From this tale, we understand that agency is at the heart of our earthly experience. The plan of salvation and exaltation hopes that we individually will bring glory to God (becoming godlike) through our agency. While it is generally understood that agency can be judged on an axis of righteous to unrighteous, it is almost as frequently forgotten that agency must also be judged on a second axis. As the competing plans in the preexistence clearly teach, agency can either be exercised or abdicated. It is impossible to bring the highest degree of glory to God, no matter how righteous our action, if we fail to exercise our agency and instead abdicate it through perfect (and therefore blind) obedience to authority.

Thus among the three degrees, obedience brings Terrestrial Glory without regard to the righteousness or unrighteousness of our actions, since we have abdicated our agency to authority. It is only through the exercise of agency that individuals and leaders can participate in Telestial and also Celestial Glory.

Discuss.

When Hyrum succeeds his father, promises of the ability to “translate” oneself from planet to planet end. Hyrum is more likely to promise wisdom than earthly treasures and his superior education (he attended a free school associated with Dartmouth) is highlighted through more sophisticated biblical references.

William is the first presiding patriarch in the LDS tradition in the period after the end of the early church. Because of his wife’s ill health, he did not return to Nauvoo for his ordination for nearly a year after Joseph and Hyrum’s martrydom. Six months later he broke with Brigham Young, but in the meantime he recorded almost as many blessings as his father had in six years, and nearly five times as many blessings as Hyrum had in four years.

William’s blessings are different from his father’s and from his brother’s. His strong interests are in the cause of Zion, the blessings of the temple, and the power and authority of blood descent from the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and especially Joseph, and then through Ephraim to the Saints. Although Joseph Sr. and Hyrum spoke of this literal blood inheritance, William almost invariably emphasizes the “royal” nature of this “seed.” For example, he promised Anna Ballantyne: “thou art truly one of the seed of Israel a full blooded Josephite for the blood of the Prophets and of the Royal seed runs in thy veins” (p. 262).

Interestingly, unlike Joseph Sr. and Hyrum, William will also prophecy in a way that almost feels like he is revealing new scripture. I was particularly fascinated by a revelation given in Abigail Abbott’s patriarchal blessing:

One of thy posterity named after the name of his father, and after the name of his Great Grandfather, who was a descendant from the tribe of Judah, and of the household of David, shall be a mighty warrior, and be led on to avenge the blood of the Prophets and Patriarchs, he shall lead a mighty people from the wilderness

and one mighty among them who shall be also a mighty warrior by the name of Nishcosh, he shall be a descendent of one of the name of Nimrod, who was also a descendent of that Nimrod, who was a mighty hunter in the days of old, by way of the Jaredites upon this country, who founded a city and called it the city of Gnoalum, this city now lying in ruins the wreck of which only appears as the last descriptive monument of a people that has fallen, and the remnants of whom have become barbarous, wild and uncultivated,

this shall be in a day when the judgements of God are abroad among the Gentiles, and by his hot displeasure the almighty God is vexing the nations of the earth and when the time of Zion’s deliverance has come, and thy seed shall behold it for it is not far distant (p. 244).

If the contents of patriarchal blessings are an indication of the expectations and beliefs of early members, how shall we read this blessing given just one year after the martyrdom?

If you missed all the fun, there’s no reason to be bitter because there’s always next year! And if you thought they couldn’t top Sacramento, hold onto your stove-pipe hats…next year, MHA’s going to Springfield…(wait for it)…Illinois!

“But why?” you ask. Short answer: There isn’t sufficient conference and hotel space in Nauvoo to accommodate a gathering as large as MHA. More upbeat answer: as far as namesakes to the Simpson’s everytown go, Springfield, Illinois, is a pretty sweet place to go!

Why should you make plans to goto Springfield a year from now, May 21–24, 2009? Here are five reasons:

#5. Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln. If you think Mormons are Joseph Smith crazy, wait til you see the professional crazies in Springfield, Illinois. These people are ape-nutz over Lincoln. Everything’s named Lincoln, including the conference hotel and convention center. That said, the Lincoln Presidential Museum & Library is a massive, modern museum, brimming interactive displays and an incredible collection. The museum and sites (Lincoln’s home, Lincoln’s office, Lincoln’s horse’s stable, etc.) are all in easy walking distance from the hotel. (BTW, 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.)

#4. Mormon history. It may surprise you how much Mormon history took place in Springfield. A lot of Mormon-era buildings remain, including the old State Capitol Building, which Joseph Smith and a number of early Mormons visited and where the Nauvoo charter was both passed and revoked.

#3. Nauvoo. A post-conference tour will extensively visit Nauvoo. Even if you’ve already been to Nauvoo, I can assure you that the experience is different when you tour with a group of historians. There’s a lot less Disney and a lot more history.

#2. The Mormon history conference experience. The Mormon history community is an extremely welcoming fellowship. It’s very easy to meet and share ideas with the very people who wrote the books on the topics of discussion. If you haven’t experienced it, you ought to.

#1. Bloggernacle meet-up. Sacramento ended up drawing a large group of Mormon bloggers. Online communities don’t always get a lot of opportunities to meet up IRL. Next year we’ll formalize a meetup at MHA with a “bloggernacle breakfast” or something like that.

By the way, don’t just plan on going; plan on presenting. MHA is eager to reach out to new voices, which bring different perspectives to the conversation. As a member of next year’s MHA program committee, I want to encourage all of you folks to consider making a proposal. If you haven’t done it before, I can assure you that giving a presentation at MHA isn’t as scary as you might think. If you decide to join the conversation IRL at MHA next year, email me (or the entire program committee) with your proposal and a brief bio. Hope to see you there.

At a formational conference a few months after its organization, the church approved a set of “articles and convenants” that initially defined three priesthood offices: teacher, priest and elder. Teachers were to exhort the membership and see that they meet often. Priests had the additional authority to administer the sacrament (communion), to baptize members and to ordain teachers and other priests. Elder was the highest position. In addition to encompassing the roles of the others, elders were to lead all meetings, ordain other elders, and confirm membership in the church by the “laying on of hands and the giving of the Holy Ghost.” Elders were explicitly equated with “apostles,” and many early elders referred to themselves as apostles. Although Joseph Smith was known as a prophet, a seer, a revelator and a translator, his initial “office” in the church was “first elder.” His original assistant, Oliver Cowdery, was given the role of “second elder.”

Releasing the priesthood to laymen was like harnessing the whirlwind. Often, immediately following baptism and confirmation, new members were ordained as elders of the church. Then, the new elders would themselves depart on missions, charged with evangelizing and baptizing their neighbors — spreading the good news of the restored gospel.

The office of deacon was soon added beneath teacher with the primary assignment of assisting the other offices. Then, in February of 1831, the office of “bishop” was added and the first bishop was given charge of the church’s communitarian property in Missouri. A second bishop was created in December of that year for Kirtland. By November 1831, deacons, teachers, priests and elders were grouped into quorums and each quorum was assigned a “president,” e.g., “deacons quorum president.” In the spring of 1832, the Saints began ordaining each other to be “High priests after the order of the Melchizedek Priesthood.” At the same time, a “presidency” of the High Priesthood, known as the church’s “First Presidency” was established.

In 1834, twelve high priests in Kirtland were called to a new “High Council” of the church. A second High Council was created in Missouri along with a second church presidency. The High Councils soon became the church’s leading legislative and judicial bodies. A third, special “Traveling High Council of Twelve” was called and given charge of the church’s missionary work. These apostles were to be assisted by “Quorums of Seventy,” led by seven Presidents of the Seventy.

What had begun with a simple structure evolved into something much more complex in just a handful of years (see diagram). Nearly every man in the church had some level of priesthood authority.

Although other churches have lay ministers, this explosion of offices seems unique to Mormonism. This leads me to a couple of questions: To what extent was this distinction the engine that fueled the early church’s success? Can an elaborated lay priesthood be fairly called the genius of early Mormonism? As the lay priesthood has continued to evolve, what are the advantages and challenges for the LDS church today?

This discussion got me to thinking about scriptures in general and I came up with an analogy that I wanted to bounce off folks. I think that the Book of Mormon’s relationship with the Old and New Testaments of the Bible can be compared to the relationship between the Aeneid (the great Roman epic) and the earlier Iliad and Odyssey (the great epics of ancient Greece).

The Iliad and Odyssey told heroic stories about a historic event, the Trojan War, but they are not literal histories. Fundamentally, the Greek epics were stories that transmitted inspirational teachings, values and models for living life in harmony with Greek religion. The Roman epic did the same for the Romans, but interestingly it did so by connecting Rome to the earlier Greek epics. In the Aeneid, the ancestors of the Romans are revealed to have been Trojans who fled to Italy after the events of the Iliad. Thus the Romans carved out a space for themselves in the world-view constructed by the Greek epics.

In the early 1800s, Americans were steeped in the stories of the Bible and their picture of the world was largely based on reading it literally. They knew the story of Noah and the Flood and imagined it recorded a history of the world covered in water. From that vantage, all the peoples of the world were believed to have descended from Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japeth. Common tradition held that Shem’s sons had settled Asia, Japeth’s Europe and Ham’s Africa.

This picture of the world included a gaping hole for Americans on the frontier. The whole New World around them had been unknown to the writers of the Bible and was not accounted for in the scriptures. How did American Indians fit into the Biblical world-view? There was no clear answer. From which of Noah’s three sons were Indians descended and how did they get to America after the flood? Were they one of the peoples scattered at the time of the Tower of Babel? Were they a remnant of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel? Were they the children of Gog and Magog or were they something else entirely? These and other questions loomed.

However, the Book of Mormon created a place within the Biblical world-view for the Americas by connecting ancient inhabitants of the New World to Bible stories like the Tower of Babel and the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. For believers who imagined that all the world descended from the family of Noah, the Book of Mormon created a particularly august lineage for American Indians, who were numbered among chosen people of the house of Israel.

We can draw one more comparison from the Greek and Roman epics. The Iliad and Odyssey were the product of pre-literate tradition, whose poetic forms were dictated by the nature of its oral composition. They sound like oral epic poems because that is what they are. The Aeneid, by contrast, was a literary composition, written by a single author. However, to create the same resonance and reverence, the author imitates the forms and language of earlier oral epics.

The Book of Mormon similarly uses the style and forms of the Old and New Testaments and the language of the King James translation of the Bible to invoke the spirit of scripture. And though the Biblical Testaments were compiled over the centuries from diverse sources, the Book of Mormon was revealed through a single conduit, just as Vergil was the sole author of the Aeneid.

What is the defining characteristic of scripture? If Job was not a historical person, is the message of the Book of Job diminished?

And so it’s a kind of treat for me these days to get to visit a place where Mormonism and the landscape are coterminus. I just got back home from a 3-day trip to Utah County, Utah. Utah Valley University (as UVSC will soon be known) invited me to present at their annual Mormon Studies Conference and was generous enough to spring for the trip.

It goes without saying that Utah Valley is very, very Mormon. My book for the airplane this trip was American Vertigo — Bernard-Henri Lévy’s attempt to retrace Alexis de Tocqueville’s seminal travelogue.  Lévy’s observations traveling around America remind me that commenting on the foreignness of Mormondom’s heartland is surely a well-plowed furrow on the Bloggernacle. And yet I shall plow on.

Just as Lévy inevitably visited the Mall of America in the suburbs of my hometown of Minneapolis, so I too visited Orem’s Missionary Mall.

Beneath the giant inflated missionary (shouldn’t he have an inflated companion?), young men called to serve can buy all the durable suits their mission will require. The same strip mall has a “Sister Missionary Mall” store too, plus a Deseret Book, an LDS Distribution Services center, two food storage preparation stores, an LDS wedding dress shop, as well as my personal favorite clothing store: “KneeShorts.”

Of course we were able to get fry sauce at Burgers Supreme — is there any clearer sign that you’re in Zion? — but it was also available in bulk at the grocery store. The grocery store had two full racks of LDS greeting cards: “Congratulations on your Mission Call!”  There was even a Spanish section: ”Felicidade en tu Bautismo!”

Beyond all that fun, the real treat for me was the BYU library. The University of Michigan has a decent Mormon history library — probably about twice as many books as I have. Both are just a drop in the vast sea of books and periodicals lining row after row of shelves at BYU. I could hang out in the general book stacks contentedly for weeks without coming up for air. But little more than an hour was possible because an even more tempting treasure lured me deeper into the library: the special collections archive.

The archives house a vast trove of early Mormon materials. Just one example — I was able to access a box containing a couple dozen letters my ancestors wrote to each other in the 1860s and 1870s. (The actual letters, not copies.) The LDS branch of the family lived in Salt Lake valley and the other (who had left Mormonism) lived in Council Bluffs. In one letter, written by my great great grandmother, she described meeting a young man while attending school.  Sometime after the letter was penned this young man went on to become my great great grandfather.

As I was leaving special collections I ran into a scholar who had also come from out of state for the Mormon Studies conference. Having found his own priceless treasure, he told me, “Every minute I’m here is precious,” and added, “What’s shocking is how many people live in this valley and have never once taken advantage of the resources right here that we have to plan and travel to find!”

Too true!

Nauvoo was a mistake. At the close of the Missouri Mormon War in the winter of 1838-39, the Saints crossed the icy Mississippi. The people of Quincy, Illinois, were aghast at their condition and opened their hearts and their homes to the refugees. A new gathering place needed to be planted and the church soon found a hopeful location upriver from Quincy — approximately at the border between Illinois, Missouri and the Iowa Territory.

The bulk of the land the church purchased was in Iowa, but the relatively small tract in Illinois included the plats of the failed town of Commerce. Soon, Stakes were founded on both sides of the River. Commerce was renamed Nauvoo and the Iowa settlement was called Zarahemla — named for the most important city in the Book of Mormon.

Nauvoo was in Hancock County, an established area with a significant non-Mormon population that included the reasonable sized towns of Warsaw and Carthage. As with the church’s experience in Kirtland, it would be difficult and expensive for poor church members to gather to the area and buy farmland (and conflict with existing “old settlers” was almost inevitable). Iowa, by contrast, was wide open. For an industrious, agricultural people, land was the key ingredient to fuel a successful settlement. With hindsight, it’s very clear that Zarahemla should have become the church’s headquarters. Nauvoo was a mistake.

Unfortunately for Joseph Smith and the Saints, the Illinoians were seductively generous. Anxious to court the Saints for their own political gains, state Democrats and Whigs offered Joseph and his people every inducement they could wish for. Within a handful of years, Nauvoo grew to become a major town, while Zarahemla never got off the ground.

It might just as easily have gone the other way. If so, how would history change? Let me propose an alternate timeline.

• 1842 Headquarters of the Mormon Church and home to Joseph Smith, Zarahemla becomes the largest city in Iowa Territory.

• 1845 Iowa’s statehood negotiations threaten to collapse over a so-called “spiritual wife” scandal, allegedly involving Zarahemla Mayor (and church President) General Joseph Smith. Smith averts the crisis by publicly renouncing the practice and expelling guilty members from the church, including former confidant, Brigham Young.

• 1846 nearly 20,000 of Iowa Territory’s 90,000 residents are Mormon, making the Saints the decisive voting block in the convention. Smith’s successful maneuvers see Zarahemla made the state capital, while a non-Mormon is elected the state’s first governor.

• 1847 Dedication of the Zarahemla temple.

• 1851 California and New Mexico admitted to the Union, while Idaho, Kansas, Dakota, and Utah Territories created as part of the “Compromise of 1851.” Some Mormons take part in the settlement of Dakota, but none of the other western territories.

• 1854 Joseph Smith elected 4^th governor of Iowa as a Democrat. He is turned out of office in the Republican revolution of 1858.

• 1861 Missouri becomes the only border state to join the Confederacy. Mormon Iowa and Missouri replay old grudges in some of the most bitter local militia skirmishes of the war.

• 1867 Joseph Smith begins to ordain women as deaconesses, teachers, priestesses and high priestesses.

• 1869 Sidney Rigdon dropped from the First Presidency, in favor of Joseph Smith III. Transcontinental railroad routed through Zarahemla.

• 1879 Joseph Smith dies of natural causes. Joseph III ordained in his place by Parley P. Pratt, President of the Quorum of Twelve and by First Presidency Counselor Amasa M. Lyman.

In history after Joseph Smith’s death, things continue along the changed timelines for Mormonism, Iowa and the West. The Mormon Church follows the trajectory from highly peculiar to essentially moderate. Its expansion in the US is stunted, but this is more than made up for numerically overseas. By 2008, the church claims 25 million members worldwide, although this number includes only 2 million in the US (half of which are in Iowa). The largest proportion of the membership is in Africa, followed by Latin America.

Happy ever might have been?  Or might not?  What do you think?

Meeting together in person to exchange ideas, you ask? Haven’t you heard of the “internets” John Hamer? Hasn’t the awesome nature of the MormonMatters Blog made attending a Mormon studies conference IRL (in real life) as obsolete as reading a printed book?!

As incredible as online connections can be, you can’t imagine the fun you’re missing at a real life Mormon studies conference until you’ve been to one in person. I went to my first Mormon History Association conference in May of 2003 and I got hooked. Like the guy in the old Gillette commercials, “I love these things so much, I bought the company” — or my case with JWHA, it might be phrased: “I got roped into being responsible for the association.”

This year I’m planning to attend half a dozen of these conferences and I want to make the plug for two that I will be participating in this April.

First up: The MORMON STUDIES CONFERENCE at Utah Valley University (fka UVSC), April 1, in Orem, Utah. The topic: “Restoration Christianity: Commonality and Divergence in the Latter Day Saint Movement.”

This is going to be a fun little conference. Yours truly will be kicking it off with an overview of the whole Latter Day Saint movement — I’ve put together dozens of charts that I’ll use to explain how the hundreds of different Mormon churches connect historically. That should sell you right there, but wait — there’s more! Grant Underwood and Sally Barringer Gorden are joined by Steve Shields, author of Divergent Paths of the Restoration, Vickie Speek, author of the new book on the Strangites, Jean Addams, expert on the Temple Lot church, and Michael Van Wagenen, author of a book on the Wightites. Also presenting will be President Frederick N. Larsen, a great great grandson of Joseph Smith Jr. and Prophet of the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. If you want to talk about this topic and you live in Utah, you’re not going to get a better chance than this conference!

Next up: The RESTORATION STUDIES SYMPOSIUM in Independence, Missouri, April 11-13. For those of us in the Midwest, Mormon Studies can often seem far away. Here’s your chance to attend a great conference that’s in driving distance.

The Symposium is going to be little larger than the UVSC conference. Starting on Friday evening with a screening of “A Mormon President,” the opening address will be the President Wallace B. Smith, the great grandson of Joseph Smith and Prophet Emeritus of the Community of Christ. Smith will give his personal reflections on the transformation of the Reorganized Church in his lifetime. There will be a host of exciting sessions all day Saturday, concluding with an address Jan Shipps — whom I consider a mentor. Jan will share insights from her upcoming book, which synthesizes a lifetime of observations about the changes in Mormonism since World War II. I think this will be her most important book and you won’t want to miss her preview.

Sunday morning will include an insider’s tour of the Community of Christ Temple complex in Independence. At the tour’s end, church Archivist Ron Romig will open the vaults and display a number of treasures, including David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery’s seerstones, the Anthon transcript, King James J. Strang’s sceptor, and much, much more!

If you can come to either or both of these, I’m very sure you won’t regret it. The best part of the experience is getting to meet all of these personalities in Mormon studies and sharing ideas with them directly. Hope to see you there.

My excitement peaked when a massive foundation was laid for what ultimately proved to be a temple. The temple walls rose quickly and were faced with stone quarried nearly. Initially it looked like it might be modelled on the Nauvoo temple, but ultimately it took its own unique form (somewhat reminiscent of the St. George temple).

In the meantime the FLDS church has come under increasing pressure. The church’s Prophet (Warren Jeffs) was apprehended, tried and convicted by government* authorities. Control of the church’s traditional financial trust (the UEP) was taken over by the courts. And yet nothing has stopped the new Zion from growing.  (*corrected by SamB, see his response #14.) 

The first three dorms have been joined by a dozen more. In addition, there are five or six massive homes and countless trailers. There are a number of warehouses, a dairy/cheese factory, cement mixers, a powdercoat shop, barns, silos, orchards, a stoneworks and a quarry.

In addition to the temple, a new stone structure with similar walls has just been built — apparently a church. Both the temple and the chruch have massive ramps. Why are they necessary? (Compare the size of the ramps with the pickup trucks in the foreground of the picture above.)

Apparently, the growing town’s water system is now capable of supporting a population of 3,000. Interestingly enough, the entire non-Mormon population of the surrounding county is only 2,935.

What will the FLDS church do next? Still unanswered is the question I’ve had from the very beginning: what happens this time when the Mormons outnumber the “original settlers”?

What do folks think will happen next?

The Temple staffmembers were excited, but skeptical. If Clinton were coming, wouldn’t they have heard from the secret service directly?

It turns out that there were quite a few Hillary supporters on the Temple staff. If the 14th Article of Faith in the LDS church is “We believe in the Republican Party…” it seems that the opposite is true in the Community of Christ. (If there are any Community of Christ members who vote Republican, they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut about it when their coreligionists are around.)

Six of us got up to a frigid and snowy Saturday morning and joined the Ohioans lined up to get into the Kirtland High School gymnasium. (We didn’t have far to go; KHS is next door both to the Visitor Center and to the house where I was staying.)

The doors opened at 8am and Bill Clinton was scheduled to arrive at 8:30. The High School band was playing a mixture of pop standbys (the Jackson 5′s “ABC”) and patriotic classics (“God Bless America”). Around 9:15 — still no Bill — everyone stood as the band played the national anthem. Finally at 9:30 it was announced that Clinton would be here… in 15 minutes.

Fortunately this promise was kept and the former president arrived just over an hour late. Just as fortunate, Ohio’s governor and lieutenant governor kept their introductions very short. There were about three or four rows of people standing between me and Clinton. However, I’m 6’4″ and Ohioans are not a particularly tall people, so I had a very unobstructed view. It was the first time I’d attended a presidential political rally since 1992, when then-candidate Bill Clinton addressed a huge group of students on the campus of the University of Michigan.

Clinton made his pitch well: He had 3 major reasons and about 27 sub-reasons to vote for Hillary. He continues to be a very likable, personable person who speaks well. He’s very intelligent, but speaks in a way that is approachable and folksy — probably deliberately so. (He said “the al-qaeda” about half a dozen times, even though I’m sure he knows very well that “al” means “the”).

He got laughs, applause and cheers — I gave him all three, even though I’ve already endorsed Obama. I don’t have any hard feelings. Meanwhile, I already predicted back on February 10 — when Hillary was still up 20 points in Ohio and Texas — that she’d lose both and would drop out soon afterward. That prediction was a lot more bold back then than it would be now, but we’ll soon see if I’m right.

I headed back over to the Visitor Center right after the rally, just in case Clinton decided to show up for the tour after all. However, the fact that he was already running an hour late meant that any fat in his schedule would have to be trimmed.

As we watched his motorcade drive off down Chillecothe Road, we realized that Bill Clinton would not be the first president since James Garfield to visit the Temple — at least not that day. That honor will have to wait until another day.

Unlike some of their religious contemporaries, early Mormons did not reject or fear science; they embraced it. Their cosmology (view of the universe) expanded the Biblical scope of creation to include souls on worlds without number. Their cosmogony (explanation for the universe’s origin) embraced contemporary science which held that matter could not be created ex nihilo. (The contemporary scientific “law of conservation of mass” contradicted the Genesis account but was perfectly attuned to the creation described in the Book of Abraham.)

Let me propose that Mormons today needn’t be locked into a world-view that embraces science up through 1844, and rejects subsequent advances in our understanding of geology, astronomy and biology. The understanding of the universe can be elastic, because a veil runs through it.

And there were many whose faith was so exceeding strong even before Christ came, which could not be kept from within the veil, but truly saw with their eyes the things that they had beheld with an eye of faith, and they were glad.

— Book of Mormon (1830) p. 564, (LDS) Ether 12:19, (CoC) Ether 5:19.

Gaze through the veil and picture in your mind’s eye a vision of Eden: the Pre-Mortal Earth perfected in its Celestial Sphere. All of the animals and plants are accounted for, but their condition is utterly different from the familiar mortal plane, for there is no death and no birth in the world. Mortal time itself has no place in the Garden. Placed in the world by the Gods are Michael and Sidri’el of the great ones, valiant leaders both in the Psuchemachy, the Pre-Mortal battle between Lucifer and Jehovah. As Adam and Eve, they exist on Earth and possess physical bodies in the image of their Heavenly Parents’ bodies. But Earth remains in the Celestial Sphere. No progress is possible in this timeless, perfect condition.

— Behold the Fall — a moment of cataclysm — of discontinuity —

Where once the world was whole and wholly a part of Eden, now three Spheres overlap: Celestial, Terrestrial and Telestial. They exist simultaneously together and apart — for they are separated by a veil. The world itself has experienced the Fall and its material forms have become Terrestrial and mortal. Adam and Eve too have been cast out of Eden and become mortal. They now experience time and can progress according to Salvation’s plan. They now have a future and in time their physical bodies will die. But time is linear, and following the line back, their physical existence also has a mortal past.

They are primitives and they are part of a group of humans, the first two to possess human spirits. They are not animals, but in the Terrestrial sphere their forms were now born of animals, whose roots trace back lineally through time to the beginning of mortal life.  Their vantage is now grounded in Terrestrial existence. And, like their physical children (down to us), they will live out their lives with mortal eyes, glimpsing the heavenly Sphere they have lost (and will return to) only in fleeting memories and occasional visions — when God sees fit to throw back the veil.

Mustering the tools of choice for the preschool set — crayons, construction paper, markers, scissors and paste — and marshalling my sister Carol’s and my artistic skills, we boldly tackled the project. As the oldest, it looks like I claimed the right to draw all the Nephites and Nephite cities, leaving the Lamanites and their cities to Carol.

The narrative begins with the ship — a double-masted cog, resembling nothing so much as Columbus’s Nina or Pinta — which landed on the southwest coast of the Land Southward. Details in this area include Lehi’s tombstone, a delightfully cross Lamanite (with striped pants) and an Elephant (Cumom) eating peanuts with his trunk.

A dotted line follows Nephi’s trek inland…

The Land of Nephi is represented by a beautiful walled, Arabesque city, with tall towers and onion domes — not a hint of Chichen Itza to be had. In front of the city is Nephi’s tombstone along with Abinadi, who is being burned at the stake by King Noah. The first path from Nephi leads northwest past a frolicking herd of horses — make no mistake, there were horses in the Land of Promise! — and past a Lamanite Queen with her two children. Paths for Zeniff, Limhi’s scouts and Ammon come back to the city and a second path away is blazed by Alma to the Waters of Mormon.

In the northeast corner of the Land Southward (near the narrow neck) is Zarahemla — complete with a “Z” emblazoned on the wall. In front of the city, the Nephites in tents listen to King Benjamin preach from a tall tower. (Nearby the city of Ammonihah is labelled “destroyed.”)

The main feature of the Land Northward is the Land of Desolation, where Limhi’s scouts in yellow robes discover 24 plates.

Taking the map as a whole, the Land Northward’s obvious United-States-like shape leaves little doubt that we understood the text to encompass the entire Western Hemisphere. It’s clear that as a Mormon family in 1976, we had a very traditional picture of Book of Mormon geography — one which today has been recaste as just one of several “theories.”

But remarkably, 1910 was the year that a black man was called and ordained to be an apostle. His name was John Penn and he was the first African American apostle of the Restoration Era.

Although in 1910, Latter Day Saints who traced their connection to Joseph Smith through the leadership of Brigham Young still banned blacks from the priesthood, this was not true for all Latter Day Saints. Taking the opposite stance was the Church of Jesus Christ that traced its line to Joseph Smith through the leadership of Sidney Rigdon and William Bickerton. Headquartered amid the steel foundaries of greater Pittsburgh, in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, Bickertonite membership was concentrated primarily in the industrial corridor between New Jersey and Detroit.

Although most Bickertonites were working class men and women of modest education, they had always embraced the ideal of racial integration and they preached the restored gospel to fellow workers regardless of race. This idealism was shown to be more than lip service when African American men were ordained to the church’s highest leadership positions, that of Seventy (of which there are precisely 70) and the Twelve (of which there are 12).

John Penn served as an apostle from 1910-1955, during which time he was an active missionary who brought the restored gospel to many other souls, especially working class Italian Americans.

Hats off to our Bickertonite cousins this Black History Month.

If that’s where Mormons find themselves, we should ask:  What lessons can they learn from Log Cabin Republicans?

In the first place, we should note that Log Cabin Republicans are not an interest/identity group. Gay people are the interest group. This is a critical distinction.

Mormons today are block voters. With only anemic exceptions, they vote Republican as a group as an identity issue, i.e., without regard to their own individual self-interests. This is the kind of voter political parties like the most: block voters are chicks that parties can count before they’ve hatched. Mormons today are among the most reliable voting blocks either party has.

But what’s a chick to do when he finds out he’s seen as an ugly duckling?

Let’s go back to Log Cabin Republicans. After the anti-Gay vitriol of the 2004 US election (which easily trumps the anti-Mormon sentiments shown this year), a lot of people were saying, “You’d have to be crazy to be a Log Cabin Republican” and who are these guys? I’m a gay small business owner and I have a bunch of Log Cabin Republican friends. If they’re crazy, I’ll tell you that it’s like a fox.

By maintaining a high profile in the GOP, Log Cabin Republicans are doing two things. In the first place, they are using considerable moneyed donations to support candidates in the GOP who avoid anti-gay demagoguery. This year they campaigned hard against Mitt (who flip-flopped from being pro-gay to being a bigot) and in favor of McCain, who is on record being opposed to a pro-discrimination constitutional amendment. This year the Gay foxes won while the Mormon chicks lost.

The second and more important thing that Log Cabin Republicans do is illustrate to the Democratic party that Gays are not just block voters that Democrats are free to keep in the bank and ignore. And frankly, they don’t ignore us and the contrast for Mormons and the GOP should be eye-opening to you. Gay people are a tiny, tiny minority group. Our population is concentrated in urban areas that are Democratic strongholds and even there, we don’t have the raw votes to be a majority in single municipality of any size. Mormons, by contrast, are geographically concentrated and have the ability to make a very serious and immediate political impact this election. And yet the idea that the GOP could lose Utah’s electoral votes this fall is hardly taken seriously by any pundit.

In 2004, Log Cabin Republicans showed their disdain by closing their pocketbooks to the GOP. It wasn’t enough to throw the election, but it did illustrate that their money, time and votes could not be taken for granted. After this primary season, if the Mormons still line up like good chicks and give their electoral votes to the GOP, how can the party do anything but take Mormons for granted now and in the future?

See Breitbart, TIME and CNN for the story.  Romney is quoted saying:

This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters … many of you right here in this room … have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming president. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country

1844 Joseph Smith Jr. (no party) — In an era when the separation of church and state were still absolute, Smith was the first clergyman to run for president. As such, he did not emphasize his role as a prophet or as president of the Mormon church. Instead, he campaigned as “General Joseph Smith” (of the Nauvoo Legion of the Illinois militia). Smith organized the Council of Fifty whose chief goal was to campaign to get him elected president. The Fifty ratified Smith’s choice of Sidney Rigdon for Vice President, and then spread out across the country campaigning for the Smith-Rigdon ticket. Smith’s positions were expressed in a widely distributed pamphlet entitled “General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States.” Dominating the day was the question of Texas annexation, which Smith favored. This was a very popular position in the western states which were interested in expansion and cheap land. People in the eastern states viewed the question more soberly because annexation meant an unprovoked war with Mexico. The leading contenders for the Democratic and Whig party nominations were Martin Van Buren and Henry Clay, both of whom came out against annexation. Smith’s initial, quixotic hope was to capture enough of the pro-expansion vote to prevent a clear winner in the Electoral College, throwing the choice to the House of Representatives, where he planned to bargain as John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay had done in 1824. The Democrats’ surprise nomination of James K. Polk and their adoption of a pro-expansionist ticket upset those plans and ultimately resulted in their victory that year. Meanwhile in June of 1844, Smith himself became the first US presidential candidate ever to be assassinated while most of the Fifty were still out on the campaign trail.

3 MAJOR PARTY RUNS

1968 George W. Romney (Republican) — Born in the Mormon polygamist colonies in Mexico, Mitt Romney’s father had been president of American Motors and had become the popular governor of Michigan. Romney was a liberal Republican who eliminated the state’s massive budget deficit by imposing the state’s first income tax. For the 1968 election, Romney was initially the leading choice for the Rockefeller wing of the Republican party and he quickly emerged as the party’s frontrunner. However, Romney’s muddled position on the Vietnam War (he was for it before he became unclear about it and then ultimately came out against it) became unpopular among Republicans and Romney dropped out before the primaries, leaving the nomination to Richard Nixon. The Mormon Question: Because Romney was a vocal supporter of civil rights for blacks in the face of the LDS church’s active political opposition, he was viewed as an independent thinker. These circumstances neutralized the question of whether Romney would be “taking orders” from Salt Lake, and his Mormon identity did not have a major impact on his candidacy.

1976 Morris K. “Mo” Udall (Democrat) — Born to one of Arizona’s prominent political families, Mo Udall was raised LDS but broke with the church over the question of race policies. Udall was a prominent member of Congress who had been a House whip behind the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and the Campaign Finance Reform Acts of 1971 and 1974. Udall had been an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. With the weakness of Gerald Ford and the post-Watergate GOP, the Democratic field was full in 1976. Gov. Jimmy Carter emerged as a surprise early frontrunner, but Udall hung on through the primary season as other more prominent rivals dropped out. A couple of close losses for Udall in Wisconsin and Michigan sealed the nomination for Carter who went on to win the presidency. The Mormon Question: Udall’s status as a lapsed Mormon had little effect on the campaign.

2000 Orrin G. Hatch (Republican) — Although raised in a working class family in Pittsburgh and pro-union in his early years, Hatch converted to hardcore Republicanism and pulled off a surprise victory in 1977 race for Sentator from Utah. By 2000, Hatch saw himself as a moderate conservative with a record of working with Democrats. He threw himself into a large GOP field already dominated by previous GOP president’s son, George W. Bush. Hatch’s rationale was that he would serve as a “kind of election insurance policy,” should Bush’s campaign collapse for any reason. Unfortunately for Hatch, Republican voters preferred other brands of insurance, leaving him last in both fund-raising and caucus votes. The Mormon Question: Hatch’s long-shot campaign itself invoked the Mormon question as nearly all of Hatch’s fundraising came from LDS members and Hatch openly called upon Iowa Mormons to caucus for him. Hatch then blamed anti-Mormon bigotry for his dismal showing.

5 MINOR PARTY RUNS

1920 Parley P. Christiansen (Farmer-Labor) — A lapsed Mormon raised in Idaho, Christensen was an activist in the labor movement who hoped to reactivate the progressive impulse that had led to a number of reforms in the early 20th century. He received over 265,000 votes and Farmer-Labor party became a player in places like Washington state and Minnesota. (In Minnesota it eventually merged with the Democratic party, which is why Minnesota Democrats are known as DFLers.)

1968 Ezra Taft Benson (American Independent) — The most politically active member of the LDS hierarchy in the later 20th century, Benson was Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower, where he became known for taking opposition to Communism to the point of obsession. The John Birch Society and the “Committee of 76″ worked to create a third party ticket of Benson for President and outspoken segregationist Strom Thurmond for VP. Later, when George Wallace emerged as the Presidential candidate for the segregationist American Independent party ticket, Wallace indicated that Benson was his first choice for VP. David O. McKay was persuaded to deny Benson permission to run on either ticket.

1968 Eldridge Cleaver (Peace and Freedom) — Prior to joining the Mormon church, Eldridge Cleaver was a radical left-wing activist in the black power movement. If elected president, he promised to burn the White House down. By the 1980s, Cleaver converted to Mormonism and became an ardent right-wing Republican.

1984 Sonia Johnson (Citizens) — Feminist activist and former chair of Mormons for ERA, Sonia Johnson had been excommunicated in 1979. In 1984 she continued to promote gender equality by running on the left-wing pro-environment Citizens party ticket and was simultaneously endorsed by the Socialist Party USA and the Peace and Freedom party.

1992 James G. “Bo” Gritz (Populist) — Bo Gritz was a convert to the LDS church, a conspiracy theorist and a white supremacist. The right-wing Populist Party had previously run KKK leader David Duke in its campaign to roll back perceived preferential treatment for non-whites. After his 1992 campaign, Gritz was subsequently disfellowshipped by the LDS church for his vocal advocacy against paying Federal income tax.

The early Latter Day Saints believed that Christ would return in their lifetimes to usher in the Millennium, so I was not surprised at all to see that so many of the blessings included the promise that the recipient would live to see that day. For example, Joseph Sr. blessed future LDS church president Wilford Woodruff that “Thou shalt stand in the flesh and see the winding up of this generation. Thou shalt remain on the earth to behold the Savior come in the clouds of heaven.” (Blessing given on 13 April 1837).

Much more surprising were the specific priesthood powers Joseph Sr. mentioned. I have often heard of the ability to move mountains as an example of a potential priesthood power, but in a blessing to Joseph Cooper, Joseph Sr. predicts Br. Cooper will excercise that power: “Thou… shall do many miracles, Mountains shall remove at thy word, prisons shall not hold thee…”

The power that comes next in the blessing is even more interesting, as Joseph Sr. states: “thou shalt translate thyself from planet to planet…” (Blessing given on 14 May 1836).

Joseph Cooper is not alone in his ability to “translate” (teleport) himself. Ethan Barrows was similarly promised: “Thou shalt have power to translate thyself from land to land, and from country to country, from one end of heaven to the other, & when thy work is done, thou shalt be translated from earth to heaven.” (Blessing given by Joseph Smith Sr. on 23 March 1836).

William Harris meanwhile was promised the power “to translate thyself and change into a shadow, so that if any shall smite at thee they shall only hit thy shadow and thou shall be in another place.” (Blessing given by Joseph Smith Sr. on 2 May 1836).

These are some pretty exciting priesthood powers! And I think the belief in these powers illustrates the excitement of the early Mormons. There was nothing separating them from the miraculous stories recounted in the Bible and Book of Mormon. They were living out the verses of a new book of scriptures — the last few pages of the last book that would be written before the world’s end.

I knew it wasn’t. My work with the John Whitmer Historical Association for the last few years has allowed me to form close connections with a number of Community of Christ leaders. But since this had been preached from the pulpit as a fact, I wanted to respond with definitive facts. So I talked to my friend Barbara Walden who is the director of the Kirtland Temple, and I put the question to her directly.

Of course the answer, unequivocally, was no. But it’s no surprise that she’d heard the question before. This particular canard has had a long enough shelf life that the Community of Christ probably could justify adding it to an FAQ list on their website. My friend Steve Shields who works at church headquarters in Independence, Missouri, loves to tell a much better variant of this Kirtland Temple story. One of his LDS friends had it on good authority that the LDS church was “in negotiations” to buy the Kirtland Temple for the sum of $40 million. Again, Steve knew this wasn’t the case, but he called the office of the First Presidency to confirm or deny the rumor. Grant McMurray, who was then one of the counselors conferred with his colleagues. President McMurray told Steve that he could tell his LDS friend that the answer was, quote: “hell, no!”

This is hardly the only faith-promoting LDS rumor that is frequently repeated about the RLDS/Community of Christ. LDS Mormons seem to know a lot of facts about their Reorganized Latter Day Saint cousins. The only problem is that most of these facts aren’t facts at all.

Let me cover a few more myths that I hear all the time:

* The RLDS church only gave women the priesthood because they ran out of male Smiths to lead the church. False. It’s true that the Prophet Wallace B. Smith, great grandson of Joseph Smith Jr. — who is still alive and serves as Emeritus (or retired) President of the church — had daughters, but no sons. However, there are plenty of male descendents of Joseph Smith Jr. who are members of the Community of Christ and who are even major figures in the church. It would have been very easy to continue to keep the presidency in the Smith family. However, President Smith did not feel called to do so; rather, he felt called to end the practice.

* The Community of Christ scrapped the Book of Mormon in order to join the World Council of Churches (WCC). False. The Community of Christ has not scrapped the Book of Mormon. I do think people who view the Book of Mormon as a literal history book are in the minority in the Community of Christ. However, these same believers have a generally more sophisticated view of scripture in general. Much of the events of the Bible are not literal histories, from Adam and Noah to the Judean kings. There doesn’t have to have been a real person named Job to make the scripture inspired. What the Community of Christ has scrapped is the exclusivist claim to be “the one and only true church.” The church now understands that while its own heritage has been inspired by God, other churches and individuals have also been inspired and are valid.

* The RLDS church changed its name because it wants to become another Protestant church. False. Charles D. Neff, who was one of the more important RLDS apostles in the later 20th century was actually a convert. He told the story that when he first heard the name of the church, “The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” his reaction was, “that is a terrible name for a church.” And he was right. Frankly, the LDS church has a terrible name too. The church was established in 1830 as the “Church of Christ.” That name was indistinct and was often confused with other churches of the same name, especially the Campbellite Church of Christ (Disciples of Christ). So, in 1834, the name of the church was changed to “Church of the Latter Day Saints.” That change upset members who had come to believe the Campbellite doctrine that God’s true church must have Christ’s name in it, so in 1838 the name was changed to “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” (The spelling “Latter-day Saints” was used occasionally in the early church, but LDS church only formalized that spelling in Utah.) “Reorganized” was legally added to the name in the late 19th century in order to protect church property from the Federal anti-polygamy legislation. The change in 2001 to “Community of Christ” was meant to evoke the church’s heritage (by returning close to the original name), while emphasizing one of the core values that Reorganized Latter Day Saints have always drawn from their organization: the special sense of community.

* The LDS church should not end priesthood discrimination on basis gender (or adopt any other progressive ideal); look at what happened to the RLDS church. Whereas the other myths are relatively harmless, I find this one to be pernicious. The problem with this comparison is that it assumes that at some point in the 1970s, the LDS and the RLDS church were in the same place and their different paths almost function like a controlled science experiment. The reality is that the organizations aren’t comparable and never were.

The two have always been composed of extremely different types of Mormons. RLDS members at their core are dissenters and free-thinkers — the Mormon value they have always put first is free agency. For the RLDS, William Law (the editor of the Nauvoo Expositor) is a hero because he fought against creeping theocracy and corruption in the church, even though it meant taking on Joseph Smith Jr. himself. The people who became LDS, by contrast, were the mass of movement’s obeyers. For the people who joined Brigham Young’s organization, William Law was a Judas. It doesn’t matter that he was exposing terrible abuses of authority because it is of paramount importance to obey the hierarchy, right or wrong: Enter into polygamy because the leader commands it; cease polygamy for the same reason.

The fact that the two groups have always had this fundamentally opposite market differentiation means that the LDS organization has nothing to learn whatsoever from the RLDS organization’s experience. It would be impossible for MicroSoft to emulate Apple’s business practices because Apple has always been a niche player, while MicroSoft is working as the broad-based establishment. Let’s say Apple successfully branded itself to a particular niche of young, trendy professionals. If MicroSoft attempted to ape that success with similar marketing schemes, it would most likely only succeed in alienating its much broader client base.

Does the Community of Christ’s experience (for good or ill) presage the results the LDS church can expect to reap when women are eventually ordained and welcomed into the leadership? In the words of the RLDS First Presidency, the true answer is: “hell, no!”

Mitt Romney is a terribly weak candidate. He comes off as a phony, primarily because he is a phony. The charge of being a “flip-flopper” has stuck to him (because it’s true) and Romney’s counter message — that he’s legitimately changed his mind and become a true believer in regressionism — has gone no where because it’s not genuine.

Ultimately, even if Romney eventually is the last man standing in the Republican primary season and becomes the nominee, he will not have the support of the core voters in the GOP coalition: fundamentalist Christianists. Christianists know “Mormonism is a cult” like they know that “the fossil record is explained by the Flood.” Although Romney would still be able to count on some in this group — hard-core racists if Obama is the Democratic nominee and hard-core Clinton-haters if Clinton is — a large proportion will stay home come November, rather than vote for a cultist. Meanwhile, Romney is so weak that if he loses Michigan, he’s probably washed out.

The current incarnation of the GOP is not a legitimate US party because its policies and positions are absolutely inimical to all of America’s national interests. As such, the GOP today is anti-America. It is essential for the Republican party to lose control of the presidency this year because it is critical for the US to turn around and head down a different path than the one we are now on. It’s likewise essential for the GOP to suffer a devastating loss this year so that the forces that currently control it are wiped out. If that happens, a new, legitimate, pro-American incarnation of the GOP can emerge again.

Mike Huckabee is the best candidate to ensure that essential, curative GOP loss come November, but Mitt Romney is a close second. (Huckabee seems unlikely to win Michigan today and, unlike Romney, he doesn’t need to win it to stay competitive.)

Meanwhile, having the battle for the GOP nomination continue beyond February 5 also should help the Republican party by further hurting its chances in the general election. It’s tough medicine, but it’s essential to cure what ails the party and the US.

And that’s why I cast my vote for Mitt. Go Mitt!

SYMPTOMS: Americans have an anti-Mormon bias which manifests itself on the right with Evangelicals who call Mormonism “non-Christian” (and who cost Mitt Romney the Iowa Republican Caucus) and on the left with secularists and atheists decrying Mormonism’s foundational stories as an obvious “fraud.”

DIAGNOSIS: Mormons are “persecuted” by non-Mormons for their “weird” beliefs.

RECOMMENDED TREATMENT: De-emphasize (or eliminate) weird beliefs. Explain Mormonism using highly-nuanced language, which we (as Mormons) believe will satisfy non-Mormon ears (“milk before meat”).

We keep going back to the doctor because the symptoms persist. We keep refilling the prescription — and we now seem addicted to the medicine.

Unfortunately, that the diagnosis is wrong. Weird beliefs are not causing the symptoms. In the past generation, America generally has become increasingly tolerant of weird beliefs. America is more broadly pluralistic because of the influx of traditional religions that were previously unrepresented in the US (and therefore are filled with unfamiliar, weird beliefs), e.g., Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, and also because the rise of indigenous weird beliefs: wicca, neo-paganism, American Buddhism and the various New Age ideas. (Is America ready for a neo-pagan president? No, because the masses of neo-pagans are college kids. Is America ready for a Sikh president? No, because most Sikhs are 1st generation immigrants. Is America ready for a Mormon president? Yes. Mo Udall would have beaten Gerald Ford, if he had bested Jimmy Carter in the 1976 Democratic primaries.) My point is that our society is prepared to be more broadly pluralistic than ever before. The primary component of pluralism is tolerance for our neighbor’s weird beliefs.

If it’s not so-called weird beliefs, what’s the real cause? I believe the cause of the problem is medicine we keep taking and that the underlying and resulting problem we face is credibility. It’s the milk before meat approach itself that undermines Mormon credibility. The examples of how this true problem manifests itself are so numerous — even in the past year alone — it’s hard to pick from among them. Let’s consider just one of 21 Questions Answered About Mormon Faith that the Fox News prepared in conjunction wiht the LDS church’s PR folks:

Q: Does the Mormon Church believe its followers can become “gods and goddesses” after death?

A: We believe that the apostle Peter’s biblical reference to partaking of the divine nature and the apostle Paul’s reference to being ‘joint heirs with Christ’ reflect the intent that children of God should strive to emulate their Heavenly Father in every way. Throughout the eternities, Mormons believe, they will reverence and worship God the Father and Jesus Christ. The goal is not to equal them or to achieve parity with them but to imitate and someday acquire their perfect goodness, love and other divine attributes.

Whachama-come again? This is a hefty dose of the medicine of de-emphasizing weird beliefs when speaking to non-Mormons. Can you argue that this bizarre answer is “not false”? Of course! And whenever anyone argues that any one of these medicinal answers is false, apologetic Mormons across the blogosphere will leap into heroic action in the answer’s defense.

And that is the problem! The problem is not whether the medicinal answers can be argued to be “not-false.” The problem is that these answers are not open and forthright, and that they thus lack credbility.

The real problem Mormons face is not that we have weirdness. It’s that we lack credibility.