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Category: Mormonism (page 12 of 12)

The Fundy Club

Alarik from comments raised an issue I’ve been thinking about quite a bit.

The cynic in me thinks that this was less about the Church defending its principles and more about convincing the rest of the religious right that we’re on their team.

I’ve been hearing this from quite a number of people, both members and non. Also frequently heard: “Evangelical Christians can’t stand the Mormons, so why are the Mormons knocking themselves out for their approval?”

I must admit, this is the way it comes off. But on reflection, I’m taking an ever-so-slightly different view. I don’t think the LDS Church is itching to get into the Fundy Club. I think they’re going to the wall on the gay thing mostly because they want to, and less because they think the Talebangelicals want them to.

I think they’ve seen what American evangelical Christians have been able to do in American politics, and they’d like a little of that action themselves. (The priest class always wants to expand their power, remember.) I think they’re willing to engage in temporary ad hoc alliances toward that end. But I think they’d be just as happy to have the power without having to deal with other Christian groups at all.

Fundies have no love for the Mormons? That’s true, but then again that feeling is mutual. Doctrinally the LDS Church couldn’t care less about impressing them. The Mormons view themselves as the embodiment of the Lord’s will in (these) the latter-days, and they’re equally certain that the evangelical Christians are Not. However, the Religious Right has really shown the Mormons the way — emboldened them, you could say. The Mormons are happy to pull techniques from their playbook, but they’re not looking for a long-term political merger.

So I’m thinking this is less about joining the Fundy Club, and more about getting political power on their own terms, plus making the kinds of changes they want to have happen. If they have to deal with other Christians, they will, but I don’t see it as a priority.

This is just my opinion from way over here. I’m only basing it on my subjective impressions of Mormon ideas about the other Christian churches. Anybody got better instincts than I do?

Proposition 8: Just getting started

Before the elections, a group called the Courage Campaign Issues Committee ran this ad against California’s Proposition 8.

It copped a bit of flack. Some god-soaked loon jumped up and down, said it was an example of ‘religious bigotry and intolerance’, and so on. I don’t know — I liked the ad, maybe a bit over the top.

But now, after the passage of Prop 8, can anyone tell me that that isn’t exactly what happened? A religion pumped money into an effort to strip rights from a group of people, and it worked. Why wouldn’t they try it? It was a win-win for the LDS Church. Prop 8 passes, they get what they want. Prop 8 loses, they get to pretend it’s the end of days, the world’s getting wickeder, and the fambly’s under attack, which brings in the easily frightened.

Now I think it’s fine for a religion to require or prohibit certain behaviours for its membership — that is, for adults who have chosen to belong to that religion, and I do not include children in this group. But when they try to force non-members to live by their rules, they’ve overstepped. And that’s what’s happened in California.

The argument from the religious right — not that they ever had a coherent argument against gay marriage — was that gay marriage would affect straight marriage. Make it worth less, devalue it somehow. That argument was a furphy, of course, but strange to say, the converse actually seems true. I heard a saying once: When one is not free, I am not free. I don’t know about that, but today it feels like: if someone’s relationship is devalued, mine is devalued. It’s strange, but it feels like my relationship with Ms Perfect is somehow the lesser for Prop 8’s passage. Maybe someday we’ll get married, but that’s only an option because we’re straight. Then again, maybe some religious group will intervene to stop us and enough voters will agree. That’s the world we live in now.

That’s why I think the last line of the ad is the most telling: “What shall we ban next?” Anything that conflicts with their delicate sensibilities, that’s what. Abortions? Why not go all the way and make it birth control? Or alcohol? Hey, what about Asian restaurants? You never did like Asian food, did you, Elder?

No on 8

The interference of the LDS Church in California politics is deeply troubling. No, scratch that. It’s infuriating. It’s hateful. And it’s wrong. If I hadn’t already written my exit letter, I’d be tempted to rejoin the Mormons just so I can resign again in protest over this issue.

What’s the worst thing about the Mormon Church’s support of Prop. 8? Hmm…

  • The idea of parochial Mormons denying marriage to people they don’t even know, and thinking it’s the will of a supernatural being whose will they are uniquely qualified to know.
  • Quotes by sanctimonious old gits like these.

    “What we’re about is the work of the Lord, and He will bless you for your involvement,” apostle M. Russell Ballard said during the hour-long meeting, which was broadcast to church buildings in California, Utah, Hawaii and Idaho.

  • The duplicity of a church that claims to be politically neutral, only speaking out on ‘moral matters’ — and then redefining political issues as ‘moral’ when it pleases them
  • Enshrining bigotry and inequality in the California constitution
  • Millions of dollars in LDS money going to support all of this. From Sully:

    Californians Against Hate released figures Tuesday showing that $17.67 million was contributed by 59,000 Mormon families since August to groups like Yes on 8. Contributions in support of Prop. 8 total $22.88 million.

  • A tax-free religious group getting to act like a PAC. Once again the priest class is vying for political power, just like in the good old Dark Ages.

Well, there’s a lot that’s detestable about this. Mormons should be livid, even if by and large they’re not. For my part, I’m just hoping that this proposition goes down and goes down hard. I want this to be an embarrassment to the leadership of the Mormon Church. I want them to wonder why their Special Pal in the Sky didn’t come through. I want Mormons to see more and more pictures of happy gay couples at weddings with the rice and the bubbles and the cake, and after they’re through freaking out about living in the End of Days, I want them to notice how happy the newlyweds look, and I hope time will help them reconsider.

I don’t have much to spare these days, but I’m donating to No on 8 because I think this is a huge deal. I’m used to religions making lots of empty doctrinal pronouncements, but when they use their baseless theology against other people, I say it’s gone far enough.

Californians: please vote against this. Even if the news anchors call all the eastern states for Obama early, don’t let that stop you from getting to the polls.

Fear of vanishing

I’ve been viewing the YouTube videos from the Exmormon Foundation. Worth a look. There are some clips from a film called “Line Upon Line”, featuring (mostly) non-angry, pleasant former saints telling their deconversion stories.

One of the stories in Part 2 tapped into something unexpected for me. A young woman says:

Leaving the Church is hard because you are so afraid of what’s going to happen to you. And you don’t have any examples of that because people leave the Church and they scurry away, you know? Like, you don’t know — When you’re in the Church, you do not know any ex-Mormons. You don’t know ’em! And so I was really afraid of leaving the Church because I was like, no way, this can’t be real. What will I do with my life if I leave the Church? Who am I going to be, right? And so, I think that that fear keeps a lot of people, either consciously or subconsciously, in the Church.

Well, that’s about right. In testimony meetings, Latter-day Saints seem to tell each other constantly how they don’t know where they’d be without the Church. They’d probably all be dead. Or in jail. Like everyone else who isn’t in the Church. And Latter-day Saints are routinely warned that if they don’t keep the promises they make in LDS temples, they’ll be in Satan’s power. Have to keep ’em scared of ghosts, you see.

But this quote touched on another part of the scariness that I think I must have harboured without realising. I have known a few people that stopped coming to church. They deleted themselves from the sample, you could say. And, what do you know, they did disappear, and I never saw them again. So the unspoken impression I think I got was: If you leave the Church, you will disappear. How frightening!

It’s nobody’s fault. Just an artifact of participation (or lack thereof) in social groups. But for me it seems a powerful cognitive illusion that I hadn’t noticed before.

So it’s a good thing that I show up every once in a while at church. I drop the boys off to be with their Mom, wearing nice but non-churchy clothes. No, I haven’t disappeared, I tell my old friends. I’m still here, and I’m very happy without religion.

UWA Atheist/Christian debate

The debate went pretty well, actually. In the Christian corner was Tim Thorburn, and the Atheist was Michael Tan.

Atheist Michael did a great job, hitting all the main points. Humans have a need to explain things, and sometimes they make explanations that involve magical beings. But we need to use evidence and reason to sort out what’s happening, and the evidence for Christianity is not particularly strong. The most electric moment: Tim said that the Bible contained predictions that have been fulfilled, and Michael responded that many others haven’t yet, especially the return of Jesus. “How long is it going to take before we realise he’s not coming back?” he said, to gasps and applause from the audience.

Christian Tim argued that Christianity was true because the Bible said so. Okay, he didn’t put it as weakly as that. He mentioned that the Bible contained eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, and that Paul alluded to the eyewitness accounts so casually that they must have been well-accepted by the Christians of his day. So that’s the evidence.

“Except it isn’t evidence,” I said to Tim as we chatted afterwards. “It’s another claim.”

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, Paul is claiming that Jesus was resurrected and that there were eyewitnesses to it. But that’s not evidence. That’s another claim, and we need to examine it.

“I mean, it’s part of the same story. You can’t use a part of the story as evidence for the story!”

“Yes, I can!” he said, looking rather surprised.

I also asked him about the Book of Mormon. At the front of every copy of the Book of Mormon, there appears the testimony of three men who claimed that an angel showed them the gold plates. There’s also the testimony of eight other men who claimed that they got to see the gold plates without any angel. I believe these testimonies to be false, to which Tim the Christian readily agreed. But if you’re going to accept the testimony of so-called eyewitnesses in the Bible, why wouldn’t you accept the testimonies of eye-witnesses in the Book of Mormon?

Tim responded that the Bible was a very reliable source of testimony because it had many different witnesses whose testimony dovetailed together so well that it couldn’t all be fiction. I’m not doing his response justice because he said it much better than I can remember, and I hope I’m getting the gist of it right — memory is unreliable. But that was basically the idea; the Bible was so much better a source for eyewitness testimony than other books because it was so complex and dense and interlocking that no one could have faked it and it must be true.

But anyone who’s heard the story of the Nottingham Lion or heard conflicting reports from eyewitnesses at accident scenes knows that eyewitness accounts are not reliable sources for what really happened. Especially when the story has had hundreds of years to get itself straightened out.

Anyway, it was a fine outing. Michael and Tim were good gentlemen to talk to. And the UWA Atheist and Agnostic Society has a Facebook group, if you’re a person of the ‘Book.

Card has lost it

Mormon writer Orson Scott Card has written an amazingly deranged piece of frothing about gay marriage. He argues that if the USA allows gay marriage, we should — nay, must — overthrow the government ‘by whatever means is made possible or necessary’. You really have to read it to see how unhinged he is on this issue.

Here are the highlights.

The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to “gay marriage,” is that it marks the end of democracy in America.

End of democracy? I think of myself as an interpreter of Mormonism, but even I’m struggling to find a context in which this comment makes sense. It’s not enough to point out that Mormons are millennial dispensationalists who expand personal and local conflicts into end-of-the-world issues. You have to imagine that homosexuality is not just a lifestyle choice that you may disagree with, but some kind of magical force of darkness that is politically dangerous.

How dangerous is this, politically? Please remember that for the mildest of comments critical of the political agenda of homosexual activists, I have been called a “homophobe” for years.

Wonder why. You know who Card reminds me of? My missionary companion from Idaho. He once made some disparaging comments about gay people, and I said, “You know what you are? You’re a homophobe.”

“What’s that?” he said.

“Well, ‘phobe’ is like ‘phobia’ — fear. So it’s a fear of gay people.”

He was incensed. “I’m not afraid of them! I’ll bet the hell out of any of them!”

Just for reference, here are his ‘mildest of comments‘ from 1990:

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity’s ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships.

Keep ’em in line. Send ’em a message. Good move. Back to the article.

A term that has mental-health implications (homophobe) is now routinely applied to anyone who deviates from the politically correct line. How long before opposing gay marriage, or refusing to recognize it, gets you officially classified as “mentally ill”?

Well, it would help if you stopped, you know, writing insane things. I’m not an expert, but Card sounds psychiatrically actionable.

If property rights were utterly abolished, and you could own nothing, you would leave that society as quickly as possible — or create a new society that agreed to respect each other’s property rights and protected them from outsiders who would attempt to take away your property.

Marriage is, if anything, more vital, more central, than property.

I got a better one: There are laws against littering. But music is much more important than litter, so we should have laws about what kind of music you’re allowed to listen to.

He then argues that marriage is like some kind of slum that straight people have let run down, which is why those horrible gay people now want in.

A vast number of unmarried men and women have such contempt for marriage that they share bed and home without asking for any formal recognition by society.

How dare they!

What is this ‘society’ Card’s talking about, and how is he so sure what it expects of us? And why does he think that society must approve of all our actions? Is he a utopian socialist?

One thing is certain: Card’s devotion to society is absolute, until the very moment it contradicts his views.

Why should married people feel the slightest loyalty to a government or society that are conspiring to encourage reproductive and/or marital dysfunction in their children?

Why should married people tolerate the interference of such a government or society in their family life?

If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law and forced to attend schools where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn’t require a husband or father, and that homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives, then why in the world should married people continue to accept the authority of such a government?

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.

What a terrible monologue. But at least he has his priorities straight. Better to tear down the fabric of the republic than for people to think certain things.

It’s crazy stuff, and it all comes to you courtesy of the Mormon Times, the weekly magazine of the church-owned Deseret Times. I’d love to see if the church leadership has anything to say about this call to insurrection.

The Church of Non-Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints

Res spotted this one:

LDS Church stressing its differences from FLDS polygamous sect

Mormon leaders today said they are stepping up efforts to make the public aware of the differences between the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), which has recently garnered widespread national attention.

The Mormon effort is in response to a church-commissioned survey of 1,000 Americans that found a degree of confusion about the two churches. More than a third of those surveyed thought the Texas FLDS compound, which recently was raided by Texas’ Child Protection Services after allegations of child sexual abuse, was part of the LDS Church. Another 6 percent said the two groups were partly related.

Well, you can’t imagine they’d be happy about that. But I find it rankling that Mormons try to disown their polygamous past and try and claim the ‘Mormon’ label for themselves only.

Check out this article from the Deseret News.

The LDS Church has said there is no such thing as a “fundamentalist Mormon,” although an estimated 37,000 people who practice it consider themselves as such. Fundamentalists argue that the LDS Church has strayed from its original doctrine by abandoning the practice of polygamy in 1890.

Clinton Hudson, a student at Sonora High School, is a member of a Christian student fellowship. During a lunchtime meeting, he said one student said they should pray for the children taken in the raid. Another student said they should “pray for the Mormons.”

“I approached her and said, ‘They’re not Mormons. They’re fundamentalists. They broke off from the church’ and described our history and how they broke off. It really helped a lot,” Hudson said Sunday. “It was a great opportunity to get them to understand there’s a difference between them and us.”

Fundamentalists aren’t Mormons? Of course they’re Mormons.

Mormons claim they’re Christians, even though other Christians disagree. Latter-day Saints typically respond: Well, what does that matter? We’re Christians because we believe in Jesus. Why should people in other churches be able to tell us who we are? And then they turn around and pull this.

Mormons are Christians because they think they are. Fundamentalist Mormons are Mormons because they think they are. Simple as that.

Or try this clumsy analogy.

An illustration from the business world might give us some insight. Suppose several engineers at General Electric invented an electric motor and decided that their product was superior to other similar products produced by the company. This group of engineers decides then to break away from General Electric and form a new company called Fundamental General Electric or FGE for short. How would General Electric react to this? Would it feel that its brand equity was being diminished or stolen? Of course they would. And they would be right.

But you’d be wrong. While it’s easy to classify the LDS Church as a corporation, the analogy only works if the Utah church were the original. Mormons like to think this, but it ain’t so. In fact it’s just one offshoot among many that emerged during the turbulent time after Joseph Smith. It’s the most populous and successful variant, but that doesn’t confer the naming rights.

The Utah church has made a few videos to show that Mormons are normal and not weird. I think it’s going to backfire.

This one’s 18-year-old beauty queen Kayla. Her interests include beauty contests, sitting around playing Uno with her family, hygiene, and sitting on the porch talking about modesty. Right now she’s doing a Morse Code in reverse with her eyes. She’s trying to spell ‘Help me’ by opening them.


You know, I don’t think these clips are going to help people tell LDS from FLDS. In fact, I think I can actually see more parallels than before. Aren’t the fundies always going on about ‘modesty’? Why doesn’t this young lady try one of those shapeless dresses you see on the compound? This clip makes both cultures seem frighteningly parochial. It’s as though the LDS Church is trying so hard not to attack the FLDS that they’re failing to make any point whatever.

Elderly men show an interest in gay marriage

Absolutely outrageous.

Even though the LDS Church’s own scripture forbids it to meddle in political affairs, the First Presidency is directly asking Latter-day Saints to vote against gay marriage in California.

A statement called “Preserving Traditional Marriage and Strengthening Families” (PDF) will be read in LDS sacrament meetings. It says, in part:

We ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment [to overturn marriage for everyone] by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman.

This is abominable. For a church to promote any kind of inequality is wrong. For a church to promote discrimination is wrong. The LDS Church has already given over a million dollars of its funds to defeat gay-marriage laws in Hawai’i and Alaska, which may have come from the tithing donated by its membership.

And all this energy and rhetoric expended in the mistaken (in my view) belief that this will somehow harm straight marriages and children.

You know what this reminds me of? Galileo.

Galileo?

Galileo.

For the Catholic Church, it was such a big deal that the sun went around the earth. They burned Bruno at the stake, and put Galileo under house arrest for espousing the Copernican model. And yet, the earth moved.

And now it doesn’t seem such a big deal. Today we wonder what the fuss was about. Religious dogma, wrong once again, had to give way. The church decided that maybe the whole earth-thing was a non-core belief, and life went on.

I feel embarrassed for Monson et al because they’re just going to have to backtrack that much farther when gay marriage turns out not to be the nation-destroying plague they’re envisioning.

I also feel bad for liberal Mormons who rightly deplore this hateful edict from their leadership. This is exactly the conflict I would have had in my believing days: wanting to support equality, but believing that church leaders were inspired and good. Rationalism has certainly saved me from that conflict.

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