BYU has banned caffeinated soft drinks on campus for years.  I work for a few large national cable tv networks, and when they come to BYU, they often rant that they can’t find a good cup of coffee in Provo, and they are especially perplexed by the soft drink restrictions.  Often these guys fly in on red-eye flights, and a boost of caffeine is very helpful to keeping them alert during football and basketball broadcasts.  (I took one of those red-eye flights just this weekend, and drank some cheap cola to keep me awake.)

So, Coke and Pepsi are sold on campus, but without caffeine.  I find it an odd situation, and I don’t have much to say when these non-LDS people rant about banning caffeine on campus.  But it appears that President David O McKay was a bit more liberal on some of these Word of Wisdom issues.  We all know the admonition to “avoid the appearance of evil”, yet President McKay was more liberal than some on the subject of Coke.  Prince describes a situation where President McKay actually requested Coke.  From page 23, (emphasis in book)

During the intermission of a theatrical presentation, his host offered to get refreshments: “His hearing wasn’t very good, and I got right down in front of him and I said, ‘President McKay, what would you like to drink?  All of our cups say Coca Cola on them because of our arrangement with Coca Cola Bottling, but we have root beer and we have orange and we have Seven-Up.  What would you like to drink?’  And he said, ‘I don’t care what it says on the cup, as long as there is Coke in the cup.”⁸⁷ McKay’s point was simple and refreshing:  Don’t get hung up on the letter of the law to the point where you squeeze all of the spirit out of life.

But that’s not all.  Prince describes an interesting story concerning rum cake that President McKay ate. Also from page 23,

At a reception McKay attended, the hostess served rum cake.  ”All the guests hesitated, watching to see what McKay would do.  He smacked his lips and began to eat.”  When one guest expostulated, “‘But President McKay, don’t you know that is rum cake?’  McKay smiled and reminded the guest that the Word of Wisdom forbade drinking alcohol, not eating it.”⁸⁶

Some people have tried to add chocolate as being prohibited by the Word of Wisdom.  President McKay chided an apostle about this stance.  From page 23,

he gently chided Apostle John A. Widtsoe, whose wife advocated such a rigid interpretation of the Word of Wisdom as to proscribe chocolate because of the stimulants it contained, saying “John, do you want to take all the joy of of life?’”⁸⁵

Is anyone else surprised by these stories?  Do you think Mormons will ever relax to President McKay’s position on the Word of Wisdom?  When I was first married, my wife surprised me and cooked with wine.  Do others cook with wine, or do you avoid it for “the appearance of evil”?

I really miss my book club, but I am participating in the Stay LDS Book Club.  The first book that we have decided to read is Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza.  It is her story of the Rwandan Genocide.  I previously discussed the movie Hotel Rwanda, describing the events from Paul Russebagina’s point of view.  Immaculee has an incredibly inspiring story as well.  The book is intensely moving.

Growing up, Immaculee had no idea if she was a Hutu or a Tutsi.  Her parents had endured previous political unrest, and wanted to raise their children as if their tribe did not matter.  (It turns out she was a minority Tutsi.)  In 1994, this awful episode began, and she hid with 7 other women in a small bathroom.  She lost half her body weight, and spent literally 3 months praying.  (She is a Roman Catholic.)  The subtitle of the book is “Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust”.

She describes her attempt to forgive, even amidst this awful tragedy.  She describes a spiritual experience she had, while essentially witnessing a murder.  I don’t emotionally understand the experience, but I can slightly grasp it intellectually.  She describes hearing the murder of a Tutsi mother, and her child left to die:

page 93-94,

One night I heard screaming not far from the house, and then a baby crying.  The killers must have slain the mother and left her infant to die in the road.  The child wailed all night; by morning, its cries were feeble and sporadic, and by nightfall, it was silent.  I heard dogs snarling nearby and shivered as I thought about how that baby’s life had ended.  I prayed for God to receive the child’s innocent soul, and then I asked Him, How can I forgive people who would do such a thing to an infant?

I heard His answer as clearly as if we’d been sitting in the same room chatting: You are all my children…and the baby is with Me now.

It was such a simple sentence, but it was the answer to the prayers I’d been lost in for days.

The killers were like children.  Yes, they were barbaric creatures who would have to be punished severely for their actions, but they were still children.  They were cruel, vicious, and dangerous, as kids sometimes can be, but nevertheless, they were children.  They saw, but didn’t understand the terrible harm they’d inflicted.  They’d blindly hurt others without thinking, they’d hurt their Tutsi brothers and sisters, they’d hurt God–and they didn’t understand how badly they were hurting themselves.  Their minds had been infected with the evil that had spread across the country, but their souls weren’t evil.  Despite their atrocities, they were children of God, and I could forgive a child, although it would not be easy…especially when that child was trying to kill me.

In God’s eyes, the killers were part of His family, deserving of love and forgiveness.  I knew that I couldn’t ask God to love me if I were unwilling to love His children.  At that moment, I prayed for the killers, for their sins to be forgiven.  I prayed that God would lead them to recognize the horrific error of their ways before their life on Earth ended–before they were called to acocunt for their mortal sins.

I held on to my father’s rosary and asked God to help me, and again I hear His voice: Forgive them, they know not what they do.

I took a crucial step toward forgiving the killers that day.  My anger was draining from me–I’d opened my heart to God, and He’d touched it with His infinite love.  For the first time, I pitied the killers.  I asked God to forgive their sins and turn their souls toward His beautiful light.

That night I prayed with a clear conscience and a clean haert.  For the first time since I entered the bathroom, I slept in peace.

I still can’t fathom her capacity to forgive.  It is awe-inspiring to me.  After the war, she met the man (one of her neighbors), that killed her parents, stole their property, and burned her home to the ground.  Semana, the jailhouse guard allowed her to see him so she could spit on him if she wanted.  From page 204,

“He looted your parents’ home and robbed your family’s plantation, Immaculee.  We found your dad’s farm machinery at his house, didn’t we?”  Semana yelled at Felicien.  ”After he killed [your mother] Rose and [brother] Damascene, he kept looking for you…he wanted you dead so he could take over your property.  Didn’t you, pig?” Semana shouted again.

I flinched, letting out an involuntary gasp.  Semana looked at me, stunned by my reaction and confused by the tears streaming down my face.  He grabbed Felicien by the shirt collar and hauled him to his feet.  ”What do you have to say to her?  What do you have to say to Immaculee?”

Felicien was sobbing.  I could feel his shame.  He looked up at me for only a moment, but our eyes met.  I reached out, touched his hands lightly, and quietly said what I’d come to say.

“I forgive you.”

My heart eased immediately, and I saw the tension release in Felicien’s shoulders before Semana pushed him out the door and into the courtyard.  Two soldiers yanked Felicien up by his armpits and dragged him back toward his cell.  When Semana returned, he was furious.

“What was that all about, Immaculee?”  that was the man who murdered your family.  I brought him to you to question…to spit on if you wanted to.  But you forgave him!  How could you do that?  Why did you forgive him?”

I answered him with all truth:  ”Forgiveness is all I have to offer.”

I never want to experience a tragedy so awful.  I truly admire Immaculee’s capacity to forgive; she is a tremendous example of a Christian.

Sandra Tanner was interviewed on the 5:30 segment of the news, with her collection of every edition of McConkie’s book.  She provided me with her view of the decision:

I believe the main reason McConkie’s “Mormon Doctrine” was taken out of print was due to its candid discussion of LDS doctrines that the church is now trying to hide. Such teachings as God once being a man, his wife–Heavenly Mother, and Jesus being the literal, physical son of God are just a few of the doctrines that are being minimized in current manuals. If the LDS Church felt “Mormon Doctrine” presented a faulty compilation of their doctrines, why haven’t they issued an authorized compendium of their beliefs? Mormons often say to me, “That’s not official doctrine” as though there was some place to look up the official teachings. Where is the official systematic theology of Mormonism?

Interestingly, KUTV has posted their news stories from last night online, omitting any mention of this segment.  There is speculation that it was held due to criticism of the way it was reported.  We will update you here as more details become available.

Written in 1958, Mormon Doctrine has served as a reference book for members of the Church for over 50 years, but has recently gone out of vogue.  References to McConkie’s work were taken out of the Gospel Principles manual when it was reissued this year for use in Priesthood and Relief Society classes.  Now it seems it is being further phased out.  It is only surprising that this has not been done before, since Mormon Doctrine has not enjoyed the support of every member of the highest Church Councils over the years.

I’d like to hold a little “In Memoriam” session here at Mormon Matters for Bruce R. McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine.  It was the first book I ever purchased when a brand-new convert in 1979, in the authoritative-looking black-and-gold binding. It was the perfect place for a convert to go for a source of Church teachings in a pre-internet age.  Thus, it shaped much of my early thinking about the Church.  This was the third edition, having been revised to be “more moderate” in 1966, and then again in 1978 after the Priesthood revelation.  Much of the Bible Dictionary in our current editions of the LDS scriptures come directly from Mormon Doctrine.  McConkie himself described it as “the first major attempt to digest, explain, and analyze all of the important doctrines of the kingdom” and “the first extensive compendium of the whole gospel—the first attempt to publish an encyclopedic commentary covering the whole field of revealed religion.”  Its teachings have had a major impact upon several generations of Latter-day Saints.

How have you been impacted by Mormon Doctrine?

Update: The story is now up at Connect2Utah.

I was captivated by this 550-page novel, and fascinated by how relevant it is to readers of all backgrounds.  The story is told from the points of view of three main characters: Golden Richards, the convert to Mormon fundamentalism; Trish, one of his wives; and the preadolescent Rusty, one of Golden’s twenty-eight children.  If you’re of a certain age and a close reader, you’ll be able to place the time period in which it is set by the subtle cultural clues: a reference to Starsky and Hutch, a Sears Roebuck catalog, Postum, and a 1963 Cadillac with only 4,000 miles on it.  That Golden is presented as an apostle of a tiny polygamist sect in rural Utah doesn’t keep him from his true character of all-American everyman.  He has four wives, but some of the same marital challenges which are familiar to us all.  His twenty-eight children present him with the same provocations as my eight, and probably your four, and my neighbor’s two.  The fact that Udall is so skilled at probing the universalities of life gives his readers an opportunity to ponder our own life journeys as we enter into what we might otherwise consider the divergent spheres of the husband, wife, and child of a polygamous family.

Consider, for example, how much the description of a church service Golden attended connected not only to fundamentalist Mormons, but to mainstream Latter-day Saints as well as the rural roots of American Protestant religion.  In a sudden burst of emotion occasioned by the recent death of his mother and the preachings of “Uncle Chick,” Golden understands “that he is a changed person; his old self, that tattered shitty thing he never knew he so much despised, has been tossed aside.  Now Uncle Chick is finishing his testimony, affirming his faith in the gospel, in the saving Principle they hold so dear, and just before he finishes he smiles, as if apologizing for all the dramatics, and says, ‘Remember, brothers and sisters, God loves you,’ and Golden knows it is true.”  Then the announcement is made for a social to be held after the meeting with Sister Maxine’s famous walnut brownies.  The congregations sings a hymn, the words of which have never struck him quite as they do at that moment, and afterward the congregation of  ”red-cheeked children” and “smelly old farmers” and “hard-faced women” evokes every Church social I have ever attended.

In Golden’s triple-homed household, you’ll find little touches you may recognize from your own families; whether it be the notes one wife leaves in strategic places: “Turn off Light When Not in Use,” or efforts to unclog a toilet, or an idiosyncratic pet.  So when it comes to both the dysfunctionality the Richards’ experience and the strengths they lend each other, you’ll realize that these things have part and parcel in all of our lives.  You’ll nod when Golden pulls into his driveway under still-lit Christmas lights feeling that just maybe everything will be ALL RIGHT — and then you’ll cry when death and tragedy prove that nothing is OK, there is no explanation that suffices, and one has to find a way to go on.

For those readers who can’t stem the craving for a peek into the polygamous lifestyle, don’t worry, you’ll get your fix.  There’s a generous helping of all the pathos and loneliness the sharing of a husband evokes for a woman, as well of the comforts of having loyal sister wives when emergencies present themselves.  I love the scene where Trish has just delivered a stillborn baby and Golden won’t look at him.  Her sister-wife Beverly makes Golden hold the baby and sing him  a lullaby.  Then he is sent off to make arrangements while the four wives weep and admire the baby and hold hands and pray.  This scene is as beautiful as another is disturbing: Rose has to work up the courage to ask Trish if she will forego her night with Golden so he can attend a daughter’s high school band concert.

“He hasn’t been in over two weeks,” Trish whispered, even though now that the dryer had rattled into silence her words carried easily into every part of the room.  ”I’ve seen him twice in the past month.  If I don’t see him tonight, who knows how long it will be, you understand?  Rose?  I’m beginning to think he won’t even recognize me anymore.”

She laughed — a pathetic attempt to lighten the mood — but Rose only nodded, and Trish realized that both her eyes were now leaking tears.  Unable to speak or make a gesture of condolence or regret, she sat in the sunken chair, a black-hearted villain in her bank-robber’s mask, her shameful features hidden from view.  Nola, whose scissors had been poised above her customer’s springy hair during the entire exchange, sighed and resumed her snick snick snick.  Rose eased her hands from Trish’s grip and gently dried her hair with a towel.

She did not wait for Rose to comb out her tangled hair, did not wait for her turn in Nola’s chair.  A bitterness had risen in her throat, sudden and hot — that she should have to feel guilty for wanting to be a participant in her own life, that she should be ashamed of wanting to spend a few hours with her own husband! — and she knew she should leave immediately… She stepped out into the bright day, the sidewalk scorching white beneath her feet, the sky a pale panel of blue over her head, and walked slowly at first, her hair wet and wild, her face still covered with the handkerchief, and then began to run, making a break for it like the outlaw she was.

And then there are the comic moments in plural marriage, as when Golden gets a piece of gum stuck in the hair of a very personal spot!  You’ll have to read the book to hear about that one.  Oh yes, Brady Udall has captured life in polygamy as if he has lived it himself.

I think that if — back when I was a 19-year-old born-again Christian — someone had given me a synopsis of the contents of the Book of Mormon, that I would have declined to read it.  And perhaps if someone had divulged the story line of “The Lonely Polygamist” to me before I read it I might have considered it too depressing, too emotionally difficult to engage.  But interestingly enough, the Book of Mormon has taken me on an exciting and life-changing faith journey.  And Udall’s novel has provided surprising opportunities as well.  Its flawed and sometimes dysfunctional characters have paradoxically given me a measure of  hope.

“There are two kinds of people: those that say to God ‘Thy will be done.’  And those to whom God says ‘Ok, have it your way.’  C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.

“Under certain circumstances profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”  Mark Twain.

Larry King wrote a book called Powerful Prayers.  He tells a joke on page 25.

“A rabbi and an alcoholic bus driver arrive in heaven at the very same moment.  The rabbi is shocked when the bus driver is greeted with great accolades and immediately asked to come inside while the rabbi is told to wait outside for a moment.  After a while the rabbi is brought inside and he immediately asks God why he had to wait after performing God’s work on earth while the bus driver with the drinking problem was given a hero’s welcome.  God says, ‘Rabbi, when you spoke in synagogue everyone went to sleep.  When the bus driver was on the job, everyone was praying.’

The Gospel Principles manual divides the lesson into 5 questions.  I think we could have a good discussion based on these questions.

What Is Prayer?

While I like this question, I think this lesson is so bland that it deserves a little spice.  I’ve been reading a book titled “The Road Less Traveled and Beyond” by M Scott Peck.

“I’ve said before that I am a born contemplative.  This means that setting aside time to think—and pray—is as natural to me as brushing my teeth.  My routine involves a total of almost two and a half hours a day, in three separate forth-five minute intervals.  No more than a tenth of that time is spent talking to God (which is what most people would consider prayer) and another tenth listening to God (a definition of meditation).  For the rest of the time, I’m just thinking, sorting out my priorities and weighing options before making decisions.  I call it my prayer time because if I simply called it my thinking time, people would view it as less ‘holy’ and feel free to interrupt me.  But I’m not being dishonest.  In many ways, thinking is akin to prayer.

My favorite definition of prayer—one that doesn’t even mention God—comes from Matthew Fox, who describes prayer as “a radical response to the mysteries of life.”  Thus prayer has everything to do with thinking.

Why Do We Pray?

CS Lewis said, “I don’t pray because it changes God; I pray because it changes me.”

Let me quote from Larry King’s book again.  He interviewed Tom Robbins on pages 50-51,

“I think a lot of prayer is nothing more than deity panhandling.  People ask for God for money, for cars, for girlfriends and boyfriends, and for help in their work.  I don’t think that’s the Deity’s function.  At least, I don’t know, I find something tacky about that.  The only think that I ask God for is protection and safety of my loved ones—and myself.

When Should We Pray?

Larry interviewed Steve Young on pages 169-170,

“I don’t pray to win because that’s not appropriate.  I pray for safety and for clarity of mind.  There have been many times when I have left the sidelines for the field and I say a quick prayer for clarity of mind.”

How Should We Pray?

J Willard Marriott on page 149,

“I’ve always been taught it’s not necessarily good to pray for the end result.  But it’s good to pray for assistance and help in whatever you need to do….I’ve come to believe that fasting is an important part of prayer.  It cleanses the body and weakens you to the point where you are more humble and attuned with what you need to say, and it helps you listen.

When I fast and pray, I always say the prayer at the end.  It’s more effective in the end that it is in the beginning.  I think you are more in tune with the spirit….Prayer is work and the Lord requires a lot of work sometimes.

How Are Prayers Answered?

Steve Young said on page 170,

So many times we learn by unanswered prayers.  So many times there are prayers we say—“Gee, if this would just work out once”—but what we need isn’t always what we want, it’s what the Lord knows is best for us.  The purpose of mortality is to learn.

On page 163,  Larry asks rabbi Irwin Katsof,

So I put the question to the rabbi:  If a prayer is answered but we’re not given the tools to decipher it and are not even aware it has been answered because so much mishagoss—Yiddish for “craziness”—has been piled on top of if, then the prayer really hasn’t been answered.  Or has it?

Another uncomfortable pause at the other end of the phone.  Or maybe the discomfort was on my end?  Let’s see, if an uncomfortable pause occurs and there’s nobody there to hear it…

“Larry, if a prayer is answered and your eyes aren’t open, then of course you’re not going to see it or understand it.

Why can’t God speak English?  Why all the hoops?

What do you want?  You want it delivered every morning like the newspaper?  You want room service?  You want a Larry Channel on your TV?”

I must admit, I started thinking about the  last one and enjoying the idea…..

He has an interesting perspective on the Biblical story of Rachel and Leah.  As we all know, Jacob (who later changed his name to Israel), greatly loved Rachel.  After working for 7 years to marry Rachel, he was duped into marrying Rachel’s sister Leah, and then had to work another 7 years to marry Rachel.  Fertel makes an interesting note that Jacob didn’t complain that he married Leah, and was satisfied to know that he could still have Rachel.

Let me quote directly from the book, because I love this point.

Jacob lived in the community as a single man for seven years.  He knew the tradition that the older sister marries first.  That’s why he didn’t complain about marrying Leah….Jacob knew he had to marry Leah–that wasn’t a problem for him.  He wanted to marry Rachel, and the fact that he did not–that was a problem for him.  So when he was told that he would marry Rachel, he was satisfied.  That’s all he wanted.  He didn’t need an explanation for why he married Leah.  He knew he had to marry Leah in order to marry Rachel.  He knew that to marry the woman of his choice, he had to marry the woman of his fate too.  And that’s why the story of Jacob serves as a paragon for a successful marriage.  Because the truth is when you marry, you marry Rachel and Leah.  You choose your spouse which you don’t yet know–your fate.  And to succeed in love, you have to commit to both–Rachel and Leah, your choice and your fate, the revealed and the unrevealed.

…

Most people don’t enter a marriage with this attitude.  Most people, when they wake up to find Leah next to them, complain that Leah was not their choice.  Most people become frustrated with their spouse and their marriage when they discover character flaws, problems, and differences.  Most people feel so duped into marrying Leah that they divorce Rachel.  But it’s not possible to marry one without the other.  Leah always appears.  The key to success in love and marriage is to know what to do when “she” does.

Soul mates are not perfect for each other.  Soul mates love each other with all their imperfections.  Soul mates love each other no matter what.

I found this story intriguing, and have enjoyed the book and other materials from the package.  One of the pieces of advice I have tried to implement (which my wife fully supports) is to have a set day for a baby-sitter every Friday night.  This is a scheduled appointment, and we have a girl in the ward who has agreed to do this.  However, she has not proved as reliable as she agreed at the beginning.

Fertel says a consistent date night is a must, and should not be canceled for any reason.  He says it puts marriage as a priority, and forces you to do something.  And he says that the date night can’t include movies, or other people (ie no kids or extended family).  You must talk face to face for at least one hour, and it can’t include anything logistical.  Learn about hopes, dreams, philosophy of life, etc.  The more I thought about this, it reminds me of what dates were like when we were single.  Unfortunately, it seems that children and work crowd into the romance.  He says too many couples become roommates, and this is why we drift apart.  I must confess that I have fallen into this trap, and I resolve to get my marriage in better shape!

So, what do you think of Fertel’s analogy of Rachel and Leah?

Yesterday, Susan Scott, Lisa Van Orman Hadley and I crossed the desert from San Diego to Tempe, talking and laughing all the way about things Community of Christ members and LDS folks have in common like ancestral visions and deep connections to Mormon places.  As well as the things we don’t, like frog-eye salad and the commitment pattern.

In Tempe, we met with essayist Holly Welker and poet Danielle Dubrasky at the home of Judy Curtis, an LDS woman who started writing poetry in her 50s. Judy is a master gardener, and after this wet winter, her yard is alive with Indian paintbrush and holly hock and fragrant citrus trees and century plants.

We met forty more Mormon women last night at our Tempe reading, including a strong contingent from the Exponent.  Together, we laughed about girls who do cartwheels in Primary and stories about polygamy traded around the fire at Girls Camp.

Today, we’re hitting the road for southern Utah, passing through the twin towns of Colorado City and Hilldale on our way.  On the dashboard, we have a pink pioneer bonnet and a rock we call our peepstone.  If we get lost, we say, we’ll put the peepstone in the bonnet and try to figure out the right road.

All of us writers on the tour are unconventional Mormon women–with lives as complicated as women’s lives can be.  But we are moving through the desert, through the Book of Mormon belt, from home to home of Mormon women who take us in like kin.

When and where in Mormonism do you feel like you most belong?

For more info on the next stops of the Our Voices, Our Visions tour in Cedar City (Thursday), Provo (Friday) and SLC (Saturday), visit mormonwomenwriters.blogspot.com.

The ’Joint Advance Senior Class’ had two manuals to choose from ’1. Heroes of Science, by Dr. F. S. Harris and N. I. Butt. 2. Rational Theology, by Dr. John A. Widtsoe.’ (Priesthood Quorums, Improvement Era, 1926, Vol. Xxix. July, 1926 No. 9 .) 

Although, I was aware that the Church used other literature in their Auxiliaries I was not aware that they used a quite wide selection of literature.  Although my initial reaction to these efforts was positive, I am not convinced that this would be a good thing today.

My positive reaction centered around the possibilities of a Church that encouraged its members to fulfill the admonition in D&C 88 to become educated.  However, on reflection I began to wonder whether I needed to be told what books to read, or what interests to have.  The Church has explicitly directed its members to try and learn all we can and this seems sufficient.

Perhaps the Church’s growing assimilation (both socially and economically) has also made it less-important to direct and supply its members with other reading materials.  Further is it possible that the Church’s correlation programmes, in trying to focus more directly on ‘core’ gospel principles, has decided to become less pro-active in directing the secular learning of the members of the Church.  Although some have lamented correlation as a form of dumbing-down, I, for one, am grateful for this change. 

In contrast, I wonder whether the Church could provide low cost literature for Saints in other parts of the world where access to books is something of a luxury, so although I feel that this is not something that I would benefit from, I sense that it might be positive for some other areas.  In addition, the Elders Quorum President in our ward has recently asked that once a month someone share something that has inspired them that is not specifically LDS; a piece of poetry, art or music.  Although I think there is something to be said for bringing in outside influences to our Sunday classes, I am not sure whether I want that to be too tightly controlled.

What are your thoughts about whether the Church should offer such materials to the Saints?

This photograph was taken by Sebastiao Salgado at a gold mine in Brazil.  I first saw it in a room at the University I attend.  As an idealistic and aspiring academic I felt moved by the raw power of the worker as he resisted the guard.  Ever since then I have had a copy of this picture in my study areas.  It reminds me that my life is not just about doing good, but that I have a moral duty to alleviate as much suffering in this world as I can.  It reminds me that sometimes I need to resist those in power to protect the weak.  I believe that is part of the heritage that Christ has given us.

Egon Friedell

In this regard I was recently provoked to thought by something Egon Friedell has said about the Christian tradition.  I had never heard of Egon Friedell, until reading a book by Clive James entitled ‘Cultural Amnesia’ (which I whole-heartedly recommend), but I think I really like him.  James describes him as the ‘polymath’s polymath’.  Yet, Friedell was not merely a book-worm but was also one of the most famous cabaret artist’s of his day in a city (Vienna) full of performers.  Before discussing his ideas I wanted to share one tid-bit from his life which was (oddly) inspiring for me:

‘On the day of the AnschluB in 1938, Friedell saw the storm troopers marching down the street, on their way to the building in which he had his apartment full of books.  He was only a few floors up but it was high enough to do the job.  On his way out of the window he called a warning, in case his falling body hit an innocent passer-by.’

His magnum opus ‘Cultural History of the Modern Age’ contains this line: ‘Mankind in the Christian Era possesses one huge advantage over the ancients: a bad conscience’.  Now it seems that neither James nor Friedell were Christians but they recognised something that the world had been given because of Christianity.  In James’ words, ‘When Friedell talked about a bad conscience, he meant the mind that was capable of seeing that might and right were not the same thing’.

One challenge with making this distinction is discerning it amidst the normalising power of culture.  Seeing oppression and pain inflicted by those in power is difficult when those causing such situations are the same people we revere or respect; it is harder still is to resist it.  ‘Most men’ James notes ‘bend with the breeze: which is to say, they go with the prevailing power.  But a few do not.  With or without Christ’s help, they grow a bad conscience.  Thank God for that.’

Yet, what haunts me more is that, in the words Albert Camus, ‘I [find] that there [are] sweet dreams of oppression within me’.  I really believe that ’it is the nature and disposition of almost all men… to exercise unrighteous dominion’ (D&C 121:39); and this includes me.  Friedell’s ‘bad conscience’ must work inward as much as it flows outward; I must check myself against the tendencies that I have to use any ‘perceived’ authority I might have to justify my own prejudices.  James’ oppressive breeze blows both from within and from without.  

The last century saw many idealistic and bright people bend with that breeze, and yet, within the Christian heritage is the ‘bad conscience’, which urges us to resist oppressive behaviour, even from ourselves.  I wonder whether I have been true to my tradition.  I wonder whether I have stood up for the down-trodden and the out-cast. I wonder whether my respect for authority has led me to turn a blind-eye to unrighteous dominion (wherever that is found).  I hope I can be rigid in one of the few senses I see as important; that I will never concede to view that power leads inevitably to truth.

‘The Sealed Portion – The Final Testament of Jesus Christ’ is published free online.  The book is 655 pages long with 100 chapters, each divided into verses, and there are even Chapter headings.  Stylistically the text is similar to the Book of Mormon itself.  But from my brief  overview here are few samples from his translation that interested me.

Christopher expands on the vision seen by the Brother of Jared, he writes “Behold this is the Kingdom and Glory of our Father.  It was on this world that our Father begat his posterity, even the spirits of all men which lived upon the world which thou standest.  And this was once a world like unto the world on which thou livest, and is where our father learned the mysteries and responsibilities of godhood.  And behold, it is upon this same world where the Mother of the Spirits of all the children of God reside with the Father” (TSP: 2: 12-3). 

In Chapter 3 the Brother of Jared meets the Heavenly Father and his Heavenly Mother.  Here he provides the name of the Heavenly Mother.  This chapter shows that God practices polygamy.  Chapter 4 teaches how spirits are born from the various Heavenly Mothers.  In Chapter 8 we learn that Michael ruled Heaven when Jesus came down for his mortal ministry.  Furthermore we learn that “Michael is the other member of the Godhead, yea even the Holy Ghost” (TSP: 8: 17).  Michael can do this because when he died he refused to take upn him a resurrected body. 

In Chapter 10 the details of the Endowment are shown to have been taught.  The text teaches that Joseph Smith was a Prophet and received the Endowment but because of the wickedness of the people he was taken from the Church and that the Lord left this people to their own devices.  As a result the Endowment would be changed from the pure form revealed by Joseph Smith.  The leaders after Joseph Smith will do this because they seek the praise of the world.  Christopher reveals that the Lord wants all people to have this endowment without any keeping of the commandments.  He then continues to give the endowment in detail in the text.  Christopher also provides us with a revealed understanding of the Endowment in his book Sacred, Not Secret.

He has also published his ideas regarding how to overcome world poverty on youtube.

Unfortunately I do not have the time to read the whole text.  I guess I did not feel particularly inspired by it.  However, has anyone ever heard anything from Christopher before?  Being from England I may be a bit late to the game.  On the FAIR site there are some cursory details about his life and some quotations from interviews he has given.  They also try to show that the translation is a forgery. 

What do you think about the ideas that he includes at the beginning of the book.  I guess this raises important questions for us about how we can discern whether Christopher has a message for us.  I am not convinced, but I acknowledge that I am may be closed off from this.

I’ve been reading a book called Establishing Zion by Eugene Campbell.  I couldn’t find it in the library, but Signature Books has posted the entire book online and you can read it right here!  Chapters 6 and 7 deal with issues surrounding the Indians when the pioneers first settled Utah.  As you will recall, Utah was actually part of Mexico in 1847 when the Mormons literally left the United States due to persecution.

Within a short time, the Mexican-American War broke out.  The purpose of this war was to protect Texas, which had declared independence from Mexico.  The Mexicans didn’t appreciate the secession of Texas, and the United States came to the aid of Texas, thoroughly routing the Mexicans.  However, the war didn’t merely help Texas, but was a major land grab by the United States.  The treaty moved the line south, and the United States took in much of the southwestern US, including Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, though Texas was technically an independent nation at the time.

So, once again the Mormons were part the United States.  As part of the Mexican-American War, the Mormons even furnished the Mormon Battalion, to show what good citizens they were.  During this time period of the 1850′s, slavery was legal in much of the United States, and slavery wasn’t completely abolished until the Emancipation Proclamation and Civil a decade later (1861-1865).

I previously blogged about slavery in my Priesthood Ban post, noting that Brigham Young made slavery legal in the Utah Territory–the only state to approve slavery West of Missouri (besides Texas.)  While I was pretty hard on Brigham, I was not aware of the slavery problem with the Indians.  I do feel like Brigham tried to make the best of a rotten situation with regards to Indian slavery.  I think this is a very important piece of information to consider when viewing Brigham Young and his legalization of slavery.  From chapter 6, I quote about the Mormon dealings with Indian Chief Walker,

Another problem was Indian slavery. As already indicated, a slave trade was conducted over the Old Spanish Trail that came through much of Utah since the early 1800s. Walker and his band raided weaker tribes, taking their children and sometimes their wives as prisoners and selling them to Mexicans. As early as November 1851, the Deseret News called attention to a party of twenty Mexicans in the San Pete Valley, trading for Indian children. In his book, Forty Years Among the Indians, Daniel Jones wrote that when this party of traders arrived in Utah Valley, Brigham Young was notified and came to Provo. According to Jones, who acted as interpreter,

Mr. Young had the law read and explained to them showing them that from this day on they were under obligation to observe the laws of the United States instead of Mexico. That the treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo had changed the conditions and that from this day on they were under the control of the United States. He further showed that it was a cruel practice to enslave human beings and explained that the results of such business caused war and bloodshed among the Indian tribes. The Mexicans listened with respect and admitted that the traffic would have to cease. It was plainly shown to them that it was a cruel business which could not be tolerated any longer and as it had been an old established practice they were not so much to blame for following the traffic heretofore. Now it was expected that this business would be discontinued. All seemed satisfied and pledged their word they would return home without trading for children. Most of them kept their promise, but one small party under Pedro Leon violated their obligation and were arrested and [p.107] brought before the United States court, with Judge [Zerubabbel] Snow presiding.

The Mexicans were found guilty and fined. The fines were afterwards remitted, and the men were allowed to return to their homes.

Stopping the slave trade embittered some Indians. Some of them attempted to sell their children to the Mormons. Jones related one graphic incident. Arrapine, Walker’s brother, insisted that because the Mormons had stopped the Mexicans from buying these children, the Mormons were obligated to purchase them. Jones wrote, “Several of us were present when he took one of the children by the heels and dashed his brains out on the hard ground, after which he threw the body toward us telling us we had no hearts or we would have saved its life.”

Incidents such as this led the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah on 7 March 1852 to pass an act legalizing Indian slavery. The purpose was to induce Mormons to buy Indian children who otherwise would have been abandoned or killed.⁹ It provided that Indian children under the proper conditions could be legally bound over to suitable guardians for a term of indenture not exceeding twenty years. The master was required to send Indian children between the ages of seven and sixteen years to school for a period of three months each year and was answerable to the probate judge for the treatment of these apprentices. As a result of this act, many Mormon families took small Indian children into their homes to protect them from slavery or from being left destitute. John D. Lee, for example, wrote in his journal about a group of Indians who “brought me two more girls for which I gave them two horses. I named the girls Annette and Elnora.”

Negro slavery was also permitted in the territory, but the pioneers had passed no similar rules about the treatment of blacks, certainly [p.108] not the requirement that they be schooled. However, blacks were not permitted to be sold to others without their own consent.

Footnote 9 was also very interesting regarding Indian slavery.

9. The Mormons had first confronted the problem of buying Indian children soon after their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley. Children were brought into the pioneers’ fort as early as the winter of 1847-48, and Indians said that they were war captives and would be killed if not purchased. The Mormons bought one of the children. Two more children were brought to the fort under the same threat, and the Mormons bought both of them. Charles Decker bought one of these two, Sally Kanosh, who was later given to Brigham Young and raised in his family. Speaking with church members in the Iron County Mission, Young advised them to buy children and teach them to live a good life. According to the Journal History for 12 May 1851, Young said, “The Lord could not have devised a better plan than to have put the saints where they were to help bring about the redemption of the Lamanites and also make them a white and delightsome people.”

Now this brings up an interesting conundrum.  By purchasing Indian slaves, the Mormons are creating a demand to encourage more slavery.  However, they are obviously saving lives.  It would take the Civil War to completely rid the country of the practice of slavery.  For more information on Mormon dealings with the Indians, click here.  What do you think of Brigham Young’s practice of buying Indian slaves?

I was talking with a friend recently about addictions. Things like alcohol, caffeine, meth, and heroin (among many other substances) all seem to rob the addict of their free will to some extent. At some point in the conversation we started talking about mythology, and he mentioned how vampires could be viewed metaphorically as heroin addicts. (There is even a movie with the vampire/heroin metaphor, “The Addiction” staring Christopher Walken as a vampire who abstains from blood through fasting and meditation.)

Of course being LDS I couldn’t resist making the comparison to Twilight. I’ll spare you the plot synopsis but the “good” vampires in the story also abstain from human blood. This is incredibly difficult for some. The temptation is so great that they need a lot of social support as well as constant effort to stay on the straight and narrow. Even the sight of blood triggers their urge to the point that it is nearly uncontrollable. As they progress, they may be more in control but still feel the temptation, as Edward often does with his human girlfriend Bella. The father in the story is the most controlled of all, having abstained for decades.

Pornography seems to be the major addiction of choice in Mormon culture. Granted, there are other addictions that members face, but this one seems to stand out above everything else. Twilight is, like it or not, THE vampire mythos of choice for Mormons. Edward Cullen may as well be a metaphor for a porn addict because he wants more than anything to be with Bella, but he is constantly fighting off his urge to drink her blood, just like an addict may end up destroying, or at least ending, their family or marriage if ultimately they succumb.

This conversation led my friend to remark how unfortunate it is that someone who drinks a lot is not seen to have a problem until they’re a raging alcoholic. There is no middle ground in mainstream society for someone to “have a problem” with alcohol. They either enjoy drinking, and you wouldn’t dare say they had a problem, or they drink all the time and they have a disease.

I think that Mormon culture is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and it may serve to exacerbate the problems of addiction. A drop of alcohol, a quad shot of espresso, a glance at a porn site all spell a serious problem. Note that I am not justifying any of those actions. I DO think abstinence is the best rule to follow in those cases. However, it is often not the reality, and I think it would be more effective to view problems with addictions as being on a spectrum. The flaxen cord in the Book of Mormon illustrates this very well. One cord isn’t going to be that strong, but many will be binding. Each choice we make contributes to who we will become.

I’ve always enjoyed books about world religions, especially the obscure and forgotten, but I was expecting something rather bland, or apologetic, or dismissive.  I was pleasantly surprised.  This one was actually very unbiased, concise, and interesting.  It didn’t break any new ground, necessarily, except that it offered interesting comparisons and contrasts with other major world religions.

I found that book packed in an anonymous box last week and decided to give it another read.  As I read about Guru Nanak I was struck by one tiny thing: how comparatively little we really know about him or his life.  How can anyone believe in a prophet whose life we can’t relentlessly scrutinize?

I’m not going to go into detail about his life here.  A quick appeal to Wikipedia will take care of the information you need to get started, I guess, but let me get to the thrust of this post.  How do we test the fruits of a prophet we know so little about?  As I read, my mind went over the prophet I feel I know so well, Joseph Smith, and I was impressed by how we scrutinize his life for tiny details.  Every scrap of information about his life has been scoured by historians, theologians, apologists, and lay-people, for clues as to whether he is a true prophet, and yet no-one to date has really been able to come to a consensus.  Was he a charlatan?  A saint?  A prophet?  A nut?

Right around the time of Christopher Columbus, northern India was embroiled, as it is now, in a theological struggle between Hindu and Muslim.  To be fair, Guru Nanak does have a few interesting sources about his life (all written after his death), but for the most part, we know little about him compared to Joseph Smith.  The people he lived with in the north of India spent their entire lives agonizing and struggling over their age-old question: which religion is right, Hinduism or Islam?  No doubt many people prayed mightily towards Heaven asking for divine guidance.  Is Hinduism worth dying for?  Was Mohamed really a true prophet?  That struggle was personified in Guru Nanak, whose simple initial revelation, “There is neither Hindu nor Muslim,” must have jarred most of his listeners.  “Neither Hindu nor Muslim?” they must have asked themselves.  “What else is there?”

I felt moved with immense compassion as I read about this struggle, especially in light of the invasion of India by the Moguls.  Here was a whole civilization, turned over by wars and religious strife, foreign to Americans, who lived and died struggling with the great questions of the soul, and here was a prophet among them, Guru Nanak, who offered peace, and eschewed outward ordinances in favor of clean living and always remembering God in your heart.

How can I possibly determine whether Guru Nanak is a true prophet if I have so little information about him?  Where are all the documents?  Stanford hasn’t done any word imprint studies on his writings, his mother never wrote a Biography of his life.  There are definitely no Sikhs here in Lexington repeatedly bearing testimony to me, “I know that Guru Nanak was a true prophet.”  Not to say there isn’t any information about him (and, to be fair, there are some Sikhs here in Lexington, if you seek them out, pun intended) but it seems quite lean compared to what we have about Joseph Smith.

Let us swing back a few thousand years and move a few hundred miles to the West to Iran, where we find the cradle of  another world religion, that of Zoroastrianism.  One could easily argue that Zoroastrianism is the grandfather of all monotheistic faiths.  They have been around for thousands of years, though their numbers have dwindled in the last couple centuries.  Want to approach Zoroastrianism objectively, and test the fruits of Zoroaster (Zarathustra)?  What do we know about him?  Well, a quick survey of historians will reveal that he probably lived sometime between 6000 BC and 100 BC.  That’s right, we can nail down his life to a 5900-year period.  Recently, the number has settled right around 1100 to 1000 BC, but how on God’s Green Earth are we supposed to find out if Zoroaster was a true prophet if we can’t even agree on the millennium in which he lived?

And where did Zoroaster live in this period of time?  I’ll quote Wikipedia this time:

Yasna 9 & 17 cite the Ditya River in Airyanem Vaējah (Middle Persian Ērān Wēj) as Zoroaster’s home and the scene of his first appearance. Nowhere in the Avesta (both Old and Younger portions) is there a mention of the Achaemenids or of any West Iranian tribes such as the Medes, Persians, or even Parthians.

However, in Yasna 59.18, the zaraθuštrotema, or supreme head of the Zoroastrian priesthood, is said to reside in ‘Ragha’. In the ninth to twelfth century Middle Persian texts of Zoroastrian tradition, this ‘Ragha’ – along with many other places – appear as locations in Western Iran. While Medea does not figure at all in the Avesta (the westernmost location noted in scripture is Arachosia), the Būndahišn, or “Primordial Creation,” (20.32 and 24.15) puts Ragha in Medea (medieval Rai). However, in Avestan, Ragha is simply a toponym meaning “plain, hillside.”

Apart from these indications in Middle Persian sources which are open to interpretations, there are a number of other sources. The Greek and Latin sources are divided on the birth place of Zarathustra. There are many Greek accounts of Zarathustra, referred usually as Persian or Perso-Median Zoroaster. Moreover they have the suggestion that there has been more than one Zoroaster. On the other hand in post-Islamic sources Shahrastani (1086-1153) an Iranian writer originally from Shahristān, present-day Turkmenistan, proposed that Zoroaster’s father was from Atropatene (also in Medea) and his mother was from Rai. Coming from a reputed scholar of religions, this was a serious blow for the various regions who all claimed that Zoroaster originated from their homelands, some of which then decided that Zoroaster must then have then been buried in their regions or composed his Gathas there or preached there. Also Arabic sources of the same period and the same region of historical Persia consider Azerbaijan as the birth place of Zarathustra.

By the late twentieth century the consensus among some scholars had settled on an origin in Eastern Iran and/or Central Asia (to include present-day Afghanistan): Gnoli proposed Sistan (though in a much wider scope than the present-day province) as the homeland of Zoroastrianism; Frye voted for Bactria and Chorasmia; Khlopin suggests the Tedzen Delta in present-day Turkmenistan. Sarianidi considered the BMAC region as “the native land of the Zoroastrians and, probably, of Zoroaster himself.” Boyce includes the steppes of the former Soviet republics. The medieval “from Media” hypothesis is no longer taken seriously, and Zaehner has even suggested that this was a Magi-mediated issue to garner legitimacy, but this has been likewise rejected by Gershevitch and others.

So we know where he lived, give or take a thousand miles, and we know what time period, give or take a few thousand years.  And by the way, there may have been more than one Zoroaster.

Again I ask, how do we know a true prophet?  The Bible says a few things, but let’s focus on one:

Matthew 7:15-20

15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth devil fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

So my question is, how do we test the fruits of these prophets? Not only these prophets, but anyone who has claimed revelation in the past.  What about Mani, who led the people now known as Manicheans, who expanded upon what he saw as truths in Christianity and Zoroastrianism? What of Confucius, whose followers led thousands in Ancient China (all bureaucrats in the government were well-versed in Confucian texts). Do we know as much about Mo Tzu, whose teachings were seen as a real competitor to Confucianism early in its history, as we do about Sidney Rigdon or John Taylor or Thomas S. Monson?

A few possibilities come immediately to mind, some conclusions that easily could be made by the modern reader.

1. We don’t need to test their fruits. Zoroaster was a prophet who lived thousands of years ago, to a people who lived thousands of years ago. These people don’t pertain to us. We know the truth, and we can just forget about these guys.  Besides, if they were so right, where are they now?

Forgive me, but doesn’t this seem like an arrogant conclusion? To dismiss an honest, sincere group of people because of distance or difference seems quite wrong, at least to my heart, especially in the case of Zoroaster, whose religion has endured longer than any other monotheistic religion, and that historians even date to before Judaism (many historians believe that it was actually the Babylonian exile, and the Jews’ exposure to Zoroastrian thought, that really ironed out their concepts of Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil, etc.).  If time is any indication of truth, it’s arguably on their side, not ours.

2. We can automatically dismiss anyone who didn’t teach about Christ.

Fair enough, if you believe Christ really was the Son of God, which I do, for the record. However, how many of Basava’s followers knew about Christ or His teachings? Guru Nanak’s world was divided into Hindus and Muslims, and the wars between them. Christ, to them, was some obscure prophet, mentioned in the Qur’an, or maybe a Bodhisattva, but not really someone whom the average person knew about. Furthermore, is it useless for a prophet to teach about loving one another in a land where Christ’s name is not mentioned? Is a prophet not “true” if he teaches that we should cease our murders and contentions and try our best to live a holy, charitable life?

3. We can dismiss them because we don’t have any useful information about their lives, like we do about Joseph Smith. We simply can’t test their fruits, and thus we can see that God doesn’t want us to know about them. If God wanted us to know about them, information about them would have fallen into our (or Joseph Smith’s) hands.

Pleading ignorance?  Really? “We don’t need to know something because we don’t know something.” This may be precisely the reason why most people in the world don’t know who Jesus Christ really is. “If God wanted me, here in Urumqi (or Jakarta or Chongking or Tokyo or anywhere else not predominantly Christian), to know about Jesus Christ, God would have sent that information here, but He hasn’t.”

4. We can dismiss any religion whose followers are a tiny group compared to the whole. For instance, why study the teachings of Alevi Muslims if they are such a minority in the world, even amongst the Muslim world?

For the record, there are probably more Alevi Muslims in the world as there are Latter-day Saints, and the Alevi are a tiny minority compared to the Muslim World as a whole. Secondly, when has truth been determined by the majority? And what was the result?

5. The particulars of a prophet’s life aren’t important, what matters is the fruits we see in the followers.

Take quantum mechanics as some sort of analogy here.  By the 1800s, Newtonian Physics had pretty much permeated all of the scientific community.  Edmund Halley’s orbital prediction of what is now called Halley’s Comet was regarded as an ultimate triumph of Newtonian Physics, and the philosophers finally concluded that if one could know the starting positions of all the atoms and matter in the Universe, one could calculate all of history over billions of years.  However, when we really started to dissect the atom, Newton’s ideas broke down on the quantum level.  We discovered entanglement and particle spin and all sorts of new, amazing, sometimes counter-intuitive facts about how things work on a tiny scale.  Yet, to this day, we haven’t seemed to reconcile Quantum Mechanics with the Universe on a large scale, and the search for a Unified Theory is one of the most interesting searches in physics.

So the resulting Universe we see has emergent properties that seem (we’re still working on this) different than the properties on the Quantum level. Are prophets the same way? Does the whole of a religion have emergent properties that aren’t explained by the life of a single person who founded it? Can we test the “truth” of a religion by these emergent fruits, ignoring what the prophet did?

This seems a bit more plausible, considering there are so many prophets we don’t have information about. Except, is that really what we’re taught in the Church? Furthermore, what if the religion died out many years ago, so we can’t necessarily see the fruits of it now?

6. We can test a prophet by the book they brought forth. If we ask if the book is true, then we can know if the prophet is true. No book? Then see #3.

Does that mean that if you can’t read, then you’ll never know? Does that mean all the prophets in history who didn’t have a book are not true? Literacy is truth, and illiteracy is damnation? What about the Christians in the Middle Ages who didn’t have access to the Bible because the Bible was restricted to the clergy? Were they doomed, never having a true testimony?

7. Those prophets taught some truth, we know that from Latter-day revelation. Therefore, we can just accept that they taught some truths, but reading about them, knowing about them, or studying their teachings is unnecessary. All truth is contained in this Church.

This is pretty much what our Church teaches us, right? Certain prophets had access to the Light of Christ at certain times in history, and did much good, but we really needn’t concern ourselves with the particulars. I can’t help but thinking this is still being overly dismissive of other teachings, other cultures, and other people. Shouldn’t we search diligently for truth wherever it can be found? Joseph Smith seemed to snatch up truth wherever he saw it, whether it be in the rituals of the Masons or papyri he thought belonged to Abraham. This has led me to #8, which is closest to what I consider to be the truth.

8. The truth is complicated.

The older I get, the closer #8 seems to reality.  However, I thank God that I’m in a religion right now that can tie the Human Family together in a way that accepts and appreciates truths everywhere and anywhen.  In the darkest times at night, and on Sundays when I listen to what’s taught from the pulpit, and when I travel and see people of all different colors and faiths and nationalities, and when I read history books full of brave men and women who sacrificed their lives for their faith, even faiths much different than my own, I don’t have to accept on blind faith the conclusion that the majority of my family (the Human Race) is damned for Eternity for not knowing the name of Christ.  There isn’t a privileged time or place for personal salvation.

And this is very comforting to me.

Say what you will about the coming of the Kingdom,

Morri Creech

of the fire-washed multitudes

that shall gather together and be raised whole

and inhabit the clean rooms of the spirit -

but that first morning we followed him to the mountain

no one was healed.  There was not flash

from the heavens, no chorus of hosannas:

there was only Jesus, in love with the world

even as he renounced it, swaying

like a storm-shaken reed as he spoke to us,

saying, the poor in spirit shall be sundered,

sundered and blessed, and the wind

caught his robes, and parted to make room

for his body, and his voice was like honey

drenching the olive leaves.  And I knew him then,

knew him for what he was: dust

torn from the light, imperfect and radiant,

an untrammelled flame loosed on the ripe fields

that Sabbath, eating the grain from the cupped hands

like a blessing – and when he said, Judas follow me

and you shall taste the abundance of paradise

how could I turn from him then,

blessed as I was, blessed with a love

that would rise and consume me forever?

I do not want to explore all the reasons that I find this particularly moving, but it may be worth highlighting just a few.  ‘No one was healed’ suggests to me the in my interaction with God miracles are not the only way he communicates with me or shows his love.  I think I should be able to feel that just from being with Him. ‘There was only Jesus, in, love with the world’ inspires me to look with new sight at sensuous importance of this life.  Further this poem makes Jesus so human.  He is like us and relishes his experiences with the world and the people in it.

All this connects in my mind with a quotation I read from from Bernard Loomer, cited by Dan Wotherspoon (former editor of Sunstone) at his ‘Pillars of my Faith’  presentation at the symposium recently.  Using Size as a metaphor for spirituality, Loomer, who is a process theologian, writes: “By size I mean the stature of [your] soul, the range and depth of [your] love, [your] capacity for relationships. I mean the volume of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity and individuality, the intensity and variety of outlook you can entertain in the unity of your being without feeling defensive or insecure. I mean the strength of your spirit to encourage others to become freer in the development of their diversity and uniqueness. I mean the power to sustain more complex and enriching tensions. I mean the magnanimity of concern to provide conditions that enable others to increase in stature.”

This poem suggests to me that Jesus grew in Size, and so must we.  

David Rosenberg has written: “Much of the Hebrew Bible was written by poets who were not parochial writers but more resembled a John Donne or T.S. Eliot: poets first, devotees second.”  Perhaps the distinction between poetry and scripture is not so easy to define.  Steven Walker has argued that the literary style of the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants often changes, as he sees Joseph become more influenced by the spirit.  He notes that “When the Prophet records the direct words of the Lord, his style is different from the style in which he writes his own thoughts… when he is intensely inspired, he is more eloquent than when less moved by the Spirit.” 

A recent Master’s candidate  at BYU who attempts to discuss the relationship of contemporary American poetry with divinity wrote: “The purpose of both scripture and poetry becomes the examination of the individual‘s relationship with God or the divine… That God is present in [poetry] is indisputable.  What is created here is not only a conversation of how man is like God, but how the individual is like God—how the reader can relate to a being who is all things, who is in every way so unlike him/her that the only way to understand is to find those similarities.”

My questions are these:

Do you like this poem, and/or are there other examples of poetry or other forms of literature that have affected you spiritually and if so which?

Does poetry, or other literature, do things for us that ‘sacred’ texts cannot?

Are poetry and scripture closely tied together?  Is the influence of scripture linked to the aesthetic of the words as much as the truth of their content?

Today’s guest post is by Michael. In the spirit of Mormon Stories, he was invited to share his experience.

I thought the people that believed in the church and loved me most in the would have at least tried to “save my soul.” I would have done it for them, had the roles been reversed. Although, it would have led me to the place where I am now, which may be the underlying (perhaps subconscious) reason why they don’t wish to go there.

—————

If someone told me three years ago that I would be where I am now, I would have never believed them. And yet, here I am. A few years ago, I decided that I should probably learn more about church history. Not out of pure interest, but more out of duty. I heard that the book “Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling” was written by a member of the church, but didn’t give the usual sanitized version of history that is given in Sunday School. I was intrigued.

I read the book. It was slow going, but I finished it. More than any of the strange practices or weird events, the thing that bugged me the most was Joseph Smith himself. I couldn’t place it at first, but I soon realized that I didn’t really like Joseph as a person. I felt kind of guilty about that because we have been raised, and it has been ingrained in us, to love Joseph and the other men of the restoration. My feelings of guilt were lessened a bit when I found out that I was definitely not the only one that felt that way. There were many others in the church that felt the same way. In fact, my dad bought a video that features a question and answer session with the author and even he admits that, by the time he was done with his research and writing, he did not like Joseph Smith either.

When I finished with the book, it made me wonder: Maybe there was a reason why things were not sitting right with me and others. The Joseph we had been taught about growing up was not the real Joseph, so who was. Also, I wondered: If this book was written by a member, then how much of a positive slant is he putting on things? That’s when my journey really began. There are so many differing and conflicting accounts out there that I sometimes felt like a detective, trying to piece together what most made sense to me.

As I said above, I went searching into church history as a kind of church duty. I felt that I ought to take a look into it. I thought that I would search things out and find that history would vindicate the church and the prophet. I believed (and believe) that the truth does not fear investigation and the facts would be overwhelmingly in favor of the church. I found the opposite to be the case. This mostly surprised me because of my father.

He is well versed in church history, and I think I trusted heavily in his ability to interpret events. Sometimes, when I would find out something new, I would ask him, “Doesn’t this bother you?!?” He wouldn’t answer. At times I wondered why I was the only one who was bothered by some of the things I was finding. I wondered if I was the only crazy one or the only one who wasn’t. I couldn’t understand why, when I showed them a claim of the church or Joseph Smith and then showed them how that claim was in fact false, they didn’t seem to care. Well, I found out some interesting things related to that. Although most of the close people around me did not seem to want to face any of this stuff, I found out that I was not alone. Besides a number of people that I know that don’t believe, but are hanging on for various other reasons (family, friends, structure, etc.), there are many, many people leaving the church every year. It always helps a person fell less crazy when you know there are others making hard decisions like you.

The other thing that made me understand the situation better, was something told to me by a friend. I mentioned to him that I could not understand why these things bugged me and no one else seemed to care. He said, “Ok, tell me something that bugs you.” So for the 20th time or so, I mentioned that Joseph Smith claimed to translate the Book of Abraham from Egyptian papyri. A decade after Joseph died, the Egyptian language was deciphered from the Rosetta Stone. Reading the papyri, it does not say what Joseph claims it said. When I gave him that one example, he went on to say that most people don’t think as much as I do, so they don’t let it bother them. Adding to that, he said, “Plus, it’s the Book of Abraham. Who cares about the Book of Abraham?” And then he ended, mentioning that some people will stay in for the sake of loyalty–they are Mormon and will always be Mormon.

Those are ideas that had never really entered my mind. It had never really occurred to me that even if the facts were against the church, people would still remain in it. I was not sure which answer he gave me that bugged me the most. If he only knew how much the Book of Abraham feeds into his own belief system. How could he say, “Who cares about the Book of Abraham?” I mean, the teachings exclusive to Mormonism don’t come from the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon was written in such a way that it virtually does not stray from biblical teachings. There is little or nothing new in the doctrine from the Book of Mormon. It is the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price that set Mormon theology apart from “regular” Christian theology.

These words of indifference, of not caring if it is true in the literal sense are so foreign to me. I first heard them from my best friend a few years ago, before I had ever expressed any doubts. As we passed by the house of a neighbor that had left the church after studying church history, he said, “I don’t understand Bro. So-and-So. I mean, even if I didn’t think the church was true, I wouldn’t leave it.” At that point, I blurted out a very loud, “WHAT?!? Are you serious?” He was. My other best friend who was also there that night is the one I mentioned in the above paragraph, who also doesn’t care about the church being true in any literal sense. Another close friend, for whom I was the best man at his temple wedding, wrote me an email when he found out that I had left the church. It was not what I expected. He congratulated me on doing what he said he never had the courage to do.

Perhaps the most painful response was from my girlfriend. She told me she was proud of me and for what I was doing. She started calling me Winston (the main character from 1984, who rebels against Big Brother). It shocked me that she would say such a thing that seemed so telling to me, and it saddened me when she said she wouldn’t be joining me. In HER OWN ANALOGY she chose to love Big Brother.

These people that have been such a large part of my life (three of the four I have known since we were children) now feel like strangers to me. Their way of thinking on this matter has never been an option for me. I have always considered such choices to be wrong, even in the best-case scenario, and in a worst-case scenario, downright evil. Although I don’t consider this a worst-case scenario, I am still left baffled that such good people would choose such a path. It would bother me less if they hadn’t all served missions and didn’t plan on teaching the rising generation that these beliefs are true. If they stand where they do, why are they passing the information on as truth? I am still working on the answer to that one. In the mean time, for the sake of preserving respect for my loved ones, I am forced to concede that making the choice to believe in something that you don’t truly think is reality, may not be as evil as I thought…

The term “Jack Mormon” is familiar to most of us.  Generally, it means a Mormon in name only.  In modern usage, a Jack Mormon is probably inactive, doesn’t really go to church, doesn’t follow the Word of Wisdom or other orthodox Mormon habits, and may or may not be proud of his Mormon heritage.  However, in the days of Joseph Smith, Quinn says on page 101, “non-mormon allies were known as ‘Jack-Mormons’, originally an LDS term of endearment.”

Alexander Doniphan is even mentioned in LDS manuals, such as this primary manual.  Quinn talks about these events, and talks about a few of the Missourians who did try to help the saints.  From page 100 of his book,

Despite the hatred of some Missourians toward Mormons, other non-Mormons protected LDS friends in the state.  William Thompson endured several lashes “with a cowhide,” rather than tell a mob where the Mormons were.  Better known among Mormons was Missourian Alexander W. Doniphan, who had risked his standing in his own community by defending the Mormons against expulsion from Jackson County in 1833.  In 1834, he startled fellow Missourians by praising the effort of Zion’s Camp to reclaim Mormon lands in Jackson County.  As state representative from Clay County, Doniphan regretted that his fellow residents had asked the Mormons to leave the county, and he successfully persuaded the Missouri legislature to create Caldwell County [in an 1836 compromise.]  When anti-Mormon troops surrounded Far West and forced its surrender, General Samuel D. Lucas ordered Doniphan to summarily execute Joseph Smith, and six other Mormon leaders who were in custody in November 1838.  Doniphan refused to obey the order, thus risking a similar summary execution himself.  By putting his own safety and career at risk, Alexander Doniphan saved Smith’s life and earned a permanent place as one of Mormon history’s non-Mormon heroes.

I want to quote from a website regarding Doniphan’s actual reply–I think it is impressive.  The website is http://www.historicliberty.org/tours/Alexander%20Doniphan%20-%20Juarenne.htm, and states,

When the Mormons surrendered to the militia, Doniphan’s commanding officer gave the order for Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, and six others to be shot. Doniphan’s reply was “It is cold-blooded murder. I will not obey your order. My brigade will march for Liberty at 8:00 tomorrow morning, and if you execute these men I will hold you personally responsible before an earthly tribunal, so help me God.” Doniphan chose to subject himself to the threat of possible court-martial rather then to carry out an order which meant the execution of men not found guilty by civil or military tribunal.

Continuing on from Quinn page 101,

Without the drama of Doniphan’s military insubordination, militia general David R. Atchison restrained his own troops and used his political clout to benefit the besieged Mormons.  Another young Missourian wrote his father in December 1838 that the governor’s “extermination” order was a “foul disgrace to our State,” and the the Mormons had every right “to defend [themselves] with force and arms…”  The Jews call such benefactors and rescuers, “righteous Gentiles,” but during Smith’s life these non-Mormon allies were known as “Jack-Mormons,” originally an LDS term of endearment.”

So, I wanted to learn a little more about Alexander Doniphan.

• Alexander Doniphan Elementary School is found on 1900 Clay Drive, in Liberty, Missouri
• Doniphan served 3 terms as a state representative, and worked as a lawyer, who represented Joseph Smith.  Quoting from the website above, “During his career as a trial lawyer Doniphan defended more than 188 men, none of whom suffered the extreme penalty for the crime with which he was charged. This was true in Joseph Smith’s case. Doniphan tendered his services as a civil defender of the Mormons who were never convicted in court. Thus was spared the life of one who led the beginning of one of the great religious movements of our day. This building stands as a monument to Doniphan’s compassion and respect for the law. “
• There was a presentation on Doniphan at the Truman Presidential Library in 2007.  ‘He once met Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln is reported to have said: “Alexander Doniphan is the only man I have ever met who lived up to my previous expectations.” Today there many items which bear his name including several towns, a school, a battleship, a county, a highway and numerous local awards.’
• He went on to lead a very successful campaign in the Mexican-American War in 1846-7.
• He was a slaveholder, who favored keeping the union in tact.

I am grateful for non-Mormon allies such as Doniphan, and hope we will always appreciate men like this.  I posted a few more details about Doniphan which can be found here.  Comments?

OK Paul technically isn’t exactly an international DJ, not unless you consider that you can listen to his interviews on line.

He’s a returned missionary and member of the Grays Ward in the Romford Stake Essex England.  Paul got the show after being a presenter at Hospital Radio Chelmsford for a year and chased a local station for airtime:

“When I was asked to join Phoenix FM the station manager warned me that radio presenting wasn’t all easy but in fact involved a lot of voluntary service too.  I responded that I was a missionary in France for 2 years for the church and was used to giving service to others, as well as being actively involved in the church weekly.  The station manager was intrigued by this and I was invited to the station to explain more about my religious beliefs and the voluntary service I had done in France.  I was then offered the chance to begin a brand new religious show once a week that they had been wanting to start but couldn’t find anyone with the religious background to do it.  I put together the idea for a chat show where he would bring in local religious leaders and ask them about their beliefs on air and their views on current issues.”

Mark Pinchin and Ian Clarkson from the Church of Scientology – Listen   here

Highlights:

10 million members around the world. Their anti-drug program “Say no to drugs say yes to life”.  Human rights educational programme and other great work they do in the community.  We discussed the 8 dynamics, the founder of the church L. Ronald Hubbard and where the word “Scientology” comes from.

The core beliefs of the church of Scientology are:

Man is a spirit, he has lived before and that man is good. Through wisdom and knowledge man can improve any area of his life he wants. Scientology is all denominational and non-conversionary and members bring with them their own beliefs.

Great Interviews ( All the ads and music have been stripped out)

Habibur Rahman & Forad Edu – Islam / Alfurqaan Foundation
Father Matthew Bemand – St Thomas Church of England
Councillor Dudley Payne – Mayor of Brentwood
Mark Pinchin and Ian Clarkson – Scientology / Jive Aces
Ed Wellman – PhoenixFM Monday Classics
Richard Burch – Brentwood Buddhist Society
Chris Day – Crown Street Christian Fellowship
Reverand Peter Thomas (Baptist)
Reverand Trevor Jamison (United Reformed Church)
Julian May – ELIM
Father Paul Keane – Brentwood Catholic Cathedral
Bishop David Barter

The show can be seen at www.phoenixfm.com/proverbs98.php

Let us know your views

In my previous post about Unconventional Book of Mormon Geography Theories, Doug G made a comment claiming that the Book of Mormon is related to the Solomon Spaulding Manuscript, so I want to address this theory.  Andrew Ainsworth did a post in February on the Curious Case of Solomon Spaulding, which talks more about the legal aspects of proving plagiarism.  Andrew is a lawyer, and I found his perspective interesting.

Lest anyone think my quotes are from apologetic sources, let me discuss them.  My quotes are going to come from two books. (1) Sidney Rigdon:  Portrait of Religious Excess, by Richard Van Wagoner (which I’ll abbreviate SR).  Chapter 11 is called Book of Mormon Authorship, and deals directly with the issue of whether Sidney Rigdon is the true author of the Book of Mormon, rather than Joseph Smith.  (2) No Man Knows My History, by Fawn Brodie (which I’ll abbreviate NM).  While Fawn Brodie was excommunicated for her book (thus increasing her stature in the eyes of skeptics), few people know much about Van Wagoner.  Van Wagoner’s book has received many awards, but has been criticized by FARMS for being “fundamentally, not simply tangentially, defective.”  Any book criticized by FARMS often gives skeptics (like Doug G) reason to like the book.  Neither book is apologetic in nature.  Both books greatly discount the Spalding Manuscript theory.

What is the Spaulding Manuscript?

Solomon Spaulding was born in 1761 in Connecticut, and graduated from Dartmouth College (NH) in 1785.  He was a minister for the Congregational Church in New York, and later became a Presbyterian.  In 1809, he moved to Ohio and wrote a historical novel, narrated by a Roman sailor named Fabius who was shipwrecked in ancient America.  The book was never published, and he died in 1816.  After several changes of ownership (including the RLDS church), the manuscript has been donated to Oberlin College in Ohio, where it currently resides.  You may view the manuscript here.

What is the theory?

What is quite interesting to me is that this theory dates back to literally 1831, and Rigdon has always denied the theory.  According to NM page 68,

The theory ran as follows:  The Book of Mormon was a plagiarism of an old manuscript by one Solomon Spaulding, which Sidney Rigdon somehow secured from a printing house in Pittsburgh.  After adding much religious matter to the story, Rigdon determined to publish it as a newly discovered history of the American Indian.  Hearing of a young necromancer Joseph smith, three hundred miles away in New York State, he visited him secretly and persuaded him to enact a fraudulent representation of its discovery.  Then nine months after the book’s publication Smith’s missionaries went to Ohio and the pastor pretended to be converted to the new church.

…

Through the years the “Spaulding theory” collected supporting affidavits as a ship does barnacles, until it became so laden with evidence that the casual reader was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the accumulation.  The theory requires a careful analysis because it has been so widely accepted.  The documentary evidence on both sides is so burdensome, however, that I have relegated it to an appendix.

Similarities

There are some interesting similarities between the two books, which I will highlight below.  NM page 449 addresses the obvious similarities.  (I have changed the formatting to highlight the similarities, but the following is an exact quote from the NM book.)

There were certain similarities between the book of Mormon which, though not sufficient to justify the thesis of common authorship, might have given rise to the conviction of Spaulding’s neighbors that one was a plagiarism of the other.

• Both were said to come out of the earth;
• Both were stories of colonists sailing from the Old World to the New;
• Both explained the earthworks and mounds common to western New York and Ohio as a result of savage wars.
• John Miller had spoken of the “humorous passages” in Spaulding’s work, which would certainly apply to the “Manuscript Story,” but not the utterly humorless Book of Mormon.
• Other features, like the scriptural style,
• the expression “it came to pass,”
• and the proper names, seem too definite to be questioned.

How did the theory come about?

During 1830 and 1831, Mormon missionary work in Ohio flourished, including converts Sidney Rigdon, Orson Hyde, Orson Pratt, and Parley P Pratt (who were members of Rigdon’s Baptist congregation.)  When Sidney announced his conversion during his Baptist services and some 100 members of his congregation soon joined, there was much consternation among the members of his congregation who felt Sidney was badly deceived.  According to SR page 132,

Mormonism’s success in Ohio, particularly among Sidney’s Reformed Baptists, spelled conspiracy in some people’s eyes.  While eleven of Smith’s friends and relatives signed affidavits that they had examined the gold plates and seen the angel who delivered them to the prophet, many did not accept this supernatural explanation.  To cynics it seemed improbable that a semi-literate farm boy could author a literary work so intricate in plot and steeped in biblical lore as the Book of Mormon.

The logical explanation for the holy book was that Smith must have collaborated behind the scenes with someone better educated and more sophisticated.  A former school teacher, Oliver Cowdery, Smith’s major copyist during the project, was considerably better schooled than his prophet-cousin.  Cowdery was touted in the press as co-author of the Book of Mormon in the 25 November 1830 Cleveland Herald.  But as soon as Sidney made his late 1830 trip to New York to meet Smith, rumors surfaced that he, not Cowdery, was the mastermind behind the new scripture.

Evidence that the Spaulding Manuscript is not the Source of the Book of Mormon

Besides the fact that the Spaulding manuscript is just one-sixth the size of the Book of Mormon (meaning Joseph and Sidney needed to come up with much new material), Spaulding’s widow, Matilda Davison, gave the manuscript to Hurlburt.  NM page 144,

Now to his bitter chagrin he found that the long chase had been vain; for while the romance did concern the ancestors of the Indians, its resemblance to the Book of Mormon ended there.  None of the names found in one could be identified in the other;  the many battles which each described showed not the slightest similarity with those of the other, and Spaulding’s prose style, which aped the eighteenth-century British sentimental novelists, differed from the style of the Mormon Bible as much as Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded different from the New Testament.

(The manuscript Hurlburt found was published by the Reorganized Church in Lamoni, Iowa in 1885 under the title The Manuscript Found).  Continuing on,

Hurlburt knew, however, that he had a keg of powder even without the manuscript.  He boldly exhibited his affidavits in Kirtland, lectured in the surrounding towns, and arranged to publish the documents in book form with the assistance of Eber D. Howe.  The lectures caused a furor.

The appendix in NM page 447 gives additional insight into the manuscript.

She [Spaulding's widow] gave permission to examine the Spaulding’s papers in the attic of a farmhouse in Otsego County, New York; but he found there only one manuscript, which was clearly not the source for the Book of Mormon.  This was a romance supposedly translated from twenty-one rolls of parchment covered with Latin, found in a cave on the banks of the Conneaut Creek.  It was written in modern English and was about 45,000 words long, one sixth the length of the Book of Mormon.  It was an adventure story of some Romans sailing to Britain long before the Christian era, who had been blown to America during a violent storm.

Hurlburt’s  Downfall/ED Howe takes over Issue

Hurlburt at some point confronted Smith.  SR Page 136,

Smith and Rigdon were quick to defend the Mormon cause.  And at some point in the passion of a heated exchange, Hurlburt publicly threatened that he would “wash his hands” in the prophet’s blood.  In January 1834, Smith filed a legal complaint bringing Hurlburt to trial on 1 April.  The court found him guilty, fined him $200, and ordered him to keep the peace for 6 months.

The notoriety surrounding Hurlbut, compounded by an embarrassing incident when his wife was discovered in bed with Judge Orris Clapp, tarnished his image.  He sold his research to Eber D. Howe, editor of the Painesville Telegraph, who held a long-term grudge against Mormonism for converting his wife and daughter.

On Nov 28, 1834, The Painesville Telegraph contained the first advertisement of Howe’s book Mormonism Unvailed. It was one of the first published books attributing Rigdon as the real author of the Book of Mormon.   SR page 136,

While Howe admitted he had Spalding’s manuscript, it was obvious that the former minister’s work, a secular text, was not the source for the Book of Mormon, a lofty religious tome, although the introduction, ethnological assumptions, and mystical lore were undeniably similar.  To explain the enigmatic gaps in genre and plot, Howe wrote that his witnesses claimed Spalding had “altered his first plan of writing, by going farther back with dates, and writing in the old scripture style, in order that it might appear more ancient.”

Howe further purported that through some unspecified means, Rigdon must have secured this hypothetical second, revised manuscript while he was living in Pittsburgh.  He concluded: “We, therefore, must hold out Sidney Rigdon to the world as being the original ‘author and proprietor’ of the whole Mormon conspiracy, until further light is elicited upon the lost writings of Solomon Spaulding.”

Other Manuscripts?

NM page 447-8 discusses the possibility of other manuscripts, and discounts them.

She [Spaulding's widow] told him that “Spaulding had a great variety of manuscripts” and recollected that one was entitled the “Manuscript Found,” but its contents she “had no distinct knowledge.”  During the two years she had lived in Pittsburgh, Spaulding had taken the manuscript to the office of Patterson and Lambdin, she said, but whether or not it had been returned was uncertain.

She gave Hurlbut permission to examine Spaulding’s papers in the attic of a farmhouse in Otswego, New York; but he found there only one manuscript, which was clearly not the source of the Book of Mormon.

….

Hurlbut showed this manuscript to Spaulding’s neighbors, who, he said, recognized it as Spaulding’s, but stated that it was not the “Manuscript Found.”  Spaulding “had altered his first plan of writing, but going farther back with dates and writing in the Old Scripture style, in order that it might appear more ancient.”  This surmise may have been true, though there was no signed statement swearing to it.  But it seems more likely that these witnesses had so come to identify the Book of Mormon with the Spaulding manuscript that they could not concede having made an error without admitting to a case of memory substitution which they did not themselves recognize.

NM Page449,

Hurlbut, at least, was certain that Spaulding had written a second manuscript.  Eber D. Howe, Hurlbut’s collaborator, now wrote to Robert Patterson, the Pittsburgh printer mentioned by Spaulding’s widow.  He replied “that he had no recollection of any manuscript being brought there for publication, neither would he have been likely to have seen it, as the business of printing was conducted wholly by Lambdin at that time.”

…

Disappointed in this source, and unable to get any confirming evidence from Joseph’s neighbors in western New York, Hurlbut had to be content with insinuating that Sidney Rigdon, who had once lived in Pittsburgh, was somehow responsible for getting the Spaulding manuscript into Joseph Smith’s hands.

Where was Rigdon between 1809 and 1830?

Rigdon never met Spaulding (who died in 1816.)  NM Page 449-51

If the evidence pointing to the existence of a second Spaulding manuscript is dubious, the affidavits trying to prove that Rigdon stole it, or copied it, are all unconvincing and frequently preposterous.

First there is no evidence that Rigdon ever lived in Pittsburgh until 1822, when he became pastor of the First Baptist Church.  Robert Patterson, Jr., son of the Pittsburgh printer, conducted an exhaustive research among the old settlers of the vicinity to try to establish the truth of the Spaulding theory.  This was in 1882, sixty-six years after Spaulding’s death.  Many were familiar with the theory and believed it, he said, but few could give first-hand information.  Rigdon’s brother-in-law, not a Mormon, and Isaac King, and old neighbor, swore to him that Rigdon did not go to Pittsburgh before 1822.  Mrs. Lambdin, widow of Patterson’s partner, denied any knowledge of Rigdon, as did Robert P. DuBois, who had worked in the printing shop between 1818 and 1820.

One woman, who had worked as a mail clerk in Patterson’s office between 1811 and 1816, stated that she knew Rigdon and that he was an intimate friend of Lambdin’s but this was clearly untrue as evidenced by the statement of Lambdin’s widow that she had never heard of Rigdon….

Brodie rejects other affidavits from this point on.  NM Page 453,

The tenuous chain of evidence accumulated to support the Spaulding-Rigdon theory breaks altogether when it tries to prove that Rigdon met Joseph Smith before 1830.

….

Rigdon’s life between 1826 and 1829 has been carefully documented from non-Mormon sources.  It is clear from the following chronology that he was a busy and successful preacher and one of the leading figures of the Campbellite movement in Ohio.  Until August 1830, when he broke with Alexander Campbell over the question of introducing communism into the Campbellite Church, he was one of the four key men of that church.  It cannot be held that Rigdon rewrote the Spaulding manuscript before 1827, since the anti-Masonry permeating the book clearly stemmed from the Morgan excitement beginning late in 1826.

Brodie then lists all the known funerals, marriages, and other meetings of Rigdon between 1826 and 1830, along with gaps of information where his whereabouts are unknown.  It fails to show a link between Smith and Rigdon prior to Dec 1830.  By this time, the Book of Mormon had already been published.

Rigdon and others’ denials

SR Page 133-4,

(1) During the spring of 1833 or 1834, while visiting the home of Samuel Baker near New Portage, Ohio, Rigdon stated in the presence of a large gathering that he was aware some in the neighborhood had accused him of being the instigator of the Book of Mormon.  Standing in the doorway to address the audience in the yard, he held up a Book of Mormon and said:

‘I testify in the presence of this congregation, and before God and all the Holy Angels up yonder, (pointing toward heaven), before whom I expect to give account at the judgement day, that I never saw a sentence of the Book of Mormon.  I never penned a sentence in the Book of Mormon. I never knew that there was such a book in existence as the Book of Mormon, until it was presented to me by Parley P. Pratt, in the form that it now is.’

…

(2) On his deathbed with an interview to his son Wickliffe, “I found him as ever in declaring that he himself had nothing whatever to do in writing the book, and that Joseph Smith received it from an angel.  On his dying bed he made the same declaration to a Methodist minister…. My mother has also told me that Father had nothing to do with the writing of the book, and that she positively knew that he had never seen it until Parley P. Pratt came to our home with it.

(3) Nancy R. Ellis, Rigdon’s most anti-Mormon offspring, recalled in an 1884 interview the arrival of the missionaries to her Mentor, Ohio home when she was eight years old:  “I saw them hand him the book, and I am positive as can be that he never saw it before…. She further stated that her father in the last years of his life called his family together and told them, as sure as there was a God in heaven, he never had anything to do in getting up the book of Mormon, and never saw any such thing as a manuscript written by Solomon Spaulding.”

(4) Former apostle William McClellin (who was excommunicated in 1838) said regarding Rigdon on page 137, “He never heard of the work of Smith & Cowdery, until C[owdery] and P[arley] P Pratt brought the book to him in Mentor, O[hio].  True enough, I have but little confidence in S. Rigdon, but I know he was more the tool of J. Smith than his teacher and director.  He was docile in J.S. hands to my knowledge.

Conclusion

SR page 137.

The weight of scholarly studies since Fawn Brodie’s seminal 1945 No Man Knows My History biography of Joseph Smith has all but eliminated the Spalding theory and Rigdon’s complicity.  The earliest Book of Mormon critic, Rigdon’s former mentor Alexander Campbell, opined in 1831 that Joseph Smith profoundly affected by the Salvationist Christianity of nineteenth-century Protestant America, was, in fact, the author of the work.

NM page 455-6

Alexander Campbell, who knew Rigdon intimately, described his conversion to Mormonism with great regret in the Millennial Harbinger, attributing it to his nervous spasms and swooning and to his passionate belief in the imminent gathering of Israel.  But of the authorship of the Book of Mormon he wrote bluntly:  “It is as certainly Smith’s fabrication as Satan is the father of lies or darkness is the offspring of night.”

So, I’m sure there are people out there who believe the Book of Mormon is fiction.  However, I believe the Spaulding Theory has been thoroughly discredited by these two authors.  (I know this is a long post, but a longer version is found here.)  Comments?

I share that background to explain why – at Sunstone West this past weekend – I took such a keen interest in a screening of the film “Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons.” Produced by Margaret Blair Young and Darius Gray, this movie goes through the history of black people in the Church and the evolution of the priesthood ban, which is largely “credited” to Brigham Young. Apparently, he evolved (or de-volved) in his views, as the movie had some interesting early quotes from him that were far more kind and tolerant towards blacks than some of his later whoppers. The historical context painted by the film shows an influx of Mormon converts from the southern states who brought their slaves to Utah. Henceforth, Young made the decision to make Utah into a slave-friendly territory. Another bit of historical context that I don’t remember being mentioned in the film is that the Democratic Party (then pro-slavery) was also more tolerant of plural marriage, which was likely another factor in the decision.

Fascinating as the history was, the movie was far more touching for me on a personal level. I was utterly floored by the powerful testimonies shared by the many black LDS members interviewed on camera. Many of these folks joined the Church while the ban still existed. One African-American sister shared the heartbreaking observation that the first time she was ever called a “nigger” was in the Salt Lake temple. Yet, she was far from angry. Like many others of all races, her life had been touched in a positive way by the Gospel. That many of these folks retained a love and loyalty to an organization that had rejected them for so long was amazing. The Church apparently did not sponsor this project, but it should buy every copy that it can and send it out to all four corners of the Earth. Seriously, who better to share the hopeful message of the Gospel than a group of people who consistently getting the short end of the stick.

Another interesting tidbit from the film was a story about Dr. Cecil “Chip” Murray, retired pastor of the First AME Church of Los Angeles (which was founded by a former slave of Mormon pioneers). Murray shares a story on camera that he was once invited to meet with then-President Hinckley at the Church Office Building. At that meeting, he says Hinckley apologized to him for the Church’s participation in the slavery issue and for its part in perpetuating prejudice against black people. How broad he meant that is arguable, but it certainly seems a long way from just three decades ago.

Ms. Young was there and hosted a lively discussion afterwards. She is working on getting the film distributed. Apparently, Howard University has agreed to show it on its PBS station. Hopefully, BYU does the same. Anyone interested should start bugging their local PBS station. And maybe some e-mails to Netflix to spark their interest wouldn’t hurt, either.

Basically, two thumbs up here. Despite the lousy economy, I would heartily recommend dipping into your wallet for $25 to buy the DVD (it can be found at

http://www.untoldstoryofblackmormons.com

) And no, I’m not getting a cut. Thanks for listening.

Here are several reasons why Mormon Doctrine is NOT Mormon Doctrine:

Despite the many reasons why the book is not an official declaration of Church doctrine, it still gets cited and quoted in General Conference and Church talks, lessons and articles. Thus, while the book does not represent the official statement of Church beliefs, such actions of using it in official Church meetings by General Authorities and members gives the book undeserved legitimacy and authority.

It is no wonder that opponents of the LDS Church attack the Church by citing from Mormon Doctrine. We deny the near canonical status of the book, yet, the book sales and use of it in Church tells the critics of the Church (and membership) otherwise.

So, what do you think?  Does the book do more good than harm?  Do average members understand that it is not canonical?  Why was Bruce McConkie protected from the consequences of writing a speculative book with a presumptuous title when others who have written speculative Mormon books have been excommunicated?  Discuss.

I’ve been thinking about Levi Peterson’s The Backslider lately (SPOILERS AHEAD).

The 1986 novel tells the story of Frank Windham, a Mormon cowboy from southern Utah. Frank struggles with his faith and finding his place in Mormon culture. Topics including sexual sin, backsliding, self-mutilation, and guilt have made this novel pretty controversial in many Mormon settings. Despite being beautifully written, I’ve always thought that the true genious of the novel is the way Frank envisions God & Jesus.

Something happens during the transmission of Heavenly knowlege from God into the human mind. We are terribly incapable of understanding or comprehending God. And this means that our visions and revelations, as sacred as they may be, aren’t actually visions of God. They’re human interpretations of glory beyond our understanding. We have visions of God – glorious visions – real visions – but they’re filtered through an earthly lens colored by our personal circumstances. We understand God based on who we need Him to be. This isn’t to denigrate the authenticity of visions, but we should be careful when trying to make categorical statements about God based on an earthly vision.

At one point in the novel, Frank is feeling guilty because of his backsliding and he imagines God pointing a gun at him, calling him to repentance. For some this is absurd, but for Frank, it was as real as any other heavenly vision. His understanding of God is shaped by his experiences. Whereas God communicated his wrath to Adam through banishment, to Noah through flooding, to Moses through serpents and plagues, He communicated his wrath to Frank through a rifle.

By the end of the novel, Frank imagines Jesus as a Cowboy, riding a horse with cigarette in hand. It’s an account that is sure to rub many Mormons the wrong way, but it’s who Frank needed Jesus to be in order to have faith in Him. A merciful God wouldn’t send Frank anything less than Cowboy Jesus.

So we can talk about who God is, what He looks like, or where He came from, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that He is.

I don’t know much about God, but i’m pretty sure Jesus rides a bicycle.

“Happiness is a full bike rack!” –Yehuda Moon

So attentive MM readers, won’t you tell me a little about YOUR version of God?

Recently I saw Religulous here and he touched on Horus here and a few of the parallels between the story of Horus and Jesus.

Many Mormons when they start delving and  unravelling events in our history also delve into what they can find out about (possible origins)

to the bible or even if you want to say conspiracy theories. Horus is one I have heard of members in our church and Christians of all faiths looking into as they go deeper into their historical studies of the Bible. Look at some of the comparisons sited by religious tolerance

Questions

Is this whole thing grasping at straws or is it uncanny the parallels between the two stories of Horus and Jesus?

Please Discuss

Notes: Religous Tolerance

]]> http://mormonmatters.org/2009/01/25/horus-bible-parallels/feed/ 21 http://mormonmatters.org/2009/01/23/a-brand-new-year/ http://mormonmatters.org/2009/01/23/a-brand-new-year/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:15:39 +0000 James http://mormonmatters.org/?p=3933

The onset of 2009 brings an opportunity for young people of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to renew their commitment to their faith while participating in a program of instruction, song and dance that reviews the activities of 2008. The program also introduces their theme as Mormon youth for the new year: “Be thou an example of the believers” (1 Timothy 4:12)

Wow I had never seen such a sleek production done by the church some blogs have compared it too watching High School Musical. See you tube video here (please click high quality when you watch it).

Its a whole new media style and attitude I have never seen in our church.

Click here to see the News Press.Click here to Brand New Year Website – I found the videos pretty up beat and interesting. My English daughter who is out of young women’s found it cheesy-she thinks most American things are.  My wife thought it was a little too manufactured and OTT but she is English to.

What do you think?

Have any of the youth in your wards seen in it live or watched it ?

Did they enjoy it or not?

In his new book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell shares some interesting and scary information that correlate plane crashes with a cultural respect for authority. He shares the story of a specific plane crash on Korean Air in which an analysis of the dialogue as recorded on the “black box” clearly shows (to someone who understands the language and what its built in deferential markers mean) that at least 2 of the crew members knew they were off course and in danger of crashing, but would not directly tell the pilot out of respect for his authority.  Because the pilot was exhausted and stressed out, he failed to notice their hints and instead flew the plane into the side of a mountain in foggy conditions, killing over 100 passengers & crew.

This problem is related to Power-Distance Index, or the cultural expectation of respect for hierarchy.  The PDI differs greatly from culture to culture and is ingrained into that culture, insinuated in both language & customs.  Countries with high PDI had the following characteristics:

• High reliance on leaders for decision-making. Leaders are expected to be decisive, their decisions are followed without question; leaders are consulted for more routine decisions than in low PDI countries.
• Lower expectations of non-leaders. Non-leaders are discouraged from expressing opinions or making decisions (er, “the thinking is done”).  They are subordinates in every sense of the word.
• Restrictions on how subordinates are permitted to express their needs. In the highest PDI cultures, this is restricted to very indirect “hints,” which within the context of the culture are generally understood by leaders as a way for the leader to retain authority but save face.  However, this structure relies heavily on leaders’ ability and willingness to listen and respond to these hints.
• Fear of backlash. In very high PDI countries, subordinates were sometimes physically struck when they irritated their leaders or were too direct.  Fear and intimidation clearly impacted how willing subordinates were to speak up.
• Strong reliance on rules & plans. These cultures discourage deviation from accepted procedures, even when circumstances clearly dictate that normal procedures will be ineffective.

Conversely, low PDI cultures are generally the opposite of the above:

• Subordinate or employee-focused culture. Leaders tend to be apologetic about being leaders and ultra-sensitive to subordinates.  This is the basis for the concept of “servant leadership.”  (Or as Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker:  “With great power comes great responsibility.”)
• Shared responsibility for communication.  In a low PDI culture, the speaker is expected to ensure understanding.  The receiver of the message is also expected to listen attentively.  In a high PDI culture, only leaders are considered responsible for the receiving of the message.  The speaker’s input is not considered necessary anyway.
• Equality culture. Subordinates are valued as having unique roles or expertise that give them insight and make their input critical.  Their opinions are expected and weighed based on merit; there is a free exchange of ideas regardless of level.  Speaking up, even in disagreement with a superior may be rewarded in these cultures, even if done tactlessly or aggressively.
• High innovation and creativity. These cultures are very willing to abandon established procedures and brainstorm new ideas when circumstances dictate.  They tend to be flexible and innovative.

Just to give you a taste, here’s how a few countries stacked up on PDI.  High PDI countries (with strong respect for authority):

1. Brazil
2. South Korea
3. Morocco
4. Mexico
5. Philippines

Low PDI countries (note the commonality created by language):

1. New Zealand
2. Australia
3. South Africa
4. Ireland
5. United States

So, based on these parameters, is Mormonism a high-PDI culture or a low-PDI culture or somewhere in between?  Does it vary by region or is it common across the entire religion, preserved in the language and customs and doctrines?  How much does it vary from person to person? What are the boundaries of respect for authority in Mormon culture (what would even the staunchest Saint refuse to do)?

Based on the above, I would have a hard time considering most Mormon culture to be high PDI (as I might have expected), yet there are some elements of both high and low PDI.  To some extent, this could be due to the fact that the concept of hierarchy is mixed:

• Quorum Leadership.  There is an “oligarchy” in that we consider all the apostles to be “prophets” and their personalities differ greatly.  Yet all are viewed as being on the same “level.”  Some of them are high PDI individuals; others are low PDI.
• Christ as the Head.  Ultimately, we consider Christ to be at the head of the church, and since our notion of Christ is something personal (everyone can have a relationship with their Savior), we have a “bat phone” to the man at the top.  That’s usually a low PDI indicator.  The fact that Christ is not physically on the earth further reduces PDI.  Everyone’s notion of Christ has somewhat equal creedence so long as it is not directly and clearly contradicted by doctrine.
• Lay Clergy.  Positions are temporary, and we are all volunteers.  No one is being paid or truly promoted, and anyone could be called to serve in any capacity at any time.  There are instances of “unrighteous dominion” (high PDI), but there are also many committees and quorums making decisions at the lowest level possible (low PDI).  Again, there’s a lot of variation based on individuals in leadership having a high or low PDI personally.

In general, I would say that the church is mixed, with both high and low PDI elements, and that it varies more from individual to individual (meaning there is not necessarily a predominant culture).  What do you think?

Discuss.

I have books written by and about the Prophets and General Authorities, Histories of the Church, Church Units and the building of the Kingdom in various geographies. Books about Temples and Temple Building.  Books which attempt to explain Gospel doctrine and principles, even untrue doctrine and books which are critical of the Church.  I have various versions and translations of the Scriptures, books that comment or explain scripture and many, many more. One of my friends once commented, “Why do you have all these books, you are never going to read them all.” Which is turning out to be true, but I have referred to many of them at one time or another. I like the feel of a real book in my hand so I often do research online and then read from the actual book itself.

Sometimes it seems that I spend a lot of time in my books and not as much time in the Scriptures.

President Harold B Lee said this:

“We have been prone in the last while to be more concerned about reading commentaries about the scriptures. But there is nothing quite so vital as taking those scriptures in our hands and reading them. [T]here is something that’s more electric, more spiritual, something that is more deeply meaningful when I read from the scriptures themselves. There is nothing so vital, so necessary today, as to ingrain in your children a love for the scriptures themselves.” (Sunday School General Conference, 6 October 1972)

I have often thought about this and wonder if we have way too many books about the Church and Church topics. That those thousands of books distract us from the books we should be reading on a frequent basis-the Scriptures.

Ironically, General Authorities and Church Scholars are major contributors to the plethora of books on the market. Even though the market for LDS books is rather small, I bet it is still big business.

And really, after the tenth or eleventh biography of Joseph Smith is written, do we really need yet another one? Just how much more Book of Mormon geography theories and explanation can we stand?

Now, I have gotten a great deal of insight from reading some of these books and gotten ideas which did truly enlighten me. But could I have gotten that with an earnest reading of the Scriptures under the influence of the Holy Ghost?

What do you think?