Finding love through the Internet is a new mating process that is increasing in popularity and has been for the past 10-20 years. As with any new process, we struggle to figure out its implications and “rules” of behavior as we embark on unchartered territory. One of the positives of the Internet is the decrease of geographical and cultural boundaries. This has a great impact on the “pool” available to those who are dating.  Our world today is much more global, as is our church, and people are meeting, falling in love or beginning friendships with those not of their culture, race or even religious faith at a much grander scale than ever before. There are many wonderful things about this – the main one being increased tolerance for others different from ourselves.
However, as with anything, there are challenges that couples in interracial, intercultural, or interfaith relationships should be aware of as they make the decision to make a life together:

• Unfortunately there still remain many stereotypes or “attitudes” towards mixed race relationships – this can depend greatly on the geographical area you live in. The best way to deal with this issue is to see it as ignorance and un-Christlike behavior. It may take patience at times, the willingness to not be overly sensitive and the willingness to be a voice, example and educator to those around you. Be clear with friends and family members that if they want to enjoy the benefits of a relationship with you and your wife (if you were to get married), that any type of racism/bigotry will be addressed and not tolerated. Because of deep seeded beliefs/cultural bias, some people may not even be aware that their behavior is racist. That is why I encourage open communication before writing people off.

• With different cultures and faiths there usually come different traditions, parenting styles, conflict/problem-resolution styles and even romance styles. As with any relationship, communication will be a key element for success.

• It will be of great importance once children are born, to engender in them a sense of pride for all aspects of their ancestry and subsequent personhood (i.e. color of skin, cultural tradition and history, etc.). Sometimes within the same family, children may have different color shades of skin tone. Communication and normalizing of the family situation will be important in engendering strong self-esteem and a strong sense of family unity. It is also important to educate them on what they can expect from the outside world so that they are prepared to deal with insults or other ignorant behavior.

Here are some thoughts in regards to your specific situation:

• It is normal to worry and “over think” when making the important decision as to your lifelong companion. In fact, it is good to be as objective as possible and be realistic about the pros and cons of the relationship. This is usually a difficult thing to do when we are “in love.” However, the more you discuss potential strengths and weaknesses as a couple, the more insight you will both receive as to your problem-solving styles, your compatibility, your attraction, your goals/dreams, etc. These are important things to be addressing during the dating process.

• I encourage you to take the relationship to the next level – that of meeting as you mention – and see how you feel about each other once you are able to spend more time with one another. There is no need to hurry or rush into any decision.

• Just because your love interest has “received an answer” and feels that you should marry, does not necessarily mean that this is your answer. It will be important for you to receive your own impressions and personal revelation regarding the decision as to whom you will marry.

• I would discourage any conversion process that is based solely on the desire to marry. Many not of our faith don’t always understand the commitment needed to legitimately become a convert.  Conversion into our religion takes doctrinal belief and personal commitment that this woman may not be completely aware of. I would hope also that from your perspective, it would be more important for her to convert sincerely if that is what she chooses at some point, than to just want her to convert due to family and/or LDS social pressure. Conversion should be a deeply personal, spiritual and largely individual journey with God.

• It is better to be aware of and recognize any cultural or racist biases you may have and be honest with yourself about them. In the desire many of us have not to be racist, we inadvertently hide uncomfortable feelings or thoughts (even from ourselves). To be able to overcome such thought processes we first need to identify them and how we want to progress. Asking ourselves the following questions may be helpful: Where do my biases come from? What lenses am I looking through (i.e. my parents?, my culture?, my education?) Are any of my biases based on evidence? Are they based on fear? Are they based on gospel teaching? How did Jesus Christ feel about and treat those of a different culture during His ministry? What can I learn from Him? How do my biases limit me? How do they protect me? Do I want this type of protection? How do I want to approach people of a different race, culture or faith? How do I want these same people to approach me?

With all this being said, I want to be clear that whether or not we marry within the same race, religion or culture – the fact remains that the two families from which two individuals come from are, in of themselves, two different cultures. We take a lot for granted when marrying within “sameness” that many times does not meet expectations. People assume certain things because of the labels we engender. Then come to find out, assumptions are not realities. It is important regardless of who we marry to be aware of the “culture” our spouse comes from, the “culture” we come from and how we are to integrate the strengths and weaknesses we bring to the table to in turn create a new found culture within the bounds of our new family and home.

MM readers:
What are your thoughts and feelings about interracial marriage?
What are your thoughts and feelings about marrying outside of our faith?

Natasha Helfer Parker is a Licensed Clinical Marriage and Family Therapist and a member of the Church with 13 years of experience working with LDS members. Here she shares with us representative cases from her practice and insights she has gained from her work as a therapist.  She blogs at mormontherapist.blogspot.com.

I attended the Mormon History Association meetings in Independence, Missouri this past week.  I thought I’d share some pictures.  If you’d like to read more about the conference, here are some links to my posts from Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

CoC Independence Temple at Sunset

All trip long, I have been looking forward to attending the Community of Christ Devotional at the Independence Temple.  The meeting began at 8:30 AM, and was a wonderful hour of singing and spoken word.  Professor Alex Baugh of BYU, and Apostle Susan Skoor of the Community of Christ

gave background on many hymns written or revised by WW Phelps.  It was a truly inspiring meeting.  I haven’t enjoyed singing that much since I was in the MTC!

Following the service, I went on a tour of the temple.  We visited the meditation chapel, as saw many beautiful sculptures inside the temple.  Unlike LDS temples, we were able to take photos everywhere except for the museum.  I was lucky enough to be led on a personal tour by Ron Romig, Community of Christ Director of the Kirtland Temple.

Displayed in the museum were actual copies of 1830, 1837, and 1840 copies of the Book of Mormon, along with facsimiles of the printer’s manuscript.  The famous oil painting of Joseph and Emma were also there, along with photos of the previous 6 or 7 prophet/presidents of the Community of Christ.  It was truly fascinating.

Following the tour, I wanted to visit some of the other Restoration churches.  There are quite a few Restoration churches in the vicinity.  When Joseph designed the city of Independence, he had allocated 63 acres for 24 temples to be erected on 3 city blocks.  The original plan called for 12 temples for the Melchizedek Priesthood, and 12 temples for the Aaronic Priesthood.  These temples apparently were supposed to serve a more administrative role than for worship.  As you can imagine, many followers of Joseph Smith, both inside and outside the LDS and RLDS churches have clamored for this land.

A group calling itself the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) actually owns the location for the spot where Joseph Smith said a temple should reside, and they have a church on that location now.  The RLDS owns a portion o fthe temple lot, where the Independence Temple resides, and the LDS church owns a visitor’s center and a stake center on part of the temple lot.

I really would like to attend some of these other Restorationist branches, so it was difficult for me to choose where to go.  I attended part of the service for the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), also known as the Hedrickites.  The group was founded by a man by the name of Granville Hedrick.  There is an article in the Journal of Mormon History outlining many legal battles between the Hedrickites and the RLDS church, with the Hedrickites prevailing.  I attended about 20 minutes of the service.  During the service, a baby was blessed, and I heard references to both the Bible and Book of Mormon.  I was late for the service, but I did not see a sacrament table, so I’m not sure if that was part of the service.

Wanting to visit a few other churches, I attended the Stone Church—the oldest church in Independence. The RLDS church began construction in 1873 and it was dedicated in 1888.  I arrived just in time for the last song and prayer.  The church had a balcony, similar to the Salt Lake Tabernacle.  The congregation stood during the last song, and I was so tall that I had to duck into the aisle to see the organist.  There were old wooden benches there, but they had cushions.

I asked if I could take photos, and they said I could.  There were 3 beautiful stained glass windows: one showing Moroni, Joseph Smith, and

the Golden Plates, another showing Moses, Jesus, and the resurrection, and a third symbolizing the Trinity.  The people were extremely friendly, and it was nice to have one of the members take me on a mini-tour.

Following that service, I noticed another Community of Christ church a short distance away.  I was surprised to learn that they had a Jazz band playing.  I recorded a few minutes of their last song!  (I tried to post it, but the file is too big–I’ll try to condense it somehow.)  They mentioned that the neighborhood was full of drugs and gangs, and they were trying to help citizens in the area avoid these problems.  They invited me back next week for a baby blessing, but I told them I had a plane to catch.

A friend told me that I really needed to attend the Cutlerite Church.  It was founded in 1853 by Alphaeus Cutler, who I believe is mentioned in the D&C.  On my way there, I mistakenly thought this was a Cutlerite church.

I knocked on the door, but nobody answered.

Just a few houses down was the real Cutlerite church.  My friend told me that the Cutlerites are the only group that still maintains an Endowment Ceremony, and it is conducted in the upstairs portion of this church.

Apparently they only have about 10-15 people meet on a weekly basis.  The MHA pre-conference tour flooded them with about 50 interested participants.

Unfortunately, I arrived too late: the doors were locked.  Here are a few photos, and I stuck my camera up to the door to peer into the chapel.

As I looked at my map, I decided to try to find Lilburn W Boggs house.  Unfortunately, I never found it, but I did find another interesting church: the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  They meet across the street from the Independence Temple in a converted high school (formerly Crisman High School.)  I walked around the building, and discovered a man.  Apparently, they hold luncheons for the needy and homeless.  Their freezer had broken, so he was loading food into his van.  I asked him if I might be able to tour the building, and he reluctantly agreed.  His name is Arlo Stevenson.

I learned that he is not a member of the Remnant Church, but his church has partnered with them to help out the needy.  The Remnant Church is a break-off from the RLDS church.  Arlo is a former member of the RLDS church, but has joined the House of Aaron, and I learned that this church has a branch about 50 miles west of Delta, Utah on the Utah/Nevada border.  Arlo showed me the Remnant Church offices, and then I learned that the Remnant Church has rented a room for the House of Aaron to hold meetings.  I purchased a “Sunday School” manual, and I hope to do a future post on the House of Aaron.

I also ran into some interesting people.  I had a nice chat on Saturday night with Paul Savage, Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Elijah message.  He is from Independence as well, and has a small congregation.  I had recently purchased Scattering of the Saints by John Hamerand Newell Bringhurst, and he pointed to the cover to his name.  I said, “Wow, I thought these were all dead people.”

“I’m not dead!” he exclaimed.  He was a really interesting person.  We didn’t have much time to chat, but I got his email address and hope to discuss this group further as I learn more.

I also took my picture with 2 apostles from the Community of Christ:  Andrew Bolton and Susan Skoor.  Here is Elder Marlin Jensen, Historian for the LDS church.  I was pleased to meet many authors including John Hamer, Newell Bringhurst, Kathy Daines, Rick Turley (asst LDS Church Historian), and Greg Prince.  It was a real blast—I remarked to some that Independence felt a bit like Mormon Disneyland to me.

I really enjoyed hearing President Carter discuss prayer during the peace negotiations between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.  From page 70,

When we went to Camp David on September 5, 1978, Begin, Sadat, and I all wanted to pray.  But before our first talks, I spent several hours negotiating the text of the prayer.  I got a proposed draft from a prayer group in Washington and I made some edits.  Sadat approved it, Begin made some changes, and we issued the prayer the first day….

While we were at Camp David those thirteen days, Begin and Sadat were almost totally incompatible.  They didn’t like each other and kept resurrecting ancient grievances.  So after the third day I wouldn’t let them see each other again.

[Larry King]  There are stories the talks almost ended without a resolution a number of times.

[Carter] I remember one day, maybe the tenth, Sadat told Moshe Dayan he would make no more concessions in the negotiating text that I was carrying back and forth.  Sadat told his people at Camp David to pack, and he told National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to arrange a helicopter to take them back to Washington.

I was in my cabin talking to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and others about budget matters.  I was in jeans and a T-shirt.  I remember changing into a suit and going to Sadat’s cabin, where I had a very sharp exchange with him.  I accused him of breaking promises he had made.  Then I went outside to a quiet place by myself and prayed.

[Larry King]  The Camp David peace accords were signed three days later, on September 17, in a ceremony at the White House.

“Pray for your enemies” has an interesting meaning when looking at the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty.  Do you pray for you enemies?

I also enjoyed Larry’s exchange with Ralph Reed.  From page 184, Reed said,

One of the things the Bible teaches us to do is pray for our leaders.  It doesn’t say pray for the leaders of the political party with which you are affiliated.  It doesn’t say pray for Ronald Reagan but not Bill Clinton.  that’s something we have to rediscover.

[Larry King] Do you include Bill Clinton in your prayers?

Yes.  I pray for our national leaders, that they will be wise and that they will be fair and judicious.  I hope that liberals said the same prayer when Ronald Reagan was in the White House.  On the day Reagan was shot, I think every American prayed for his health and his protection.  Maybe there were some who didn’t, but I think most did.

The book was published in 1998, so I’ll update question:  do you pray for President Obama, Harry Reid, and Mitt Romney, John McCain and (fill in your favorite/least favorite politician here)?

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

The wording of my resolution was:

“Treat others how I want to be treated.”

I want to make one point here about something I have heard over the years. It is something that has bothered me over time, and I want to state up front what I believe this verse does NOT say – what I believe is a classic case of “wresting” scriptures and creating meaning that never was intended.

I have heard it said of old (*grin*) that we should treat others in whatever way will help them best. After all, this reasoning goes, deep down they really want whatever is best – so if we know what is best for someone, we should do all we can to help them see, recognize, understand and accept that which is best for them. This argument asserts that it’s better to treat someone how they “really” want to be treated (often subconsciously) than to treat them how they “think” they want to be treated – that I, as an enlightened individual, know what is best for them and, therefore, I, as an enlightened individual, should treat them as if they were in my shoes.

To try to say it differently, this approach to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is based on you placing yourself in their situation and transferring your own hopes and dreams and expectations on them. While this might sound reasonable and even praiseworthy at first glance, there are at least three problems with this approach that I can see immediately:

1) It is used often as a justification for aggressive action, pressure and even compulsion. At the most extreme, it allowed those in charge of the Inquisition to torture people into confessing non-existent sins – since those doing the torturing were convinced they only were doing what was best for the person being tortured by “cleansing” them of sin and freeing them for a more benevolent judgment in the afterlife. At a more common level, it is used to justify constant and inconsiderate preaching and attempts to convert others – unfortunately, even among our own membership. Again, the reasoning is, “If I didn’t have the Gospel in my life, I would want someone to preach it to me even if I didn’t want to hear it.”

2) It totally ignores and discounts the actual desires of the other person – and illustrates an arrogance that is couched in terms of love but, literally, is judgmental and condescending. In essence, it says, “I know better than you what you need, and I’m never going to quit trying to make you see that, no matter what you want.”

3) It simply isn’t what is commanded in these verses – to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

I want to finish with that last point, and I want to do so by placing each reader in the shoes of an active member of the LDS Church – and focusing on the reaction of nearly every LDS member who has a friend, family member, acquaintance or stranger who disagrees with Mormonism, has left the LDS Church, believes Mormons are not Christian and/or is saddened at the thought of Mormons ending up in Hell. If that person really is sincere in his concern, and if she really thought that constant badgering might convince you of the error of your ways, would you appreciate her preaching at you every time you were together? Would you appreciate her non-attendance at your wedding reception, since she believes your sealing in the temple is a sham and not recognized by God? Would you appreciate her constant, subtle (or blatant) warnings about your eternal condemnation? Deep down, on a very practical level, what would you really, truly want from her – how would you want her to “do unto you”?

I submit that all of us, at the most basic level, want little more than acceptance and respect and love for who we actually are – recognition that we are capable of making our own decisions – friendship that is genuine and not tied to certain conditions – etc. In other words, we want to be treated as equals – as important – as valuable – as legitimate deciders of our own fate, and we want that for who we ARE, not for who others want us to be.

So, the next time you start to say something to someone else, ask yourself, “How would I respond if someone said that, in that way, to me?” The next time you start to write a blog comment, ask yourself, “How would I respond if someone wrote that, in that way, to me?”. The next time you start to react to someone in any way, ask yourself, “How would I respond if someone reacted that way to me?” In summary, ask yourself:

How would I feel if someone “did that unto me”?

If you would thank God for that person’s words or actions, in the actual circumstances of your real life, “do so unto others”. If you would not thank God (or if you would need to pray for forgiveness) for your reaction to that person’s words or actions, don’t “do so unto others”. Finally, if you really would understand this principle, take one entire day and analyze everything according to this standard:

How would I feel if someone “did that unto me”?

If we really focused on that question, I have no doubt we would stop doing and saying much of what we do and say – and start doing and saying many things we currently do not say and do.

That was my resulotion that month – to treat others more as I actually want them to treat me.

Thoughts?  What am I missing that would support or weaken this interpretation of the Golden Rule?

Though it’s only an “additional teaching idea” in Lesson 12, Jacob’s ladder has captured my imagination due to some conversations I’ve recently had with Christian evangelicals.

The theme of the ladder to heaven is often used by the Early Church Fathers. Their interpretations of Jacob’s symbolic dream in Genesis 28 are similar to those made by Mormon General Authorities. In the 2nd century, Saint Irenaeus described the Christian Church as the ladder of ascent to God. In the 3rd century Origen explained that there are two ladders in the Christian life; one of which is the ladder that the soul climbs on the earth increasing the virtues. In the 4th century Saint Gregory of Nazianzus spoke of ascending Jacob’s Ladder by successive steps towards excellence, interpreting thus the ladder as an ascetic path, while Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote that Moses climbed on Jacob’s Ladder to reach the heavens where he entered the tabernacle not made with hands, thus giving to the Ladder a clear mystical meaning. The ascetic interpretation is found also in Saint John Chrysostom who wrote:

“And so mounting as it were by steps, let us get to heaven by a Jacob’s ladder. For the ladder seems to me to signify in a riddle by that vision the gradual ascent by means of virtue, by which it is possible for us to ascend from earth to heaven, not using material steps, but improvement and correction of manners.”

The account of Jacob’s Ladder as an analogy for the spiritual ascetic of life is again found in the classical work Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus. The ladder in Jacob’s dream represented a symbolic journey where each of the rungs suggest the steps needed to move upward. Man must climb up one level at a time as he participates in the saving principles and ordinances of the gospel offered by the Lord, who stands at the top. Notice how similar this description is to the quote by Marion G. Romney found in our lesson:

“Jacob realized that the covenants he made with the Lord … were the rungs on the ladder that he himself would have to climb in order to obtain the promised blessings—blessings that would entitle him to enter heaven and associate with the Lord” (“Temples—The Gates to Heaven,” Ensign, Mar. 1971, 16).

***
Later Christian interpretation of Jacob’s ladder is quite different than the early Church fathers, and demonstrates the dichotomy of thought between evangelicals and Mormons on the faith and works issue. In this exegesis, Jesus is seen as being the reality to which the ladder points in that he bridges the gap between heaven and earth. According to Martin Luther, Jacob’s vision of the ladder represented the incarnation of Christ. In the Gospel of John 1:51 there is a clear reference to Jacob’s dream pointing towards Jesus Christ, referred to by his title of the Son of Man:

And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

Adam Clarke, an early 19th century Methodist theologian and Bible scholar, elaborated upon this verse:

“That by the angels of God ascending and descending, is to be understood, that a perpetual intercourse should now be opened between heaven and earth, through the medium of Christ, who was God manifested in the flesh. Our blessed Lord is represented in his mediatorial capacity as the ambassador of God to men; and the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, is a metaphor taken from the custom of dispatching couriers or messengers from the prince to his ambassador in a foreign court, and from the ambassador back to the prince.”

In this one Biblical symbol we find differing schools of thought over the issue of salvation: One group views the ladder as a way to reach heaven based on their own actions of improvement and obedience to covenants and ordinances. The other group has access to heaven based on the provisions of God through the Mediator, Jesus Christ, who came to earth and became that ladder or stairway for the sinner to reconnect the relationship with God.

In pondering this issue in the past, I have lamented that such a rift exists between our two faith traditions. It often seems to me that we are closer than we think, and that grace and works are both important. Mormons, I explain, emphasize works so much because we fear that if we don’t, the sinner might lapse into laziness or indifference. Christians emphasize the grace aspect of the equation so that no one will mistakenly trust in legalism rather than the Savior for their salvation. Isn’t the truth a balance between Paul and James? However, the evangelicals have labored hard to convince me that salvation must be accepted upon grace alone. Lately I’ve been pondering why I am reluctant to join them in their assurance. I’ve accepted Christ as my Savior, and it certainly would be a lot easier not to worry so much about whether I was paying my tithing, going to the temple regularly, or doing my visiting teaching. But here’s what holds me back: if Jesus offers me the grace they describe, then I’ll be OK whether I’m doing my works or not. But if the Mormon view turns out to be the more accurate description of the will of God for us, I need to be trying my hardest to do all of those works which are in my power.

Am I living my life based on fear rather than faith? Maybe. Will it count against me in the end?  I don’t see how it could.

What’s your take on Jacob’s ladder? Do we walk up, or does God descend to meet us where we are? Can this scriptural metaphor be of any help to us in our faith journey?

BiV’s recent post “Sod, Seed, Salvation: Abrahamic Covenant and the Claim to Palestine” brought me out of my normal lurking.  Modern Palestine and what I firmly believe to be the erroneous interpretation most members of the church have regarding events there always riles me up.  Usually I do the smart thing and bite my lip, but every once in a while I choose to enter the fray in full combat mode.  As I’ve found on most issues of debate, it doesn’t really matter how right I think I am the noise of the argument rarely does more than highlight who already believes what.  So my wish here is not to re-argue the questions of Palestine which I’ve already done enough of on this blog.  Instead, I’d like to talk about shoes.  No, not the famous Arab shoes, rather walking a mile in another’s shoes.

Most American (and many non-American) Mormons grow up with an instinctive ability to walk in a modern Zionists’ shoes [for those less familiar with the terminology, I prefer to use the term Zionist as opposed to Israeli as it better captures the political movement that supports the Israeli state on an international and local basis, and it captures pre- and post-1948 dynamics].  There is a pseudo-scriptural modern narrative that seems to easily link Jewish, Christian and LDS-specific views of the Abrahamic Covenant to modern Zionism.  Orson Hyde’s 1840s visit to Palestine and several subsequent visits by church leaders over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries seem to further fit neatly into that narrative, with a number of statements from church leaders that come across as clearly pro-Zionist.  Then there is the fact that the leaders of modern Zionism have been overwhelmingly Europeans with a very western mode of communicating (and in western languages much of the time) that is easier for American Mormons to relate to.  And sealing it all up there is the manner in which the Zionist version of events is almost the only one heard in American media, literature and entertainment, and it comes across sounding very neat, clean, and heroic.  It sounds to most like a clear cut case of good and evil, and it all makes it so very easy to sympathize with Zionism growing up as a Mormon and especially as an American Mormon.

I grew up with that narrative.  I was an unusually political teenager.  John Birch-style anti-Communist crusading and religious-political support for Zionism were two of my big shticks.  The morality of it all seemed clear as daylight, the religious tie-ins to my LDS faith felt unassailable.  I lapped up Leon Uris’ “Exodus” like it was the Bible itself.  But then something changed.  I got to BYU.  I decided to make these and related issues a major focus of my studies.  I won’t bore you with all the details, but in a nutshell what happened over the years to follow was that in seeking to prove what I already believed was right, I ended up seeing things from the other side’s point of view as well.  I walked a mile in a Palestinian’s shoes, and my view of things was never the same again.

Now, perhaps I’m not being generous enough to humanity as a whole in separating Mormons out on this count, but I have always believed that one of the most wonderful ‘weaknesses’ of Mormons is that we’re so darn nice.  I mean, obviously that’s a gross over-generalization.  But as long as I’m already in that realm, I do feel like our basic doctrines that say that we’re all children of God with eternal worth and potential, means we have a really hard time dismissing other people when placed face to face with them.  We may dislike people, we may get as caught up as other people in political and philosophical movements that make us theoretically despise other people, but somehow when we’re placed face to face, those of us who have a real belief in those core doctrines of the worth of souls feel an obligation to not utterly dismiss as worthless the person on the other side even if we find much about them obnoxious. And it is that part of your Mormon-ness I wish to appeal to today in regards to Palestine.  I don’t ask you to accept all my views (which can be somewhat seen in the voluminous comments I left on BiV’s previous post), but I would like to ask: will you as a Mormon walk a mile in a Palestinian’s shoes?

Obviously very few people can actually go live in the forced exile of a Lebanese Palestinian refugee camp or experience life under Zionist siege in Gaza, but if you have any interest in what’s going on, even a superficial interest, you can choose to read things from the other bank of the river at least occasionally.  I’d like to give you some suggestions on what you can read.  If you say you simply don’t agree with it up front, all I ask is that you suspend your judgment and listen to your Palestinian brothers and sisters.  See their tears, hear their stories with a clear mental slate, ask how it feels to be them.  God could just as easily have chosen you to have been born in their place after all.  Walk in their shoes from time to time, and when these issues hit the news and you get curious, make a point of saying “how can I make sure I see how this looks from the other side too?”

So, below I’m going to give three different types of links.  As I imagine many readers of this blog are more inclined to literature and the personal angle, I will first give some glimpses of the world of Palestinian literature and a few other related cultural tidbits.  As I imagine others are more into seeing the nitty-gritty facts, I’ll then give some links to the counter-facts which show that history looks quite different when viewed without the Zionist prism.  And lastly, I’ll give some links for sources one can regularly follow in English to see how the story in the present looks very different from the Palestinian side versus the Zionist or standard American side.

*****

LINKS 1: LITERATURE FROM THE PERSONAL SIDE

*The works of Ghassan Kanafani, especially his short stories and short novels “Land of the Sad Oranges”, “Men in the Sun”, “Letter from Gaza”, and “Return to Haifa” (the latter story was one of the first stories in Arab literature to deal with Zionists as three-dimensional human characters).  The two collections I link two below contain a nice and well-translated selection of his works.  When Kanafani was murdered by a Zionist car bomb in Beirut along with his niece in 1972 (incidentally, the man had never been involved in any military action in his life, he was a writer pure and simple), the world lost one of the finest rising authors in the Arabic language of the time.  Kanafani upset many people on all sides of the ideological divide because he insisted on portraying the Palestinian situation as it was really lived, with all the emotion experienced at a personal level, regardless of the political implications that human portrayal might have.  Reading his stories one feels the utter despondency of a father unable to care for his family having been shoved across the border with only the things they could carry, the desperation of trying to sneak across the borders in the Gulf in search of work but unacknowledged as a human because of having been born Palestinian, the inner turmoil of deciding between emigration to the west in search of a better material life versus staying in the squalor of Gaza to stay true to the people who need you there.

http://www.amazon.com/Men-Sun-Other-Palestinian-Stories/dp/0894108573/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265974999&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Palestines-Children-Returning-Haifa-Stories/dp/0894108905/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265974999&sr=8-2

(Incidentally, “Return to Haifa” was one of the first full – admittedly short – novels I ever read in Arabic)

*Emile Habiby’s “Pessoptimist” or “The Secret Life of Said”.  Ghassan Kanafani wrote from the exile’s perspective, Emile Habiby wrote from the perspective of those few Palestinians who survived the ethnic cleansing to live on in what became Israel.  He writes in a satirical format about his now famous character Said who simply never can quite understand what’s going on around him, sometimes cooperating with the Israeli authorities, sometimes becoming an accidental Palestinian hero, but always stuck in a confused limbo, and always in his naïveté noticing the way things really are.  This has been made into a popular Arabic play as well, and was translated and widely read in Hebrew over the years.  Habiby embodies the plight and struggles of the “48 Arabs” as they call themselves as few others have managed to do, and does so with a wry, bitter humor that is hard not to enjoy.  Habiby has somehow managed to gain the respect of Hebrew and Arabic reading audiences and definitely mine.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=Emile%20Habiby

*The comic genius of Naji al-Ali and Handhala.  Palestine’s national cartoonist, discovered by Ghassan Kanafani who saw his work while visiting Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp and first published in the magazine “Freedom” in Lebanon in 1961.  He subsequently moved to Kuwait in 1963 and his character Handhala appeared in 1969.  In 1973 Handhala turned his back on his viewers, permanently frozen at 10 years of age (the age Naji was when his family was ethnically cleansed) and refusing to turn his face back to the world until he returned home.  Naji al-Ali was assassinated by an unknown hand in London in 1987, some have pointed to Yasser Arafat as a potential culprit, but Handhala has gained immortal status in Palestinian and Arab eyes as the embodiment of Palestinians’ hopes and pains.  Go through the cartoons on the website (feel free to email me if you want translations).

http://www.najialali.com/

*Joe Sacco’s “Palestine”.  I’m going to be lazy here and simply quote the Amazon product description because I think it encapsulates the book better than I can (other than to say, this is an excellent book for understanding life on the ground in the Occupied Territories if you can’t actually be there — although things have gotten much worse since this was written based on experiences almost 20 years ago now): “Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, who has often been called the first comic book journalist.  Sacco’s insightful reportage takes place at the front lines, where busy marketplaces are spoiled by shootings and tear gas, soldiers beat civilians with reckless abandon, and roadblocks go up before reporters can leave. Sacco interviewed and encountered prisoners, refugees, protesters, wounded children, farmers who had lost their land, and families who had been torn apart by the Palestinian conflict.  In 1996, the Before Columbus Foundation awarded Palestine the seventeenth annual American Book Award, stating that the author should be recognized for his “outstanding contribution to American literature,” while his publisher, Fantagraphics, is “to be honored for their commitment to quality and their willingness to take risks that accompany publishing outstanding books and authors that may not prove ‘cost-effective’ in the short run.”"  This brief review is also a good summation of the book: http://mobookblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/palestine-by-joe-sacco.html

http://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Joe-Sacco/dp/156097432X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265976394&sr=1-1

LINKS 2: THE HISTORY SEEN FROM THE OTHER SIDE

*Ilan Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”. One simply cannot properly understand what drives the conflict today without understanding what happened in 1948.  Israeli historian Ilan Pappe digs into the Israeli archives, press accounts of the era, international organizations accounts, British colonial records, and a few primary and secondary Arabic sources including survivor’s stories (not nearly enough, but in any case the Israeli and international accounts prove more than sufficient to make the key points anyhow) from the fateful years of 1948 and 1949.  What emerges is an entirely different picture than the Zionist narrative and almost perfectly in line with what Palestinians have said for over 60 years now actually happened.  The title of the book is clear enough in stating what happened, and it comes straight from the records kept by men like Ben Gurion himself in addition to countless eyewitnesses.

http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265976754&sr=8-1

*Walid Khalidi’s “All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948″. This is primarily a reference work, but it’s an easy one to spend time skimming through as it has lots of pictures.  Khalidi is one of the foremost scholars of Palestine up to it’s destruction by the Zionists in 1948 and meticulously goes through the over 400 villages they ethnically cleansed in 48/49.  Pictures of the remaining ruins, descriptions of who lived there and population statistics, when the villages were founded, land ownership, houses of worship, current status of the land and properties, how the actual acts of ethnic cleansing were carried out, etc.  You may have visited Israel and noticed old ruined houses or fallow farmland or agricultural terraces in lots of places.  Israelis act like they’re not there or “ancient” remnants to have biblical ponderings over.  The truth is much darker, these are ghost towns that were inhabited just a few decades ago and whose residents still live often just a few miles away and want nothing more than to just go home, fix and rebuild, and live in peace again in the places they are from.

http://www.amazon.com/All-That-Remains-Palestinian-Depopulated/dp/0887283063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265976717&sr=1-1

*Palestine Remembered: http://www.palestineremembered.com/

Think of it almost as an online version of what Walid Khalidi has tried to do, archiving records of what Palestine was and is today.  Each district, city, and village is catalogued, and (one of the best parts) personal stories from life in those areas and where its refugees are today are often found.  Unfortunately one of the best parts of the site – oral history videos of the survivors of the 1948 ethnic cleansing – only has Arabic audio, though hopefully they’ll be able to find the resources to translate and subtitle eventually.  The site is a great resource and along with Khalidi’s seminal work reminds the world what the Palestinians always knew was a Zionist myth: the land was never empty, Palestinian society was thriving and vibrant until it was violently burned down to its foundations in 1948/9.

*Kathleen Christison’s “Perceptions of Palestine”. I’m going to crib another book review that does the job better than me from http://mobookblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/perceptions-of-palestine-their.html “Former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison looks at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from an often ignored but vital angle: how the conflict is viewed by US policymakers. Starting in the late 19th century and going US administration by US administration, she examines how Washington’s policies have been a critical factor in the development of the conflict. In effect, she lays out how this is not a binary Israeli-Palestinian problem, but in fact a triangle involving the Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans. A century of deep sympathy for the Israeli perspective, but near constant ignoring and denigration of the Palestinian viewpoint in Washington has helped to fuel rather than calm the conflict in the Holy Land. For American readers who wonder why the United States often gets so much blame in the Arab world for what happens to the Palestinians, this book is a clear-eyed explanation of the issue.”

http://www.amazon.com/Perceptions-Palestine-Influence-Updated-Afterword/dp/0520217187/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265980633&sr=1-1

LINKS 3: SOURCES FOR FOLLOWING CURRENT EVENTS FROM THE PALESTINIAN & NON-ZIONIST VIEW

*The Electronic Intifada http://electronicintifada.net/.

Founded by Ali Abunimah, a Chicagoan of Palestinian refugee descent, the site has become probably the foremost representative of the Palestinian viewpoint in English.  Gathering not just excellent writers and op-eds, but on-the-ground human stories from throughout the Palestinian world, Palestinian culture, top-notch analysis of current events, advocacy of a single-state solution with equality for Jews and Arabs and the right of return for every Palestinian, equal-opportunity criticism of Arab rulers alongside Zionists, extensive coverage of the growing international BDS (Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions) and Right of Return movements, and in general a great pulse for the views many Palestinians have of events as they unfold.

*Ma’an News Agency http://www.maannews.net/eng/Default.aspx.

The leading independent Palestinian news agency (i.e., not in the pockets of Fatah, Hamas, or Israel — or at least one hopes so, their reporting as I have seen it would back up their independence).  They publish in English, Arabic, and Hebrew (though their Hebrew site seems to be undergoing a redesign at present).  You’ll see all sorts of news here you’d never see reported in the American press.  Follow it even casually and you’ll quickly start to understand how completely misleading the American and Israeli media are about actual events on the ground.

*Zochrot: http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?lang=english

One of the very few Israeli groups actively working to get Zionists to realize what they did to the Palestinians in 1948/9 and in very practical ways.  If you ever visit Israel, you should definitely look these people up and see if you can join one of their walking tours of destroyed Palestinian villages where they often bring survivors back to talk about life in the villages, put up signs marking where destroyed churches/mosques/schools/municipal buildings/homes/etc. once were, and often bump into the present Israeli squatters who frequently turn very irate for having these facts pointed out to them.  Zochrot’s goal is the same as mine: a single state where all are treated equally, where the wrongs of the past are acknowledged, the right of return implemented, and a new system of legal equality established.  The difference is, they’re on the ground, being told they are traitors by many in their own society, but pressing bravely forward anyways with a wide variety of educational activities.  Worth checking their site from time to time to see what they’re up to.

*The Angry Arab News Service / وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب http://angryarab.blogspot.com/

You probably need to have a similar acidic sense of humor as I do (which I blame on serving a mission in London and at least one BYU professor’s influence on me who shall go un-named), and you definitely need to go with UC Stanislaus Professor As’ad Abukhalil’s many many quirks, but the man has become a blogging cult phenomenon for good reason.  He focuses his blogging heavily on Palestinian issues and usually just does short links (many every day) with sharp comments, but he occasionally goes into longer (non-paragraphed) critiques and analyses of different topics related to Palestine and broader issues of the Arab world.  He can be hard to follow at first, and his views (he’s a hardcore leftist atheist) may often be ones you disagree with, but follow him on an even semi-regular basis and you will learn incredible amounts about Palestine and the Arab world.  What makes him so valuable among other things is the way he is one of the few public academic figures who fully straddles the Arab and English speaking worlds (and I believe his French isn’t bad either, though I don’t think he really writes much in French).  His weekly column in Lebanon’s leading paper al-Akhbar is eagerly read (and far less flippant than his blog but no less biting and to the point) by many throughout the Arab world, and he manages to regularly follow and comment on sources on both sides of the linguistic divide.  With his growing following he has also gained a wide network of contacts who frequently send him unique information.  And if your sense of humor is even as vaguely ironic as his, the man’s a riot.  He’s not Palestinian, but is frequently mistaken for one by friends and enemies and takes it as a badge of honor.

*****

I could go on for a lot longer and undoubtedly have already put many of you to sleep.  But if you have a genuine interest in the topic of Palestine/Israel – as most Mormons inherently even if only tangentially do – I’d ask you to bookmark the references I’ve given, and go them when your questions come up.  If you’re really into digging deeper, feel free to drop me an email, I’m always happy to point people to more resources.  The issues surrounding Palestine are such that one must wade through the extraordinarily complex to discover at the end there’s an amazingly simple set of guiding principles behind it all.  In a Gospel sense, my belief is that the Zionist violation of the basic commandments of “thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not covet” are the root cause of the conflict, that the conflict is inherently modern and not ancient, and that the solution is really quite straightforward: civic equality for all in a manner similar to that which I believe the Lord inspired as a principle in the US Constitution and many other civic-based democracies around the world.

You may not agree with me on those points, but you’re a Mormon, you know if you knew any Palestinians personally you’d feel an overwhelming urge to bring them a plate of cookies and listen to their stories if they broke down in tears in front of you.  So even though you may not be able to meet them in person, when the topic comes up, tap that Mormon urge to empathize and at least listen to what the other side is saying, I hope I’ve given you a few useful pointers for doing so.

Sod, seed, and salvation — it’s how I like to describe the Abrahamic Covenant. There were three promises in the covenant. The first was a land promise, where the Lord gave Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. The second was the promise of a great and numerous posterity. And the third was the blessing of the everlasting Gospel: the priesthood and the promise of exaltation, to come to the world through Abraham’s lineage. (see Genesis 17)  But just look at how often the covenant was renewed!

• Several times with Abraham in Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17
• With Isaac in Genesis 26
• With Jacob in Genesis 28
• With Joseph in Genesis 49

Not only that, but you may be surprised to learn that this covenant consisting of a land promise, a posterity promise, and a gospel of salvation promise was also given to

• Moses and the children of Israel in Exodus 6
• David in 2 Samuel 7

and, though we call it the Abrahamic Covenant, the same covenant was made even earlier, with

• Adam in Genesis 3
• Enoch and Noah in Genesis 9, Gen 9:21-25 JST

Finally, if you’ve read this week’s Sunday School lesson, you’ll know that the Abrahamic Covenant is made with faithful members of the Church today, as promised in D&C 132.

But when speaking of the Abrahamic Covenant, we might well consider the claim of Abraham’s firstborn son, Ishmael, his alleged descendants, and the ongoing conflict over the land of Canaan. I think it is interesting that the claims of both Palestinians and Israelis can be distilled into sod, seed, and salvation claims. Before you jump to a conclusion about how the argument over Palestine/Israel should be solved, let’s look at these with an open mind.

Sod: The Land Claim

Jewish claims to the land of Israel are based on the fact that this was the historical site and native site of the Jewish kingdom of Israel. There were always large communities of Jews in Israel, and the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. Palestinian Arabs’ claims to the land are also based on continuous residence in the country for hundreds of years. The land was originally “Arab” land taken from its native inhabitants by invading Jews, they say.  Who’s right?  Let’s see: 

§ It was the British who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for thirty years prior to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948.

§ But the territory was Turkish land, a province of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years until the British wrested it from them during the Great War in 1917.

§ If you look back earlier in history than the Ottoman Turks, who took over Palestine over in 1517, you find it under the sovereignty of the yet another empire not indigenous to Palestine: the Mamluks, who were Turkish and Circassian slave-soldiers headquartered in Egypt. In 1250 they took Palestine over from:

§ The Ayyubi dynasty, the descendants of Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim leader who in 1187 took Jerusalem and most of Palestine from:

§ The European Christian Crusaders, who in 1099 conquered Palestine from:

§ The Seljuk Turks, who ruled Palestine in the name of:

§ The Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, which in 750 took over the sovereignty of the entire Near East from:

§ The Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, which in 661 inherited control of the Islamic lands from

§ The Arabs of Arabia, who in the first flush of Islamic expansion conquered Palestine in 638 from:

§ The Byzantines, who (nice people—perhaps it should go to them?) didn’t conquer the Levant, but, upon the division of the Roman Empire in 395, inherited Palestine from:

§ The Romans, who in 63 B.C. took it over from:

§ The last Jewish kingdom, which during the Maccabean rebellion from 168 to 140 B.C. won control of the land from:

§ The Hellenistic Greeks, who under Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. conquered the Near East from:

§ The Persian empire, which under Cyrus the Great in 639 B.C. freed Jerusalem and Judah from:

§ The Babylonian empire, which under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. took Jerusalem and Judah from:

§ The Jews, meaning the people of the Kingdom of Judah, who, in their earlier incarnation as the Israelites, seized the land in the 12th and 13th centuries B.C. from:

§ The Canaanites, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years before they were dispossessed by the Israelites. (from Lawrence Auster)

This brings us to our second point. The Hebrew Torah clearly shows that the Jews seized the land from the Canaanites. Can we go back into history and discover who the descendants of these ancient native peoples are?

Seed: The Descent Claim

Ibrahim Alloush describes the descent claim of the Palestinians as follows:

“The Arab identity of Palestine emanates not from the Islamic conquest, but with the Canaanites who came into Palestine from the shores of the Arabian Peninsula around 2500 BC, and who had sovereignty over the land until about 1000 BC. Hence Palestine was called the Land of Canaanites, until the Philistines came from the island of Crete and intermarried with the Canaanites to melt peacefully into them leaving only the name behind: Palestine. The ancient Hebrews were indeed part of the peoples of the region but they came into Palestine (the Land of the Canaanites) as invaders.”

Those making this claim point out that descendants of the Canaanites/Philistines (ancient Arabs) have maintained a continuous presence in the land throughout history. Others say that the archaeological evidence disproves this. There is no record of the Canaanites surviving their destruction in ancient times. Prior to 1964 there was no “Palestinian” people and no “Palestinian” claim to Palestine; prior to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the name “Palestinian” referred to the Jews of Palestine.

Meanwhile, the Jews have their own problems proving literal descent. For example, Shlomo Sand insists that Diaspora Jews descend from converts and have no ethnic link to ancient Israel. In addition, human rights groups make the point that no other indigenous or aboriginal peoples on the planet are granted the same consideration as the Jews. But there is one other consideration being used to make a claim for the land.

Salvation: The Religious Claim

According to the Torah, Eretz Yisrael was promised to the Abraham and his descendants. Muslims believe that since Abraham’s son Ishmael is the forefather of the Arabs, then God’s promise of the land to the children of Abraham includes Arabs as well. The prophet Muhammed passed through Jerusalem on his first journey to heaven, and all of the land of Israel is designated as Islamic “Waqf” which implies it must be governed by Muslims.

Israelis insist that the covenant was renewed with Abraham’s son Isaac and the inheritance was passed through his line to the Jews. They made Jerusalem a holy city over three thousand years ago have remained steadfast to it. They pray in its direction, mention its name constantly in prayers, close the Passover service with the wistful statement “Next year in Jerusalem,” and recall the city in the blessing at the end of each meal. The destruction of the Temple is still an event commemorated by a special day of mourning, houses left partially unfinished, a woman’s makeup or jewelry left incomplete, a glass smashed during the wedding ceremony. Christians identify with the Jews’ love of Israel in many ways. The plaintive sound of Psalm 137 is reinforced in many of our hymns: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” This sympathy has been apparent in modern reactions to the conflict over Israel.

In attempting to keep this post from being unwieldy, I am afraid that I have greatly simplified the issues. Please feel free to make additional points about these claims in the comments. However, what I am most interested in discussing is the great support the Christian world has given to the Jews’ political return to Israel in modern times. (Zionism was actually opposed by Orthodox Jews at first — they regarded Zionism as a violation of God’s will.) But the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people in 1947. Do you think there is a solution to this conflict? Who has the better claim? Should a world-wide coalition define boundaries, or should we let the two nations duke it out on their own?

Does your religious worldview and your Christian understanding of the Abrahamic Covenant affect your position on the issue?

Differences in religious belief can be the death knell to a marriage. For that reason, many organized religions strongly advocate against being “yoked with unbelievers”. This is not only a Mormon phenomenon; you see this in any faith tradition that teaches that they alone have exclusive access to God. Even before marriage, it is rare for the unmarried, devout Mormon to even consider dating (let alone marrying) a non-Mormon; most LDS women raised in the Church are taught from an early age to make a temple marriage to a returned missionary their primary goal.

Likewise, in the Catholic Church, marriage to any non-Catholic (including Protestants!) is not permitted within a Catholic church building, and is not considered to be a Sacrament. In particularly conservative Catholic cultures, it really is considered a heresy to marry someone not of the (same rite of the) Catholic Church. Consider, for example, the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding: Toula refuses to marry Protestant Ian until he joins the Greek Orthodox Church (thus leading to a humorous scene of Ian being baptized).

Similar to Mormon ‘Marriage Prep’ and ‘Temple Prep’ Sunday School courses, dating Catholic couples are required to pursue a several-month course of marriage preparations classes, known as Pre-Cana. Similar to Mormons, Catholics who have pre-marital sexual relations (usually known from the resulting offspring) cannot be married on Catholic church grounds. However, they can have their marriage “convalidated” at a later date, similar to to a family being ‘sealed’ a year after a civil marriage.

I compare these things not so much to indicate how Catholics do things so much as to show just how non-unique Mormons are in many ways with regards to their approach to interfaith marriage.

Disbelief that comes after marriage, however, is harder to deal with. Despite the admonition of Paul in the 1 Corinthians that:

[I]f any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is consecrated through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is consecrated through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is they are holy. (1 Cor. 7:12-14)

it is really not all that uncommon to see marriages Mormon temple marriages dissolve once one member of the union loses faith. The same can also be true in Catholic culture, where one of the vows made at the altar is to raise your children Catholic.

A few examples, then, to illustrate some of what I am talking about:

A Mormon female friend of mine (who also happens to be a reader of this blog) attended a non-LDS university for college. Her Patriarchal Blessing was explicit that she was to marry an RM in the temple. When a Baptist schoolmate asked her on a date, she turned him down several times before giving him an ultimatum: She would only go on a date with him if he would read the Book of Mormon and consent to taking the missionary discussions. Confident that the Mormon church was misguided, and that he could show her the error of her ways, he consented. He joined the LDS Church and they two were married in the temple a year later. Obviously, she and the Church would consider this example to be a huge success story; his Baptist family, in contrast, at that time considered their daughter-in-law to be the devil incarnate. (I suspect that they mellowed with time).

Another friend at the same university for four years dated a non-Mormon off and on, and was fairly involved with him physically (although never so far that she needed to go to the Bishop). She loved him and he proposed to her, but since he was not interested in the Church, she said no. Several years later, she met and married a convert of 1 year, in the temple. Another Church success story.

A Jewish friend attended a Jew-friendly university, but did not find a spouse. She later moved to an area in the Midwest that was predominantly Protestant, and met and fell in love with a Protestant. They moved in together, but when her family would call or visit, she threw him out of the house for the weekend. When her parents found out that she was dating this man, they first gave her a series of lectures on being ‘married under the canopy’ and of all that her grandmother had suffered at Auschwitz. They then cut off all verbal communication with her. When the grandmother found out about the boyfriend, she literally suffered a stroke. She broke up with the boyfriend, and later married an Orthodox Jew and was welcomed back into her family.

A Muslim co-worker of my husband’s met and married a Hindi woman. The parents of the Muslim refuse to acknowledge their daughter-in-law, and the parents of the Hindu refuse to call the Muslim by his real name, instead calling him by the Hindi equivalent.

When I married my husband, we were both Mormon, however I had converted to the Church as a young adult. My mother’s side of the family (who are culturally Catholic) refused to speak with my husband at family functions and boycotted our wedding. Indeed, my own marriage might now be considered as an interfaith marriage, with each of us losing our faith in the LDS Church and taking divergent faith paths. I’ve left the LDS Church and now consider myself a post-Mormon liberal Catholic, returning to the faith of my mothers (since Catholicism in America is largely passed down matriarchally). My husband is an agnostic atheist who remains actively Mormon: regularly attending his meetings and ‘magnifying’ his calling, held in the church by the faith of his fathers. My family is urging me to do what my responsibility as a Catholic mother would be: to baptize my son Catholic and raise him in the Catholic Church.

And so it goes, and so it goes. Its remarkable how adherents of all faiths claim that God will only recognize marriage in their church.

Through it all, my husband and I have retained enormous respect for each other and our religious decisions, as well as the effect that those decisions have on our son. I think respect for each other is really the only way such marriages can survive. My husband’s loss of belief was founded in his respect for me: Trusting that my reasoning was sound, he wanted to determine for himself what validity there was in my conclusions. Obviously, we came to different end-points, but part of respect is learning to accept (and even welcome) differences of opinion and conclusion.

My questions for the readership are these:

• What are your stories?
• How can a couple who finds themselves in a Mormon interfaith marriage make the relationship work?
• Is it possible to maintain a believing Mormon/non-believer relationship?
• If so, what components are required?

CofChrist Prophet: Baptism in Christ Transcends Culture

“5 It is imperative to understand that when you are truly baptized into Christ you become part of a new creation. By taking on the life and mind of Christ, you increasingly view yourselves and others from a changed perspective. Former ways of defining people by economic status, social class, sex, gender, or ethnicity no longer are primary. Through the gospel of Christ a new community of tolerance, reconciliation, unity in diversity, and love is being born as a visible sign of the coming reign of God.”

With these words, the Prophet/President of the Community of Christ delivered to the church for its consideration as divine counsel on January 17 a document that changes the relationship between its sacraments and its people. Copies of the documents are already posted at http://www.CofChrist.org.

Most stunning to readers on the bloggernacle, the document places resolution of pressing issues of marriage, sexual identity and roles, among others, into the hands of field or national jurisdictions to resolve within the context of their own cultures and secular laws. This appears to mean that the Community of Christ will no longer have a world-wide policy toward these cultural institutions, although what local policies will come into place is left undefined. Thus, jurisdictions in which gay marriage is permitted by the culture may be able to move forward with this practice as a sacrament of the church as well, and the church may continue to forbid discussion of the issue in nations where such discussion is taboo.

In addition, persons baptized by water within other denominations who are led by the Spirit to the Community of Christ are now to be accepted without rebaptism into membership upon confirmation following a period of study.

The headlines will probably not be the most important part of the document in the long run. Take a look at it and see what you think.

President Barack Obama met with President Monson on Monday in the Oval Office, thanking  President Monson for a thorough history of the first family.

President  Monson presented Obama with details of his family’s genealogy during their first face-to-face meeting. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who is Mormon, helped arrange the meeting and joined it.

“I’m grateful for the genealogical records that they brought with them and am looking forward to reading through the materials with my daughters,” Obama said in a statement after the meeting. “It’s something our family will treasure for years to come.”

Mormon leaders traditionally meet with new presidents and share with them records from the Salt Lake City-based church’s extensive genealogical records.

“President Obama’s heritage is rich with examples of leadership, sacrifice and service,” Monson said in a statement. “We were very pleased to research his family history and are honored to present it to him today.”

The five leather-bound books detail Obama’s family history for several generations. Parts of that history were already known, such as his ties to former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney. The two are eighth cousins.

Obama is a descendent of Mareen Duvall. The French Huguenot’s son married the granddaughter of a Richard Cheney, who arrived in Maryland in the late 1650s from England.

Thoughts Questions?

Notes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Barack_Obama

2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072002068.html

(If you want a review of these 3, click here.)  So, with Christ being resurrected, Christians would obviously find these 3 sources as problematic.  If Christ was really resurrected, there should be no bones, right?  I must say I was really intrigued by Simcha Jacobovici’s position.  Simcha is a Jew, and said that if the bones were really discovered, then it would actually give credibility to Christianity, because it would in fact give proof that Jesus was an actual person.  (Of course, there are many who claim Jesus never existed, citing lack of evidence.)

So, it got me thinking.  Obviously, all 3 can’t be right.  But what if one of them is right?  Critics of Christianity would loudly trumpet the fact that the resurrection couldn’t have happened if the bones were found.  They already make claims that say this discovery “would shake the foundations of Christianity”, seeming to imply that Christianity would somehow disappear.  But would it really disappear?

I don’t think so.  Let’s assume for sake of argument that one of these positions was scientifically proved correct–Jesus bones have been positively found.  Now, while I am sure it would cause much re-evaluation among Christians, I do not believe Christianity would vanish.  I suspect that many Christians would have to re-evaluate the resurrection.  Here’s some possible scenarios that I see happening.

(1)  The resurrection is actually not a physical resurrection.  I believe many people already believe this.  When we look at it, it’s a little tough to reconcile with the scriptures, because Jesus ate fish and honey after his resurrection.  “Touch me” was his reply–so it does seem to be a fact that he was physically resurrected.  But perhaps this physical resurrection would only apply to him, and not us?

(2)  Perhaps there was some sort of stem-cell/cloning technique for the resurrection.  Perhaps Jesus “corruptible” body is on the earth, but his new “celestial” body looks/feels the same, but is basically a perfected clone of his human body.

(3)  Perhaps the resurrection is not important at all.  Perhaps the Gnostics had it right, and the body is not needed in heaven.  Perhaps, Jesus true purpose is not the resurrection, but rather his purpose was to teach spiritual truths.  In this scenario, the resurrection is meaningless, and Christ’s atonement and teachings are what really matters.

I’m sure there are other options.  Can you think of some?  If Christ’s bones were truly found, would it really spell the end of Christianity, as skeptics claim?

“My name is Kate. I was raised Catholic, but converted to the Mormon church in 1999 in a hippy branch at Cornell University. Since leaving that branch, I have struggled to find my voice within the LDS world. Where does a politically liberal, PhD-holding, working mom fit in? I created the Myriad Mormon Musings blog in an attempt to find my niche as I struggle with LDS culture versus doctrine.”

Recently, my husband and I attended a marriage and family retreat. One of the speakers described three phases of the marriage relationship as the honeymoon, disillusionment, and joy phases. The honeymoon phase is where your spouse can do no wrong, and is perfect.  The disillusionment phase occurs when you start to realize that your spouse is not perfect, and ask yourself “what have I done?”  However, it is only with a full understanding of the other person, warts and all, that you can reach the “joy” phase, where you love one another despite (or even because of) their failings, and this makes the commitment that much greater.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how this concept applies to my walk with God. It will be 10 years ago in September that I officially joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons).  Before joining the church, I thought I had done a lot of research into my decision. I had spent 4 years looking at other churches, learning their doctrine and attending their church services. Surprisingly, not all of my academic efforts led me to the decision to become Mormon. It all came down to the Holy Spirit and what it was telling me God wanted me to do.

When I was meeting with the missionaries, they talked a lot about the Restoration, and how we are the only church with authority on the earth. The talked about how other churches have light and knowledge, but how ours is the only one with the fullness of the Gospel. In Conference talks, there is a lot of focus on our church Fathers, the Pioneers who lead the way across the Plains to Utah to settle Zion. In our Sunday School lessons, Church history focuses exclusively on Joseph Smith’s first wife (Emma), and ignores the “less-savory” aspects, such as polygamy, blacks in the Priesthood, the expulsion of the intellectuals, the Church’s role in the ERA, etc.

I knew that there was a lot of history that has tripped up the testimonies of others in the church. For that reason, I have really pushed off learning about it, in an effort to build my own faith before trying it. This past year, I made the decision to open that historical can of worms and found… worms. Yes, it wasn’t as bad as I was afraid of (it wasn’t snakes). However, it still has been enough to change my perspective and shake things up a bit for me.

I know that all churches have things about them that they would prefer to ignore. The Catholic church has the Inquisition and its relationship with Hitler. Muslims have the fundamentalist view of Jihad. Mormons have polygamy. The problem I am having now is that for years I have thought that our church was perfect. That the Prophets would never teach anything that was incorrect or untrue. Then I find statements from Brigham Young saying that interracial marriages are, in God’s eyes, punishable by death. I find contradictions, where early church leaders taught that the “new and everlasting covenant” meant polygamous/plural marriage, whereas now we teach that only monogamous marriage is acceptable. While my faith in fundamental Gospel principles and doctrines remains firm (I still believe in the Restoration, for instance), my ability to blindly accept everything the Prophet says as true has been shaken.

It may not sound like that big of a deal, but in a lot of ways it is. It’s like being married to someone and then finding out that they aren’t what they appeared to be when you married them. You still love them, but some of the being “in love” has worn off. You find out that they have imperfections where you once found them perfect. They have fallen from a pedestal you had placed them on. My hope is that this disillusionment phase can only lead to a final joy, where I can rest in my stronger testimony of God and His Apostles.

Another thing that I realized recently is that there are several non-doctrinal “ways to faith” that the Mormon church doesn’t really emphasize. For instance, meditation and devotion are largely undiscussed in our faith culture. Yet, these are some of the ways that I have felt closest to God in the past. I have been rediscovering them, and realizing how much my own spiritual growth has suffered without them. How does one learn about these things, when they are not taught or an active part of the faith culture you are in? Does the fact that they are not taught make them wrong?

Another example is the idea of a personal ministry. In the Mormon church, you are called by a priesthood leader, through no power or act of your own, to different responsibilities/ministries in the church. There is really no place for someone who feels God calling them. Typically, it is said that if you aspire to a calling, then you are unrighteous. It’s as if God must work the hierarchy; if you haven’t been called by a priesthood leader, it doesn’t count.

Recently, I have been feeling more and more like God has been trying to call me to a specific ministry. But I can’t determine what it is. Moreover, it is somewhat impotent when I feel like there is not a church program or mechanism for me to reach that ministry, no matter what it may be. I felt strongly that I was supposed to go to the Marianist retreat. Now I feel that I should be exploring other faith cultures again, to “find” this ministry. But to what end? If I know the Book of Mormon is God’s word, then what else and where else can I go?

The ICM poll of 10,000 people in the USA, UK, Israel, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Mexico and Lebanon was carried out for the BBC

It reveals that only 46% of respondents in the UK said they have always believed in God – 27% less than the average. Only Russia (42%) and South Korea (28%) were lower. Furthermore just 52% of UK respondents believed God (or a Higher Power) created the universe, compared to 85% in the USA, 83% in Mexico, 99% in Indonesia and 96% in Lebanon.The highest levels of belief are found in the poorer nations of Nigeria (98%), India (92%) and Indonesia (97%).However, the USA – the richest nation polled – has a very high level of belief. Only 13% of those polled in America said they found it hard to believe in God (a Higher power) when there was so much suffering in the world.Yet this compares to more than half (52%) of those polled in the UK – the highest of all the countries – and more than twice the average. The figures for Lebanon were 2% and Nigeria 12%.

The survey found that Only 19% of those in the UK said they would die for their God/beliefs. This compares to 37% in Israel, 90% of those polled in Indonesia and Nigeria, and 71% in the USA and Lebanon.

A staggering 78% of those polled in the USA claimed to have studied religious texts, by far the largest figure, followed by 51% in Nigeria and 42% in the UK. This    compares to an average of 33%.

The poll also looked at the place of religion in the world. Almost a third (29%) of people in the UK believe that the world would be a more peaceful place without beliefs in God but very few people in other countries agreed. Just 6% of those polled in America agreed with this view, 11% in Israel and 9% in India. The average across all ten countries was 10%.Only 15% of those polled in America blamed people of other religions for much of the trouble in the world compared with more than a third (37%) in the UK and 33% in Israel.This figure fell to 8% of those polled in Indonesia, 24% in Lebanon and 17% in India.

The poll also looked at levels of attendance at organised religious services in the UK compared to the rest of the world. Across the ten countries, an average of 46% regularly attend a religious service but the figure was 21% in the UK, the second lowest behind Russia (7%). The highest figure was 91% for Nigerians, with 54% in the USA.

Furthermore just 29% of UK respondents said they had been encouraged to believe in God by someone outside their family, compared with 57% in the USA.

With regards to prayer, a total of 95% of Nigerians polled said they prayed regularly as did 67% of those polled in the USA with further numbers praying occasionally at times of crisis. 28% in the UK said they prayed regularly and 41% in Israel. However 25% of people in the UK and 29% of people in Israel said they never prayed.

The poll did reveal however that nearly 30% of all atheists polled admitted they prayed sometimes.

Asked whether a belief in a God/higher power makes for a better human being, well over 80% of people in most countries agreed, but by far the lowest figure was in the UK with just 56%.

Furthermore, just 42% of UK respondents believed God (or a higher power) judges their actions and the way they lived their lives compared to 76% in America, 72% in Israel, 81% in Nigeria and an average of 70%.

Exploring the issue of tolerance of different religions the poll found that more than 90% of all respondents in Nigeria, Indonesia and Lebanon believed their God was the only true God.This compares to 70% in Israel and just 31% in the UK.

The majority of those polled when asked if they believed death was the end disagreed. This was the case for more than half of the UK respondents (51%), 79% of those polled in Nigeria, 75% in Lebanon and 74% in the USA.

Looking at how attitudes change across different religions, the poll found that while 85% of Hindus and 83% of Muslims said they prayed regularly, only 65% of Christians did and barely a third (38%) of Jews.

When asked if their God was the only true God, 95% of Muslims said yes, compared with 68% of Christians and 66% of Jews.

But when asked if other religions were to blame for the troubles in the world, 34% of Jews agreed, while only 24% of Christians, 18% of Hindus and 14% of Muslims agreed.

What do you think?

This is an adaptation of a post my good friend Ron wrote. He is Catholic, so with his consent I have modified some of it to fit the audience here, as well as added some of my own thoughts. It was inspired by some of his encounters with a “rather nasty Fundamentalist Christian” who was “more interested in winning an argument, rather than learning.” These points, however, may be applied to anyone who wants to prove other people wrong rather than understand or learn.

“After spending years debating James White, I have noticed common tactics employed by people who want to win at any cost rather than seek a mutual understanding of the facts or even work toward a mutual disagreement. Ann Coulter is a good example of a political satirist who engages in this sort of rhetoric. Let’s take a close look, shall we?”

1. Make an outrageous claim. It doesn’t matter if it’s out of Mormon Doctrine, or if you take a comment out of context, or if the side you’re on is just as guilty as those you are making accusations against. The goal is not to be fair minded or even accurate; all you need to be concerned with is igniting an emotional response from the other person. Remember, you are always right and your opponent is always wrong; your job is simply to supply enough rope for your opponent to hang himself. Manipulative (e.g. “Don’t you think _____?”) and leading questions are also really effective here.

2. Rely on mocking or sarcasm to ignite passion. If you are of a conservative ilk, rely on a mocking or morally superior tone to deliver your message (Ann Coulter). If you are liberal use a lot of sarcastic humor to exalt yourself above your opponent’s attempts at presenting himself/herself as morally superior (Al Franken).

3. Do not give an inch. If your opponent happens to stumble upon a true statement, ignore, deny, or reframe the conversation! In all cases, NEVER concede even a minor point to your opponent. Also, be sure to ignore any sincere questions by your opponent. In the very least do not answer them directly. Again, the point is not to help the other person understand you, but to prove they are wrong.

4. Make Your opponent work harder. Always remember that you are right, regardless of the facts presented, and you will eventually prove it by weathering any storm that may be created due to the information your opponent happens to give you. Most importantly, put them in a place where they feel like they have to prove you wrong. If they present troubling information to you about your own position simply refuse to acknowledge it. The fact is your opponent is either a brainwashed innocent or at worst, a conniving interloper who has no right to challenge your superior position, and only appears to have the nerve to do so without merit.

5. Do not bother reading posts or listening to response from your opponent. After all, reading your opponent’s posts may ignite emotions within yourself, or take your mind off your primary goal, WINNING! Instead of reading, skim your opponent’s post for statements that can be molded to aid you in your ultimate goal. The best statements are usually the most irrelevant to your opponents point–why re-post something meaningful or relevant? Oh, and make sure you continue to apply the steady drumbeat or either mocking/moral superiority, or sarcastic humor.

6. Stay the course! Or leave! Whatever you do, just don’t engage! Eventually your opponent will either hang himself or simply tire of the interaction; in both cases, you must declare victory immediately. Like any good staring contest it is not the person that presents the best case who wins, but the person who is left standing. If it just keeps going you may want to consider eventually checking out. There are two ways to do this, either just disappear quietly until the next post comes along that you can slam, or make a big announcement about why you are not coming back. Try to make everyone reading it feel bad about your departure, and say self-deprecating stuff like “I guess I’m just not popular here”). Whatever you do, NEVER admit to any good points the other side made in their last comment, and when you come back, make sure it is only to attack again.

How can we avoid this? How can we learn together even when we disagree?

1. Ask sincere, open-ended questions. Look around and you’ll be surprised how little actually happens. Example, “What do you think about _____?” Amazing concept, but so often we end up trying to trip each other. Make sure your questions are not meant to lead the other person down a particular path, or that you don’t have some hidden underlying agenda.

2. If you use sarcasm or a lot of humor, be kind. Even if you don’t like emoticons, make sure others understand your intention, and don’t use it as a weapon. I know many people (myself included) like to use mocking now and then, but we must refrain.

3. Acknowledge (write in your replies) when the other person has a good point. Or, *gasp* when they say something you agree with.

4. Monitor the conversation to make sure it is not one-sided. Is there always one person on the attack and the other constantly on defense, or is it more even-handed?

5. Consider the whole comment. Don’t just pick out stuff to argue with.

6. Apologize when appropriate. Take a break when you need to, but don’t completely check out or make threats when you get upset. Come back and engage. We can all learn from each other.

7. When in doubt, ask Ray what to do. He will have the answer.

Why do you converse with others online? More specifically, why do you engage in commenting back and forth with other people on Mormon Matters? To share your views? To influence others? To learn from others?

What is your method of going about this? Debate? Crafting arguments? Sharing and working towards mutual understanding? What are the pros and cons of the different ways?

As we have said multiple times, we delete or edit very, very few comments here at Mormon Matters.  This site was established to have an open forum for discussion among people with widely varying points of view and beliefs.  However, it was not and is not intended to be a site to spew bile, insult people and cast aspersions about others’ faith.  The rules are simple and few, and they can be summarized as:

Be civil.

Comment on the topic of the post.

Address what others say without disparaging them or their character.

Don’t blaspheme, use vulgar language, condemn – and don’t call people sinners who need to repent.

This is not a fourm for personal attacks, and it is not a forum for sweeping broadsides.

Disagreement is fine, even passionate disagreement, but ridicule and accusation and condemnation is not.

I wish this post was not necessary, but please understand one thing:

As much as we believe in the free exchange of ideas and beliefs, comments that are only condemnatory and add nothing to the conversation will be deleted.

If anyone has suggestions or concerns, feel free to comment.  Just do so within the rules outlined above.

This problem is similar to the problem of freedom of speech.  Do you only allow freedom of speech until someone says something you don’t like?  Those with less dogmatic viewpoints are also less likely to condemn the sweeping pronouncements of others for the same reason they don’t make them.  They may be more self-critical and more reluctant to express their opinions when those opinions will affect others.

Here are a few examples of this problem (many of these are included in the book David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism):

• Bruce R. McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine.  This was published without prior authorization from the FP under the most presumptuous title imaginable.  While Pres. McKay was highly incensed over it, requiring two apostles to research and find over 1000 errors in the book, no public correction was made other than to tell BRM that the book should not be republished.  BRM accepted the private correction, but repeatedly requested that the book be allowed to be republished.  Eventually, in his dotage, Pres. McKay gave a sufficiently cryptic response that BRM took it as license to republish.  Among the worst criticisms of the book:
  • It referred to the Roman Catholic church as the Church of the Devil, stating that this was what was meant by the Book of Mormon’s “harlot of the earth” reference.  It was so harsh that it caused RC Bishop Hunt, a friend to Pres. McKay, to come to Pres. McKay with tears in his eyes asking if this was what McKay thought of him.
  • It propounded the inaccurate “Cain” doctrine (borrowed from Protestantism) as justification of the Priesthood Ban.
  • It prohibited all caffeinated beverages from the Word of Wisdom (despite Pres. McKay’s own personal affinity for Coke).
  • And many many more . . .
• Ezra Taft Benson’s association with the John Birch Society.  As an apostle, Benson was staunchly anti-communist.  He quickly became enamored with the newly formed John Birch society and was repeatedly courted by founder Robert Welch to join the society and to use his apostolic influence to encourage other Mormons to join.  Pres. McKay refused to consent to both Benson’s membership and endorsement of the John Birch Society, but Benson persisted and even resorted to trickery to try to convince Pres. McKay to be featured on the cover of the monthly magazine of the society.  Again, no public disavowal of the organization or Benson’s tactics was ever made, and many members were led to believe that the church endorsed the John Birch Society.
• Joseph Fielding Smith’s Man, His Origin and Destiny.  The book states authoritatively (yet without authority) that evolution is false, a matter of Joseph Fielding Smith’s personal speculation.  David O. McKay specifically said he believed evolution was a true scientific principle; yet no corrective action was taken to diminish the book’s significance.
• Paul H. Dunn’s stories.  While not dogmatic, they are riddled with hyperbolic glurge that purports to “prove” the church is true, which can be faith demoting when individuals discover the stories are fictional.
• The Priesthood Ban.  This is a pretty basic one.  While David O. McKay was the first to acknowledge this was a policy (therefore “of man”) and not a doctrine (no originating revelation), there was no public repudiation of the rampant racist rhetoric of the time until much later when the ban had been removed, and the rhetoric had continued in justification.  In fact, this is a great example of a time when Bruce R. McConkie (much later) fell on the sword publicly, apologetically stating that the things they had said were all wrong.
• Spencer W. Kimball’s Miracle of Forgiveness.  This was written in 1969 and contains errors that are potentially harmful to those who read it if they are in a vulnerable emotional state or prone to take things far too seriously, such as:
  • It’s better to be killed than to be a rape victim.  This also implies that those who don’t die as a victim of a rape attempt were somehow willing participants, a particularly disturbing notion for both victims of rape and children of incest.
  • It states that wet dreams are sinful, implying that they are voluntary and not biological.
  • It has been criticized alternately as too harsh (by internal critics) and as un-Christian (by external critics) in diminishing the power of the atonement to redeem by focusing on human efforts.

In the above cases, the standing prophet was unwilling to make public correction, instead preferring to hope that the inaccurate information would die out on its own over time.  There was a desire not to reduce the influence of the General Authority who had erred in speculation through public correction.  The actual effect seems to have been that the tolerance and generosity of the standing prophets has caused these individuals’ voices to be the loudest of all, to the point that their doctrines and interpretations are mainstream or orthodox over the more tolerant religious views.

Is this the way of the world?  Do the loudest voices always win?  Are the loudest voices always the most harsh and dogmatic?  Was it always this way, or is this simply the current trend?  Or is this how we learn humility?  Is this a human condition that is just a natural byproduct of all organizations or a particularly Mormon trait?  Is this an example of those who act (those who prefer to take charge and define requirements for others) vs. those who are acted upon (those who prefer to “go with the flow,” or be passive & tolerant)?

Discuss.

I feel like that sometimes at church. I’m a Mormon—born and raised—but sometimes I look around and think: “Hey, wait – this is a different brand of Mormonism.” The church I grew up in doesn’t forbid 3-year-old girls to watch “The Little Mermaid” because Ariel dresses immodestly. The church I belong to doesn’t have men in leadership positions pull a woman aside and call her out for wearing a professional pantsuit to church. It doesn’t teach 12-year-old girls that “men are in charge” (and that’s a quote). I sometimes wonder whether there’s a place for me inside this church that I sometimes don’t recognize.

Qanta felt like this, too, during her sojourn in The Kingdom. She tries to fit in; she tries to understand people’s motivations; she tries to live by the “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” adage. It was hard for her and never really got easier—at least I didn’t get that impression. Still, she tried. She decides to go on a hajj. She wants to experience this pinnacle of Muslim worship. Several chapters in the book are devoted to a vivid description of her pilgrimage. It reminded me much of the endowment ceremony—rich with symbolic meaning and ritual. She wants to be a good Muslim. She struggles to keep up, to follow along, to say and do the right things, watching her fellow pilgrims.

At one point, she says: “This was part of Hajj, to be allowed to improve and develop one’s skills of worship.” This really struck me. What kind of skills of worship do we (Mormons) have?? I honestly don’t know what to think of this. What are things that we have to be good at to travel the Mormon road?

What about obedience?  Is that a skill?  How about acquiescence?  Those are both negative things, which is not my intention at all.

How about serving others – is that a skill?  Patience (we do have a LOT of long meetings).

Thoughts?

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

Surely, you have seen some of these folks:

• instead of communicating their true feelings, they use hackneyed cliche phrases (that are uniquely Mormon) to fit in
• they give the VT lesson never deviating to share their own true feelings unless those feelings could have been uttered by Julie Beck herself
• they prefer the standard Sunday School answers rather than thinking and sharing their own reflections
• they exercise a form of brand management:  doing the things that spell out “I’m a good Mormon,” and hiding anything that detracts from that image
• they are excessively careful of everything they say and do from a PR standpoint for the church

What would you do if every time you wanted to talk to your spouse, you had to consider the church in the relationship?  What if every time your child wanted advice from you, you referred them to what a church leader said or taught instead of sharing yourself with them?  What if every relationship was colored by your feelings of guilt or anticipation related to your own spiritual standing?

• Every family member or friend’s struggle would be a sign of your guilt for having failed them OR a sign that you should cut them off so you will not be tainted by association.
• Every new person you met would be an opportunity for a convert rather than a friend (and if not a convert, not a friend).
• You would carefully choose your words and deeds to demonstrate to others around you that you are living up to what you think they expect.
• If you ever did disagree with someone, you’d have to make sure that somehow your disagreement put YOU on the side of the church and THEM on the other side.
• If your spouse suddenly stopped attending church or became disaffected, you would stop loving them because they jeopardized your “perfect” image or your expectations for the Celestial Kingdom.

Matthew quotes Jesus as saying (Matt 10:34-37):

34 Think not that I am come to send ^apeace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

36 And a man’s ^afoes shall be they of his own ^bhousehold.

37 He that ^aloveth father or mother ^bmore than me is not worthy of me: and he that ^cloveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

It seems that this comes with a few caveats:

• The church does not equal Jesus, even if one believes Jesus is at the head of it.  The church is a human institution that should ideally inspire us and draw us closer to Him.
• It’s pretty arrogant to put yourself (or your perceptions) in the role of Jesus and to assume that anyone who disagrees with you is rejecting you as the Savior was rejected.
• Being righteous does not equal being right.  In fact, once you start getting too concerned about the latter, you can kiss the former goodbye.
• The greatest two commandments are to love God and our fellow man as ourselves.  If we can’t even unconditionally love those closest to us (family and friends), how can we expect to love our enemies (also required)?
• “Perfect love casteth out fear.”  We can’t love people if we are consumed by fear of rejection (from either man or God).

Is this a particular problem in the church?  Do people really live their lives like this?  Do you know anyone like this?  Are you like this sometimes?  How do you take off the mask and “let your light so shine”?  Discuss.

This trend is probably to some extent backlash against the histo-centric year we are having with D&C as focus of GD class and JS manual in RS.  There may also be some desire to reaffirm our status as Christians when other religions often stigmatize us as not being Christian.  So, what would it look like if Christ were the center of our worship?  Here are some possibilities of how lessons & talks might be more Christ-centric:

1. the atonement of Christ; his role and divinity
2. how to apply Christ’s teachings:  how to be followers of Christ
3. stories from the life of Christ, events that happened to him in his lifetime
4. the parables of Jesus – sharing and elaborating on these messages
5. how to develop a personal relationship with Jesus; understanding Jesus’ nature as a personal friend

Have I missed any major angle above?  It occurs to me that these topics might get stale if covered for 3 hours every week.  Also, if speakers only focused on 1 or 2 of the 5, it would get very repetitive.  I also notice that as I look over the list, I don’t find them equally appealing.  Personally, I would prefer them in this order:  2, 4, 3, 5, 1.  What order would you prefer?  I think the order in which they are usually focused at church is the order I listed them above:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  Do you agree?

Do you feel that Church should be more Christ-centered or that it is sufficiently Christ-centered?  Which of the above focuses would be of the most interest to you?  Are there some ways of focusing on Christ that you don’t find appealing?  How do you think our focus (especially by topic) compares to other Christian churches?  Discuss.

I couldn't resist one of these

And while I ranted on my blog about how offensive I found various parts of one recently received email…I realized too that I found a strange comfort in realizing that it was just a generic Christian chain mail. This served to be one of the times when I was deeply thankful that we Mormons are a peculiar people — I realized that some of the ‘pop’ doctrines espoused in this email would be uncharacteristic for an LDS email. So, I wondered…what if we could deconstruct Christian chain mail and come up with LDS orthodox counterpoints?

So, the email, and some points to lead our discussion after the break!

A man from Norfolk , VA called a local radio station to share this on Sept 11th, 2003, TWO YEARS AFTER THE TRAGEDIES OF 9/11/2001. His name was Robert Matthews. These are his words:

A few weeks before Sept. 11th, my wife and I found out we were going to have our first child.. She planned a trip out to California to visit her sister.  On our way to the airport, we prayed that God would grant my wife a safe trip and be with her. Shortly after I said ‘amen,’ we both heard a loud pop and the car shook violently. We had blown out a tire. I replaced the tire as quickly as I could, but we still missed her flight. both very upset, we drove home..

I received a call from my father who was retired NYFD. He asked what my wife’s flight number was, but I explained that we missed the flight.

My father informed me that her flight was the one that crashed into the southern tower. I was too shocked to speak. My father also had more news for me; he was going to help. ‘This is not something I can’t just sit by for; I have to do something.’

I was concerned for his safety, of course, but more because he had never given his life to Christ. After a brief debate, I knew his mind was made up.  Before he got off of the phone, he said, ‘take good care of my grandchild.  Those were the last words I ever heard my father say; he died while helping in the rescue effort.

My joy that my prayer of safety for my wife had been answered quickly became anger. I was angry at God, at my father, and at  myself. I had gone for nearly two years blaming God for taking my father away. My son would never know his grandfather, my father had never accepted Christ, and I never got to say good-bye.

Then something happened. About two months ago, I was sitting at home with my wife and my son, when there was a knock on the  door. I looked at my wife, but I could tell she wasn’t expecting anyone. I opened the door to a couple with a small child.

The man looked at me and asked if my father’s name was Jake Matthews. I told him it was. He quickly grabbed my hand and said, ‘I never got the chance to meet your father, but it is an honor to meet his son.’

He explained to me that his wife had worked in the World Trade Center and had been caught inside after the attack. She was pregnant and had been caught under debris. He then explained that my father had been the one to find his wife and free her.  My eyes welled up with tears as I thought of my father giving his life for people like this. He then said, ‘there is something else you need to know.’

His wife then told me that as my father worked to free her, she talked to him and led him to Christ. I began sobbing at the news.

Now I know that when I get to Heaven, my father will be standing beside Jesus to welcome me, and that this family would be able to thank him themselves .

…This story should help us to realize this: God is always in control.

We may not see the reason behind things, and we may never know this side of heaven, but God is ALWAYS in control.

Please take time to share this amazing story.  You may never know the impact it may have on someone.. God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.  His love endures Forever.  Psalm 136:1
May God bless you, and your family,

So, some of my possible points of discussion:

• What would be official answers about the disturbing implications of predistination in such situations. How does free will play a role, and how would miracles or other intervening acts play out?
• How would LDS doctrines about baptisms by proxy and the nature of the afterlife play into our concerns about the mortal states of our relatives’ salvations?
• What does it mean that “God is in control” if it is a different interpretation than this email’s?
• The line: “God doesn’t call the qualified; God qualifies the called” — how does it mesh with LDS teachings about fore-ordination, or the process of ordination and setting apart?

I suppose that we’ve all thought about what our lives would have been like if we weren’t LDS. Actually, whether you’re LDS or of another faith, perhaps you’ve tried to imagine what it would be like to convert to a different religion.  Sometimes I wish I could just pick and choose different aspects of different religions and make them into my own, ideal religion.  So here are just some of the things that I would like to snatch up from the buffet of world religions and philosophies:

Catholicism: First of all, I’m under no illusions about my ability to be a “good” Catholic and accept all the Catholic dogma.  (Goodness knows I can’t do it with Mormon dogma either.)  But I LOVE a lot of things about Catholicism. The obvious attractions are the history, traditions, and churches.  I’ve visited countless Catholic churches and cathedrals throughout Europe and Mexico and have always felt something special inside of them. Aside from being awe-struck on a purely secular level by beautiful art and stunning architecture, it’s hard to not somehow feel closer to Deity in such an atmosphere — especially when you throw Gregorian chants into the mix. It commands reverence in a way that I probably haven’t experienced anywhere else. I felt it when I just happened to be in Notre Dame in Paris during an Easter Sunday mass a few years ago, as well as when I visited Palais des Papes in Avignon, France, or the stunning cathedral in Florence, Italy. I love the fact that many of the cathedrals are always open and you are free to walk in, light a candle, and just sit quietly and meditate in a place that is spiritually inspiring.

Another thing I love about Catholicism is intercessory prayers to patron saints and the Blessed Virgin. Many mistakingly believe that Catholics pray to Mary and the saints in order to worship them, which of course they don’t.  As Mormons, we do something similar by petitioning each other to pray on behalf of ourselves or others. We do it in temples with the prayer roll and we do it in sacrament meeting when we ask the congregation to pray for someone in the ward. Catholics, however, have the option of petitioning departed saints to plead their case before God. I love this idea and would love to think that I could pray to Mary, or Heavenly Mother, or “saints,” Mormon or non-Mormon, and have them petition the Lord on my behalf for something that I need.

I used to always imagine Catholic confession to be a horribly embarrassing practice that I was glad we didn’t have in the LDS Church. However, after reading Catholicism for Dummies, I sort of changed my mind about it. In fact, I could almost see the appeal in being able to go to a priest, who has taken an oath of confidentiality (very important factor!), tell him everything I’m feeling guilty about and then hopefully receive penance for my sins. In some ways, I think it must be very therapeutic. As Mormons, we only go to the Bishop for major sins, but Catholics confess even their lesser sins to a priest.  Pope John Paul II outlined three main reasons for confession:

1. we are renewed in fervor
2. strengthened in our resolutions
3. supported by divine encouragement

Seventh-day Adventist: I knew nothing about Seventh-day Adventists until I noticed that a vegan friend of mine had it listed as her religious views on Facebook. I was curious and did a bit of research. It has certain similarities to Mormonism, both in doctrine and policy, and Adventists do a lot of humanitarian and community work. In fact, my husband’s uncle, who suffers from extreme back pain, recently stayed at a rehabilitation centre run by Seventh-day Adventists in Norway and after a 3-week stay, he looked like a new man. Being a heavy-drinking, chain-smoking meat eater, we were skeptical about how he would like this  alcohol-free, smoke-free, meat-free environment, but he apparently enjoyed his time in the centre very much.  He is even back to work on a part time basis, instead of having to rely 100% on a disability pension.  Seeing what it did for him, I wish he could live there permanently.

What I like best about Seventh-day Adventism is its emphasis on a healthy vegetarian diet. Most avoid coffee and caffeinated drinks like Mormons, but I like the fact that they promote and practise a vegetarian lifestyle — something that very few Mormons do.  Adventists are credited with the development of certain health and vegetarian products, and according to Wikipedia, research by the US National Institute of Health found that the average Adventist in California lives 4-10 years longer than the average Californian.

The Black Churches: Of course, there isn’t just one “black church.”  But there is something special about the way of worship among African Americans. I’ve never personally been to a “black church,” but I’ve watched some services and sermons on TV. The minister giving the sermon is often quite animated, often backed up by an energetic choir and background music, and the congregation is lively. Mormons, by contrast, are pretty conservative in their style of worship. No standing, no clapping, no waving, no shouts of “amen.” I don’t think that either of these styles of worship are “right” or “wrong.” I see value and purpose to both and am perhaps most suited to a style of worship where I can sit quiet and do nothing, but can certainly see the appeal — and perhaps even need — for a more animated style of worship.

Jainism: I first heard of this religion because of an Indian acquaintance of mine, who is a Jain. What I like about Jainism is its respect for all life. According to Wikipedia’s page on Jainism, “(B)ecause all living beings possess a soul, great care and awareness is essential in one’s actions in the incarnate world. Jainism emphasizes the equality of all life, advocating harmlessness towards all, whether these be creatures great or small. This policy extends even to microscopic organisms.”

A devout Jain will not only refuse meat, but even root vegetables such as onions and potatoes, in order to preserve the life of the plant.  I encourage you all to read a bit about Jainism.  It really is a beautiful religion, in my opinion.

Veganism: I know, it’s not really a religion, right?  Well, no, not in the traditional sense, but I think that veganism holds, to many of its adherents, a spiritual aspect to it. I have a few friends who are vegan and although they’re not really “religious” per se, they consider veganism to be their spirituality and are probably among the most compassionate and loving people I know — towards both humans and animals. Veganism requires people to really think about how their dietary choices and actions affect animals, as well as their fellow human beings and the environment. Although I’m not vegan myself, I definitely have a bit of “vegan envy” of those who are able to avoid all animal products for ethical reasons.

Unitarian Universalist: UU’s believe in “complete but responsible freedom of speech, thought, belief, faith, and disposition.  They believe that each person is free to search for his or her own personal truth on issues, such as the existence, nature, and meaning of life, deities, creation, and afterlife.  UUs can come from any heritage, have any sexual orientation or gender identity, and hold beliefs from a variety of cultures or religions.” That statement is something that I can wholeheartedly agree with, but there is a lot more to it.  See more about what UU’s believe here.

Agnosticism: Simply put, agnosticism is “the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, ghosts, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove. It is often put forth as a middle ground between theism and atheism, though it is not a religious declaration in itself.” (Read here for more information.)

I have my days, but for the most part I don’t really doubt that God exists. I do doubt sometimes, however, whether we can ever really “know” that God exists. Wikipedia breaks down different types of agnosticism and I would say that I strongly identify with “Agnostic theism,” also called “religious” or “spiritual agnosticism:

“– the view of those who do not claim to know of the existence of any deity, but still believe in such an existence. Søren Kierkegaard believed that knowledge of any deity is impossible, and because of that people who want to be theists must believe: “If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.”

So what would I be if I weren’t a Mormon? In terms of style of worship, I feel very drawn to Catholicism for the reasons that I mentioned above. In terms of ethics and morality, I absolutely love the message of Jainism, particularly the reasons behind its dietary code. It adds a more religious element to veganism and that’s something that I find very appealing, even though I’m not vegan.  Although I abstain from meat for ethical reasons, I recognize my own personal hypocrisy since I still use eggs and dairy (organic when possible, but even that is no guarantee of ethical practices), as well as a bit of fish on occasion.  I think that believing in the Jain doctrine would give me the motivation needed to go that extra mile and abstain from all unethical dietary practices (although I admit that I can’t imagine ever giving up root vegetables).    Still, though, I feel drawn to Christianity because of Jesus.  But Christianity can be a maze of confusion, with all the different denominations, interpretations and disappointing feuding and hypocrisy. (Mormonism in itself can be a maze that can test one’s spiritual endurance.) Had I not been raised Mormon and found my own little niche in the Church, I think that I would have been drawn to something like Jainism, but would have perhaps still felt that something was missing. If I had found Mormonism later in life, I think I would have been drawn to the Plan of Salvation — which is my favourite part about Mormonism — but I think that I would have been scared off by certain elements of Mormonism and therefore would not have investigated it further.

So I think that if I weren’t a Mormon, I would have felt drawn to a combination of Christianity and Jainism, but would have most likely considered myself to be agnostic because I may not have been able to sincerely believe the doctrines of these other faiths in order to consider myself a true follower.  I do consider myself a true follower of Mormonism, since I do believe in most of its doctines, but I don’t proclaim to know that Mormon doctrine is true, as many Mormons do.

After doing this post, I think I’ve finally figured out what I am at this stage in my life:

I’m a practising Mormon Agnostic Theist with Jain envy.

(Perhaps I’ll have to change the name of my blog.) 

What about you?  What would you be if you weren’t a Mormon?  And are you “envious” of any other religions out there?

Now again I want to underscore the fact that I write as a non-Mormon, and I recognize the fact that there must be something about the sacrament meeting that does work and that the current missionary strategy has proven quite effective. Consequently, it could be very well argued that there is no point messing with success – and I would not object in the least if you, the reader, took that position.

But I would humbly suggest that maybe the broader vision of David McKay, the insights and success of Gladys Knight and her gospel choir, and the early roots of the LDS Church itself might raise some heretofore unconsidered possibilities for reaching more people from different backgrounds. I would also suggest that these same possibilities for more effective mission might also bring the sacrament meeting and the principle of ongoing revelation into greater practical coherence.

Lastly, incorporating some of these possibilities might help establish the local ward or branch as being every bit as responsible for spreading the good news as the missionaries. I think that, particularly in the U.S., congregational based evangelism could well be the way to greater success in finding converts. Participation in a church service at the invitation of a friend is a far more appealing introduction to any religion than two strangers knocking at one’s door.

From both reading and conversation, I think this fact is more and more recognized by the LDS. The missionaries do great work, but they have a far better chance of success with people who are already well disposed toward their message than with “cold” calls. Experiencing the presence of God in worship instead of just hearing about it could go a long way towards establishing that favorable disposition.

Allow me to close with a personal testimony of sorts that might illustrate what I have been talking about:

I like rationality. I am far more a head person than a heart person. The Unitarian Universalists and I get along very well. Yet even I found the service at the local branch that Sunday a bit too cerebral. If I were someone looking for a spiritual connection that morning, I would’ve appreciated the friendliness of the people and the earnestness of their beliefs. I would’ve been impressed by the fact that lay people preached and that the branch president earned his living elsewhere, but I think I would have decided to search elsewhere for that connection with the Spirit. And given the emphasis on personal testimony in the LDS, there is, I think, a sad irony here. Simply put, I would expect people who are convinced that God still speaks to them to offer a little less talk and a little more encounter in their Sunday morning worship.

And once again I hasten to add that this is the perception of someone who is sympathetic to the LDS but not a member. I therefore thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you. I pray that they will stimulate not only thought but prayer on what it means to worship and to witness and the connection between the two. In turn I hope that such thought and prayer will result in seeing the power of the Holy Spirit change even more lives. I am also eager to hear how the current sacrament meeting works in the lives of those who already find it meaningful. By listening to the voices of both those who “get it” and those who don’t (at least not yet) perhaps greater spiritual growth will be possible for all.

The second reason (I am interested in the possibility of returning a bit of the former fire of earlier Mormonism to the current church) lifts the service I attended from the background of Mormon history and sets it against the backdrop of the LDS future. As I mentioned parenthetically in my previous post, one of the talks used in the Sacrament Meeting I attended was one given originally by David McKay. As I understand it, President McKay was the prophet who set the LDS on its modern missionary explosion. Prior to his time Mormonism was largely confined to the mountain west. McKay, however, had a vision of a broader reach and that was the impetus for the current status of the LDS as a nascent worldwide religious community.

This in turn raises the issue of missionary activity. The talk which McKay had given perceptively realized that sending out missionaries would not, by itself, achieve the desired ends. Every Saint needed to see him or herself as a missionary, bearing witness and providing contacts for the “tie guys” to follow up on. Keep this thought on the back burner for a minute.

Just long enough ago for me to forget the source, I read an article which addressed some of the difficulties LDS missionaries abroad were facing. One was the explosive growth of Pentecostalism, another was the lack of well formed LDS communities, a third was the disadvantage of missionary “roll over” especially when contrasted with the long term work of Protestant and Catholic missionaries, and the last was the lack of indigenous expression in Mormon worship. One former African Mormon convert said that the reason he gave up on the LDS was that it just wasn’t African.

Now add in the words of Gladys Knight to Gordon Hinkley, “I like everything about the Mormon Church except the music.” Knight has since developed a Latter Day Saint gospel choir which, significantly, has been very effective at getting contacts for missionaries. Let that sink in a minute: a black gospel style choir is proving very effective in getting a hearing for the gospel message as understood by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Bring McKay’s vision back into the mix. I would suggest (and here my outsider standing might be of particular import since it is non Mormons that you wish to attract) that if the LDS is going to successfully jump to the next level of its growth then two related things might need to happen. One is a greater sensitivity and openness to the process of inculturation. The other is a greater emphasis  (or rediscovery) of the power of spiritual encounter and ongoing revelation. The two are obviously related. It isn’t likely that many people are going to have a spiritual encounter if they find the delivery and expression of the gospel excessively foreign. Going the other way, spiritual encounter is most easily encouraged, nurtured, and spread when it incorporates as much as possible of the individual’s culture.

These two principles are at the heart of the modern missionary movement which has seen the dramatic growth of Christianity throughout the non western world. Once missionaries started concentrating on making disciples of Christ instead of exporting English or American or Italian culture they started doing very well. Indeed, the core of Christianity now lies south of the equator in Asia, Africa, and South America rather than in its old bastions of Europe and the United States.

From talking with a local ward leader, I know that maintaining sound doctrine is of paramount importance in the LDS. This makes the prospect of inculturation and greater freedom of expression in worship and witness a bit threatening. One does not wish to lose control of what is said and done in the name of the LDS and/or watering down the restored gospel. Having both evangelical and Roman Catholic roots, I understand the concern and (especially as a guest in this venue) I do not want to make light of it.

Nevertheless, I would point out that the Roman Catholic Church with 1.2 billion very diverse people has still managed to maintain its historic teaching and practice while allowing for considerable local color and expression. The Mass has proven flexible enough to keep its basic structure very much intact and yet still accommodate a plethora of indigenous customs and music. The music of Bach or Brubeck are both entirely capable of conveying the ancient mystery of Christ’s body and blood. So are the genres of soul, black gospel, and bluegrass.

Evangelicals have likewise managed to keep to a pretty rigid orthodoxy while allowing for all sorts of worship expression. Curiously, I have personally found that the more creative the worship, the more traditional the teaching. What makes this particularly interesting is the fact that evangelicalism is a broad based movement with no central authority.

I should think that if a church the size of the Roman Catholic communion and a movement as decentralized as Evangelicalism can keep their doctrinal commitments while allowing freedom for local expression, then surely the LDS with its off the charts organizational genius could do the same.

I would also suggest that by reclaiming some of its early heritage, the LDS could speak more powerfully to the post modern world where heart tends to trump head and where music often speaks most powerfully than sermon. (As a preacher I mourn this development, but I do not dispute its veracity.)

To put it another way, I found the service that morning to be very similar to a Unitarian Universalist service. Given that the UU is over the top rationalistic with a very strong secularist element, this is really saying something. I would think that the LDS, a movement rooted in prophecy and revelation, would offer a very different kind of service from the UU, a movement rooted in rationalism.

Now again I want to underscore the fact that I write as a non Mormon and I recognize the fact that there must be something about the sacrament meeting that does work and that the current missionary strategy has proven quite effective. Consequently it could be very well argued that there is no point messing with success and I would not object in the least if you, the reader, took that position.

But I would humbly suggest that maybe the broader vision of David McKay, the insights and success of Gladys Knight and her gospel choir, and the early roots of the LDS Church itself might raise some heretofore unconsidered possibilities for reaching more people from different backgrounds. I would also suggest that these same possibilities for more effective mission might also bring the sacrament meeting and the principle of ongoing revelation into greater practical coherence.