Ben Park shared this critique of the popular misconception that only 3% of Mormons practiced polygamy:

[In early August], FAIR went live with their Mormon Defense League website.[1] Among the “false claims” the website seeks to debunk concern the LDS Church’s current relationship to polygamy. In an effort to distinguish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from polygamous groups in the western United States, the MDL emphasized that plural marriage was a limited practice that had been officially stopped over a century ago. (Including perpetuating the unfortunate rhetorical battle over the label “Mormon”–a battle of deep irony when considering our frustration of others refusing us the label “Christian.”) To answer the question of the number of Mormons who practiced polygamy, it replied that “modern estimates of LDS members practicing polygamy prior to 1904 range between 2% and 20%.” While the website does admit that it is tough to get an accurate number, and that it depends on who you count within the statistics, their final number (2% to 20%) is unfortunate in that it is not only false but misleading.

The MDL shouldn’t be blamed as the first organization to present this number. The 2% figure, which has been perpetuated for over a century through many sources, probably originated with the Utah Commission in the mid 1880s, which in turn was probably received from the LDS Church itself in hopes to downplay the practice of polygamy in the era of federal prosecution. It was then echoed in the Reed Smoot Trials from 1904-1907 as the Church sought to distance itself from its polygamist past. The figure appeared in many public venues–most notably LDS-owned newspapers–in the 1930s as LDS Leaders worked to put distance between themselves and the growing fundamentalist organizations. It still crops up today, most notably in President Hinckley’s interview with Larry King where it was presented that “between two percent and five percent of our people were involved in [polygamy].”[2] If only 2% of Mormons practiced polygamy, this reasoning tends to argue, then it wasn’t nearly as bit a role within the Church as detractors would like to claim.[3]

The biggest problem with this number is that it is demonstrably wrong. Demographical work done by Kathryn Daynes and others that shows that the number of Mormon individuals living in polygamous households was closer to 20 to 30%, with variations over time and region.[4] One would have to take some seriously narrow parameters to get anything close to 2%, and some very optimistic framing to have a top number of 20%. Granted, there were decades and areas that had lower percentages, but there were plenty of times and periods that made up for it.

The second major problem with these statistics is that it emphasizes only the male acceptance or practice of polygamy. The only way 2% could be anywhere close to valid is if it were only counting husbands. The only way 20% could be in anyway close would be not to count children. Such a perspective overlooks the far-reaching grasp of polygamy–and indeed the fact that “women and children” would be considered a “far-reaching grasp” should cause one to pause. This framework perpetuates the male-centered nature of the LDS past, where women (and in this case, children) are merely props on the Mormon stage or pawns in the LDS chess game. By focusing on men, polygamy becomes a “duty,” an extension of “obedience,” and a lesson in “stewardship.” If it were looked at from a woman’s or child’s point of view, however, it is a much more poignant sense of sacrifice and in many cases, loneliness. The male-centered perspective can mesh with the contemporary emphasis on priesthood diligence and patriarchal order; the female- and child-centered perspective fails to match modern-day emphases on love and familial closeness. We all eagerly await Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s volume on this topic.[5]

The third and final problem is the very assumption that giving a percentage can quantify the importance of polygamy to 19th century Mormonism. These statistics are generally given to prove that plural marriage was not as bit as critics like to proclaim; in reality, the importance of polygamy before the manifesto cannot be quantified. It was at the center of LDS theology, it was emphasized within Mormon practice, and it was exemplified by all ecclesiastical leaders. The fact that it was at the center of the Mormon ideal image transcends demographics. A few examples help provide a glimpse: Plural wife Esther Romania Bunnell Penrose proclaimed polygamy as “the platform on which is built Endless Kingdoms and lives and no other or all combined principles revealed can be substituted as a compensation.”[6] Brigham Young’s counselor Daniel W. Wells, when under oath in the Reynolds Trial, explained that if Mormons “failed to obey it [polygamy] they would be under condemnation, and would be clipped in their glory in the world to come.”[7] Joseph F. Smith in 1878 protested against the “false idea” that monogomy was enough for the highest glory, and that “whoever has imagined that he could obtain the fullness of the blessings pertaining to this celestial law, by complying with only a portion of its conditions, has deceived himself. He cannot do it.”[8] As late as 1884, Apostle Moses Thatcher declared polygamy was “the chief corner stone in the hands of [God].”[9] That same year, George Q. Cannon emphasized that he “did not feel like holding up his hand to sustain anyone as a presiding officer over any portion of the people who had not entered into the Patriarchal order of Marriage,” and that everyone who is capable “must have more than one wife at a time in order to obey that Law.”[10]

Now I am not saying that polygamy still holds a prominent position within LDS theology, because I am not. (Though I do admit that remnants remain within our teachings, culture, and especially, and most unfortunately, parts of our temple worship.) Polygamy has nothing to do with my understanding of Mormonism as I believe and practice it. I also agree that, in public relations, there should be a clear difference made between the LDS Church and other fundamentalist Mormon sects. I just don’t think we should downplay 19th century Mormon conceptions of polygamy, misconstruing history and possibly insulting the thousands who dedicated their life and belief to the principle, to do so.

_____________________________________

[1] Hopefully it is modeled after the Anti-Defamation League rather than the similarly-named Jewish Defense League. Also, the MDL should be commended for being frank and honest about post-manifesto polygamy leading up to 1904.

[2] President Hinckley Interview with Larry King, 8 September 1998, text found here.

[3] David G. kindly provided me with information on the 2% figure, which he received from conversation with B. Carmen Hardy.

[4] Kathryn M. Daynes, More Wives Than One : Transformation Of The Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001), esp. 91-115.

[5] A preview can be found in Ulrich, “An American Album, 1857,” American Historical Review 115 (February 2010): 1-25.

[6] Esther Romania Bunnell Penrose, Memoir, LDS Archives, in B. Carmen Hardy, Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2007), 112.

[7] ”The Reynolds Trial,” Deseret News, 15 December 1875.

[8] ”Discourse Delivered by Elder Jos. F. Smith,” Deseret News, 11 September 1878.

[9] ”Remarks by Apostle Moses Thatcher,” 4 April 1884, Deseret News Weekly, 7 May 1884.

[10] Charles Lowell Walker, Diary, 26 April 1884, in The Diary of Charles Lowell Walker, ed. Andrew Karl Larson and Katharine Miles Larson, 2 vols. (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1980), 2:629; Wilford Woodruff, diary, 9 March 1884, in Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, ed. Scott Kenney (Salt Lake: Signature Books, 1983), 8:235.

By Alan Keele, Professor Emeritus of German Studies, Brigham Young University

I begin with some words of President Spencer W. Kimball from the Ensign of June, 1976. His article commemorated the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and is entitled: “The False Gods We Worship.” President Kimball wrote:

We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel … and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;”(Matthew 5:44-45) … What are we to fear when the Lord is with us? … Our assignment is affirmative: … to carry the gospel to our enemies, that they might no longer be our enemies.

President Kimball had similar things to say in the First Presidency Statement on the Basing of the MX missile five years later, in 1981, as well as in his Christmas and Easter Messages around that same time. (The remarkable revelation on the Priesthood in June of 1978 fell directly between these pronouncements.)

President Kimball’s inspired words of 1976, 1978, and 1981 were unprecedented and courageous. Anyone alive at that time will remember clearly how much fear and hatred had been generated by the Cold War and the policy called Mutually Assured Destruction, appropriately abbreviated MAD. I recall people I otherwise considered sane seriously advocating a preemptive nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union.

My friend and colleague Gary Browning, on the other hand, was one of the few who had for years had the courage and good sense to stand up and speak out in the community against this torrent of fear and hatred. Unlike most others, for whom Russians were an easily feared abstraction, as a Professor of Russian, Gary knew personally and had a deep love for individual Soviet citizens as well as for the Russian people and their long history and profound culture.

In the early eighties, Gary founded the Utah County Chapter of Utahns United Against the Nuclear Arms Race, inviting others of us to join. (I’m proud that one of the things our little group was able to accomplish was to assemble this special issue of BYU Studies on War and Peace, with Gary as guest editor. Its monographs and poems are still vitally relevant today.)

Our wider umbrella organization, Utahns United Against the Nuclear Arms Race, had been founded in about 1980 by Ed and Gloria Firmage along with a wide, ecumenical cross-section of 70 or so Utah religious and cultural leaders. It was also Ed Firmage, a professor of constitutional and international law at the University of Utah, as well as a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young and the grandson of Hugh B. Brown, who spoke as an expert witness at the invitation of the First Presidency to the three of them, and on another occasion to the entire Quorum of the Twelve, about the arms race in general and the MX missile in particular. President Kimball’s pronouncements were based on Ed’s materials and analysis.

Meanwhile, less than a decade later, the First Presidency called Gary Browning as the first mission president to Russia, operating initially out of Finland and later, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, from headquarters in Moscow. (I can’t resist sharing with you that once, years later, when I happened to be riding with him in an elevator, Elder Ballard of the Twelve, upon learning that I was Gary’s colleague, raised his index finger, moved his hand and his face close to mine, looked into my eyes intently, and in a most dramatic voice proclaimed: “The Lord raised up that man!”) Incidentally, Gary and our friend and Russian Department colleague Thomas Rogers are now the patriarchs to the Russian saints and regularly travel to Russia to give blessings.)

With missionaries in the Soviet Union, suddenly gone were the days when Gary got anonymous threats for being a “Commie-Lover.” Now, literally overnight, many Utahns had apparently come to realize, as President Kimball had admonished, that “our assignment is affirmative: … to carry the gospel to our enemies, that they might no longer be our enemies.”

Hearing reports of real distress in the former Soviet Union during that first hard winter after its dissolution, and inspired by an earlier campaign by Professor Eugene England and others called Food for Poland, Russian Professor Donald Jarvis and I initiated a Russian Relief campaign centered at BYU to send funds and food packages through President Browning to hungry, cold people. The outpouring of support for our initiative at BYU and in Utah generally was very gratifying indeed. LDS Humanitarian Relief joined in, as well as people with extraordinary resources like Jon Huntsman, to send aid to citizens in the former Soviet republics.

In Germany, our friend and former BYU colleague Elder Spencer Condie of the Seventy, who was serving in the area presidency there, helped expand our Russian Relief initiative through the good offices of Area President Elder Hans Ringger. Soon I beheld through my tears photos showing German Latter-Day Saints loading trucks with food and clothing for the people of Leningrad, the very city which German troops famously besieged for 900 days during World War Two, causing widespread starvation and even cannibalism.

The lesson for me was that once freed from the bonds of extreme ideology – of both the older German anti-Bolshevik and the more recent American anti-Communist varieties – Mormons both in Utah and in Germany were deep down absolutely responsive to the imperative, in President Kimball’s words, to carry the gospel of peace to our enemies, that they might no longer be our enemies.

So it has become an article of my faith that Mormons want fundamentally to do good, not harm. We may at divers times and places be misled by fear, ignorance, and prejudice, we may succumb to bouts of mass hysteria, but the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ continues to admonish us and the Holy Spirit never tires of prompting us to love and care for others, even those sometimes considered our enemies, throughout the whole world. Yes, bellowing cries of fanatics can at times drown out the whisperings of the Spirit; humans – not just chickens – tend to react to threats with flocking behaviors; but eventually truth and sweet reason may one day again prevail. And as we have seen in this case, with the prophetic leadership of Spencer W. Kimball and the Lord quietly raising up good people like Gary Browning, it can happen very unexpectedly and very quickly.

Another instructive example is the case of the Mormons in the Third Reich. It shows that even good, faithful people can be misled by mass hysteria. But it is also a good case study in why this is never inevitable. And it is a case study in what conditions need to obtain for it to be entirely avoidable. When there is access to good information to counter propaganda and other lies, where there is a strong sense of right and wrong, and a questioning mind trained even a modicum in examining truth claims, and where the moral courage exists to stand for the truth, right political choices replace wrong ones.

This perfectly describes young Helmuth Hübener. His source of good information was the BBC. And it is important to remember that his resistance movement was entirely non-violent. It would never have occurred to Helmuth to have called for an armed insurrection or for Hitler’s assassination.

I first stumbled onto the Hübener story in 1971 in a novel by Günter Grass. It was precisely these qualities in Hübener, especially his instinct for non-violence, that made Helmuth an appealing figure to the Nobel-Prize-winning author. Now, one article, three books, and a short documentary film later (which I’m happy to say airs repeatedly on KBYU Television), I trust that most Latter-Day Saints have had a chance to become familiar with the Hübener story and its tragic outcome for seventeen-year-old Helmuth, who was the youngest person executed for resistance to the Nazis.

The courageous and intelligent reaction of Helmuth and his friends Karl-Heinz Schnibbe and Rudi Wobbe to Hitler and National Socialism has been a beacon in my own life, for me convincing proof that – despite a tidal wave of almost universal adulation and jubilation – even very young people, armed with better information, can see through the lies of the most pernicious, pervasive, and persuasive propaganda apparatus the world has ever witnessed.

Helmuth Hübener, flanked by Rudolf Wobbe (left) and Karl-Heinz Schnibbe (right)

I have been hesitant in the past to speak much about the other Mormons in Nazi Germany, the ones who were not always anti-fascists, partly because I only more or less inadvertently picked up information about them along the way, and partly because I have learned there are those who are eager to bend all such unflattering information about Mormons to their anti-Mormon purposes.

Nevertheless, at a conference in honor of Professor Douglas Tobler on the occasion of his retirement I did tell a story with a negative beginning but with a positive ending, namely the story of a naive young LDS boy named Bruno Stroganoff who briefly joined Hitler’s SS but, when he learned to his horror that he was now expected to help massacre Jewish villagers in occupied Poland, he courageously buried his SS uniform and began to walk across Europe to escape from Nazism. You can, if you wish, read more about him in my brief article in BYU Studies [32:3-4].

In addition to a large number of a-political German Mormons, there were others who were convinced Nazis, many of them very nice people and dedicated Church workers, including some who were loyal to the Führer to the bitter end. Some remained enthusiastic supporters of Hitler long after the war, even after they had emigrated to the US or to Canada.

Such Mormon Hitler supporters who happened to learn about Helmuth’s resistance activities universally despised Helmuth Hübener and often stubbornly stuck to these views until death. At least one member of Helmuth’s branch, Brother Jacobi, is reported to have said in a Church meeting he would have shot Helmuth if he’d known what he was doing.

This is a bitter pill to swallow. We’d like to think Mormons didn’t make bad political choices, much less violent political mistakes, despite what we know about such infamous events as the massacres at Mountain Meadows as well as at My Lai, where several Mormon members of Charlie Company were present when hundreds of innocent men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood. (One of them, Mike Terry, is quoted as having said, when asked why he participated: “I don’t know, it was this Nazi kind of thing.) Obviously, mere membership in the Mormon Church does not convey automatic immunity even from participation in mass murder, much less from political naiveté.

In order to understand analogous phenomena, I think it is important to examine briefly how some Mormons in Germany were misled by a concatenation of superficial reasons to support Hitler and the National Socialist movement, especially when the regime was new and appeared to be doing positive things.

Hitler had, for example, created full employment and a stable economy. Not many grateful people who now had jobs again wanted to focus on the fact that the economy was being driven by a vast rearmament industry and a rush to war. As H.L. Mencken once pointed out, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.

Hitler restored a sense of national pride which had been badly wounded by the harsh Treaty of Versailles after World War One. He had cracked down on public behaviors left over from the roaring twenties which made the middle class uncomfortable. Even today, one can sometimes hear an older German reminisce in an unguarded moment: “Well, you can say what you want, but in those days at least a woman was safe on the streets! And he gave us the Autobahn!” (Environmentalists have humorously turned this canard upside down: “Well, Adolf wasn’t so bad, he just shouldn’t have built that stinking Autobahn!”)

German Mormons had additional, theological, reasons to embrace Hitler. Those who saw in him a man called of God to help prepare the world for the millennium saw hidden significance in the phrase das tausendjährige Reich, a realm lasting a thousand years, or in the fact that he had twelve close associates referred to as his disciples, or that his party number was the holy number seven (which it actually wasn’t, it was 555).

Germans were not the only Mormons captivated by the romance of Hitler, especially early on. Statements by enthusiastic American church members made their way to Germany. Some were shockingly antisemitic – we tend to forget today how wide-spread antisemitism used to be in the US, and Mormons here were not immune to it either.

German saints were also aware of an unsigned editorial in a British church magazine, The Millennial Star, which enthused about Hitler and the New Germany, saying it was clear der Führer had been raised up by God to prepare the world for the millennium.

After years of being closed to the despised Mormon cult, Mormons rejoiced when under Hitler all genealogy records of the state churches, Catholic and Lutheran, were suddenly thrown open to anyone. (If you were not a Jew, it was easy not to think about why the Nazis really wanted the archives open.)

Some German LDS saw significance in the fact that Hitler was a teetotaler and non-smoker. It was also widely rumored that Hitler had attended primary meetings as a child in Austria (in Haag am Hausruck about 15 miles from his hometown of Braunau am Inn) where he learned about the word of wisdom, or that he had even secretly been baptized a Mormon. (I heard this canard again very recently, from an American mission president no less.)

Such urban folklore was codified into an organized spiel by a “professional friend” of the church named Max Hähnle, a sociologist who had made research trips to Salt Lake City. He went around Germany giving talks to Mormon congregations favorably comparing Mormonism to Nazism.

In 1939, just before Germany attacked Poland, something like Hähnle’s summary of favorable comparisons between Mormonism and Nazism found its way into an infamous article in a special number of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official Nazi party organ. Entitled “Im Lande der Mormonen,” [In the Land of the Mormons] and though it could have been written by Hähnle, the article did not bear Hähnle’s name but rather that of Alfred C. Rees, the American mission president in Berlin at the time.

According to this article, to cite only one example, the idea of Mormon Fast Sunday had been borrowed by Hitler and turned into Eintopfsonntag, that one Sunday a month when German families were encouraged to have a simple one-dish meal and donate the cost difference to the party.

As its author warms to his subject, however, he soon makes it sound like Mormonism was borrowed from the Nazis, not the other way around. He makes a long list of Nazi beliefs before coming to his conclusion: “Mormons are the ones who put these healthy doctrines into practice.”

I think everyone now experiences deep embarrassment and sadness at such statements. But the passage of time has the power to make fools of all of us if we too end up on the wrong side of history. So how can we follow the examples of Helmuth Hübener and his friends as well as people like Bruno Stroganoff to avoid being spattered by blood and sins from such calamities in our own time?

Let’s briefly try to examine a tougher case, because it’s closer to home and more recent, residing in that grey zone where current events gradually shade over into history. Nevertheless, many objective, indisputable facts about the case have already emerged with considerable clarity. When stepping off his presidential helicopter five days after the attacks of 9/11/2001, President George W. Bush made an apparently unscripted and unpremeditated remark: “This crusade, this war on terrorism,” he said, “is going to take a while.” President Bush, though a history major at Yale, was probably not mindful at that moment of the terrible massacres perpetrated by European crusaders in the Middle Ages and of the resonance the word crusade still has in the Middle East. Still, he discontinued using the word crusade when he was reminded what a potent symbol and rallying cry the word is in the Islamic world.

His choice of the term war on terrorism, on the other hand, was neither immediately nor widely challenged, though it turns out the distinction between whether 9/11 was an act of war or a criminal act – even a particularly horrible criminal act – has almost incalculable legal and moral ramifications. In a number of international treaties, to which the US is a signatory, terrorism is specifically defined as a crime, not as an act of war.

Nor is this distinction mere semantic hair-splitting; rather, it is an important legal safeguard designed to prevent future calamities in light of past horrors such as World War One, which began when Austria declared war on the entire country of Serbia because one nineteen-year-old Serb had assassinated Austria’s heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand.

The attack did not even occur in Serbia, but in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a different country altogether. Of course, as we all know, Serbia’s ally Russia immediately responded by declaring war on Austria, and soon all the major powers were inexorably drawn into the war because of their fateful interlocking system of alliances and because they all started an irreversible spiral of mobilization. We have heard Professor Tate recount earlier today the staggering death toll of this colossal mistake.

Yes, young Gavrilo Princep and his co-conspirators were patriotic Yugoslavian nationalists, but not all were Serbs. Some were Bosniaks, and one, named Graham Hough, sounds suspiciously British to me; I have been unable to find out any more about him. But despite attempts by Austria at the time to link them to the Serbian secret police through their weapons – little Browning [!] 9mm automatic pistols – these murderers were not state actors.

Neither were the 9/11 hijackers state actors, but rather a conspiracy of individual terrorists from various countries including Egypt and the Emirates, most of whom, however, were natives of Saudi Arabia. They were doubtless trained in Afghanistan, but they did not attack America as agents of the governments of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, or any other country, certainly not of Iraq.

Sir Kenneth Macdonald, Britain’s Director of Public Prosecutions, the UK’s most senior criminal prosecutor, has argued that these terrorists, like the 2005 London bombers, were not soldiers in a war at all, but criminals who should answer to the criminal justice system.

His view is that the prime purpose of terrorist attacks is to cause democratic countries such as Britain and the US to abandon their civilized, constitutional values in the rush to war: “London is not a battlefield,” he explained. “Those innocents who were murdered … were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, ‘soldiers.’ They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this … The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws, and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement.”

Likewise, British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, explained as recently as January of 2009, that “the idea of a ‘war on terror’ is a ‘mistake,’ putting too much emphasis on military force … Mr Miliband said the idea had unified disparate ‘terrorist groups’ against the West. He said the right response to the threat was to champion law and human rights – not subordinate it.”

In the event, much of the law and many of the human rights spoken of by Miliband, many of those civilized, constitutional values mentioned by Macdonald, were in fact to be in some measure subordinated and abandoned precisely because our efforts were cast as a war on terror, and that because of one presumably spontaneous semantic choice by a president not otherwise particularly noted for the precision of his language.

All the subsequent questionable and now repudiated legal opinions by John Yoo and others which gave birth to the so-called unitary executive theory, were based on the premise that George W. Bush was a wartime president. The unitary executive is a legal doctrine which holds that the president in a time of war (bearing in mind that this was to be a war without any foreseeable end) enjoys unlimited powers no different than those under what legal scholars have called the Führerprinzip. This means that under the doctrine of the unitary executive, the President of the United States – and I know this is difficult to grasp or even imagine – is bound by no law at all, international or American, including the Geneva Convention banning torture, kidnapping, and murder. George W. Bush’s lawyers were actually advising him that the Chief Executive in wartime does not even answer to the US Congress or to the Supreme Court!

The doctrine of the unitary executive, like the almost countless other costs in blood and treasure and lost prestige and the destabilization of nations would have been rendered moot if 9/11 had been defined as a criminal act rather than an act of war. I think history will show this rush to war by a warlike people, accompanied by a willingness to abandon the rule of law, was a costly mistake.

But what has all this to do with Mormons? you might well ask. I hold the view that at a crucial moment in American history, when our Constitution was arguably hanging by a thread, at least four high-placed Mormons in key positions could have stepped in to save it. Had these four LDS men – two lawyers who helped define torture so narrowly that nearly any cruelty was considered technically legal; as well as two psychologists who reverse-engineered Chinese and North Korean torture methods and then implemented them for the CIA – had these four men made better decisions, they had the power to have prevented grievous war-crimes. In fact, however, they are deeply implicated in them. (In the interest of time I refer you for the details about these matters to Jane Mayer’s excellent book, The Dark Side.

I refer you as well as to an article by my former student Josh Madson about the suicide of young Alyssa Peterson, a soldier in Iraq who had served an LDS mission to the Netherlands. Tragically, Alyssa apparently ended her own life in September of 2003 after she had objected to the very interrogation techniques developed and declared legal by her fellow Church members and used on prisoners in Tal-Afar. Alyssa courageously refused to participate after only two nights working in a unit known as the cage, and was later found lying dead in a field, next to her rifle. To my mind, her death, like that of Helmuth Hübener, in nowise detracts from the correctness and nobility of her stance against evil.)

Alyssa Peterson

Aside from the profound tragedy of these individual cases, for me the bigger tragedy is that clearly not a small number of Mormons in the US reacted after 9/11 the way most other Americans did. Many of us became – exactly as predicted by President Kimball – anti-enemy. We gave our support to the idea of an everlasting global war on terror, without having any way of being able to foresee and count the eventual costs. Two young marines from my neighborhood were buried last week.

I know we are probably still too close to the painful events of the last decade to be able to agree on what a more appropriate response to the 9/11 attacks might have been. With more hindsight, however, such pivotal moments in history often become much more clearly focused. I believe it’s now indisputable, for example, that the massive escalation by President Lyndon Johnson of the Vietnam War in 1964, was all out of proportion to its proximate causus belli, the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident. And can any of us watch without shuddering those old film clips of Propaganda Minister Dr. Josef Goebbels screeching out at a Nazi Party rally: “Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg!!” [Do you want total war!] followed by resounding shouts of “JA! JA!” from the throats of tens of thousands of enthusiastic Germans, many of whom would soon be dead in the steppes of Russia or amidst the rubble of their destroyed cities?

To counteract the almost irresistible pull of such mass psychology when enemies threaten, as President Kimball implies, we must do better at following the admonitions of Jesus Christ, but we must also do better at epistemology, the examining of truth claims. As an example I invite you to consider with me the rather tortured logic, the lack of information, and the shallow level of political analysis which must have been operational in the case of three young individuals quoted in a New York Times article of May, 2006 entitled: “All Polls Aside, Utah Is Keeping Faith in Bush.” Remember, this is 2006, long after WEDs, mushroom clouds, meetings in Prague between Iraqis and Al-Qaeda, the unitary executive, and the Bybee torture memo, when it should have been clear to all who had eyes to see how problematic the war on terror had become:

“When I watch him, I see a man with his heart in the right place,” said Delia Randall, a 22-year-old mother from Provo, the hub of a county that gave Senator John Kerry just 11 percent of the presidential vote in 2004. “I like George Bush because he is God fearing, and that’s how a lot of people in this area feel.”

“He’s strong, and he doesn’t waver,” said Jaren Olsen, 18, a freshman at Brigham Young, the nation’s largest religiously affiliated private university, who is from Albany. “I like that he is for the family, that marriage should only be between a man and woman. And the war, we need to finish what we started.”

Another student at Brigham Young, Danielle Pulsipher, a junior, offered blanket approval of the president. Asked to name which of his actions as president she liked most, she was hard-pressed to answer. “I’m not sure of anything he’s done, but I like that he’s religious – that’s really important,” Ms. Pulsipher said.” [end of quotes]

I consider it highly instructive that present-day German saints, though they joined millions of their countrymen and -women in rallying to show their support for the US immediately after the September 11 attacks, were not in the least inclined to rush to war. Like other Germans, they very reluctantly agreed to send some troops as police units to Afghanistan, but Germany refused to send any at all to Iraq.

In fact, my impression from conversations with a relatively large number of German and other European Mormons recently, especially with the youth – I was able to speak about the Hübener story at three annual all-European German-language Young Single Adult Conferences in recent years – is that European Mormons were overwhelmingly troubled about what they viewed as the naiveté of their admired American coreligionists at the heart of Zion who seemed to have become little more than enthused cheerleaders for the war on terror. For obvious reasons, Germans today are very suspicious about cheerleading as a substitute for informed political engagement.

I found Germans – even the youth – to be much better informed about the problems and inconsistent claims about the reasons for the war on terror than the above-cited young Utahns, in part because this time it was the German media – the equivalent of the BBC in Hübener’s case – that had better information. (I remind you that in the US even the venerable New York Times through its now discredited reporter Judith Miller was funneling misinformation from Dick Cheney about yellowcake from Niger and spurious connections between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. I remind you also of what the Austrian curmudgeon Karl Kraus famously said about such feedback loops: “We have wars because politicians lie to reporters and then believe what they read in the papers.”)

Additionally, many of the infamous secret torture sites were in Eastern Europe, in Poland and Rumania, and the extraordinary rendition flights to those so-called black sites refueled in Germany, so it was widely reported there that plane watchers had been observing air fields, recording the tail numbers of the CIA jets involved. There were also some high-profile cases where German citizens of Middle-Eastern ethnicity were kidnaped off European streets and taken to black sites be tortured, at least one, an innocent victim of mistaken identity.

The fact that Mormons in Europe did not share our American passion for the war on terror encourages me, suggesting to my mind that this problem is not a specifically Mormon disease, it is a political disease, highly contagious for Mormons and non-Mormons alike, but virulent only when conditions are right, or should I say when conditions are wrong: we or anyone else can get on the wrong side of history when an unhealthy combination of factors such as fear, lack of good information, an inability to process truth claims, thoughtless a-priori political loyalties, and that counterfeit patriotism mentioned by President Kimball makes us susceptible. If we eliminate any or all those elements, we make ourselves immune. I hope a brief video clip by one of our better-known Mormon contemporaries will help me make this point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l46t_nrySg4

Such irrational and anachronistic evocations of those hoary old twin fears – Communism and the Negro – leave me speechless, so I fall back on the words of the poet: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity… Surely some revelation is at hand: What rough beast, somewhere in the sands of the desert, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

As I slouch toward my conclusion, lo! there is another revelation at hand. As in the case of President Kimball in the seventies, our current prophet, President Monson, has not left us without inspired guidance for our times. Whether we have been paying attention to it is another matter. (In the interest of time I want to remind you only in passing of the respectful tone during the two visits made to President Obama by Church leaders this past year – President Uchtdorf with Elder Ballard at the inaugural and six months later President Monson with Elder Oaks who presented the Obamas with five volumes of their genealogy. Elder Ballard said, for example: “We pray for President Barack Obama’s success in these challenging times and join in his expressions of hope and optimism. We need to exercise our prayers and help him accomplish the great objectives that he has set.”)

I also refer you to the LDS Church press release of October 16, 2009, entitled “The Mormon Ethic of Civility,” a statement I consider the most fitting response to Glenn Beck and similar voices, which reads in part: “The political world is astir. Economies are faltering. Public trust is waning. Individuals feel vulnerable. And social cohesion wears thin. Meanwhile, stories of rage and agitation fill our airwaves… the Church views with concern the politics of fear and rhetorical extremism that render civil discussion impossible. As the Church begins to rise in prominence and its members achieve a higher public profile, a diversity of voices and opinions naturally follows. Some may even mistake these voices as being authoritative or representative of the Church. However, individual members think and speak for themselves. Only the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles and their designated representatives speak for the whole Church.

“The fabric of civil society tears when stretched thin by its extremities. Civility, then, becomes the measure of our collective and individual character as citizens of a democracy… The need for civility is perhaps most relevant in the realm of partisan politics… A healthy democracy maintains equilibrium through diverse means, including a patchwork of competing interests and an effective system of governmental checks. Nevertheless, this order ultimately relies on the integrity of the people …” [endquote]

As we learn from the 98th Section, it is for the good and safety of society that God holds men accountable for their acts in relation to government and the law. I have touched on some examples today where I think men have failed at this, because I wanted to demonstrate that Mormons are never exempted from the arduous task of being good citizens in the governance of this world. As suggested by the theme of this symposium, being a good citizen includes a knowledge of things both in heaven and in the earth including the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land, not all of which are always uplifting.

But I am proud to be able to point to the example of good Mormons like Gary Browning and Helmuth Hübener, whose lives are proof that when the correct constellation of factors does come together in the individual soul, Mormons can and do behave, even in the most trying times, as true patriots in President Kimball’s sense, and with true civility in President Monson’s sense.

12th March 2010, BYU Studies Symposium

I’ve never quite understood the idea that we’re primarily here on earth to learn obedience. It’s the kind of thing that you’d think we could have practiced to boring but pristine perfection in the pre-mortal life. Ahh, you say, but the difference is that here we have to learn to obey even when God isn’t explicitly around. So now you get the added twist of having to figure out what’s really coming from God. This, I have to say, sounds disturbingly like a game of “Simon Says.” Your primary aim is to learn the skill of figuring out which commands are coming from Simon, and then to obey them as quickly as possible. And even more troubling, Simon’s voice is often unclear, but you risk eternal consequences if you get it wrong.

And what does this create? A lot of people who are good at playing Simon Says (though of course they can’t stop arguing about what really came from Simon and calling to repentance those whom they think are playing the game incorrectly). But while Nute Gunray and the Trade Federation might want to build droid armies, in the context of LDS teachings, I can’t say I really understand why God would want one.

So what’s up with this idea that obedience is the first law of heaven? In the New Testament, Jesus says that the first great commandment is to love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. And while some might interpret that as simply a fluffier way of saying, “obey God,” that doesn’t work for me. In fact, I would say that conflating love and obedience is a dangerous move–at the very least, it’s certainly not something we would advocate in any mortal relationship. Someone who proclaims, “if you love me, you’ll do what I say,” should probably raise our suspicions.

But then again, Jesus does in fact say that if we love him, we’ll keep his commandments. And our relationship to God does differ in some significant ways from our relationships to other fallible mortal beings. So I can’t simply dismiss the role of obedience in our relationship to God. But I want to think about it in the context of the importance of relationship. It’s not that obedience is a good in and of itself. We are told that our first priority should be a relationship with God that involves us as wholly as possible. And the crucial, definitive element in this relationship is love. Obedience, then, is an expression of that love, rather than what defines the relationship (or is even a prerequisite for it) I see the gospel as less about following orders, and more about being fully engaged in relationships with God and with others–this seems pretty clearly indicated in the two great commandments.

As I read the Plan of Salvation, a primary reason for our coming here has to do with experience–in particular, the experiences of ambiguity and embodiment, two things which cause a lot of hard, hard challenges, but also provide real potential for moral and spiritual development. I dislike the life as a test metaphor, with its depiction of a divine being who is running us through mazes and seeing how well we do. Rather, in this context I see obedience in terms of trust, as a response to a love that is terrifying in its radicalness–and in a situation where there are so many uncertainties. Are we willing to take take the risk of really responding to God’s call, to make commitments, to choose to love, all without knowing the outcome?

But I remain skeptical of the value of obedience for its own sake. On the other hand, I am also wary of the too-easy liberal critique that since agency is so key, any expectation of obedience is an infringement on that. I want to move away from obedience and agency as some kind of zero-sum game, and instead ask just what it means to develop our agency. I think this is something richer than being confronted with a command and saying yes (yay! did it right! more agency for you) or no (oops, lost some agency there). That’s getting back to Simon Says. The defining feature of agents is the ability to act with intent. That suggests some amount of thought and consideration, as opposed to a simple stimulus-response situation. (In passing, I would note that I think this is generally accepted by Latter-day Saints, and accusations of “blind obedience” are frequently unfair.) But I do want to note that agency is always contextual. We find ourselves in situations in which we have to negotiate a whole lot of factors: the needs of other people, the requirements of our religion, the demands of our conscience, the limitations of temporality and embodiment and miscommunication–and also what we hear God calling us to do, along with the difficulties of discerning that. Sometimes that might involve simple binaries (do we obey, or not), but at least in my life, that’s been the exception rather than the rule. I think usually our challenge is more along the lines of negotiating competing goods. And acting as genuine agents, who make intentional decisions, while living in a lot of chaos–that’s not an easy thing to do.

I also dislike a model in which you obey a lot, even when it’s hard, but it’s worth it at the end when you’re rewarded with a celestial gold star. Because I would propose that the prize, the aim of all this, is in fact an ever-richer relationship with God. When we follow God, then, it’s not in hope of some additional ultimate reward, but because of the relationship itself–one that matters to us here as well as in the eternities. Obedience can certainly bring specific blessings–it can, for example, steer you away from things that might harm you–but ultimately, I think, the reward of obedience is that it involves you in a relationship with God. This is another reason why it’s crucial that the obedience be what I would call agentive obedience; without that, the relationship isn’t real.

And now I will get to everyone’s favorite issue: whether there’s such a thing as faithful questioning, or even faithful dissent; and what to do when the competing goods with which you’re wrestling are your conscience and church teachings (which at least potentially represent the will of God). I’d first like to distinguish between situations in which obedience is hard in that it moves you out of your comfort zone or requires you to do things you find particularly different because of your personality or situation–and obedience that is hard in that you find the demand to be morally problematic. When people are grappling with the latter, it’s not really helpful to frame it in the context of the former. The fact that I’m not so good with going to church on time, or being charitable to people–those are qualitatively different challenges than a situation in which I feel I’m being asked to violate my conscience and go against what I see as basic moral principles.

I mentioned earlier a cheap liberal critique. I see an equally unfair move on the conservative side (using those terms rather loosely, of course). This is the accusation that those who raise questions are apostates who are just looking for reasons to disobey. Questioning is such a basic part of my faith (for heaven’s sake, I’m a theologian), that it’s honestly bizarre to me when I hear the two described as if they were inherently in conflict. Sometimes the questions are simply curious ones. And sometimes they’re more loaded, because they deal with situations which are more loaded. But I’d say that’s even more reason to ask them.

On a lot of things, I’ve ended up kind of agnostic: Book of Mormon historicity, what to do with some of our wackier scripture, stuff like Adam-God and what that means for prophetic inspiration, polygamy, etc. But maintaining a good dose of skepticism doesn’t preclude a commitment to my religion. If I insisted on finding a church that had clear answers to everything, after all, I’d end up perpetually disappointed. And in fact a lot of these issues wouldn’t unsettle me so much if I didn’t have some kind of basic belief in the church.

But. And this is always where things tend to get heated. What about those times when I think I’m being asked to violate my conscience? Is it presumptuous to consider disobedience in such a situation? Is it presumptuous to want an explanation? Maybe it is, but I come from a religion that is nothing if not presumptuous in its claims about the relation of humans and God. I can live with that. But in the end, I don’t have a neat model of how to deal with such situations. For me, it’s really been a case-by-case thing. That’s one reason why I find it helpful to keep talking (see: previous post on why I keep doing this crazy blogging thing). I would actually propose that one of the reasons why mortality is so darn ambiguous and confusing is that we are continually confronted with the reality of how much we need the involvement of other people in sorting out these things. We commonly note that we need prophets and scripture because of all the chaos, but I would go even further and say that this is a reason why we also desperately need each other.

Kaimi recently raised some questions at T&S about Saul and the Amalekites, and obedience and genocide. And I’m pretty much in the camp of, if God wants genocide, he can carry it out himself. I strongly suspect that if I abandon my conscience in an attempt to save my soul, I will end up losing both. So yeah, you can fairly accuse me of being selectively obedient, and I’m okay with that. But that one (not committing genocide) isn’t too much of a morally perplexing issue for me. Other questions aren’t as easy. And I do think the discussion raises legitimate questions about how dissent fits into religious commitment. I suspect that at times I may be too cavalier in dismissing things that make me uncomfortable. Blind disobedience (rejecting ideas without seriously giving them a hearing) isn’t really an act of agency, either. If I’m going to choose dissent, I think I need to do it thoughtfully, and with some kind of theological framework for the decision–probably thinking about it in the relational context I brought up earlier. Because both obedience and disobedience are tied up with ways of being in relationship.

Okay, I haven’t concluded anything, but this post has gotten way too long. Simon Says you should have stopped reading it halfway through.

The Pharisees were already irritated with Jesus; He and His disciples had gathered grain to eat on the Sabbath. As if His disregard for the rules of righteousness were not offensive enough, for good measure He claimed that He was Lord of the Sabbath! Jesus sure knew how to rile up the Pharisees.

They followed Him to the synagogue and set the trap. They pushed a man with a withered hand before Him and asked “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days?” (Matthew 12:10).

The Pharisees knew that Jesus had often healed on the Sabbath. If He suggested that His actions were acceptable, He would be in clear violation of the Jewish law. If He suggested that healing was not acceptable on the Sabbath, He would be condemning Himself and His previous actions. The Pharisees had Him in their trap.

Jesus, in His masterful way, invited an understanding of law: “What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.”

Now the Pharisees were in the trap. They would rescue a sheep but not a child of God on the Sabbath? What kind of shepherds were they?

Jesus turned to the man whom the Pharisees had turned into an uncomfortable object lesson. Jesus saw a struggling and stunted human. He reached for him—as He does for all of us: “Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other” (Matthew 12:13). What a healer!

Aftermath

Were the Pharisees taught and enlarged by Jesus magnanimity? Hardly. “Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him” (Matthew 12:14).

On another occasion, Jesus pointed out the hypocrisy of batting each other with holy expectations. “Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers” (Luke 11:46). It is a double offense to load people with expectations and then fail to help them shoulder the burdens.

Intriguingly, the Pharisees’ hardheartedness drove Jesus away. “But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence….” We can also push Jesus from our presence by judging others with hardheartedness.

Or we can follow Him. “And great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all” (Matthew 12:15).

Will I Follow the Pharisees?

The question I ask myself is whether I do the same thing as the Pharisees. When a child cries in sacrament meeting, do I see an annoyance who is disturbing my worship? Or do I see with compassion a child in distress who is probably accompanied by harried and tired parents? When people choose to play in their yards on the Sabbath, do I cluck condescension toward them? Or do I trust that they are the best judges of what helps their family? When a member of the ward goes from row to row hugging on ward members in the minutes before sacrament meeting begins, do I see an offender who needs a good high council talk on reverence? Or do I see a saint brimming with love? When a fellow saint wears a plaid shirt to sacrament meeting, do I subtract points from his righteousness score? Or do I see a fellow-worshiper, a cherished son of God?

The natural man is a Pharisee (in the negative sense of that title). We create labyrinths of rules and we use them to identify the infractions and compute the righteousness of those around us.

But the story provides a different way of reacting to the man with the withered hand. Jesus, the true shepherd, saw a sheep trapped in a pit. Rather than condemn him for getting himself into a pit, Jesus reached to pull him out. Jesus healed all those who came to them.

Jesus did not merely break the Sabbath rules. He broke myriad social rules that held the people from being healed and being healers.

For example, women were shunted to the background in ancient society. Jesus appalled Pharisees and even His own disciples by the way He treated women. As Harry Emerson Fosdick observed, “He treated women as he treated men—as persons sacred in their own right, as souls loved of God and full of undisclosed possibilities. When they were sunk in sin, he forgave them; when they were humiliated, he stood up for them; when they suffered social wrongs, he defended them; when they had abilities to offer, he used them” (1949, pp.148, 161).

In addition, Jesus regularly scandalized all civilized people by hanging out with the lowest class of people. And He wasn’t merely a keep-them-at-arm’s-length do-gooder. He seemed to genuinely like and value the ne’er-do-wells. He was a true friend of publicans and sinners (Matthew 11:19). He loved them. He lifted them. He sought to redeem them.

His example and His stories teach the same principle. He taught us to leave the 99 pleasant and rule-abiding saints to find the lost ones. Including the ones who aren’t behaving exactly as we think they should. And the ones we perceive as difficult or annoying. And the ones who might typically be shunted to the background because they are different, struggling or have made mistakes.

How would the world be different if we followed His example? Would we focus less on our own needs and our own judgments if we were filled with Christ? Would we treat each individual as a person sacred in his or her own right, as a soul loved of God and full of possibilities?

Pharisees or Redeemers?

A contrast comes to mind. Last week we had a ward social. I followed my decision rule for such events and  positioned myself so that I could casually stroll to the front of the line as soon as the starting gun (sometimes called a blessing) was shot, so that I could get a piece of the treasures such as Ruby Bernal’s enchiladas and Alison Jones’ cake. Once I had secured the buffet essentials, then I looked for a place to sit—preferably by nice people who wanted to talk about woodworking. Clearly missing in action was my wife, Nancy. But I knew from oft-repeated experience where she was. She had found someone who is inactive, lonely, or hurting and she was loving them. She is a redeemer.

Maybe when we find the Pharisee within us chafing at others, judging them, and speaking ill of them, we can invite that Pharisee to be a healer. No human has fallen beyond the reach of His compassion; we can plead for the mind of Christ so that our compassion reaches with His to those “almost-repentant who warily probe the possibility of both fellowship and forgiveness” (Neal A. Maxwell, 1980).

Elder Holland told a powerful story that continues to challenge me:

I grew up in the same town with a boy who had no father and precious few of the other blessings of life. The young men in our community found it easy to tease and taunt and bully him. And in the process of it all he made some mistakes, though I cannot believe his mistakes were more serious than those of his Latter-day Saint friends who made life so miserable for him.

He began to drink and smoke, and the gospel principles which had never meant much to him now meant even less. He had been cast in a role by LDS friends who should have known better and he began to play the part perfectly. Soon he drank even more, went to school even less, and went to Church not at all. Then one day he was gone. Some said that they thought he had joined the army.

That was about 1959 or so. Fifteen or sixteen years later he came home. At least he tried to come home. He had found the significance of the gospel in his life. He had married a wonderful girl, and they had a beautiful family. But he discovered something upon his return. He had changed, but some of his old friends hadn’t—and they were unwilling to let him escape his past.

This was hard for him and hard for his family. They bought a little home and started a small business, but they struggled both personally and professionally and finally moved away. For reasons that don’t need to be detailed here, the story goes to a very unhappy ending. He died a year ago at age 44. That’s too young to die these days, and it’s certainly too young to die away from home.

When a battered, weary swimmer tries valiantly to get back to shore, after having fought strong winds and rough waves which he should never have challenged in the first place, those of us who might have had better judgment, or perhaps just better luck, ought not to row out to his side, beat him with our oars, and shove his head back underwater. That’s not what boats were made for. But some of us do that to each other.

We can tell how much hold Jesus has on our souls by how we respond to those who are struggling. May we resist the temptation to club them with oars. May we pull them aboard and row them to the warm lights and healing fires on shore.

That is what Jesus invites us to do with Him.

During BYU Education Week (August 15-19), Brother Goddard will be presenting a series of four evening classes on parenting, another series on marriage, and one on personal well-being. You may find useful ideas for family life by attending some of his classes.

References:

Fosdick, H. E. (1949). The man from Nazareth. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Holland, J. E. (1984). A robe, a ring, and a fatted calf. Go to: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=731&tid=2

Maxwell, N. A. (1980). True believers in Christ. Go to:

http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=618&tid=2

There is no possibility of confrontation here between Good and Bad. This is best shown in Alma’s duel with Amlici. The Amlicites are described as coming on in all the hideous and hellish trappings of one of our more colorful rock groups, glorying in the fiendish horror of their appearance (see Alma 3: 4-6). Alma on the other hand is the “man of God” (Alma 2: 30) who meets the monster Amlici “with the sword, face to face” (Alma 2: 29), and of course wins.

Yet the Nephites consider that debacle to be “the judgments of God sent upon them because of their wickedness and their abominations; therefore they were awakened to a remembrance of their duty” (Alma 4: 3). The moral is that whenever there is a battle both sides are guilty.

Nobody knows that better than Captain Moroni, whose efforts to avoid conflict far exceed his labors in battle. When he sees trouble ahead, he gets ready for it by “preparing the minds of the people to be faithful unto the Lord their God” (Alma 48: 7). His military preparations are strictly defensive, and he is careful to do nothing that will seem to threaten the Lamanites; all of his battles are fought on Nephite soil (see Alma 48: 8-10).

We are repeatedly reminded that Moroni is “a man that did not delight in bloodshed” (Alma 48: 11). By him “the Nephites were taught to defend themselves against their enemies, even to the shedding of blood if it were necessary; yea, and they were also taught never to give an offense, yea, and never to raise the sword except it were against an enemy, except it were to preserve their lives” (Alma 48: 14).

Any thought of preemptive strike is out of the question; Moroni even apologizes for espionage, for if they only have sufficient faith God will “warn them to flee, or to prepare for war, according to their danger; And also, that God would make it known unto them whither they should go to defend themselves. “This is a great load off their minds”and his [Moroni's] heart did glory in it; not in the shedding of blood but in doing good, in preserving his people, yea, in keeping the commandments of God, yea, and resisting iniquity” (Alma 48: 15-16). Resisting iniquity where? In the only place it can be resisted, in their own hearts.

Not only is a preemptive strike out of the question but Moroni’s people have to let the enemy attack at least twice before responding, to guarantee that their own action is purely defensive (see Alma 43: 46). The highest compliment that Alma can pay Moroni is “Behold, he was a man like unto Ammon” (Alma 48: 18), who, as we have seen, renounced all military solutions to the Lamanite problem.

Later it is the decision of the Nephites, after a series of brilliant victories, to take the initiative against the Lamanites and “cut them off from the face of the land” that makes a conscientious objector of Mormon, their great leader, who “did utterly refuse from this time forth to be a commander and a leader of this people” (Morm. 3: 10-11).

And when they had sworn by all that had been forbidden them by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that they would go up unto their enemies to battle, and avenge themselves of the blood of their brethren [a perfect John Wayne situation], behold the voice of the Lord came [to Mormon] saying: Vengeance is mine, and I will repay” (Morm. 3: 14-15).

So Mormon, from being top brass, becomes a detached observer and reporter for our express benefit, “I did stand as an idle witness. . . . Therefore I write unto you, Gentiles, and also unto you, house of Israel” (Morm. 3: 16-17). He explains that the fatal mistake of the Nephites was to take the offensive: “And it was because the armies of the Nephites went up unto the Lamanites that they began to be smitten; for were it not for that, the Lamanites could have had no power over them” (Morm. 4: 4).

Then comes the bottom line: “But, behold, the judgments of God will overtake the wicked; and it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished; for it is the wicked that stir up the hearts of the children of men unto bloodshed” (Morm. 4: 5). The battle is not between Good and Bad–the wicked shall destroy the wicked.

Mormon places the Nephites and the Lamanites side by side for our benefit. As the war between them continues, each sinks deeper and deeper into depravity. First, after a Nephite victory, are four years of peace devoted not to repentance but to warlike preparations as the Lord removes his beloved disciples from among the Nephites because of the wickedness and unbelief. The Lord even forbids Mormon to preach repentance, which preaching will now do no good “because of the hardness of their hearts the land was cursed for their sakes” (Morm. 1: 17).

They have passed the point of no return. The people have begun to worry and seek safe investments, to “hide up their treasures in the earth.” But the Dow Jones keeps going down as their riches “became slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land, that they could not hold them, nor retain them again” (Morm. 1: 18).

It is interesting that amid all this military fury riches still hold the number one position in their minds. Then, as at the end of the Antique World, total lack of security forces people to turn in desperation to “sorceries, and witchcrafts, and magics” (Morm. 1: 19)–they feel haunted, helpless, surrounded by demons. “The land was filled with robbers”; insecurity is total but “notwithstanding the great destruction which hung over my people, they did not repent . . . and it was one complete revolution throughout all the face of the land” (Morm. 2: 8).

Then come those awful words, “and I saw that the day of grace was passed with them” (Morm. 2: 15).

Though Mormon relents under extreme pressure and leads the army to more victories (see Morm. 5: 1), “nevertheless the strength of the Lord was not with us; yea, we were left to ourselves” (Morm. 2: 26).

After all the Lord has done for them, the poor fools “did not realize that it was the Lord that had spared them, and granted unto them a chance for repentance”–his arm is still stretched out (Morm. 3: 3).

Meanwhile, what are the bad guys up to? The Lamanites have been sacrificing Nephite women and children (see Morm. 4: 15), yet “notwithstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people,” who practice cannibalism “for a token of bravery” (Morm. 9: 9-10).

When things reach this state, Mormon says: “I pray unto God that he will spare thy life, to witness the return of his people unto him, or their utter destruction; for I know that they must perish except they repent” (Morm. 9: 22; emphasis added). “O the depravity of my people! They are without order and without mercy” (Morm. 9: 18).

Mormon prays for the people he had loved and led, though he knows his prayer cannot be answered (see Morm. 3: 12). “And if they perish it will be like unto the Jaredites, because of the willfulness of their hearts, seeking for blood and revenge” (Morm. 9: 23).

And all this is meant for us: “These things must surely be made known. . . . A knowledge of these things must come unto a remnant of these people, and also unto the Gentiles,” by being “hid up unto the Lord that they may come forth in his own due time” (Morm. 5: 8-9, 12).

As to Mormon’s own people, the Lord has reserved their blessings, which they might have received in the land, for the Gentiles who shall possess the land (see Morm. 5: 19). But they will have another chance, for “after they have been driven and scattered by the Gentiles, behold, then will the Lord remember the covenant” (Morm. 5: 20).

Then it will be our turn to be concerned: “And then, O ye Gentiles, how can ye stand before the power of God, except ye shall repent and turn from your evil ways?” (Morm. 5: 22).

That hardly describes us as good guys; there is only one hope for us: “I prayed unto the Lord that he would give unto the Gentiles grace,” says Moroni, “that they might have charity”–that is the only thing that can save us, unilateral generosity; if I expect anything in return for charity except the happiness of the recipient, then it is not charity.

The Lord’s answer to Moroni is chilling: “The Lord said unto me: If they have not charity it mattereth not unto thee” (Ether 12: 36-37). Mormon was shown our generation, which) he describes with photographic accuracy: “Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing” (Morm. 8: 35).

He then proceeds to describe a people immensely pleased with themselves: “There are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts, unto the wearing of very fine apparel, unto envying, and strifes, and malice, and persecutions, and all manner of iniquities”–the high-living fiercely competitive crime-ridden world of the 1980s.

And then to the heart of the matter: “For behold, ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches [Communists do not adorn churches], more than ye love the poor and the needy, the underprivileged to “pass by you, and notice them not,” while placing high value on “that which hath no life” (Morm. 8: 36-37, 39).

All the meanness and smugness of our day speaks in that phrase; and these very self-satisfied, church-conscious, and wicked people are about to be destroyed by war: “Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you; and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you, for he will not suffer their cries any longer” (Morm. 8: 41).

We have not mentioned the case of the Jaredites; it should hardly be necessary to tell the story of Shiz and Coriantumr, each obsessed with the necessity of ridding the world of his evil adversary. Both sides were exterminated.

Not many years ago all of this Book of Mormon extravaganza belonged even for Latter-day Saints to the world of pure fantasy, of things that could never happen in the modern civilized world–total extermination of a nation was utterly unthinkable in those days. But suddenly even within the past few years a very ancient order of things has emerged at the forefront of world affairs; who would have thought it–the Holy War! the ultimate showdown of the Good Guys with God on their side versus the Godless Enemy.

It is the creed of the Ayatollah, the Jihad, Dar-al-Islam versus Dar-al-Harb, the Roman ager pacatus versus the ager hosticus. On the one side Deus vult, on the other Bi’smi-llah; it is a replay of the twelfth century, the only way the “good people” can be free, that is, safe, is to exterminate the “bad people” or, as Mr. Lee counsels, to lock them up before they do any mischief–that alone will preserve the freedom of “us good people.”

And now there is even talk of Armageddon with Gog and Magog, the two giants of the North, ending in extermination. There are those who insist that we are the good guys fighting the bad guys at Armageddon, but there is no such affair in the scriptures, where the only actual fighting mentioned is when “every man’s sword shall be against his brother”–the wicked against the wicked.

Then God intervenes with pestilence, “hailstones, fire, and brimstone” (Ezek. 38: 21-22), with much slaughter, but no mortal army has a hand in it. In the New Testament version it all happens after the Millennium, when fire comes out of heaven and destroys the army besieging the Saints, but there is no mention of a battle anywhere (see Rev. 20: 7-10). We have seen that for us there is only one way to prepare for the great events ahead, and that is to be found doing good when the Lord comes, with no one taking advantage of temporary prosperity “to his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken” (JS-M 1: 52).

Mormon’s message to us is not without a word of hope and advice: “Behold, I speak unto you as though I spake from the dead; for I know that ye shall have my words…”

“Give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been” (Morm. 9: 30-31). His address is expressly to the inhabitants of “this land” into whose hands “this book” shall come– specifically, it is meant for us.

& http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBnp6T3jmXg

I am not an Egyptologist, nor do I have any formal training in Egyptology. But I do love the Pearl of Great Price’s Book of Abraham, and I enjoy learning about ancient Egypt. With that said, although I’m confident in my conclusions on this issue, I would encourage readers to take my thoughts on this subject with a grain of salt.

Abraham 3 is such a powerful chapter, and it’s one that I worry is too quickly glossed over by most Latter-day Saints. In the chapter, the ancient patriarch sees a grand vision of the cosmos through the Urim and Thummim. From this vision comes several controversial doctrines unique to Mormonism, such as the existence and nature of “Kolob” and God’s physical presence in the universe.

It is not uncommon to hear speculation among Church members about what Kolob is and where it might be. Theories have been given that Kolob is actually the star Polaris, or the star Sirius, or a star at the galactic center. However, all of this wondering about Kolob’s place in the universe—assuming Kolob is actually a physical star—is “looking beyond the mark” (Jacob 4:14). People who have this narrow view of the contents of Abraham 3 never see the important meaning of the chapter, which has little to do with celestial bodies in the universe. We imagine it as being something more mysterious than it is, while really Abraham 3 can be very simple to understand.

The question we might ask is, Why would God be interested in revealing principles of astronomy? Do our beliefs about astronomy have any bearing on our salvation? I think that the immediate answer, of course, is no. Ancient prophets are not going to be condemned at the last day because they had a geocentric understanding of the universe. So again we ask the question, Why would God reveal an astronomical system to Abraham? We probably agree that our understanding of astronomy has no bearing on our eternal fate, so we should be able to conclude that God must have had another point in revealing these things to Abraham besides simply to teach him astronomy.

What do we learn about Kolob from Abraham 3? Well, Kolob was the star “nearest unto the throne of God” (Abr. 3:2). It was “the great one…because it was near unto” the Lord, and God appointed Kolob to “govern all those which belong to the same order” (3:3), because Kolob was “after the manner of the Lord” (3:4). Besides Kolob, Abraham is also shown other astronomical bodies, such as “the governing ones,” in which Kolob is included (3:3). So again, what was the point in revealing these things? What salvific value did they carry?

The spiritual message of this chapter is explained in the 18th verse, which tells us that as Abraham saw the stars, “as also” he saw spirits. The stars Abraham saw, such as “the governing ones,” Kolob, and the Kokaubeam, symbolized the spirits in heaven. As Latter-day Saints we are used to such astral imagery when describing spirits. The name Lucifer, after all, actually means ‘Morning Star,’ and we are familiar with the passage from the book of Job, “When the morning stars sang together, and all of the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7).

If, then, the cosmology that Abraham is shown might actually be a metaphor for spirits, interpreting Kolob should be fairly simple. Nearest unto God, after the manner of God, the great one, the chief governing one – Kolob is Jesus Christ. And the “governing ones” are the “noble and great” spirits that Abraham later sees, of which he himself is included (Abr. 3:22-23).

It seems fairly safe for us to conclude that God did not show Abraham the cosmos so that he would have an understanding of astronomy; rather, he was teaching him about the order of heaven, the nature of spirits, and the supremacy of Jesus Christ among those spirits. God teaches Abraham the order of heaven by showing him order in the cosmos: “one planet above another, until thou come nigh unto Kolob…[which] is set…to govern all those planets” (3:9). Kolob stands supreme in the universe, atop an infinite cosmological order of heavenly bodies. God then explicitly says to Abraham that “[h]owbeit that he made the greater star; as, also, if there be two spirits…one shall be more intelligent than another” (3:18). God tells him that the principle of one star above another star is a metaphor for spirits; like the stars and planets in the cosmos, spirits have varying degrees of light or “intelligence,” one above the other, with Jesus Christ or Kolob ranking supreme.

But why would God used astronomy to teach Abraham these things, when he goes on in the chapter to just restate most of it less symbolically? He gives his explanation to Abraham: “Abraham, I show these things unto thee before ye go into Egypt, that ye may declare all these words” (3:15). God showed Abraham the Gospel in this way because they astronomically-minded Egyptians could understand it this way.

When seen for what it is, the third chapter of the Book of Abraham is an astounding testimony that God loves his children and that he cared enough for the people of Egypt that he would give Abraham this vision so that they would be able to more easily understand his teachings. It also testifies that Jesus Christ—the one nearest unto the throne of God—is “the great one,” the Redeemer of the world.

People enjoy watching musicals. Sound of Music, South Pacific, Oliver, Guys and Dolls, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Oklahoma – all of them tell a story of people struggling to get something about the world the way it should be. One of the funny things about watching the musicals is the improbability of people – sometimes large groups of people: soldiers, chimney sweeps, lumberjacks – suddenly bursting into song and dance, as a constant reaction to a new circumstance or twist in the plot!

Lest anyone sneer too much at the genre of the musical, one can’t help but notice that Luke’s gospel account of the birth of Jesus Christ seems uncomfortably like the script for a musical. People – or heavenly hosts – keep bursting into song at the mention of Jesus!

These Biblical songs have become an integral part of Christian worship: the Gloria, the Nunc Dimittis, the Benedictus, and, from today’s gospel, the Magnificat – “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.”

This last Sunday of Advent, the last Sunday preparing for the coming of the Christ child, sees our focus shifting to Mary, the mother of Christ. In our reading today from Luke’s gospel, Mary, carrying the Christ child, travels for a week to visit her elderly relative Elizabeth, who, to her husband Zechariah’s amazement, is pregnant. Elizabeth recognizes Mary’s baby as the Lord, and Elizabeth’s unborn baby starts dancing inside her! The baby’s dance is almost like the introduction to Mary’s song.

The Magnificat is a remarkable song. It expresses not just her own sentiment of submission to God, but the aspiration of all Israel. It is at the heart of Christian worship and praise to this very day, because it captures the excitement and the joy that in Christ, the expectations and values of this unjust world are turned on their heads.

The recurrent theme of Mary’s song is the faithful love of God towards his children, no matter how lowly, despised or lacking they may be. The phrases of her song are drawn almost entirely from the grateful pleading of the forlorn in Old Testament prophetic literature. It is a song which has done a huge amount to reinforce the Christian commitment to the poor and needy of society in every age. Advent is the time of preparing for the birth of Christ, and in Mary’s song we are reminded every year and every evening to keep the needs of the poor as close to our hearts as can be, because the poor and forlorn are as close as can be to the heart of God.

All of that is a nice enough sentiment. But keeping the poor ‘close to our hearts’ can be a costly business. Many of us, for much of the time, shrink from this Christian calling, because to accept Mary’s call is leave our comfort zone way behind. The life of the poor is not an idyllic life of simplicity in modern Britain. It is a constant struggle, a constant battle, a constant minefield of competing opportunities, competing responsibilities, obligations and requirements, a constant effort to achieve the impossible. For many at the bottom of our social ladder, lawful, honest life can sometimes seem to be an apparent impossibility.

What advice should one give, for example, to an ex prisoner who was released in mid-November with a release grant of less than £50 and a crisis loan, also of less than £50, who applies immediately for benefits but is, with less than a week to go before Christmas, still to receive any financial support? This is just the situation that presents itself at the vicarage door. What would you advise? One might tell them to see their social worker, but they are on a waiting list for a social worker. Tell them to see their probation officer, perhaps, but the probation officer can only enquire of the benefits agency, and be told that benefits will eventually be forthcoming. One might tell them to get a job, but it is at the very best of times extremely difficult for an ex prisoner to find work, and these are not the best of times for anyone trying to find a job.

One might wish that they could be supported and cared for by their family, but many people’s family life is altogether dysfunctional, and may be part of the story of how they came to be in prison in the first place. One might give them some money oneself, but when week after week after week goes by, and benefits still do not arrive, the hard reality is that a vicar’s salary is not designed to meet the needs of everyone – or indeed anyone – whom the benefits agency has failed. What else might one advise? They cannot take out a loan, except from the kind of loan shark – and there are enough of them around – whose repayment schedule is so harsh that it constitutes indentured slavery to the criminal underworld. They could beg. But how many of us, good Christian people that we are, give constantly and generously to ex prisoners waiting for benefits? And the likelihood is that, found begging, they will quickly be in trouble with the police, and therefore in breach of their parole.

They could perhaps get cereal and toast every morning from a local charity. Then could perhaps apply, and see if they are eligible for some limited help from the Salvation Army or other such body. But in the meantime, having had only £100 in six weeks, what would you do, every legal avenue having been exhausted?

My advice in these circumstances, when people have been let down so very badly by the rest of society, is that they should not hurt anybody, and cope as best they can. The strong temptation is to burgle or rob people – family, friends, neighbours, strangers. Others are tempted towards prostitution, a nightmare world of degradation and abuse for all concerned. Others are tempted towards suicide.

Instead, I would rather that they shoplift. My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift.

I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither. I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices. I would ask them not to take any more than they need, for any longer than they need. And I would offer this advice with a heavy heart, wishing that our society recognized that bureaucratic ineptitude and systemic delay constitutes a dreadful invitation and incentive to crime for people struggling to cope at the very bottom of our social order.

What then, of the eighth commandment? “Thou shalt not steal.” Is this advice to usurp the authority of Almighty God?

No. Not the God who is born of Mary, Mary whose soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. For in Mary’s song of praise is the explicit recognition that the poor are extremely close to the heart of God. The church, the community of faith, the community of people who keep the song of Mary alive, have long recognized that it is permissible for those who are in desperate situations to take food that they might not starve. For ours is a God, Mary tells us, who has “lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:52-53]. The mother of Christ reminds us what Jesus shows us: that God’s love for the poor and despised – and who in our society is despised more than a newly released prisoner? – outweighs the property rights of the rich.

Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift. The observation that shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with is a grim indictment of who we are. Rather, this is a call for our society no longer to treat its most vulnerable people with indifference and contempt. When people are released from prison, or find themselves suddenly without work or family support, then to leave them for weeks and weeks with inadequate or clumsy social support is monumental, catastrophic folly. We create a situation which leaves some people little option but crime.

People of God at St. Lawrence’s, Advent is at its height. Prepare for the coming of Christ, for Christmas is almost upon us. But don’t let your preparations be limited to tinsel and turkey, crackers, fairy lights and chocolates. Prepare for Christ by singing his mother’s song, and taking her words to heart. Don’t just sing about lifting up the lowly: help with the lifting!

And when we, as a society, are found time and time again to fail lift those at the very bottom, then for the love of God, a God born in a stable of all places, let us not punish them for trying to survive as best they can.

Do we really believe that just because one is rich one is blessed by God? According to a study published in 2004 which researched the Mormon Wealth Attribution (MWA), we do.  The MWA can be defined as the tendency of LDS individuals to perceive those who are wealthy as more righteous or pious than their less wealthy neighbors.  The randomized empirical study reported that “Church members are more likely to attribute righteousness to a wealthy church member than to a poor one” and that (in general) wealthy members of the church are seen as being better people, both secularly and spiritually than poor people.

I have seen many LDS individuals (including priesthood leaders) apply negative attributions and stereotypes toward those who are poor or lacking resources.  They implied that these poor individuals need to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and either work harder or be more righteous.  To me, making these kinds of attributions based on wealth alone (or at all) seems to be dangerous and hurtful.

What about environmental influences? Take the example of someone who has worked diligently to obtain training in a tech position.  Then abruptly all of those tech jobs are shifted out of country.  Did that person sin?  Is s/he somehow less righteous than the wealthy person whose job was not shipped overseas?  What about the person who invested all their savings in the housing market?

Wealth does not equal righteousness. There are many wealthy people within the LDS church (more per capita than most religions). However, just because one is LDS and rich does not mean one is righteous.  I have known many wealthy LDS members who ran pyramid schemes, sold faulty merchandise, and were certainly not kind to their fellow-man.  And yet at Church they were given a level of respect and positive regard simply because they made more than six figures.  It has always struck me as odd that individuals who ruin other peoples financial stability can be perceived as somehow more righteous simply because they figured out how to make money and keep it.  Does the value of the almighty dollar outweigh other values?

Poverty does not equal unrighteousness. I have known many people who had difficulty making ends meet.  To me, these people seemed to be righteous and pious people who had deep and abiding faith in God.  And yet these people were slighted, marginalized, and given menial callings at church.  I also once had a close relative (who had experienced several financial setbacks in a row) ask me “why is it that this keeps happening to us?  We pray, we go to church, we pay our tithing, we budget, we work hard, we do everything we are supposed to, why can’t we seem to get ahead?”  Should I tell her she simply isn’t righteous enough?

While I disagree with people within the church that apply the MWA, I can understand why they apply it.  Many LDS members buy into the concept of individualism as an explanation of poverty, if someone is lazy (an ungodly trait) then they are simply earning their just rewards.  If they would pray more, be more obedient and work hard they would earn money.  Individualism as an explanation of poverty asserts that poverty is always within ones control (based on secular conduct or spiritual conduct).

Mormons are also encouraged to believe in the MWA because of scriptures in the Book of Mormon which state that blessings (including worldly ones) are predicated upon righteousness; the more righteous the more blessings.  At least until an individual becomes prideful (an unrighteous state) which is followed by a fall (which could mean they lose their money).  It’s not a big leap to see why many members view those who are wealthy as somehow more righteous (They have earned their blessings by piety!).  Those who are poor may have been prideful, or were guilty of some other sin which caused their fall.

The full reference for the study is:  Rector, J. M. (2004). The Symbolic Universe of Latter-day Saints: Do We Believe The Wealthy Are More Righteous? AMCAP Journal, 29, 102-112.  And can be read here:

https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/IssuesInReligionAndPsychotherapy/article/viewFile/494/469

Previous posts on this subject -

Wealth & Worthiness

Wealth & Poverty

Can You Be Wealthy and Mormon

The Flood of Material Things

Although some might find the commentators language to be disrespectful, the story below is an interesting insights in to how some programs and policies are created.

Rise Of The Institutional Church

In 1961 Church headquarters announced a new program that it called “Correlation.” This new way of doing things was introduced in conference by apostle Harold B. Lee. It was described as a benefit, sold as a way to coordinate and unify all the various programs of the church.

What it ended up being was a stifling means of control, not only of individual wards, but also of many individual members. The policies of correlation took decades to fully implement, and most of us didn’t even notice the subtle changes. Although it was begun during the administration of President David. O. Mckay, it has since been learned that President McKay neither implemented nor controlled the program, and on at least two occasions he expressed concerns about it privately. Still, the Correlation juggernaut continued on for the next four decades.

Correlation represented a gradual and subtle shift in the way the church came to be governed at all levels. What it resulted in was top-down control of the church and its members. Like the frog in the pot, few members really noticed what was happening to their church until it was fully cooked.

Even I don’t remember the exact moment I realized the meaning of the word “church” had changed for me. But at some point, without realizing it, when I spoke of “the church,” I was no longer referring to the place I went on Sunday to worship; I was now subconsciously referencing a monolithic institution headquartered in Salt Lake City and controlled by an accordant group of men in dark suits.

Where previously friends and I might have perhaps wondered what the scriptures said about this question or that, now we found ourselves asking, “What has The Church said about it?” or “What is The Church’s position on that?” We spoke as if “The Church” was, if not God himself, some commensurate entity that existed on its own, separate from the Creator, but somehow equal in authority to Him.

Why They Canceled Roadshows

Gone by this time were the Roadshows, because the central authority couldn’t trust us hippie teenagers not to write some funny bit into the script that someone might find inappropriate. Gone also were the fun church bazaars, rummage sales, and pancake breakfasts. With them went many of the extracurricular activities, other than scouting and some tightly controlled dances.

Gradually there was not much to do outside of Church on Sunday, and those meetings were crammed all together into three hours of stultifying boredom that was so unbearable that as soon as church was over no one felt like staying around to visit. After church you just wanted to get home. Since ward members no longer lingered, they didn’t get to know each other well, and the sense of community in many wards began to weaken.

“The Church” whatever that used to mean, was now morphing into some kind of giant monolithic authority. “Church” no longer meant us, the aggregate community of believing Saints. The Church was now THE CHURCH. The Great I Am.

Bishops now tended to be chosen more for their administrative skills than for their deep knowledge of the gospel and love for others. It was no longer so important that such men knew how to shepherd the flock. What the Church needs today is someone who can “run the ward.” We need managers. Go-getters. High achievers.

Daymon Smith quotes a department head relating an odd inversion of charity occurring on the local level throughout the church. Rather than fulfilling their chief duty of tending to the poor and needy, these bishops believe “that they’re expected to keep expenditures as low as possible. There is a sense of pride among bishops and stake presidents who send fast offerings from their units to the general Church.”

The New Mormon Church

I may not have recognized the frog as it was boiling, but Dr. Smith gives us the exact date it finished cooking. January 1st 1990 was the day the Church dropped all pretenses.

From that day on, it was announced, all tithing monies collected from local congregations would be sent directly to Church headquarters, and the Church would then dispense a portion back to the wards. This was all sold as a more efficient way of running things. But it turned the traditional church of Christ on its head, requiring the members to send in their money to a corporate entity that was far removed from them and which became the sole judge on how contributions would be spent. Nothing about the doctrine of Common Consent was mentioned in the announcement.

President Hinckley and Elders Packer and Monson announced the news at a priesthood satellite broadcast. The details were sketchy, but the new program, said Monson, “eliminated the need for local units to raise budget money as their…expenses are now funded almost entirely from general Church funds.”

Now the Church would fund everything through a “ward budget” it dispensed, based in part on attendance at Sunday services.

“The Church?” Smith asks rhetorically. “Yes, the speakers were quite clear…They know by the Church they mean The Corporation.

You were not included in those decisions, because you are not a member of that Church.

At best you are a subsidiary of the corporation. Like those Mormons promised as human collateral to the banks at the turn of the twentieth century, It is upon the promise of your future tithes that the corporation counts you as an asset. You are a resource, a cow to be milked when the bucket runs low.

Daymon Smith says that over a three year period, his ward sent ChurchTM headquarters “a flat million in tithes.”

“In return for their generosity,” says Smith, “members receive an annual return held in trust by the ward accountants. For my ward it was $7 a head, officially.”

What does the Church do with all those billions? It “sends out materials (print, DVD, and so on), builds chapels, funds missionary efforts (partially)… and who knows what with the rest of the billions.”

“Rarely does your money feed the hungry, clothe the poor, or provide for other non-religious forms not published by the Church Office Building or sent forth from the COB.”

“By the time the money comes back from the COB, the Church has generously tithed to the needy from its multibillion dollar revenue stream something on the order of one percent, often in used, tattered clothing and rice and wheat and so on…For all its bluster and public relations about humanitarian aid, The Corporation, in other words doesn’t follow its own rule of tithing.”

“I would not be surprised,” adds Smith, “if more was spent on PR than on those good works which are PR’d before men.”

In 1837 Joseph Smith taught that tithing meant a mere 2 percent of one’s net worth, after debts were paid. That was back when we had a church.

Somehow over time the corporation has convinced us that we should hand over to it 10 percent of everything before expenses, and some believe that includes money received as birthday gifts. Corporate spokesmen have even hinted from the pulpit recently that some of us should consider turning over 20 percent to them.

“When instituted by Joseph Smith in the 1830′s,” writes Smith, “tithing wrought a very small revenue stream, and it was designed to be small in order to prevent just the sort of dominating “Church” that now governs and patrols, steals the very name, and surveys and takes and gives what it believes best to congregations.”

“Mormons are warned from the pulpit not to rob God, so they send their money to the bishop. Aware of poorer congregations, and of starving Mormons on some god-forsaken land, locals tighten belts and send as much as possible to headquarters.”

“And it all disappears, then suddenly we are handed another pamphlet, another manual, built another chapel or temple, beamed another satellite broadcast. The rest of the money just sits in banks and investment portfolios reviewed by money managers in Salt Lake City, who see in growing numbers the Lord’s General, Sacred Funds, and that means the Corporation’s, and they its priestly stewards.”

“Many Mormons who attend chapels,” Smith continues, “are good, kind, and decent; many are not. Mormons in these wards are often willing to sacrifice for others, to help, and yet these desires are turned, collectively, too often by the corporate interests against the works of light.”

The Mormon Stories Podcast has a series of Interviews with Daymon Smith

Although some might find the commentators language to be disrespectful, the story below is an interesting insights in to how some programs and policies are created.

The Vanishing LDS Church

Without a doubt the most startling discovery in Daymon Smith’s book is his revelation that the church that Joseph Smith established in 1830 no longer even exists. At all.

What we think of as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, says Smith, operates today as a mere trademark of the corporation that owns the name to it. The actual church that used to go by that name, and which claims Jesus Christ as its head, does not exist today in any legally recognized form.

I realize that sounds impossible for some people to grasp. Well, I’m here to help.

As it so happens, I know something about corporate law as it applies to churches, so allow me to back up a bit here and give you a quick crash course so you can understand how a government chartered corporation can own a church that no longer even exists. I promise to make it easy to understand.

Corpus Descriptum (See, it’s getting easier already!)

A corporation is an organization chartered by the state and given many legal rights separate from its owners. You with me so far? Didn’t think so.

Okay, think of Frankenstein’s monster. No, scratch that. Too evil.

Think of a robot that you and your friends control. It has no brain and no soul, but it can walk around and pick things up; it can do stuff for you. That’s a corporation. It can do stuff for you.

Except unlike a robot, a corporation has no actual form. No body. No robot hands or robot feet. So if you can visualize a robot that has no mechanical parts, you’re close to mastering the concept. A corporation is an entity. What is an entity? It’s a thing. What is a thing? It’s an entity.

Welcome to the world of law.

A corporation is an entity that you cannot touch. It is neither inherently good nor inherently evil, but it has a life of its own, and if the batteries are good, that robot can live on after you and your friends are dead and gone. Sometimes that can be a problem. Originally corporations in America were not meant to outlive their creators. Today they do.

One of the biggest problems with a corporation is that under the law, a corporation is actually considered a “person.” That’s why it is often defined as a legal fiction. That is, this “person” is legal, but he isn’t real. It’s a fictional person. It isn’t flesh and blood. It has no soul.

And that’s the rub. Although it is treated like one, a corporation is not a human being, and usually no real live person within a corporation can be legally held responsible for the harm a corporation might do. The corporation can be fined, but that fine is usually absorbed by the stockholders. The board member’s salaries remain sacrosanct.

Indeed, the directors of a corporation can, in a way, transfer their sins to the corporation, which will absorb them without much consequence. In the words of the British Baron Edward Thurlow, the problem with corporations is “they have no soul to save, nor body to incarcerate.”

Most tellingly, a corporation is not something that can stand accountable before God. So if you believe in the doctrine of personal accountability, you can see the crack in the plan right there.

The American colonists were particularly leery of corporations because England’s East India Company had in many ways become more powerful than England herself, and was a prime instigator behind England’s imperialist ambitions.

When our country was young, there were very few corporations in existence here; when one did appear, it was for the purpose of accomplishing something monumental. Charters were granted for a specific purpose and always for a limited time. The construction of the Erie Canal is one example of the granting of an early American corporation. When the canal was finished being built, the founding corporation expired, as all corporations were meant to.

Corporations certainly weren’t the common mode of doing business that they are now. And as far as churches went, incorporation was simply not done, as a corporation derives its existence and all of its power from the state.

Since Jesus Christ is the head of the church, it would be incompatible for a church to petition the government for permission to exist. The church, as Paul taught, is the body of Christ. He governs it with His laws, principles, and directions. It is not subject to man’s laws. No Christian pastor in colonial times would have thought to place his church under political control.

As the Supreme Court explained in the case of Hale v. Hinkle:

“A corporation is a creature of the state…It receives certain special privileges and franchises and holds them subject to the laws of the state and the limitation of its charter. Its powers are limited by law. It can make no contract not authorized by its charter. Its rights to act as a corporation are only preserved to it so long as it obeys the laws of its creation. There is a reserved right in the legislature to investigate its contracts and ascertain if it has exceeded its powers” (Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43)

“Corporate existence,” according to Roberson’s Business Law, “is a privilege granted by the sovereign upon compliance with specified conditions.”

So that’s a problem for any church that gets a hankering to incorporate, because in the church, Jesus Christ is supposed to be the sovereign. When application is made to incorporate a church, the will of Jesus Christ becomes subordinate to the will of the state. “For a church to become a corporation,” goes the maxim, “in effect divorces the church from Christ.”

All of this incorporating of churches is unnecessary in America anyway, because churches automatically operate in a sphere separate from the state. Governments have no jurisdiction in the church whatsoever. There is no tax advantage for a church to incorporate, as some mistakenly believe. But there is if that “Church” actually wants to operate as a business. Then it can trade its sovereignty in exchange for special privileges granted by the government.

Which is what the President of what used to be the LDS church did in 1923.

… [Skipping some interesting history which the reader might wish to look at the original post to read]

How I Love Ya, How I Love Ya, My Dear Old Mammon

After the bust-up of 1890, and after bowing and scraping to their government masters so that they could retain some of their assets, the Church hierarchy eventually made peace with Babylon. As the saying goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

With only a hint of exaggeration, Daymon Smith cheekily summarizes the situation:

“No longer members of any legally recognized religion, Mormons organized a focus group to re-brand their identity. So they called around to some California railroad lobbyists, New York ad-men, and brainstormed and out-paradigm-shifted a totally innovational re-branding of Mormonism.”

“The Trustee thus offered bonds to Eastern bankers with the promised collateral being the Mormons themselves.”

The Mormon people, you see, had untapped value: a sense of community, a uniquely productive work ethic, and best of all, a built-in propensity to be obedient to authorities.

These Mormons were made to order. The Mormon leaders offered up the future tithes of the Mormon people as guarantees against their investments. The members of what used to be The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would be unwitting cash cows for the benefit of their leaders. And the leaders of what used to be that church were now climbing into bed with the whore of Babylon.

Catholic Pope, Meet The Mormon Pope

Some time around 1900, the office of Trustee-in-Trust was reformed, then a few years later the financial interests of the “Church” were protected under the “Corporation of the Presiding Bishop.” Finally in 1923, church lawyers found The Holy Grail: a rare, little known, and hardly ever used mode of incorporation known as The Corporation Sole.

Virtually unknown in America, and tracing its origins to ancient Roman law, the corporation sole was the way the vast riches of the Holy Catholic Church had been protected under Emperor Constantine. All financial power was vested in one man -in their case the pope, in our case, the prophet.

Or, as he was named in the corporate charter, “the President.” The word “Prophet” doesn’t appear in the charter. This wasn’t a real church, after all. It was just a way for the leadership of the, ahem, “Church” (wink, wink) to control the member’s money.

In the original LDS church from the time of Joseph Smith, all members were considered of equal worth. They were called “members” because in the ancient church the scriptures called them “members of the body of Christ.” All parts were of equal importance to the Lord. You know the words of Paul in 1st Corinthians 12: “The head cannot say to the feet, I have no need of you.”

Likewise church property bought with member’s tithing was considered held in common by all the members of the church, with common consent required for the purchase or disbursement of that common property.

But not anymore. Under the corporation sole, the head could tell the feet to go take a hike. The president of the church could do whatever the hell he wanted with the member’s money without asking permission from the members whatsoever. It’s spelled out right there in the charter. The president of the corporation needs no authorization from any mere member of the Lord’s church. No show of hands, no vote, no “all in favor please manifest.” Like the Pope, his power is absolute. He is the Sole Brother.

Also written into the charter of the Corporation of the President as amended was how the line of succession was to operate within the Church. In order for there to be no question as to who held the purse strings following the death of the president (the “Sole” in a ”Sole Corporation”), the Senior Apostle automatically becomes the next president of the Corporation.

You thought somehow God maneuvered certain chosen men into these callings over the years so that they would one day be at the head of the line at the exact moment when God was ready to call them as the next prophet? You are so naïve.

The line of succession is outlined in the state approved charter. God’s will isn’t mentioned anywhere in it.

Systemic Within The Body

Now, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I see the general authorities of the Church as a group of sinister businessmen gleefully rubbing their hands together plotting their next takeover.

Far from it. I believe those men take very seriously their commitment to doing good works. They try very hard to be worthy of their responsibilities, and I’m positive they pray for guidance daily. With the obvious exception of Boyd K. Packer, none of these men is inherently evil. On the contrary, most of them are exceptionally good and fine men.

As Paul James Toscano has said, individually the general authorities of the Church are fine and wonderful people. “The problem,” he says, “is that when they get together, they act like a corporation.”

Exactly. It’s not so much the people within the system, it is the system itself. This Church is a corporation. It is chartered as a corporation, and it behaves like a corporation. Before they were called to their positions of leadership within the Church, most of these men made their livings as lawyers and businessmen in the corporate world. Not in the last hundred years can I think of an actual theologian who has been invited to join their ranks. They are in these positions because the talents and skills they developed on the outside are needed on the inside.

When each of them came aboard to serve in this corporation, even though they believe it is ecclesiastical in nature, they soon learned that things are run here very much the way things were run in the corporate world they left.

Thus, the areas that the corporate Church tends to focus on are, by and large, the same things any corporation lends its attention to: Growth, Image, and Control. …

Another excerpt from this entry will be posted tomorrow.