunderstood as technological, cultural, and dialogic.

It is significant that the majority of the “doubt your doubts” memes containthe direct quote from Uchtdorf’s message, often including the attribution toUchtdorf as its author. Some iterations, intentionally marked for insiderMormon audiences, include the title “President Uchtdorf” as a reference tohis position in the LDS Church First Presidency; others use “Dieter F.Uchtdorf” aiming instead for a wider appeal beyond the Mormon communityfamiliar with the Church leader. Images void of any reference to Uchtdorf andthe LDS Church often exclude the second half of the quote, leaving the phrase“doubt your doubts” to operate as a multivalenced iteration open to a broaderrange of interpretations and contexts. These examples depict how the flexibilityof religious memes enables online participants to engage in varying registers ofinstitutional and religious affiliation. In other words, those circulating the memehave a broad range of options for communicating their stance in relation toreligious faith, the LDS Church, Uchtdorf’s original talk, and even Uchtdorf asan individual religious authority (Figure 3).

Several “doubt your doubt” memes also appropriate common popular cul-ture memes, melding the religious quote with an existing memetic phrase orimage. “Keep calm and doubt your doubts” is one example. Another utilizesthe “I don’t always. . . ” meme that grew out of Dos Equis beer’s “MostInteresting Man in the World” advertising campaign. In the Mormon version,a photoshopped Uchtdorf and a bottle of Sprite replace the original actor andhis beer bottle with the text, “I don’t always doubt . . . but when I do I doubtmy doubts.” This meme reveals the complex intersection of commercial adver-tising, popular culture, and lived religion. Religious memetics, through theirpolysemic layering, provide a space for audiences to reflexively position them-selves to both make sense of and critique religiosity. The “I don’t alwaysdoubt” meme demonstrates that Mormons can affectively poke fun at them-selves within the bounds of appropriate religious participation and socialnorms. While the vast majority of orthodox LDS members view the alterationof prophetic statements to be inappropriate, memes provide a space for many


Mormons to reflexively recognize the peculiarities and strictness of some oftheir beliefs.

Both the LDS Church’s “Gospel Topics” essays and its version of the “doubtyour doubts” meme delicately balance personal religious beliefs and institutionalobjectives. They emphasize institutional attempts to preserve personal religiosityby integrating traditional worship into digital networks. The reappropriation ofthe “doubt your doubts” meme by online participants brings considerable atten-tion to the tenuous line between traditional religious authority and emergingsocial authority online. Indeed, the LDS Church’s version of the meme and agrowing number of similar memes it produces are branded without the Church’sname. The memes act as proselytizing tools by linking to official LDS websiteswhile maintaining a consistent aesthetic style recognizable to those familiar withChurch. The strategic ambiguity of the meme’s origins increases the likelihoodthat an institutionally generated meme will appear organic and circulate in afrenzied memetic moment. As such, religious memes such as “doubt yourdoubts” operate within a liminal space between explicitly institutional mediacontent and participatory cultural creations.

Figure 3. A humorous meme blending the “doubt your doubts” line with the popular

“most interesting man in the world” Internet meme.


The meme also operates metonymically as the phrase “doubt your doubts”comes to stand in for an idealized version of Mormon religious practice wherefaith and personal spiritual experience subsume doubt by absorbing these com-plicated questions about Mormonism and religion more broadly. It provides anostensibly simple solution to individuals’ complex fears and anxieties, as theentire sermon is succinctly repurposed and marked for faithful consumption.While the “Gospel Topics” essays allow for long-form religious engagement andin-depth reflection on religious history and doctrine, memes are convenientlyconsumed and shared as a part of everyday religious practice. The power of the“doubt your doubts” meme comes from condensing and quashing religiousdoubt while offering a daily reminder of religious values, all in an unassumingand convenient form.

Antimemes

Within Mormon culture, the term anti-Mormon literature embodies institutionalconcerns with its members—particularly youth—being exposed to highly criticalor defamatory media (Nelson, 1992). This fear of anti-Mormon information andother unsanctioned Internet content (pornography in particular) is, perhaps, onereason the LDS Church has been wary of fully embracing digital media.However, the last two years mark a distinct shift by LDS Church leaderstoward encouraging Mormons to actively participate in online discussionsabout religion through various social media platforms. As leaders, such asDavid A. Bednar, push members to engage with social media, they can nolonger avoid some of the perils of publication; for example, exposure to “anti-Mormon” content. Rather than taking the time and effort to seek out a pamph-let, critical blog post, or questionable “anti-Mormon” websites, the mobility andcirculation of memes increases the likelihood that Mormons will encounter arange of perspectives about their faith. As faithful Mormons follow the counselof their leaders to use social media for “righteous purposes” (Bednar, 2014),insulating themselves from unwanted media content becomes far more difficultthan just avoiding or abstaining from taboo books, magazines, TV programs,and films. Although challenging for the LDS Church as an institution, Internetmemes also allow for a type of liminal meditation on complex Church doctrineand history that might be harder to handle in another context (Figure 4).

As a result of their ideological function, religious memes are particularlyadept at igniting antimemetic responses. Like the religious ideas they metonym-ically represent, religious Internet memes can be incendiary and at times polar-izing. On the surface, antireligious memes appear to merely critique religiousbeliefs, but they also operate antimemetically because of their critique of themetonymic function of religious memes, or of the memetic frame itself.Antimemes resemble Jonathan Gray’s (2003) conception of antifans, fans thattake pleasure in disliking texts or critiquing the very frame of fandom itself.


Through the use of a meme, antimemes critique the framing of all memes, whichironically furthers their circulation. Yet, they seem to relish this irony; adding totheir poignancy. Critiques of religion are far from new or novel; they haveexisted and persisted as long as religious faith itself. However, antimemes areunique because they take place within the same memetic logic and digital spaceas the ideas they seek to refute.

Today, a simple Google Images search with the term religious memes yieldsmillions of results. The majority of the memes, however, are more atheistic thanreligious in nature; many take shots at religious beliefs ranging in expressionfrom subtle humor to outright hostility. The “doubt your doubts” meme ana-lyzed earlier is a powerful example of how religious Internet memes spur anti-memetic responses (Figure 5).

Amidst the thousands of crafty, flowery, and inspirational “doubt yourdoubts” picture memes supporting Uchtdorf’s message, a number of antagon-istic antimemes can be found. One picture meme in particular, found on thepopular website, Reddit, stands out. The meme features the same Uchtdorfquote, except this time a picture of the infamous September 11th plane strikingthe second Twin Tower in New York City provides the backdrop (ExMormon,2013). The meme instantly connects Mormonism to the radical and deadly prac-tices of Islamic terrorists, critiquing blind religious subservience and the circularlogic of Uchtdorf’s quote. It promotes skepticism rather than faith among criticsof the religion. However, it does more than simply attack Mormon tenets; by

Figure 4. An example of the “advice God” antimeme.


challenging the metonymic function of the “doubt your doubts” meme, it cri-tiques one of the core functions of religious memetics.

Antimemes pose the important question: Do religious Internet memes sim-plify religious beliefs in detrimental ways? Certainly, the metonymic capacity ofreligious Internet memes, their simplicity, and mobility make them meaningfulfor religious individuals in digital contexts. Antimemes succinctly and simultan-eously critique the facile form of memes as well as the overarching frame ofreligious belief. Because antimemes often accompany and grow out of religiousmemes, they need to be taken seriously as an integral part of religious memeticsand digital religion broadly situated. The increased digital presence of antime-metic content makes navigating these messages another part of everyday livedreligion.

Discussion

We exist in a moment where institutions of all types are transitioning into thememetic space. Memes do not simply constitute third places, rather, memes, likeblogs, “provide an integrative experience for the faithful, not a ‘third place,’ buta melding of the personal and the communal, the sacred and the profane”(Cheong et al., 2008, p. 107). Memes augment this integration with religiousbelief and everydayness—not merely as third places, but social media produces arearticulated form of religious connectivity. By systematically creating strategicInternet memes, both religious and secular institutions aim to connect them-selves to ongoing memetic trends in popular culture to increase visibility andmaintain relevance.

Figure 5. An antimeme from Reddit.


Memes as metonyms are building blocks for digital religious practice. Memesconstruct loose metonymic chains that become embedded in the everyday prac-tice of maintaining social networks. The metonymic chains also construct sharedbelief systems and networked sociality as your network becomes aware of yourreligious proclivities and value systems. This is most often performed as small,banal enactments and engagements with religious memes. A comment, “like” orshared meme, often not a grandiose proclamation of faith, acts as interstitialengagements that meld and marinate faith with everyday practice.

In returning to Bednar’s call to flood the earth with messages of “righteous-ness and truth,” floods are countervailing forces. The metaphor points to theLDS Church’s goal to spread its message powerfully, far and wide; to sanctifythe earth by sweeping it with positive media content. Memes are carriers of faith.With the circulation of memes, religiosity almost unknowingly gets attached to auser’s digital presence. Memes are imbued with aura as they traverse socialnetworks. The trace of religiosity remains as the affordances and algorithmsof social media reinforces faithful, lived religion. This attaches memetic commu-nication within a lineage of Mormon media history that attempts to maintaintop/down, authoritative media production. This circulation can also produce thenegotiation of religious values, as memes can serve as ruptures to institutionalorder. In a transmediated religious ecology where multiple media platforms andtexts are open to construct competing notions of faith, memes intervene in thestruggle between institutions and individuals and mediate digital disjunctures.Reflexivity through religious memetics provides a liminal space for renegotiatingthe everydayness of religious practice.

However, because of their inherently layered, polysemic nature, religiousmemes yield themselves to a range of interpretations as they circulate throughonline networks, continuously changing shape and meaning through ongoingappropriation. This intertextuality behooves religious organizations—such asthe LDS Church and others active in digital spaces—to navigate centuries-oldtensions between institutional control and hermeneutics in new and creativeways. As religious organizations, acting as curators, continue to incorporatedigital technologies and social media platforms into institutional practice, reli-gious memetics will increasingly play an integral role in the social and spirituallife of religious individuals. Religious discourse both shapes and is shaped byemerging memetics as coconstitutive practices.

The complex historical, doctrinal, ritual, and cultural elements of an orga-nized religion can, through an Internet meme, be condensed down into digestiblebytes. We argue for the adoption of religious memetics as a unique category ofInternet meme, which complicates existing literature on memetics within popularculture and digital religion. The scope of this research has been limited to theLDS institutional context and invites further research into other institutionalcontexts and audience reception practices. Regardless, religious memetics offersa space for reconnection to the everydayness of religious practice and boils down


meaningful moments of faith into facile, nonthreatening avenues for sharingreligion.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,

authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publicationof this article.

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Author Biographies

Benjamin Burroughs is an assistant professor of emerging media in the HankGreenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University ofNevada, Las Vegas. His research focuses on streaming media and technology,digital ritual, and social media. His work has been published in journals such asNew Media and Society, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, andGames and Culture.

Gavin Feller is currently enrolled as a PhD student in communication studies atthe University of Iowa and teaches undergraduate courses in rhetoric and mediastudies. He is interested in the cultural history of religious media and has pre-sented his research at regional, national, and international conferences. He iscurrently conducting ethnographic research on Neo-Pentecostal object media inBrazil. Gavin also makes experimental nonfiction videos exploring the intersec-tion of media and religion.


Documents

Religious Memetics: Institutional Authority in Digital/Lived Religion