Full Court Press
Two articles in this week’s periodicals paint a less-than-flattering image of official and unofficial Mormons. The first appeared in Time Magazine in a review of the movie “The Book of Eli.” The second was the lead article (complete with cover photograph) in the National Geographic. I have no particular comment on either article, but it is interesting to see how we are portrayed in the popular press.
Richard Corliss in review of the post-Apocalyptic movie “Eli” wonders if the major character, played by Denzel Washington, is a messianic figure. “Is he God, making a personal inspection of what humanity has done to his earth? Could be: Eli is the Semitic word for a supreme being. He says that after the big flash, a voice told him to take the Bible and go West, so he might be Brigham Young leading the Mormons to Utah, or any number of cult leaders who found acolytes in California. Eli could also be a jihadist, using a holy book as his moral cure to annihilate the infidels. . . . Maybe he’s Jesus, but with an Old Testament fury–he brings peace with the sword.” I’m obviously not confortable with Mormons being placed in the same boat with jihadists and cultists, and Old Testament justice. Mormons need to come to grips in understanding why the comparison is made.
The second article is about the FLDS colonies, principally the one at Short Creek (Hillsdale UT and Colorado City AZ). But the image of mainstream Mormonism takes a pretty heavy hit in the NG article (Feb 2010, p. 50-51). The next 4 paragraphs are from the article “Polygamy in America”:
“The principle of plural marriage was revealed to the Mormons amid much secrecy. Dark clouds hovered over the church in the early 1840s, after rumors spread that its founder, Joseph Smith, had taken up the practice of polygamy. While denying the charge in public, by 1843 Smith had shared a revelation with his closest disciples. In this “new and everlasting covenant” with God, plural wives were to be taken so that the faithful might “multiply and replenish the earth.”
After Smith was assassinated by an anti-Mormon mob in Illinois, Brigham Young led believers on an epic 1,300-mile journey west to the Salt Lake Basin of present-day Utah. There the covenant was at last publicly revealed and with it, the notion that a man’s righeousness before God would be measured by the size of his family; Brigham Young himself took 55 wives, who bore him 57 children.
But in 1890, faced with the seizure of church property under a federal antipolygamy law, the LDS leadership issued a manifesto announcing an end to plural marriage. That certainly didn’t end the practice, and the LDS’s tortured handling of the issue–some church leaders remained in plural marriages or even took on new wives after the manifesto’s release–contributed to the schism between the LDS and the fundamentalists.
“The LDS issued that manifesto for political purposes, then later claimed it was a revelation,” says Willie Jessop, the FLDS spokesman. “We in the fundamentalist community believe covenants are made with God and are not to be manipulated for political reasons, so that presents an enormous obstacle between us and those in the LDS mainstream.”"
While some may disagree with NG’s portrayal of plural marriage in mainstream Mormonism, most would probably agree with the assessment that the church has had a “tortured handling of the issue.” We need to forthrightly face up to our past (even in Sunday School) and deal with it. Trying to sugar coat it just isn’t going to work any more.
January 30th, 2010 at 11:43 am
Another point of view to my last statement was presented by Mike Paulos in a letter to the editor in Sunstone (December 2009, p. 3.):
“I understand the surprise some life-long Church members feel when they discover problems in Church history. However, I deplore the attitude of some who blame the Church and its leaders for their own previous intellectual incuriosity. . . . ”
” . . . Church leaders will not and need not turn worship services into forums where historical controversies and theological discrepancies are explored and debated.”
February 1st, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Frances Lee Menlove wrote the following in Dialogue (December 2009, p. 7-8):
“Gene (England attending a fireside in Hyde Park, England, with recently baptized Black members of the church) talked candidly about racism in society, in the Church, and in himself. He spoke of his own joy when the ban on blacks and the priesthood was lifted. He spoke movingly of the need to both own and absorb our whole church history if we are to learn from it. We can’t disown whatever is embarrassing or whatever we don’t approve of in that history. The memory of the past is required for learning, for moral instruction.
That evening, Gene took ownership of not just the glories of the Church, but its shadows. He didn’t speak from a distance but from the center of the story. He spoke with grace and dignity. He listened carefully as several black members told stories of being blindsided by a history they didn’t know before joining.
My memory is that when he was asked about some of the theological underpinnings of the ban on the priesthood (e.g., blacks were less valiant in the war in heaven, or descendents of Cain), he gave them short shrift. These theological rationales, he said, are themselves part of the racism.”