The Book of Zelph

Brothers and Sisters,

I would be truly ungrateful if I did not stand before you this day and bear my testimony concerning the Book of Zelph. The Book of Zelph is an ancient record, inscribed on plates of leather, that the Lord revealed to Josh Anderson, his latter-day prophet, seer, revelator, and translator. It truly is another testament of the Book of Mormon, confirming its truths and answering difficult questions like, "how did Lamanites get Asian DNA?" God has truly not left us helpless in these perilous times. No longer need we rely on FARMS apologists and their LGTs and whatnot. I have tested the divinity of this work according to the promise recorded in Melph (5:4):

And I promise thee that if ye ask if this book be not true, and roll a pair of dice with a sincere heart, and desire exceedingly for the book to be true, yea, the dice shall reveal the truthfulness of this book unto thee.

I rolled the dice many times, and they did come up with the right answer... eventually.

In the name of Cheese and Rice, Amen.

Here lies Hiram.

Thurl Bailey ROCKS!

Just when I thought I would never see a Mormon celebrity with some pizazz, I stumbled upon the website of Thurl Bailey, former member of the Utah Jazz. Go check him out for yourself at www.ThurlBailey.com. President Hinckley should look into getting the GAs webpage intros like that one!

The Church is as true as the Gospel, or is it?

True is a word that covers, well, almost anything in Mormonism. "The Church is true" is one of those all-purpose phrases that tends to end anything approaching interesting or controversial speech in the LDS Church. Not surprisingly, there has been some confusion over precisely what is to be considered 'true' and what is not necessarily to be considered so.

In the area of apologetics, something is to be defended as true until it is no longer useful, or it is even embarrassing, to do so. Wonderful new definitions of Book of Mormon geography and ethnicity are springing up in response to the troubling realization that perhaps the book does not live up to its own claims. There is a hierarchy of true that helps apologists navigate these troubled times. At the pinnacle, or core, depending on how you picture it, reside those things that must be maintained in order to have any excuse for an LDS Church, period. Just about anything else is up for grabs and may be dumped to protect what really must be true for the sake of institutional survival.

It was fashionable at one time to separate the trueness of the Church from the trueness of the Gospel. An LDS GA even had the cajones to speak about it in the October General Conference of 1984. His name was Ronald Poehlman. His message was inspirational. He suggested that the Church was merely a vehicle or tool for transmitting the Gospel. Members might utilize it to their own benefit, but they should not mistake the Church for the really important stuff--the Gospel.

Well, the powers that be did not approve of that one bit. They had Ron rewrite the whole thing, or, rather, they rewrote it for him. Members needed to know that the Church was indispensible, and that without the Church there could be no Gospel. There could be no rebel hippie types inspired by the free-wheeling thoughts of Mr. Poehlman. He was required to re-record his talk so that history could be changed for you and me. Check the record. You'd never know the original talk was ever offered.

Another interesting view came from Eugene England, who wrote "Why the Church is As True As the Gospel." His fascinating argument essentially boils down to this: it takes an organization as screwed up as the LDS Church to test your soul enough to get into the highest degree of celestial glory. No other organization could possibly offer the same challenge to your sanity and self-respect. Only the LDS Church, therefore, is true enough to allow you to experience the soul-wrenching trials promised in the true LDS Gospel. They are a match made in heaven. OK. This is admittedly my reading of his talk.

I have yet another interesting perspective. The Church is a human organization rooted in the career of the self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Smith. Joseph had some cool ideas, and some damned stupid ones. You can tell which ones were stupid partly from they way they contributed to his assassination. You know, ideas like polygamy and destroying a printing press that did not belong to him. The heirs of Smith have some nifty and some stupid ideas too. I'll leave it to you to sort out which ideas fall into which category--and this is the way it should be.

As a human organization, the LDS Church can be altered to suit better the needs of its members. Unfortunately, because most Mormons tend to deify the Church, they have no appreciation of this fact. They also have no idea of the power of their voices. They believe that the leaders of the LDS Church hold all the power, and that these leaders alone have the right to make changes. So, the Church goes trundling along, sprouting ex-members in its wake. And it never asks itself whether crucial course corrections are in order.

Instead we hear delightful talks from leaders like Elder Bednar, who places all the blame for leaving on individuals who take offense at things they shouldn't be offended by. Surely, no one could have a real reason for leaving, because, from the Bednar perspective, such a thing does not exist. Or there is Elder Ballard who tells people just to chill out and not fret over stats to the point that these mean more than people. Once again, the people need to change, not the organization. It is close to perfect.

NEWS FLASH! Organizational problems are not always the fault of individual members! Outside of the LDS Church, people sometimes realize that if an organization has problems, the problem just may be the organization's! But if you maintain that the Church is true in the sense that God has put everything in place as it is and only he can change it, responsibility can only lie with the poor schmucks who just don't get the divine plan. It is they who need to change and to repent. The Church is as close to perfect as anything can be. Boy, you were really silly not to see that.

I propose that we approach our Mormonism in the spirit of the old, hatcheted Poehlman talk. You have the power and responsibility of choosing things in this life. We used to call that "free agency." You have the freedom to think that the Church may indeed have problems, which someone could fix if they would extract their heads from their asses. You can go to Church or not go. You can believe in what Joseph Smith taught on issue "X" or not. You can be Mormon and drink the damned coffee. Are you going to hell? Are you even going to a lower kingdom? Hell no. Let God be the judge of that. Or, if you don't believe in God, to hell with it.

My own little spot on the DAMU

Nothing excites my vanity like the thought that every once in a blue moon one of those cybernauts with an interest in Mormonism--positive or negative--drops by my little corner of cyberspace. I have only recently become aware that this blog is linked at a couple of other websites on the DAMU.

I also discovered that I am not the only peep stone owner out there. Little did I know that the prophecy of everyone having their own seerstone would be fulfilled right before my eyes! Just one more on a long list of confirmations that the Gospel is true.

One of my fellow "peepers" (I just couldn't resist) is named Simeon. Poor Simeon recently suffered a trauma in his DAMU life when his dear wife ratted him out for his wicked blogging. My sympathies to Simeon. I too have gazed into the stone and seen the darkness that lies within. I too have written down my revelations for posterity. I am just grateful my spouse never took it up with local Church leaders.

Sadly, Simeon is not alone. There are many LDS spouses out there whose love of God extends so far as to sacrifice marital trust. These spouses believe, as does the Church that trained them, that one must simply act out of a regard for the eternal welfare of another's soul, even if that means screwing them over royally in the short term. It's kind of like those good old days, when Joseph or Brigham called a man on a mission and then promptly took his wife and property--or doled them out to other worthy brethren. They know what's best for you. Really.

When people can be convinced that all of this is somehow part of the divine will, they can be convinced of nearly anything. And that is how we end up with people who sell out their spouses to the LDS Church.

All the latest on Hiram

It seems like forever and a day since I last posted anything. Much has happened in that time too. First of all, I started a new job, and that job is very time consuming. But the BIG news is that I stopped going to church at my LDS ward.

"How did it happen?," you might ask. Or, "it doesn't surprise me in the least," you might say. Surely someone who complains about the LDS Church as much as I do can't hold on for long. Perhaps, but then there is Robert Kirby, who has done plenty of complaining and finds himself returning week after week--as far as I know.

To answer that one person out there who might both read this and ask the first question, I was not the one who motivated the big exit. It was instead my wife, who, upon taking our daughter into nursery one Sunday, felt a wave of nausea overtake her as she recalled all of her unpleasant experiences as a young woman in the LDS Church. Very soon she contacted a member of the bishopric to explain how she could not continue, and she had me deliver up her temple recommend.

So, I was shocked. I mean, I had been complaining and criticizing for years. Here my wife, moved by deep-seated pain, decided to put a stop to her participation in the Church abruptly. It took this to get me to stop too. I have lived in paranoia and fear for some time that I would get delivered up to the powers that be--as if they really care. Now, unless I break the 11th commandment ("thou shalt not publish") I should be, like many other disaffected LDS people, just fine in my apostasy.

Now, oddly, I find myself in mourning. I guess it isn't so odd really. A child can mourn the death of an abusive parent. I can mourn my partially self-imposed incarceration in the LDS Church. I say partially because I did not choose to be raised as a Mormon. Neither did my parents. My 19th-century ancestors thought it was a good idea.

Many of them had lived under an English monarch, so perhaps the freedom to have Joseph or Brigham as a king didn't seem like such a bad idea. Now, I understand that the decision they faced wasn't exactly put in those terms. Rather, they thought they were off to join the people of God in building His kingdom--Zion. To achieve that goal they were willing to sacrifice. Unlike me, they did not have such a radically individualist concept of freedom to make some of these sacrifices seem odious.

As I have grown older and looked on as the Reagan Revolution aged into the would-be hegemony of the Religious Right--as I have seen us endure humiliation and shame ourselves in the quest to rid the world of evil by throwing billion dollar weapon systems and innocent lives down the tubes, settling for the illusion of security and selling our birthright for a mess of pottage--I have come to value my dissipating personal freedom.

I believe in having a say and a stake in my personal future, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant it may be. I feel damn fortunate to have had what little freedom I have enjoyed. I believe that people can govern themselves. It is my hope and ideal to see more people empowered to govern themselves. While this may be overly optimistic, it is an optimism I believe we must indulge. Considering the alternatives is simply unthinkable.

This faith in humanity is precisely what has affirmed our decision to quit attending the LDS Church. The idea that God chooses another person to rule over me and to speak the divine Word to me is no longer acceptable. This is, simply put, a spiritual monarchy. Inculcating in people an unquestioning obedience to arbitrary authoriy is a great way to transform adults into spiritual children and slaves. It does nothing to bring about the avowed goal of eternal progression to divinity. Correlation has brought hierarchical control so close to the average member that there is no longer any room to breathe.

Oh, I still consider myself Mormon. I am a Mormon inasmuch as I believe that progression toward better things is a worthwhile ideal. I am a Mormon inasmuch as I believe that it is vital to search after further light and knowledge. I am Mormon inasmuch as I believe in the value of cultivating a polite and respectful environment. I am Mormon inasmuch as I value the adventuring spirit of Joseph Smith, even though he clearly went too far when he sought multiple wives and a Mormon monarchy. I identify with the restless creativity of Joseph Smith and his audacity.

Today that adventuring spirit has departed. The audacity has hardened into arrogance. The Joseph Smith of today's LDS Church never existed. His image is a whitened sepulchre. He has been reduced to a palatable and quantifiable object of devotion. St. Joseph of a Bransonized Nauvoo.

How do I hold on to my Joseph as I let go of the Church he founded? I hope it is in continuing on the quest for more wisdom and knowledge. I hope it is in my pledge to be a friend and brother with a determination that is fixed and immovable. I hope it is in my cultivation of the Grand Fundamental Principles of Mormonism. I still seek for the kingdom, but the kingdom I am seeking has no kings unless all are sovereign over themselves. It is a unity of heart and mind that comes through love, persuasion, and toleration, not compulsion or constraint.

In recent days I have read about Elder Holland working to drum up support for Mitt Romney's presidential bid. I have seen the Church's refusal to comment on what is happening with all those pine benches in the Tabernacle--of all the silly things to hush up. I have read the racist comments of a BYU-Idaho professor and the hateful taunts thrown at a little child because his mother is a Democrat in Rexburg. I have read with sadness the parting comments of BYU's one black, female law professor, who discovered that the LDS Church really does not support women in the workplace when it has a say in the matter.

In short, I have discovered that this is not my Church, and that I do not want the people who actively seek after these things to be my people. Do I hate them? No. I am simply choosing what I hold to be the better part.

The Mormon King by G.W. Anderson

The following little ditty was posted on a discussion board by an LDS apologist. It's pretty funnny, even if it isn't very flattering of old Brigham.

LYRICS
THE MORMON
KING.

Words by G. W. ANDERSON, Irish Vocalist.

Air--King of the Cannibal Islands.

Oh hark kind friends while I do sing,
About Brigham Young the Mormon King,
Who swears that he'll do everything,
Out in Salt Lake City.

He also says we'll rue the day,
That e'er we came into his way,
For all of us he'll surely slay.
Out in Salt Lake City.

Poor Brigham's mind it can't be right,
Or else he's surely lost his sight,
To think he'd a Yankee 'fright,
Away from Salt Lake City.

CHORUS...........Old Brigham mind your P's and Q's,
Or we will show you what to do,
If we get our hands on you,
Out in Salt Lake City.

Old Brigham he has somewhere's near,
About seventy wives and children dear,
Oh Lor' they must be very queer,
Out in Salt Lake City.

They say their children are quite tall,
And like their father loudly squall,
And often make old Brigham bawl,
Out in Salt Lake City.

If that's the case some future day,
We'll make him bawl another way,
For his motley crew we'll surely slay,
Out in Salt Lake City.

Old Brigham must'nt think we are fools,
To be knocked about like wooden stools,
But we will let him know our rules,
Out in Salt Lake City.

If any fuss he goes to make,
The whole of his city we will take,
And then fasten him unto a stake,
Out in Salt Lake City.

If we get old Brigham in our paws,
We'll make close his heavenly jaws,
And let him know that we've got laws.
For old Salt Lake City.

A Chinese internet any Mormon can be proud of!

I embark on this commentary with some ambivalence. Like most people, I like a pleasant environment. I may not have created the most comfortable environment for everyone on this blog, but ordinarily I enjoy to spend time in places that are clean and with people who are polite, friendly, and in control of themselves. Does this characteristic give my Mormon background away? Mormons are past masters of creating pleasant environments. Mormon temples are the apotheosis of pleasant. They are not very lively. Mr. Rogers would have felt very comfortable with the level of stiumulation in a Mormon temple.

The Chinese government is also interested in maintaining what it considers to be a pleasant environment on the internet. The New York Times online edition of May 9 reports that 500 students at Shanghai Normal University are employed voluntarily as internet monitors, who report explicit and controversial material and steer heated debates in more 'appropriate' directions. The students who participate deny that they are controling speech, but claim they are rather "guiding" it. They are very concerned about the moral environment of the net. Says one volunteer monitor, "a bulletin board is like a family, and in a family, I want my room to be clean and well-lighted, without dirty or dangerous things in it."

Sound familiar? The reasoning sounds very persuasive at first. After all, who wants to live in a garbage bin? Like many of you, I prefer a safe environment. I suppose the problem is that I prefer to make my own decisions regarding my safety. We rightly fear the Patriot Act precisely because in embracing safety uncritically, one can sacrifice a great deal of constitutional freedom. Such freedom is not simply a legal fiction, it is supposedly one of the pillars of Mormon theology. Some would call it moral agency. Modern technology is challenging our belief in moral agency. Agency can be lost through addiction, and modern technology has found the means of fostering addictions very effectively. Agency isn't gone, but it is severely challenged by powerful drugs, etc. Freedoms also leave us exposed to their misuse by others with whom we disagree.

How far are we willing to go to seek after safety? How much power do we want to hand over to governments and other human leaders to protect us from ourselves and the decisions of others? At a certain point, the power we give to these people will be used by them for their own interests. Not yours and mine. It's the nature of the beast. Any institution that hopes to continue its existence will fabricate its moral imperative to exist, and will thus take the measures necessary to continue that existence at the expense of others. For this reason we must be very careful when we give power to these institutions to keep us safe.

In the case of the Chinese government's bid to tame the internet, it is clear that there is an effort to strike a balance between the safety of the internet and the safety of a governement that sacrifices a great deal of what Americans value in the principle of freedom of expression. Mormons as a group tend to feel comfortable with the idea of voluntarily sacrificing a great deal of their personal freedom for the safety of the kingdom of God. As long as that kingdom exists within the boundaries of larger entitities that really call the shots when the chips are down, this is not viewed as especially dangerous. You can get out by writing a letter. Therefore, Mormons are happy to look to leaders to give them the guidelines to remain safe from the ravages of "the world", which is usually characterized by the worst aspects of extra-Mormon reality.

I agree that this is relatively harmless. No one but Mormons need be concerned. Until, of course, the financial might of the Mormon Empire is committed to efforts like fighting against gay marriage, the supposed dangers of which seem largely illusory. We fear these seemingly benign institutions like the Mormon Church today because they organize themselves behind political issues and exercise a great deal of power thereby. The fact that Mormons want a safer internet may translate into you living with a more restricted internet in the future.

You may be happy to sacrifice pornography in order to have a safer internet, and if this were the limits of the issue I might be inclined to agree. Mormons claim that the political issues they involve themselves in are moral in nature. There is of course, the little issue of the definition of moral. And, from my perspective, Mormons have a bad record of separating the moral from the cultural and the political. Was ERA really a moral issue? Is the motivation to raise the gay marriage amendment issue now unrelated to the election cycle? Is it related to the election cycle for purely moral reasons (i.e. use of the strategic advantage of elections for the sake of the issue v. use of the issue for the electoral advantage of a party)?

One small example may illustrate my concern quite handily. Years ago a young, female BYU student was hrown out of BYU for protesting against Geneva Steel. It boggles my mind that a student, who did nothing to violate the school's honor code, was expelled for protesting against a business! While this kind of travesty does not happen every day at BYU, it is an interesting and troubling example of the kind of injustice that can occur when we give institutions too much power in the quest to remain safe from the world. Every institution will try to expand its powers in the quest to thrive and achieve its agenda. We cannot, however, allow these institutions to get out of control.

Go back and read the words of Jesus in the New Testament. The Sabbath was made for man. This dictum should apply to all institutions. When these institutions become harmful to human progress, let them change or die. Of course, we are the ones who must change them.

Please, learn about Correlation.

Few things have had such an impact on LDS life as the development of Correlation. Through Correlation, the auxiliaries of the LDS Church, including the women's, children's, and youth programs all lost much of their autonomy as they passed under the more direct control of the Priesthood. Follow this link to "By Common Consent," where a panel of scholars of Mormonism share their views about Correlation. This thread should not be missed.

Mormonism entering the Academy

Mormon Studies continues to be a hot issue on the Bloggernacle. Recently, at Times & Seasons, the news that Claremont has established its first chair for Mormon Studies elicited scores of responses. Understandably, many faithful Mormons are excited by the prospect that their religion has become the focus of greater academic attention. In spite of some reservations regarding placing Mormonism under a secularist microscope, Mormons are cautiously optimistic that more academic attention is a mark of increasing respect for the faith and its founder Joseph Smith.

Unfortunately, discussion of the rise of Mormon Studies is temporarily mired in the question of why D. Michael Quinn cannot land a job. As proponents of Mormon Studies observed, Quinn would arguably have some hurdles regardless of the Church's attitude toward him (although some of these issues are the result of unjustifiable Church actions). So, while we may feel justifiable sadness for his current plight, these problems should not be the predominant focus of the current discussion of Mormon Studies. Having said that, his story raises many of the issues that should cause concern for those interested in the academic study of Mormonism, because it is what his story teaches that makes some of us very uncomfortable.

Nate Oman has called out Hellmut Lotz for being paranoid with regard to the prospects for Mormon Studies in an environment where academic institutions are sensitive to the feelings of the Mormon community, many of the donors for chairs in Mormon Studies are faithful LDS people, and in at least one case the LDS Church was contacted with reassurances about the university's intentions in having a Mormon Studies chair. On the face of it, all of this seems reasonable and no cause for alarm. Add to this the fact that the academic paradise of totally unfettered inquiry and speech is a fantasy, and you begin to wonder why people are the least concerned about LDS influence on the study of its faith.

Are people like Hellmut merely indulging in unwarranted alarmism? Why be concerned about LDS influence on the academic study of Mormonism?

The reasons for concern are rooted in recent Church rhetoric and action. They include 1) the Church's record of anti-intellectualism and hostility to academic inquiry; 2) the political alignment of the Church with groups who seek to remake society on religious models; and 3) broader institutional control over the thought and expression of LDS people through the instrument of temple covenants. The last in particular is both subtle and insidious in that endowed members of the Church make expansive oaths of loyalty to the institution of the Church, thus creating a situation in which the least hint from the leadership is all that is necessary to persuade members to pursue or to avoid a particular line of thought or course of action.

Let's consider a few events in recent LDS history that have caused people like Hellmut and me concern about the Church's regard for academic inquiry into Mormonism. First, in 1981 LDS apostle Boyd Packer gave a paper tellingly entitled "Do not spread disease germs!" about the responsibility of Mormon historians to write faith-promoting history. Evidently anything but historical rhetoric designed to promote the missionary and devotional interests of the LDS Church is comparable to communicable disease. This all sounds perfectly reasonable, no? In this talk, Packer sought to define the proper writing and teaching of Mormon history and thereby dissuade Mormons from pursuing academic perspectives that might challenge a Mormon's belief in the status quo version of official Mormon history.

In 1989 LDS apostle Dallin Oaks cautioned members of the LDS Church against listening to "other voices" and "alternate views," pointing to unofficial LDS publications (Sunstone, Dialogue) that frequently took a critical perspective when dealing with the institutional LDS Church. It should be noted, for the sake of perspective, that in a Church of millions of members, Sunstone has never reached 20,000 subscriptions. One wonders why a worldwide Church with such a large membership should need to call attention to the very few people who read articles espousing critical perspectives, and the even fewer who write them. This was followed up in 1991 by an LDS First Presidency warning against attending certain "symposia," again a swipe at Sunstone.

A decent barometer of the official LDS stance toward academia would be the atmosphere at its flagship institution, BYU. Consider the following: 1) administrators have in the past planted spies in classrooms to make sure that professors were not teaching or promoting certain political views or theories like "evolution;" 2) BYU students have continued to inform on professors voluntarily in a quest to hone their own righteousness or gain the attention of Church authorities; 3) by the year 2000 BYU had seen the firing or resigning of a number of academically competent professors for their political views, research, or philosophies. One English professor was fired essentially for publically airing pro-choice views. Keep in mind that the LDS Church is not officially a pro-life institution.

Consider now the political alignment of the LDS Church. The Church committed many thousands of dollars and its members' time and efforts to the defeat of ERA. One of their sadly amusing tactics was to rile up LDS people by focusing on the horrors of uni-sex bathrooms. The LDS Church now allies itself with the Religious Right in the fight against gay marriage. To this end it has enlisted the help of BYU professors to prostitute their credentials in offering specious expert testimony in court. It has also committed millions of dollars in funds, all of which ultimately derive from tithing moneys, to the cause of seeing that 3% or so of the population do not acquire the privilege of marrying the person they love. The dirty little un-secret of Mormon politics is that they have skewed right for some time. Read "The Mormon Corporate Empire" to see how far in bed Mormons were with the fringe Right up to (and beyond) the mid eighties.

Think of it. The Religious Right is the same group of folks that want to bring their religion into the schools either directly or through the backdoor theology of Intelligent Design. On the local level they bully school administrators and teachers to keep evolution from being taught to the children we hope will one day find a cure to cancer and AIDS, build and pilot rockets to carry us to Mars, etc. Fat chance if the theocrats have their way. These folks also lead the fight in equating human conception with full-blown personhood in a quest to make abortion of any kind (including cases of rape, incest, and danger to the mother) illegal. Thanks to people of their ilk the hands of US scientific researchers have been tied in stem-cell research. If the most extreme of these groups had their way, the United States would be the Western equivalent of a medievalesque Islamic regime like Taliban Afghanistan.

The leaders of the LDS Church have certainly made their point with regard to their position on LDS intellectuals, politics, and scholarship. They have orchestrated BYU firings, and local excommunications, even going so far in the case of Simon Southerton of coming up with a highly questionable pretext to get rid of him. After writing a book about DNA and the Book of Mormon, Southerton was subjected to Church discipline for a long past affair he engaged in while separated from his wife.

Is there any question about how the Church feels when intellectual arguments lead members simply to question contemporary Church teachings? By the same token, is it at all unclear to the faithful member what the Church expects of him or her when investing in a Mormon Studies chair? After all, these folks have probably covenanted in an LDS temple to commit their entire lives to the welfare of the LDS Church.

As far as the institutions taking up Mormon Studies are concerned, given the Church's record of dealing with its ideological foes quite aggressively, is it any wonder that they seek to avoid the Church's and LDS community's ire when bringing the academic study of Mormonism into the university? Is their willingness to bend over backwards to reassure the LDS Church an unqualified positive? I rather think not. The fact that universities are so inclined is more an indicator of Mormon hypersensitivity than it is of non-LDS sympathy.

There is no question in my mind why one should scrutinize the way that Mormon Studies are conducted. Any academic pursuit should be subject to scrutiny. Indiscriminate leftist hate for the military and the Republican party within the academy should be subject to greater scrutiny. Since the LDS Church and its members have, especially in recent years, shown a proclivity to limit speech severely within their own community, to fight against the extension of human rights outside of their community, and to cooperate with groups whose stunning anti-intellectualism is not only shame-inspiring but downright dangerous, surely it is prudent to be concerned about how the LDS Church may influence, directly or indirectly, its presentation and discussion within the world of academia.

Finally, if there is paranoia about the Church's possible role in Mormon Studies, it is surely one that was born in the Church's own paranoid behavior. Any Church that would instruct its members not to take notes in meetings and not to circulate them on the internet clearly has some issues with trust. Any Church that is willing to cooperate with the Religious Right cannot cry foul when it faces the consequences of that choice to its own image. Any academician worth his or her salt would be remiss in their professional duties if he or she was not wary of the influence of such an organization on the academic study of said institution.

William Call on Mormon Testimony

The following is taken from William Call's 2000 book, "The Cultural Revolution":

A Mormon's "testimony" feigns certainty via a supposed knowledge that negates real understanding. He who knows "beyond a shadow of a doubt" has no need to comprehend, discern, or master. The "knowledge" given by the Holy Ghost both precludes and takes the place of understanding. Is anyone as ignorant as he who thinks he has God's knowledge, and is any religion as void of knowledge as one that suppresses understanding with supposed "spiritual" knowledge? A Mormon "testimony," because it has no foundational suport, is a confession of ignorance concerning that which it is supposed to affirm absolutely and without question. It is a declaration that man is completely dependent on God so far as religious questions are concerned. The claim that one can found one's religion on the "knowledge" gained from "prayer and testimony" is a denial that man in and of himself can do anything to gain knowledge concerning religious truth other than to humble himself before his God and submit himself to Church authority.

"Spiritual knowledge" received from a source that cannot be separated from one's own prejudices and which has little or nothing to do with an acquaintance with the matters in question is ignorance. Mormonism's "testimony bearing" is an ackowledgment that the believer does not need to delve into religious questions; all he needs to do is "pray with faith, nothing doubting" and "keep the commandments." The rest can be left to the "still small voice" that "whispers" in his ear and instills "burning testimony" of the truth of whatever the Church claims is true. Mormonism's religious enthusiasm as exhibited in the form of testimony bearing takes the place of doctrinal and ecclesiastical understanding and removes any responsibility one might have to master one's religion. Both rank and file Mormons and their leaders are dependent on their testimonies. They cannot question what they already "know" is true. And so it is that a Mormon testimony is more than a denial of life's uncertainties; it is a denial that a critical evaluation of any kind is effective or necessary so far as discovering religious truth is concerned.

Wanna be like Mike?

D. Michael Quinn is one of the best and most controversial scholars of Mormonism. Dr. Quinn has made discussion of treasure digging and magic an indispensible topic in scholarship of early Mormonism. He wrote a groundbreaking two-volume work on the development of the Mormon Church's hierarchy. According to a Wall Street Journal Online article written by Daniel Golden, he is also finding it impossible to find employment in the area of his expertise.

I have an interesting perspective on this story. Before I explain why Dr. Quinn, one of the foremost scholarly authorities on Mormonism is having a difficult time finding a job, I will share my perspective.

For some time I lurked or posted over at FAIR. FAIR, which is among the links on my blog here, is an online apologist resource. It has a discussion board. In one forum on the board, apologists of all stripes and critics of Mormonism gather to slug it out. I grew tired of the predictable slant in moderating the board. If criticism reached a certain level of pointedness or effectiveness, a thread would get shut down, usually right after someone like professor Daniel Peterson had the last word.

I am capable of being practical. FAIR was created for the purpose of promoting Mormonism. Arguments that call truth claims of Mormonism into question are likely to get shut down. In my last thread at FAIR I made the mistake of bringing up the employment of two men who had written an inept review of Vogel's biography of Joseph Smith. Although men like Daniel Peterson have no problem using the ad hominem when it comes to identifying the atheism of critics of Mormonism, he did have a big problem when I called into question the scholarly objectivity, such that it can exist, of two men who have to hold temple recommends to keep their jobs.

My point was not welcome, and I was put on the 'queue.' This meant that anything I wrote had to be approved by the moderators. I tried to post something through this route once, and my post never saw the thread. I am sure the moderators really are too busy to screen these things, which makes putting people in the 'queue' very similar to putting on the gag. Fair enough. I have learned my lesson.

The apologists had their own day of realization when they abandoned ZLMB, the leading board of the time, because in spite of favorable moderating policies carried out by a team of LDS and non-LDS moderators. They felt they were being victimized by the biting posting of critics. So they left for the safe harbors of FAIR where agressive moderation in their favor made their lives more comfortable and their arguments more likely to seem to prevail.

Now we get closer to the point of this exercise. One of the FAIR board's most prolific posters and moderators is a graduate student at Claremont College. She is studying religion. She likes to crow about how the days of amateur Mormon scholarship by "counter-Mormons" (a 'counter-Mormon' is a secularist amateur scholar who writes Mormon scholarship with a secularist agenda) is drawing to a close, and that people like herself are the vanguard of the future of academic Mormon Studies. Sounds to me like her triumphalism is motivated by something more than guess work.

I had no idea how true this could be until I read the Goldman article. Mr. Goldman briefly documents how it is wealthy Mormons who are funding Mormon Studies chairs, and that these donors' views ultimately influence the hiring process. You pay for the chair, and it happens to turn out that they hire someone you don't find offensive. There's no conspiracy here. We're simply talking about the money of those who are flush and motivated (wealthy Mormons) dictating, to no negligible degree, how the academic study of Mormonism will be conducted.

The Goldman article also shows how people like Mike Quinn are edged out in other ways. Quinn made the mistake of asking BYU prof. and Mormon historian Thomas Alexander for a letter of recommendation when he went up for a job at the University of Utah--a state-funded institution. Alexander cautioned the U against hiring Quinn because his controversial scholarship would cost the university donations. Now, it is clear to me that Alexander stabbed Quinn in the back, but what he said is true, and in the modern, capitalist, corporate university knowledge is controlled by money.

For this reason Mike Quinn has been turned down for at least two jobs he was eminently qualified for. When he had a visiting position at Yale, BYU threatened to withdraw funding for an academic conference on Mormonism hosted by Yale if Mike were allowed to present a paper. In the end, Quinn personally yielded and merely introduced a paper for someone else. Once again, it is the power of money that determines which information sees the light of day.

These are the realities of our world. Don't be fooled. The Academy is not the place where any well-founded argument can have a fair showing in the arena of ideas. It is not the place where any useful question can be asked. And where it concerns different fields of specialty in Religious Studies, expect that the person who teaches your child about Islam, Evangelical Christianity, Mormonism, Catholicism, or New Age spirituality, will increasingly be a person who has an agenda to spin that informaion in a panegyrical manner.

What is at stake here? Honest education. Do we want Religion Departments at major universities to become arenas for proselytizing? Is Religious Studies a valid field of academic endeavor when the people who staff it are well-educated missionaries for their personal faith? It sounds OK when you think of your faith being taught by someone who sees things in a favorable light and teaches accordingly, but what if you are an Evangelical and your child is learning Mormonism from a Mormon, or Islam from a Muslim? Does it seem just a little more like missionary work then?

Apologists argue that if you want accurate information about a religion, you should go to a believer. I say that if you want someone to try to persuade you to join a religion, go to a believer. If conversion is your goal, by all means restrict your exposure to favorable sources. If education is your goal, then consider different perspectives, not just a believer's.

If you are a well-published, Yale-trained scholar like Mike, you may forever remain unemployed in the field of your expertise and fame. If you are a relatively unknown, unproven, brassy polemicist at FAIR with a graduate degree from Claremont, you may just have an eager financial backer. Wanna be like Mike?

"Dogs and cats, living together--mass hysteria!"---Dr. Peter Venkman

Last autumn, my wife and I became the proud parents of a beautiful baby girl. In my opinion, the present age provides the best prospects for women's freedom and happiness. She can obtain an advanced education, pursue a career, find her true love, have access to decent medical care, and avoid starvation. Her income will be closer to equal to that of her male counterparts than previously. Laws protect her from discrimination, harrassment, and violence. In other words, our baby girl can have a bright future.

Still, we have a long way to go before women are given equal consideration. Much of the problem is with perceptions. It is difficult to change people's attitudes, no matter how much you legislate a problem. My conservative friends love to point this out to me. They also think that there is no problem with their attitudes. Fancy that.

Last week I received a wedding announcement in the mail. Normally I would be overjoyed to receive such news. This time my joy was tempered by the realization that only a year and a half ago, the bride to be was sitting in my youth Sunday School class. Not only is this woman quite young to be getting married, she was also by far the most intelligent young person I taught that year. She understood complex concepts and picked up on subtleties most adults miss. When she read something, she did much more than understand the surface meaning of the text. She really grasped what she was reading, rather than simply repeating the Sunday School liturgy.

Before I go on, it is important for me to say that I sincerely hope that her marriage brings her great joy. It is most important that each of us has the freedom to grow and find happiness in this life. If that means getting married at a young age, then bully for the person who is so fortunate. I wish more intelligent folks who treat their fellow humans with true compassion would have more children who will behave as wonderfully as they do.

I guess what troubles me is the exaggerated emphasis that the LDS Church places on getting young women married. This young lady whose announcement I received spent a single year at school at Brigham Young University. One year. Maybe she'll go back. I have no idea, but I sure hope she does. As someone who spent some time with the young people of my ward, and who knows something of what the young women are taught from inside sources, I know that far too many bright young women are being discouraged from pursuing any career by their LDS elders.

The young women in our ward are being warned that the woman who works is supremely unhappy and that she deeply envies her friends who can stay home with the children. Unfortunate is the poor girl who "has to work because her husband does not support her" (you catch the assumption that she would not work simply because she wants to?). Yes, I bet there are these poor souls out there. But there are also the poor souls who married because they felt they had to, who hate being tied down at home, who are miserable as parents, and who raise their children to be equally miserable humans.

You see, the real problem is not working or staying home. The real problem is a society that tells people there is a single way to be happy in this life. Everyone is expected to live by that one plan, and there are to be no exceptions. If you choose something else, you aren't playing by the rules, and you probably won't attain the eternal rewards. The well meaning people of your community look down at you with that self-satisfied illusion of compassion that says, "poor thing, if only she were as fortunate as I am."

We can say that the problem is with the people, not the Gospel. And I hope that when it comes to the REAL fundamentals of the Gospel we are right. But what is fundamental? Faith, repentance, baptism, and enduring to the end. Loving God and your fellow human beings. This is the full extent of the law. These are the requirements.

Some people, including the leadership of the Church, also have a thing about gender, however. And they are deeply concerned that people conform to their understanding of gender so that a very angry Jesus does not come and destroy everything like Sodom and Gomorrah. Except that Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed because mom wanted a job and Balthazar loved Shiz instead of Sariah. The incident that broke it for Sodom was the violation of ancient mores concerning hospitality.

But the LDS Church, grasping at a way to remain relevant to its members without being useful or interesting in the least, came up with the Proclamation to the World on the Family. At the risk of gross oversimplification, I will boil the Proclamation down to what I think were the essentials they were really concerned about when they drafted this thing. If dad doesn't go to work, if mom doesn't stay home with the kids, and if Adam tries to marry Steve instead of Eve, God will rain down blood and horror upon the land.

What if dad stays home with the kids while mom goes to work? What if the whole family is happier that way? What if Adam really loves Steve and never had any interest in an Eve in his life? What if the tiny percentage of people who truly love a person of the same gender get married? Is it true that God will destroy us?

Since my homophobic friends like to bring forward the example of Sodom and Gomorrah, I will try to illustrate something useful using the very same text. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the homophobes are right about the interpretation of the Sodom story. God destroys Sodom because it is thoroughly wicked. This depth of turpitude is reached when street gangs go pink. Consider Genesis 18:

26 And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.
27 And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes:
28 Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it.
29 And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty’s sake.
30 And he said unto him, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there.
31 And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty’s sake.
32 And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.

Now, I have no clue what the population of ancient Sodom was. Let's lowball it and say that three hundred people lived in Sodom. I say three hundred because recent estimates of David's Jerusalem are around several thousand. Ten righteous people out of three hundred would be a little over 3%. Recent estimates place the gay population in the United States at roughly the same percentage.

Let's assume that God would be as forgiving today as He was then. What is the likelihood that this 3% would shift to over 97%, thus bringing the wrath of God down upon the heads of all? How likely is it that over 97% of our population will leave dad at home, place mom in the workplace, or be a married homosexual (assuming that this were legalized in all of the states)? I would say it ain't gonna happen.

We have a long ways to go, even if the leaders of the LDS Church are correct about this, before God rains down with blood and horror upon us.

But I have truly digressed. As I ponder about the things I want my daughter to learn, the values I want inculcated in her impressionable mind, the apocalyptic fury of a vengeful God who doesn't like women to work in the outside world doesn't even touch the list. It is no mistake that the Church whose leaders place these kinds of values at a premium sees its young women marrying as soon as they hit 18. I just hope that my daughter doesn't marry so young and for the wrong reasons.

The Power of Stories: Mormon Racism

President Hinckley instructed the men of the priesthood not to discriminate against people of other ethnicities in the Saturday Priesthood session of General Conference. For speaking out against racism, President Hinckley deserves praise. Was this effort, however, sufficient?

Let's consider the problem of polygamy. At one time leaders of the LDS Church taught that engaging in polygamy was necessary to reach the highest degree of exaltation. In other words, to become deified, one needed to live the law of polygamy. It took two official statements of the Presidency of the Church and decades of cooperation with local and federal authorities to marginalize polygamy in LDS culture. Generally it is only the highly dedicated person who reads a lot of the Journal of Discourses that ever considers how odd it is that Mormons think they will be exalted without living the Principle. Some of these folks join the Fundamentalists.

In other words, polygamy is pretty far behind us as a people. My wife would not tolerate me engaging in it. Few LDS women would.

Unfortunately, racism is a more persistent problem because it involves attitudes that many secretly carry in their hearts. No one has to be commanded to be a racist. All it takes is exposure to racist thought coupled with an irrational fear of those who are different to be eligible. As human beings, we are prone to stumble when it comes to reason and courage.

Unlike polygamy, which still manages to lure a few people out of the mainstream Church here and there, racist ideas and practises are very recent phenomena for Mormons. In 1978 the Second Official Declaration, which resulted from the prayers of President Kimball and the other leading authorities of the LDS Church at the time, ended the "practise" side of the equation. The LDS priesthood has been extended to peoples of all ethnicities.

The "idea" side of the equation is still sadly very present among too many members of the LDS Church. What is the "idea"? From as far back as the year after Joseph Smith's assassination, we find Orson Pratt, one of the Twelve of the day, teaching what would essentially become the normative position on race:

"At the time the devil was cast out of heaven, there were some spirits that did not know who had authority, whether God or the devil. They consequently did not take a very active part on either side, but rather thought the devil had been abused, and considered he had the best claim to the government. These spirits were not considered bad enough to be cast down to hell, and never have bodies; neither were they considered worthy of an honourable body on this earth...and hence the negro or African race."

Ordinarily I would not employ an elipsis, but the passage is so long, and the sentiments so vile, that I thought it best to truncate it.

The above quote comes from the year 1845. Essentially the very same teaching can be found in the first edition of Elder Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine, which was published in 1958. I had never known where McConkie could have come up with such stuff, especially when it did not appear in the scriptures. Now I know.

I also understand better why these teachings present a real problem. Pratt, or someone else, went to a lot of trouble to come up with a mythological justification for slavery. He crafted a narrative that fit more or less into the unique theology of Mormonism about the pre-mortal existence. The significance of this fact cannot be overstated. The power of creating such narratives was the gift and responsibility of a seer, and it was exercised mostly by Joseph Smith. His successors exercised it rarely, Joseph F. Smith being the last president of the Church to provide a major narrative about the other world.

Unfortunately, at least in this case, stories are much more powerful than the dry legalistic language of the Official Declarations. One remembers stories long after one has forgotten the wherefores and whatnots of official statements. In this case, the narrative involved is the very foundation of an LDS person's concept of personal identity. Being polluted with Pratt's racist myth as it is, something more dramatic than an Official Declaration or instruction not to be racist is required to combat it. In short, many members maintain a racist perspective because they recall easily the powerful and fundamental story at its roots, a story that continued to be told up to and after 1978.

In the case of Adam-God, the First Presidency issued a statement specifically designed to correct the teaching. At least one apostle fulminated over the pulpit about the falseness of it long after the Presidency corrected it. James E. Talmage was commissioned to write a statement on theology that directly contradicted the theology of Adam-God. It has been made clear that Adam-God is false doctrine, and that those who promote it will be subject to Church discipline.

The result of the Adam-God crackdown is pretty clear. Today, very few people even know that this was once taught by the second prophet of this dispensation as the "Doctrine of the Priesthood." Only a very small, studious minority even bothers to think about the issue in depth. Adam-God is, for the mainstream LDS Church, a dead doctrine.

Since the Church's efforts to marginalize polygamy and Adam-God were so successful, it would seem that similar efforts might be committed quite usefully to ending the widespread "folklore" that black people were cursed for their inaction in the pre-mortal conflict with Satan and his minions. We cannot simply stand on the idea that God finally decided to give these poor people a break by lifting a curse. The people are not poor but wonderful. The curse never happened in the first place.

The Second Official Declaration is inadequate to put an end to the belief in a curse. Official, and highly visible statements, along the lines of the efforts against Adam-God, are necessary to put the matter to rest. People should think that it is sinful for them to believe in the curse. There should be no loopholes. No concept of a curse that was lifted. People should be persuaded to believe that they may face Church discipline for teaching such a thing. Perhaps the matter should be incorporated into the temple recommend interview. If bishops have felt to inquire into people's soda drinking habits in worthiness interviews, why have they not felt similarly inclined on the subject of racism?

In other words, given the fact that the LDS Church, when it is really serious about stamping out something, gives real teeth to its efforts to do so, their efforts to stamp out racism in the Church do not seem to me to be very serious at all. Who has been excommunicated simply for being an unrepentant racist? Why do conservative Mormons proudly crow on the Bloggernacle that the Church is not racist, but that it was God, who could not possibly be racist, that cursed blacks and then extended his grace in 1978, all the while sincere in their conviction that they are not racist for believing such a thing?

Clearly something needs to change here.

Corporate Mormonism

LDS Mormonism is a corporation: The Corporation of the Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While many liberals see corporations as sinister entities, working evil in the world in a godless quest for the almighty dollar, corporations are tools of human fashioning. We do have the power to regulate them. At least I hope we do.

I have been reading up on Scientology. It is an unusual belief system, but as a Mormon I have very little room to criticize it for its strangeness. One reporter in Rolling Stone magazine suggested that Scientology inflates its membership numbers. There are, so she claims, far fewer Scientologists than they have led people to believe.

Still, they have plenty of money. So much money that they have been able to fund several large headquarters in different US cities. The real estate alone must be incredibly expensive. Where do they get all their money? For one thing, their "e-meter" sessions cost a fair amount, and like Freemasonic initiation, the price increases the higher you advance in the system. They have no problem encouraging clients to go into debt for their treatments.

They also have some high profile, celebrity members (Tom Cruise, Beck, Isaac Hayes) who have undoubtedly contributed some serious cash to the cause.

Being a corporate entity, like the Mormon Church, it is conceivable that Scientology could sustain itself through its investments and business possessions. I have no idea what kind of portfolio they have, nor do I care to know. I simply find the possibility of a corporate church with vast holdings and diminishing members extremely intriguing. Theoretically, one could have a guilded temple with no parishoners.

The LDS Church brings in over several billion dollars a year in tithing. Members, like my wife and I, pay ten percent of our income to the LDS Church every year. On top of that we are expected to pay additional offerings to feed the poor in the local unit. The latter I have little issue with. The former, according to personal belief, is presumed to belong to God. Business has been very kind to the Almighty, at least in the case of the LDS Church. Different parties have estimated their holdings to be tens of billions of dollars in value.

Like Scientology, they have some wealthy members: CEOs, owners of giant corporations, and the like. If these folks tithe, then they are contributing far more than I ever will. But again, is it possible that the LDS Church could sustain itself as a corporation as its members dwindle in number? The LDS Church also inflates its numbers. It allegedly counts everyone in its records, some long after they have removed their names, or converted to another religion. How can they keep up with all of that change anyway?

No harm, no foul. I guess. It bothers me to think that the tithing we pay may be committed to the fight against gay marriage, or some other worthless project like that. I have no problem giving God his due. I just wish he would find nicer estate managers.

Theocracy

For some time there has been a minor feud between two LDS apologists: Daniel C. Peterson and Kevin Graham. Peterson for various understandable reasons has greater support among the apologist denizens of the FAIR universe. He is better known, more published, a professor at BYU, and an excellent writer. Kevin, for his part, is a solid thinker and a decent writer. Both men believe in the truth of Mormonism and have undertaken to defend it against its critics.

Numerous threads at FARMS provide evidence of the rancor that has arisen between them. Oddly, the subject about which most of this ill will exists is Islam, not Mormonism. Peterson, a professional Islamicist, is understandably sympathetic toward and protective of the culure of his expertise. Kevin Graham, although not an expert, is a quick study and has made a number of excellent points which are critical of Islam.

Mormons fall on different sides of political issues that touch on Islam, as the Peterson/Graham debate illustrates. Still, I think there are reasons why some informed LDS people sympathize with elements of fundamentalist Islam. I think one of these reasons can be encapsulated in the word theocracy.

A few nations like Iran have succeeded in establishing Islamic regimes that reflect the strict values established in the Koran. While most Americans distrust these governments and abhor the terrorist acts supported by them, there is a certain blindness to the role religion has played in this matrix of theocracy and violence. Why the blindness on the role of religion? I believe that one reason is because on a certain level some Christians and Mormons abhor the violence while envying the limited success of theocracy in shaping the lives of the peoples of these countries according to the precepts of highly conservative religious minorities.

The Mormon marriage with American government was once viewed as partial and ideally temporary. God revealed to Joseph Smith the Lord's tolerance of the Church 'befriending' constitutional government in the United States, but at the same time Joseph Smith had himself anointed king of the kingdom of God on earth--this as he was beginning to mount his campaign for the U.S. presidency. Joseph may not have seen the contradiction between establishing theocracy and participating in American democracy, but few Americans today could stomach a presidential candidate who engineered his own kingship in a shadow world government scheme.

Oddly, Mormonism, it would seem, is a belief system that has continued to produce would-be American monarchs. James Strang, leader of a Mormon schismatic group in the early post-Smith years, fashioned himself as the theocratic monarch of Beaver Island, Michigan. In more recent years, a Mormon convert from Greek Orthodox Christianity--Alex Joseph--began to practice polygyny and proclaimed himself a monarch in Southern Utah. These men did not remain members of the LDS Church, but they were inspired by the example of Joseph Smith.

Is it possible that some Mormons envy elements of Islamic theocracy? I would say yes, but I doubt that any prominent LDS person would openly espouse such views. Some Mormons believe that they will rescue the Constitution of the United States from grave danger, although, as in the case of many prophecies, they are short on specifics. Yet, one should not confuse their view of saving the US Constitution with upholding American government in its current form. Sure, some Mormons who put stock in this prophecy believe exactly that, but some also see the US Constitution as but a precursor to the millennial government by the sovereign Christ.

How do some of these Mormons envision their rescue the of Constitution and ushering in of God's kingdom? Simply put, their objective is to peacefully transform our country's laws and institutions to conform to their vision of the kingdom of God. In defensive terms, this means protecting our country from legalizing sin, and in an assertive fashion this means legislating against sin. It also means fighting the atheists and secularists who seem to them to want to take God out of government. Indeed, it means refashioning society through legal means to conform to a Christian-Mormon ideal.

Wouldn't you think that these folks have some plan in mind for forming their own government?

There are a few differences between a Mormon theocrat and an Islamic theocrat. The most important is that the Mormon theocrat will likely work within established institutions of government to achieve his ends. Violent Mormon revolution is unlikely. The second is that Mormons are such a small minority everywhere except in the population-challenged states of the West like Utah and Idaho that they pose a relatively small threat even in the unlikely event that they should get restive. Finally, Mormonism no longer advocates conflict and agitation the way it used to. Even in the days when Mormons battled with the 'Gentile' mobs, Mormon violence never reached the status of a general imperative.

Some Mormons do cooperate with likeminded right-wing Christians to achieve a more fundamentalist Christian nation. The LDS Chiurch itself has poured millions of dollars into fighting against the cause of women's rights and gay rights. Earlier than this, prominent Latter-day Saints (like former LDS Church president Ezra Taft Benson) were among the most fearful of the phantoms of communism in this country. They basically have an apocalytic world view in which they anticipate the end of the United States and their own role in saving the world. These beliefs make them very motivated to push their own political agenda now.

Update: Since Daniel Peterson brought up this post on FAIR, I decided to revisit it to clarify the language and remove certain unfelicitous imprecisions. Dan believes that I have accused him of being an "aspiring Mormon theocrat who finds inspiration in the Islamic Republic of Iran and in the former Taliban." I have no idea whether Dan is an "aspiring Mormon theocrat" or that he does find such inspiration in these groups. Neither did I accuse him of such.

"BYU is an Auschwitz of the mind." --D. Michael Quinn

I spent far too many years at BYU, something which may partially explain my anger with the LDS Church. In my many years at BYU, I had some fine experiences, and a few that convinced me something is indeed rotten in Denmark. First, I was fortunate to have Hugh Nibley as a teacher. Regardless of what you may think of Dr. Nibley, the man was a genius. He may have been 'off' about many things, but he was off in that way that only the brilliant are capable of. We may disagree utterly with his methodology and conclusions, but we ought not to gainsay his intelligence.

Hugh Nibley described BYU best when he shared his vision of hell. "Hell is like Disneyland," he said, "filled with a bunch of nicely dressed Mormons telling you where to sit and when to laugh." I think that really sums up BYU nicely. BYU and Disneyland do have much in common. Both institutions are dedicated to the appearance of learning without the cultivation of critical thinking skills. Both strive to affect a sentimental emotional response that is carefully cultivated in the maintenance of an illusory image.

For BYU, it isn't just the dress code, or the Honor Code. The truth of the lie is located somewhere in the conjunction of many different restrictions and requirements that coalesce in the creation of an artificial Zion for public consumption. Where Disney offers an artificial utopia of mind-numbing entertainment, BYU offers the illusion of an educational Zion. In reality, Disney is devoted to a Brave New World of uncritical consumers, and BYU suffers from nearly the same malady, except in this case the institution equates unthinking obedience with true education. At BYU, integrity is the obligation of the individual and part of his or her sacrifice to the institution. The institution, on the other hand, takes no other commitment as more important than the insuring of students' continuing belief in the truth of Mormonism.

What makes such a pleasant place so odious?

1) Independent journalism has been harassed and effectively wiped from the community.

2) Academic freedom is not observed, or it is so severely limited as not to qualify for its own name.

3) Students have been required to write personal statements of loyalty to the university which smack of similar Nazi practices.

4) Students voluntarily police professors, holding them to a standard of adherence to Church commandments that curtails the professors' ability to cover their subject material in full.

5) Non-Mormons are not sought as permanent employees unless they are uniquely prestigious.

6) Mormon employees must qualify for a temple recommend to maintain their jobs, which also entails that they remit 10% of their income to the LDS Church.

7) The university acts as the intellectual attack dog and support for extreme conservative causes that promote inequality and the limitation of civil rights for certain groups.

8) The apologetic organization FARMS has been drawn under the BYU banner, thus compromising scholarly credibility for doctrinaire and polemical ends.

Lingering LDS racism: one example

Some time ago a little web-essay entitled, "Who are the Signaturi", came to my attention. It is a delightful little piece (gag) that characterizes Mormon intellectuals in a very unflattering fashion. In the process of writing a piece for my blog, I revisited this thing.

In my re-reading of it I stumbled across an idea that offers one of the clearest examples of lingering racism in the LDS Church. Redelfs has a list of characteristics of people he calls the Signaturi. Number nine on that list is the one I want you to consider:

"9) Generally, they think the ban on blacks holding the Priesthood, which the Lord lifted in 1978, was the result not of God's law and revelation but culturally induced racial prejudice and bigotry on the part of the prophets and apostles."

There you have it, folks. In the enlightened view of Mr. Redelfs, the "Signaturi" erroneously attribute the ban on blacks holding the priesthood to the weakness of men, when it is clearly, at least clearly to Mr. Redelfs, the case that God was behind the whole thing. Case closed.

Never have I been more proud to be numbered among the Signaturi. I want no part in the company or sympathy of those who think that God is a respecter of persons, and that the gospel is not a free gift to all, "whether black or white."

Addendum: I have been informed that it was BYU professor and Mormon apologist William Hamblin who coined the term 'Signaturi'.

Gnostics: the Ancient Signaturi

Most of today's closet LDS intellectuals have something in common with the ancient Gnostics. No, they don't generally share a dizzyingly complex cosmogony, write their own scriptures, or think of the OT God as an inferior being. Like the ancient Gnostics they exist within the LDS Church and find themselves at odds with it.

The ancient Gnostics were kind of arrogant about their self-perceived superiority. Or, at least, this is how the Church Fathers like to portray them. From a patristic perspective, these folks were looking down their noses at the average member of the Church, because these average types didn't possess the secret doctrines and interpretations of scripture that marked out the enlightened Gnostic.

Indeed, the some Gnostics (it can be dangerous to generalize too much) thought that they alone had the divine spark that marked them out as worthy of salvation. Most everyone else was simply not quite so bright. Now, I do think that the Signaturi (the Mormon intellectuals) of today can be arrogant. My modest knowledge of Church history and World history sometimes has me metaphorically clucking my tongue at some of the ignorance I encounter in Church.

If anything, however, modern Mormon intellectuals are haunted by that sinking feeling that they are out of step. After all, the leadership of the Church likes to make people who see things a little differently feel that way. The very act of picking up an unofficial Mormon magazine has been stigmatized over the pulpit by an apostle of the Church. Then one sees scholars being excommunicated or disfellowshiped because of their research. Someone like Michael Quinn, a historian who had a strong testimony and whose work explicitly avowed allegiance to the leaders of the Church, gets excommunicated as part of a small purge of Mormon scholars and intellectuals. Another apostle identifies intellectuals as one of the three great threats to the Church.

Since it is apparent that freedom of speech has little place in modern LDS Mormonism, I think it is necessary to do what many ancient Gnostics did in order to survive--go underground. What does this mean? It means that you essentially have to keep your mouth shut about your real thoughts to your fellow members and local leaders.

The early Church Fathers who wrote against the Gnostics were frustrated because they 'masqueraded' as regular Church members. Given the efforts of these Fathers to root out Gnostics and Gnostic teachings from the Church, one can understand why they needed the disguise. The situation for them was something like this. Others were defining with greater strictness what it Christianity should mean for everyone. These others were not the approved Church leaders in the LDS sense. They were self-appointed rhetorical bullies.

Unfortunately, such bullies exist in the LDS Church today, and a few of them were and are numbered among the Lord's servants. Here are some names: Elder Bruce R. McConkie, Elder Mark E. Peterson, Elder Boyd K. Packer, and, sadly, Elder Dallin H. Oaks. I say sadly on the last one because I generally really like Elder Oaks, but his positions on unofficial LDS publications and the historicity of the Book of Mormon are narrow and unforgiving. Still, I am not aware that he has personally initiated any disciplinary action against scholars like Elder Packer has.

With the power of the LDS Church arrayed against intellectuals (i.e. Signaturi), one can either get out or go 'Gnostic' (and I think of this in terms of being underground and in a sense adversarial). Now, the leaders of the Church paint those who differ in opinion with them as apostates, since they take 'authority' as the center of their Gospel creed. The important thing, in their minds, is not so much the independent truth value of an idea as its origin and function. If a truth does not 1) serve the purposes of the LDS Church as the leadership define it, 2) originate from them or one of their various organs, 3) serve to paint the Church and its claims in unmitigatedly rosy fashion, then it is not 'truth' by their definition.

Scholars who discover truths that are not convenient to the Church quickly learn that these truths are not very valuable in the minds of those who run it. The fact that Joseph Smith received the Mechezidek priesthood authority from God's voice and not at the hands of Peter, James, and John is one such inconvenient truth. After all, the idea of resurrected beings laying their physical hands on Joseph Smith's head to give him these keys and authority works well when the 'hands-on' method is the one employed today. Problem is, there is no real good evidence for the claim that hands were used until years after the events transpired.

Publishing or delivering a paper that delves into the actual historical development of priesthood authority and claims is the kind of thing that lands one in a disciplinary council very quickly. Grant Palmer was disfellowshiped for his book which contains a chapter on the subject.

So what is one to do? Publish and perish (in LDS terms) or be silent and perish (in psychological terms). Not the best options. But what are you going to do?

Mormon Newspeak

Today my wife brought home the "2006 Outline for Sharing Time and the Children's Sacrament Meeting Presentation." Catchy title, huh? It is a fairly bland tribute to the principle that LDS people should not be allowed to think for themselves, since now even Sharing Time for Primary children demands a scripted outine.

And lest the children be led astray by all those ignorant adults with their false doctrines, this fun little booklet provides a doctrinal glossary that comes straight from Elder Packer's greatest hits. We all know what a fun-loving guy Elder Packer is. Here are the items we are not to be in confusion about. I add my comments in square brackets:

Accountability: Accepting responsibility for our actions [because the atonement just ain't gonna cover them].

Agency: The ability to choose and act for one's self. Use the term agency rather than free agency to describe our freedom to choose [because we don't want that freedom to sound too free]. Agency is the term used in the scriptures (see D&C 29:36; Moses 7:32).

Apostacy [one that every child can fully grasp]: A falling away from the gospel of Jesus Christ [as presently constituted in manuals such as this one].

Heavenly Father's Plan: Our Heavenly Father presented the plan of life and salvation in the Grand Council in Heaven. Only one [my emphasis] plan was presented. Jehovah (Jesus Christ) sustained the plan of our Heavenly Father [hopefully with a great deal more enthusiasm than that which I have when I 'sustain' items of business]. Lucifer (the devil, Satan, [el Diablo, ol' Scratch]) attempted to change the plan [damn him to hell anyway].

Jehovah: Jesus Christ, also known as Jehovah [in case you didn't get it the first time], is the God of the Old Testament [thanks to the wonders of non-LDS theology as imported into the LDS faith by James E. Talmage].

These items are marked with an asterisk (*) throughout this outline [whew!].

So there it is. No big deal, right? Sure. But I'll write a little about it for kicks and giggles.

First, free agency has been 'free' agency for some time now. The increasing discomfort of Elder Packer with the idea that anything could be free inspired him to remind his fellow GAs that the scriptures do not use the adjective free in connection with agency, which is more correctly called "moral agency" or simply "agency". Take a look at Brother Spencer J. Condie's article in the September '95 issue of the Ensign. Under the rather telling subtitle "The Price of Agency", Brother Spencer tells us how he was practically administered an Elder Packer smack-down so he would drop this hippie crap about 'free' agency. After all, so he continues and I paraphrase, the scriptures say we are "bought with a price" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Brother Condie, and you have to love this, showed some real backbone and kept calling agency 'free agency' anyways.

It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside to consider how metaphors of slavery are so easily translated into metaphors of market capitalism in the Global Age. This works well now that we are no longer slaves to human masters, but the wage slaves of multi-national corporations, which simply exercise the rights of human individuals in a legal fiction of imposture that continually strengthens. But, I digress. You see, in Joseph Smith's day, agency was seen in the light of American constitutional democracy. 'Free' in this context had less to do with not being paid, and more to do with the freedoms associated with inalienable rights endowed by the Creator.

These days, however, in the new society of the Temple of Commerce, we are continually reminded by the Temple's moral wing--Commerce Christianity--, which supplies what little moral fiber the amoral system of Capitalism has (at least for the sake of keeping the masses docile), that we are bought and paid for by the Savior. What we are, even in the metaphysical sense, is not free. Agency comes with a high price-tag--complete submission to the right Master.

Sure, there is a certain truth in the metaphor. What bothers me is not the relative usefulness of it. It is instead the pervasiveness of the market metaphor and our inability to interrogate it that gets my dander up. Everyone just takes it for granted that their 'souls' are a commodity like anything else. In Mormon terms you have agency, but that agency is not free. If you exercise it incorrectly, you will lose your job (salvation). Let's face it, people were not calling agency free because they did not value it. They were calling it free because they associated it with freedom. So why change back? Simply to pull ourselves back in line with Joseph Smith's usage? Or is it that we are so stuck on market metaphors that we only associate free with money rather than human rights?

Moving on, I have a much bigger problem with all of this business about 'Our Heavenly Father's Plan.' One thing that continually bugs the living hell out of me is the obviously bogus statement the leaders of the Church make with regard to the primacy of the scriptures. They are wont to say, and I paraphrase, that their every teaching must square with the canon of scripture. This position is patently false, and nowhere more so than in the case of 'The Plan of Our Heavenly Father.'

Here's the deal folks: it ain't scriptural. If you go to Abraham 3:24-26, you read the following:

24 And there stood one among them that was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;

25 And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;

26 And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever.

That's the plan. So here's the question: whose plan is it? One who is like unto God, which is, coincidentally, the equivalent of an English translation of the Hebrew name Michael. Setting that tidbit of info aside, what is the likelihood that the author of this passage intended us to read 'God' where he wrote "one who is like unto God. My guess is that he, whoever he is, did not.

Is this person Jesus? Well, Jesus certainly does appear later in the passage as "one...who is like unto the son of Man." Now, I would think that if the 'one who is like unto God' were the same person as the 'one who is like unto the son of Man', the author would not use two entirely different descriptions to refer to him, especially when the lack of names in the passage makes any descriptors crucial for properly differentiating separate identities.

So the first problem is that the plan is definitely not the plan of Heavenly Father. It is likely not even the plan of Jesus Christ. I think the best answer to the problem of the first speaker's identity is Michael. Son of Man is a New Testament title of Jesus. One who is like unto God is really a translation of the Hebrew Michael. Now, at this point the only way I can see that Michael's plan is Heavenly Father's is to side with Brigham Young on the identity of God, which would make God Adam (i.e. Michael). Something tells me the Brethren won't want to go there either.

Our Primary Glossary, the original spark for this blaze of ranting, was very specific about the number of plans presented: "only one plan was presented." Unfortunately for our trusty misreaders of latter-day scripture, the Book of Moses (chapter 4) seems to paint quite a different picture:

1 AND I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.

***

3 Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;...

The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following among its definitions of plan: 3.a. A formulated or organized method according to which something is to be done; a scheme of action, project, design; the way in which it is proposed to carry out some proceeding. Also in weakened sense: Method, way of proceeding.

Now, I'm not saying that ol' Scratch had a Power-point presentation or a flowchart on a big dry-erase board, but it sounds like he had a plan to me. His plan, which is different from Michael's (sorry, I couldn't help myself), is that he will redeem humankind such that not one soul will be lost. In return, he wants God's honor. Evidently, the guarantee that all souls would 'make it' required that they not have agency, i.e. the ability to choose for themselves. Even if el Diablo's vision was essentially similar to Michael's except for these points: no agency, no loss, and 'all hail Satan!', it was certainly quite different in these few respects. In fact, I would say it was sufficiently different to qualify for the status of a separate plan entirely.

So why call Michael's plan Heavenly Father's Plan? Because it is the plan that God chose for his children, not the one he initiated. A relatively open dialogue seems to have been allowed in the first place to come up with a plan.

Now, if, in the spirit of Elder Packer, we want to be real sticklers about language, neither Moses nor Abraham use the word plan to describe Michael's proposal, Lucifer's tongue wagging, or Jesus' statement of allegiance. Moses uses the phrase plan of salvation to refer to the atonement (6:62). Abraham uses the word plan for the spiritual creation (4:21). The Book of Mormon refers to the "plan of redemption", the "plan of our God", the "plan of salvation", etc. If we want to preserve the context chronology of the scriptures, and not their production chronology, the plan became God's when he adopted it. From that point on it could be called "Heavenly Father's Plan" and not before.

By the way, here we have in the "Plan" narrative one of those many instances in mythology when some crafty character tries to deceive the head god, and pays dearly for it. Other examples include Prometheus, king Numa, and Loki. Satan falls in line with this tradition when he tries to slip the part about humans losing their agency past Hevenly Father. Heavenly Father is just too smart to fall for it. So he chooses Jesus as savior, who essentially says, "I'll have it your way, God." See, even here it is clear that Jesus has no plan. In fact, it seems that just about every major player except Jesus has one.

Why on earth are the Brethren so concerned that there only be one plan, and that that plan come from Heavenly Father? Well, my guess is that they want to reinforce the image of their own authority as emanating from the voice of the prophet alone. No one is to have a plan except the guy at the top, and everyone who knows what's good for him or her is to follow along. The actual scriptural stories present situations that are much less neat. A composite of Moses and Abraham shows that different figures are proposing different plans, and that God is the final decision maker.

Everyone is already exercising the eternal gift of agency in what they are doing (including employing their own initiative) in the Grand Council. Satan exercises his own agency in proposing his plan, but he hopes to rob everyone else of theirs thereby. This is where he goes wrong, not in suggesting something different. What is true, it seems, is that there wasn't anything like a vote. After God decided which plan he was going to adopt, people had the choice to exercise their agency by defecting to Satan or by assenting to the plan God had adopted.

The way I read between the lines of the Church's interpretation is that Satan was wrong in that he said anything and that that anything contradicted God's plan. You might say he was insubordinate. He didn't have a plan. He was just one of those annoying naysayers you see at any bad meeting who keeps anything substantive from getting done by carping at absolutely everything. Jesus had the right idea when he said, "What you said, Boss." This reading fits what we see in the LDS Church today.

There is a plan in Mormonism, and you didn't have any say in it. And guess what, you still don't have any say in it. Once the Gang of Fifteen has adopted it, and has sent it out to the stakes of Zion, your part is to say, "what you said, boss," and then proceed to do it. The worst thing you can do is to discuss openly any other idea for how things are or should be. Then you are consigned to that lowest circle of Mormon hell occupied by Sunstoners, Signaturi, and all other such apostates.

The deadly power of SILENCE

A friend of mine has recently suggested that silence plays a largely unrecognized, but powerful, role in Mormonism. He hopes to devote future research and writing to the subject, but in the meantime I will share some of my thoughts on it.

Joseph Smith looked to the example of Jesus when he instructed others to hold special experiences close to their chests. The restoration of the Aaronic priesthood through the ministration of John the Baptist was largely unknown until 1835--six years after the event occurred. Why? Because Joseph Smith seems to have instructed Oliver Cowdery to keep quiet about it. Even David Whitmer, a close relative of Cowdery's by marriage, did not learn of the event until 1835. This silence led to doubts that the event ever happened.

Silence played a vital role in one of the most controversial aspects of early Mormon history--polygamy. Joseph Smith started engaging in polygynous relationships in 1832, i.e. only a couple of years after the Church was organized. Yet the fact that Joseph practiced polygamy was kept secret from so many, that even after his death many of the saints did not know. Those who formed the Reorganized Church were thus able to convince their members that Brigham Young was responsible for the practice and that Joseph had never engaged in it at all.

The endowment ritual was one means Joseph used to keep his polygamous relationships silent. Joseph endowed those people who knew about his plural wives, and these people were thereby placed under oaths of secrecy and loyalty to the kingdom of God, whose earthly head was Joseph Smith. I am not the first person to propose such a thing, and it is not proposed here for the purpose of darkening Joseph's reputation. I think Joseph did believe that he was religiously justified in his practice of plural marriage, and I think that the steps he took to protect himself and his close friends were religiously motivated as well.

The Reorganized Church, now the Community of Christ, is one of the most easily recognizable results of Joseph's use of silence. It is clear that until Brigham had solid control of his followers in the West very few people knew much of what was going on in the inner circles of the Mormon elite. Many remained unaware of some things thereafter too, and some do to this day (in spite of the availability of great historical material). I was accused of spouting "anti-Mormon garbage" when I informed someone on a discussion board that the early prophets of Mormonism had themselves crowned king of the kingdom of God on earth.

The Reorganized Church kept its own silence. As mentioned earlier, they conspired to keep their membership in the dark about Joseph's plural marriages. When one of Joseph's own sons, David, went out west to do missionary work among the 'Brighamites', the discovery that his mother and friends had lied to him about his father's marital practices may have been a contributing factor in his subsequent mental illness.

Silence in Mormonism has not only been a tool for exercising control and asserting privilege, it has also led to major doctrinal changes. It was the desire to keep certain doctrines hidden from the world that led to the abandonment of Adam-God and the belief that polygamy was a requirement for exaltation. The irony is that the men who kept silence on these matters believed them and held them sacred. Thinking it necessary to keep their silence about matters too sacred for general consumption, these men were responsible for the bulk of the Church and its leadership forgetting these teachings. Thus Bruce R. McConkie was able to deny their existence for years.

It was the temple ritual that spread the veil of silence ever broader among the rank and file members of the LDS Church. Through the temple initiation of thousands of Mormons, the injunction to keep quiet about certain things became a regular feature of LDS worship. It was also the means to creating a kind of spiritual class system that is largely unrecognized but surely present in the Church. Certain Church offices and responsibilities are only entrusted to those who share in the sacred temple ritual. The unitiated are eligible for lesser 'callings' and a lesser salvation. Only through initiation into ritual silence can one qualify for all of the privileges and blessings of the kingdom of God.

Since the leaders of Mormonism, even on the local level, are instructed in the ways of Mormon silence, the result is a society in which communication on many matters is conducted on a 'need to know' basis. And the truth is, very people are deemed to need to know. These few are usually restricted to the ward council and the presidencies of the priesthood quorums and various auxiliaries. There is nothing sinister about this limitation of communication, but by its very nature it leaves most ward members in the dark about much of what is happening in the local congregation.

One important reason for silence among the local leadership is that members share intimate personal information with these leaders. The Church advises or commands them to discuss personal sins with the bishop and his councilors. If the bishop were not enjoined to keep silence, such personal information would become common knowledge. Unfortunately, it sometimes still does. When this happens, sensitive personal information becomes part of a ward gossip underground that emanates from the ward council and auxiliary leaders. Understandably, silence is sometimes not maintained. Loose lips carry the information in the form of whispers through the social cliques that form in any ward.

On a 'macro' level, the top leaders of the Church use commandments of silence to keep certain matters out of general Church discussion and publication. To paraphrase President Hinckley's statment on Larry King, "the members can believe whatever they want, so long as they don't publish." A handful of LDS scholars and BYU professors have found themselves disciplined or fired because they did speak openly or publish views about sensitive issues regarding Church history and doctrine. These actions were coordinated from the top, and one of them at least involved the use of long past sexual transgressions as a means of excommunicating a scholar in the present (Simon Southerton). The power of silence is evident in how the Church treats scholars. They both enjoin scholars to avoid sensitive issues, and they discipline those who do not comply.

This enforced silence on doctrinal matters is one of the factors that has led to the stultification of discussion on the local level. Members are either increasingly ill informed about the history and doctrines of Mormonism, a fact that would not be surprising given the dismal state of Church educational materials, or they choose not to engage in discussions that go beyond the surface level, or worse, beyond the oversimplified and misleading spiritual propaganda that in Church educational materials substitutes for real information. People now say very little in an LDS chapel that even warrants a listen. It is usually the same pablum repeated ad nauseam in a liturgical fashion.

The word 'liturgical' brings to mind the temple again. The temple is a location of rich symbolism and mythological narrative. Yet over the years it has undergone a number of changes, one being the striking removal of ritual actions and words. The culture of silence in Mormonism prevents people from discussing the temple at any length in a public forum, or even a Church-only forum, since LDS folk generally believe that everything connected to the ritual is too sacred to discuss outside of the walls of the House of the Lord. In reality, the ritual injunctions against public speech or action related to the temple involve direct reference to the signs and tokens imparted to the initiate.

Unfortunately, silence on these few aspects of the ritual has expanded to cover almost all aspects of the endowment. Furthermore, there is really no mechanism for fostering discussion of the endowment within the temple either. There is no helpful literature in which aspects of the endowment are discussed. In a sense there is a distinct advantage to this. It allows the temple to be uniquely yours, and not subject to the tyranny of outside opinion. As Mormons are generally conditioned to look to authority figures for interpretations of scripture and guidance in practice, surely the temple would be defined by the General Authorities were it not for the fact that no one discusses it.

There are some real downsides to this silence, however. The first, and one of the most important, is that members are so poorly prepared for the temple that their first experience sometimes comes as a real unpleasant shock. In not a few cases a person's first experience with the temple is so jarring, that the person never returns to the temple, or may even leave the LDS Church over it. Another downside is that people never really mentally or emotionally engage in the temple ritual because they have almost no means of contextualizing it within the rest of their religious lives. Most references to the temple ritual in LDS literature are by allusion alone. If a person is not a keen student, and an avid, talented reader of Church literature, that person may miss out on the only discourse on the endowment in the LDS world.

The result is waning temple activity. The Church has tried to address this problem by building more temples, editing unpopular elements out of the endowment, and encouraging its members to attend on a regular basis. In my opinion all of these efforts were largely in vain. The real problem is silence. Without meaningful discussion and writing about the temple, the temple experience remains isolated from the rest of the Mormon worship experience. The symbols become empty, the drama becomes boring, and the initiates participate less and less. Only the few who serendipitously learn to engage in thoughtful, prayerful meditation in the temple continue to find it meaningful and enjoyable. In a society like ours, where meditation is almost unheard of, few people ever gain that kind of appreciation for temple service.

I have a couple of ideas that I think would improve the temple experience and increase temple attendance. 1) Talk about the temple more and in greater detail. One can maintain silence on the signs and tokens and still discuss much of what goes on in the temple. 2) Foster publications which discuss the temple. Do not place the imprimature of authority on the publications. Allow the writers wide berth to discuss and speculate so long as they do not reveal the elements that one covenants to keep secret. 3) Make space for libraries and lecture rooms in the temples. Allow members to go to special places within the temple where they can study and discuss their thoughts and insights. Sponsor lectures where people come to share their research on the temple. Provide libraries where books on sacred subjects are placed at the disposal of the endowed. 4) Offer temple preparation courses that provide substantive information about the temple experience. If people are sufficiently prepared, they will be less shocked when they participate in the actual ceremony.

The culture of silence has become so pervasive in Mormonism that it has choked out much substantive discourse and has alienated members from one another. Strong emphasis on elementary principles expressed in an attitude of strict orthodoxy increases the problem dramatically. The temple, althought one of the richest loci for symbolic expression in the LDS Church, is quarantined from the rest of the Mormon experience. The end result is that members are losing enthusiasm, leaving the Church in greater numbers, and abandoning temple service. The LDS Church could reverse these trends if it took a more open, and liberal stance toward discussion, scholarship, and temple cult.