Post on Rational Faiths - Divine Family Modeling

In which I analyze the Mormon discourse in which we sometimes cast Heavenly Father as the model Man and extrapolate that Heavenly Mother must be the model Woman, and question that framework.

A preview:

"...perhaps we should not take the individual members of the Heavenly Couple as our models for men and women, but instead see the Heavenly Couple as a unit as a model for each earthly couple as a unit. It is the couple that is divine and godly; individuals are to an degree insufficient for exaltation."

You can read the full post HERE.

to Mourn with Those that mourn

“…as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, … what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord …?” – Mosiah 18:8-10

We Mormons make a big deal about our baptismal covenants, renewing them every week with the Sacrament and citing the scripture above – Alma the Elder speaking to his congregation upon the founding of the Church in the Book of Mormon – as an explication of our responsibilities as baptized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

However, I wonder if we misunderstand some of the things we covenant to do upon baptism. I feel that I have been more often than not willing to negate others’ burdens, to solve their sorrows. We tend to meld Alma’s words: we help others cast aside their burdens, and we comfort those that mourn in an effort to arrest their mourning, like attending to a bawling baby in the middle of the night.

I have two points to ponder.

1. We covenant to mourn.

We like citing 2 Nephi 2:25 that “men are that they might have joy.” We live in a culture rampant with rhetoric of becoming happier, wherein sadness is seen as an anomaly to be cured. Indeed, the most recent edition of the DSM (the manual that provides a guideline for psychiatric diagnosis) has removed the “bereavement exception,” which stipulated that doctors should be loath to diagnose a patient with depression within the two months following a death of a loved one. Now, grief over death can be classified as medically-treatable depression after only two weeks. Being sad is wrong, or even dangerous.

But here we have a command to mourn, and not only that, but to mourn when others are mourning. Not only are we supposed to experience sadness, but it’s not even necessary that it be personal, individual, private sadness: this is social sadness.

Further, it’s more than just a bit of feeling “down.” What does it mean to mourn? Have we done away with our mourning rituals? What are the bounds, if any, to our obligation to mourn?

I used to (and still) find a great deal of comfort in Revelation 21:4, which always recalls to my mind the final chapter of the Chronicles of Narnia: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” But as Mormons, we know that this is not really the case. We are meant to become like God, and God feels sorrow and pain – and weeps. Weeps because of their apathy and hatred. Mourning, weeping, is a godly activity; does our cult of happiness impede our pursuit of godliness?

2. Mourning… because of what?

Another tendency I believe we have is not only to squirm around those mourning, but to mourn with or comfort only those whose mourning we find justifiable.

Perhaps we’re thinking of Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:10, where he states that contrary to “the sorrow of the world [which] worketh death,” “godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of.” Wishing to be godly, we discern between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow, letting ourselves empathize with the former and admonish the latter.

Can we, however, distinguish what sorrow is godly, and what is worldly – especially in a way that does not judge ex post facto? Does Alma distinguish between the two? What does it mean if our baptismal covenants require us to mourn empathetically for non-godly things, with people who might not be, in our judgment, steering toward repentance?

Perhaps God wishes us to develop this sort of radical empathy, for it is all too easy to Otherize those we deem evil, wicked, or deluded. If instead we treat all mourning alike, we might grow to love more of our fellows more than we already do. Indeed, this might be necessary to cultivate charity. We cannot forget that Alma’s son Alma taught that Emmanuel, God-with-us, “[took] upon him the pains and the sicknesses [and the sins] of his people”(Alma 7:11, 13). Are others’ potentially ungodly mournings things that we must dare to take upon ourselves to be Christlike?

Just a few thoughts. What’re yours?

LDS Temple Square Footage throughout the World

In Sacrament Meeting today, I was struck by an idea. It’s always hard to measure the geographical spread and diversity of the LDS Church and its members. For example, membership numbers are understandably fraught with problems. Yes, the records of the Church show 14 million plus members in the world with over half outside the US; further, within the US, only one third of Mormons live in Utah. However, these basic calculations do not account for members who have been lost or who are entirely inactive. Further, it does not account for differences in attendance rates across geographical regions; Mormons in Provo, Utah tend to be much more active proportionally than do Mormons in Presidencia Roque Sáenz Peña, Chaco, Argentina, where at times the attendance hovered around 5%.

What I realized, though, is that there is a metric that could be evidence of Mormon activity rates in a curious fashion: square footage of LDS temples by region. In the temples, Mormons participate in the highest rites of their faith, and are encouraged to go often. Until the late 1990s, temples were typically large buildings that required significant resources to construct; however, since around 2000, many smaller temples have been built to facilitate attendance by members in far-flung regions of the globe. As a result, temple construction more closely reflects habits of temple attendance by members. Further, temple construction also reflects on the size of local populations and the proportion of those members that pay a full tithe.

With this in mind, I tabulated all the square footages of LDS temples by region throughout time, showing the geographic expansion of the Church*. What I found is very interesting: though the majority of LDS members live outside the US, 66% of temple square footage is found within the US – 27% in Utah alone, and 50% in the western states.

Of course, temple attendance and demand cannot be equated with LDS activity rates or practicing population, for it is certain that American affluence (more leisure time, more dispensable funds, and more readily available transportation) inflates American attendance rates. For many outside the US, a visit to the temple might be a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence (though the prevalence of that is, hopefully, decreasing). Still, it’s very interesting to consider what this data might entail for the Church. What, for example, how would the worship of a highly active LDS population that cannot attend the temple regularly look like? Does the availability of temples affect LDS activity rates? What does this mean about different regions' cultural capital within the global LDS community?

* I included La'ie and Kona Hawai'i in the "Pacific and Oceania" region based on the populations they typically service, put the Philippines in "Asia," and included Santo Domingo in "Central America."

Blessing the Sacrament in a Purple Tie

Cross-posted from Scholaristas.

I need not summarize the saga of the Pantspocalypse; if you’re reading this, you probably know it already. What is relevant is that after last week I decided I would be wearing a purple tie to church meetings on Sunday. My decision came as a result of my sympathies with imperfectly gender-conforming women (and men) who are often marginalized, the desire to show solidarity in the face of recalcitrant and exaggerated norms of gendered dress and behavior (as well as death threats), and the conviction that cultural change often starts with the culture in question – and that culture lags behind Church pronouncements. Also, my purple tie is one of my favorites.

Of the arguments arrayed against the latter-day bloomers, however, I found the most thought-provoking to be that of not marrying “political statements” with sacred ordinances like the Sacrament. Would not knowledge of a grassroots event simmering among Church members distract the congregation from the object of the meeting, Jesus Christ? If I cared not for the sanctity of the ordinance and the value of not distracting from it, I actually would have worn my dishdash (the white, robe-like formalwear of Arab men). Since I did care, however, I was left with some reservations about my violet neckwear, though not enough to dissuade me from wearing it.

Almost immediately after entering the chapel of my YSA ward I was approached and asked to help bless or pass the Sacrament. I intentionally took the spot on the stand next to my roommate, the only other purpled man in the room. There were no trousered women. I’m not sure why I did that so deliberately. I placed a feminist critique of latent, baseline patriarchy into the locus of patriarchy in weekly worship – the Sacrament.

I’ve blessed the Sacrament countless times before, but today was different. I was extraordinarily self-conscious, aware of every single one of my thoughts. As I knelt, I knew that I, with my concerns, worries, and stresses, was coming before the Lord on behalf of the congregation. And as I read, I pronounced the words more slowly and with much more precision than my average. Wearing a purple tie had made me hypersensitive to myself and, in turn, the Spirit, whose presence I found myself seeking more fervidly than I have for a long time in Sacrament meeting. Under this influence, I noticed several things:

“Oh God, the Eternal Father …”

All of worship is humans coming to the mercy seat, laden with their own burdens to be relieved. Some of our burdens might be socially acceptable and widely recognized, but others are not. Some women feel marginalized by the sometimes strict gender roles and norms assigned to them by their fellow Saints (stricter, often, than those embodied in modern Church proclamations). Some do not. A myriad of statements are made tacitly every week in the clothes we bear, statements that, though often not part of a wider movement, nonetheless have some political content. Further, we are constantly negotiating the boundaries between minimalist divine ritual and totalizing cultural trappings.

“…we ask thee …”

Though we partake of the pieces of bread and cups of water each individually, we all are parties to the prayer offered to consecrate them. We – the old and the young, the man and the woman, the new convert and the descendent of pure pioneer stock, the patriarch and the feminist, the conservative and the liberal, the straight and the not-so-straight, the pants and the dresses. All of us together implore God to sanctify unto our souls the emblems of the Sacrament, to soothe the wounds our fallen natures cause with the healing balm of the holy.

“… in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ …”

Not only do we all come before God, but we come before Him explicitly as disciples of Jesus Christ, in representation of Jesus Christ, in our strivings to beJesus Christ: the friend of women of ill repute and the nemesis of men of good repute; the political radical and the prince of peace; the king of kings and the servant of all. We have made covenants to mourn with those that mourn, to comfort those that stand in need of comfort, as He did. While it is problematic if we expect the Church to institutionally affirm every facet of our identities, it is necessary that we empathize even with the most other Other. If we find we cannot empathize with people’s experiences that are wholly different than ours, we are not fulfilling our covenants. Yes, we come to meetings in order to worship God, but we do it in a community in part to be disturbed and humbled by those around us, to serve them in their specific anxieties and infirmities that we probably don’t share. Our efforts to be Christlike require a dedication to diversity; people can be disciples of Christ, oriented toward God, and differ in a million other ways. It would seem that beauty and variety are also values Divinity wishes would adorn Zion’s unity of heart. And given that we seek to convert the world, we had better be ready for diversity in our membership.

Unlike any other time in recent memory, I returned to my seat pondering the Sacrament and its symbolism, all because I, through my purple tie, had bared a bit of my soul before my fellow man and my God.

That didn’t stop me from smiling, though, when I noticed that all the chapel’s upholstery was purple.

Secrecy, in Temples and Tests

The LSAT had been rather grueling. Four and a half hours (with a short break in the middle) sitting in a chair in a room along with about twenty-five other people, all stolidly focused on the test booklets in front of us, dutifully filling in bubbles with our regulation No. 2/HB pencils. I was, unsurprisingly, relieved when it was over and I found myself wandering with the other test takers out the door to our vehicles.

It was then that something that I had previously regarded as so routine, as so obvious, caused me to pause, quizzical: even though all of us had taken the same test, even though we had toiled shoulder to shoulder all morning through the same questions, we could not say a word about any of it. Before the beginning of the test, in fact, we had to write out a confidentiality agreement wherein we promised that we would not reveal the contents of the test to anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason.

Another thought then struck me: the secrecy around standardized tests might be the closest thing in the typical non-Mormon experience to the oaths of nondisclosure that Mormons make during the temple endowment ordinance.

 Mormons have often taken flak for the restriction of access to the interiors and ordinances of their temples, which include baptisms by proxy for the deceased, the endowment (a two hour-long dramatic presentation retelling the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement with corresponding covenants to be taken on), and sealing (marriage for time and eternity). This exclusivity is exacerbated by covenants in the endowment ritual to not reveal parts of the ceremony and by community norms that prohibit in-depth discussion of the details and wording of the any of the ordinances of the temple. These factors mean that Mormons who have not yet undergone these rituals often know little about them, non-Mormons know even less, and even that non-Mormon family members cannot witness their Mormon relatives’ marriages, a high point of contention to many. While Mormons repeat that the temple ordinances are “sacred, not secret,” to a world steeped in requirements for transparency, this sacred secrecy seems strange, if not sinister.

However, the LSAT and other standardized tests demonstrate that there are circumstances in the non-Mormon world with secrets as closely and zealously guarded as the verbiage of the Mormon temple ordinances – perhaps even more so, for the questions change for each test, whereas temple ordinances seldom change and have been published far and wide on the internet. Maybe some of the reasons for the parallel norms of secrecy are similar: the significance of the LSAT and similar tests lies in the presumption that the candidates are encountering those specific questions for the first time. Though they could be informed of the format of the exam, the types of questions they could find, and strategies for interacting with the questions that they will eventually be required to answer, if they had seen their particular test booklet previously, the resulting experience would be fundamentally altered. It is requisite to encounter the test at the right place, at the right time, and in the right manner, or it loses much of its purpose. For this reason strict secrecy is implemented thereafter: test administrators wish to prevent those who have taken the test from corrupting others’ experience. While us veterans can speak in generalities because we understand the implications of specific words (“Ugh, three logical reasoning sections?” or “What about that question with Iturbe, Hong, and Franco?”), we are enjoined to say nothing more.

Likewise, much of the endowment’s ritual power derives from the location, time, and manner in which the ordinance is encountered. The temple is a consecrated place of sacred privacy and release from the normal flow of time, wherein ordinary people, dressed in white and speaking in whispers, are called to participate in cosmic dramas with a spirit of reverence, contemplation, love, and awe. If any of these elements is missing, the experience is utterly changed. Further, since it is an experience we are admonished to relive regularly[1], those essential characteristics must be preserved. While deployment of certain mutually understood but publicly unrevealing phrases outside the temple can help us convey our thoughts about the endowment, the taboo nature of direct speech helps make certain that the temple retains its ritual sanctity and uniqueness that lends power to its ordinances.

Of course, there are major differences. The LSAT and standardized tests are meant to evaluate one’s reasoning, skill, and knowledge, while the endowment is meant to instruct and, perhaps, test our wills to make sure they align with God’s. Both are rites of passage of a sort, but one inducts the initiate into a community and the other merely provides the possibility of induction through categorization and evaluation of candidates. In one, the concern that motivates secrecy is fairness to avoid cheating and resultant incorrect evaluation; in the other, the driving concern is appropriateness to avoid cheapening the experience through erroneous or improper perceptions. The problem Mormons have is that while fair and standard evaluation is an acceptable justification for secrecy for the American public, sanctity seldom is. And when sacredness is valued, in an exceedingly Protestant fashion it is more often attached to high principles and individual encounters than religious rituals, and rarely justifies complete privacy.

In the end, I believe that realizing that a high degree of secrecy is not only accepted but deemed necessary under certain sensitive circumstances among broad swaths of the population could be an important step in developing to a more proper interfaith understanding of Mormon temple rites.

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[1] While we only receive the endowment once for ourselves, we can return to perform it for those deceased by proxy, as with baptisms.

Stained Glass: Mormons and Protestant Transparency

This was a reading response for my present Mormonism and Politics course regarding Kathleen Flake's book The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle.

Throughout Kathleen Flake’s account of the seating of Mormon apostle and senator-elect Reed Smoot, accounts of Mormon secrecy and duplicity are prominent. For example, crowds lined up to see Charles Mostyn Owen, a detective, perform the Mormon endowment ceremony out of curiosity and derision, while LDS Church leaders called to testify before the Senate answered questions only in the most circuitous manner possible, making a virtue of selective forgetfulness or ignorance (Flake 82). Flake places the importance of these performances in their demonstration of willful Mormon defiance of law and unwillingness to join in a Protestant quest for the national Good. However, it might be useful to examine them instead through the value placed on transparency in the Protestant tradition, for even though the protestants in the case may not have used that terminology it is a key part of the Protestant mindset.

For Protestants, the more direct one’s access to Divinity and Truth, the better the system, and many elements of Mormonism seemed to reject that standard completely. God’s word was to be accessed through a living prophet’s revelations, not through the sovereign conscience or through the Bible alone; strange ceremonies were hidden from the world and contained impenetrable symbols, contrary to the believed clarity of scripture that anyone could reportedly understand; and officials engaged in concurrent but parallel insider and outsider narratives. These matters Protestants thought they had shrugged off alongside Rome and demolished cathedral choir screens, but within Mormonism a centralized, conspiratorial hierarchy mediated collective experience of God and ritual superseded law and reason. It is not a coincidence that after significant negotiations about Mormon identity and practice to allow Smoot to obtain his Senate seat, Flake observes that “the message to member and nonmember became indistinguishable” (Flake 132). Only this sort of clarity could satisfy the skeptical Protestant.

What is fascinating is that today’s Mormons still face this demand for transparency. Recently, blogger Andrew Sullivan linked to “never-before-seen” footage of LDS endowment ceremonies, hoping that it would reflect poorly on Mitt Romney’s presidential potential. After listing differences between Mormon and traditional Christian beliefs on matters like Trinitarianism, he provides his rationale for posting the video: “if you are running for president, transparency is essential.” That transparency includes the “religious services” that Romney attends in the temple, which Sullivan compares with sermons offered by Jeremiah Wright. In addition, he claims that criticism of Mormonism from the likes of Billy Graham was hushed so that religious conservatives could achieve their political goals. We see here not only a very telling fundamental misunderstanding of Mormon temple worship – comparing it to a Protestant sermon – but also allegations of ulterior motives for public occlusion of the ceremonies. For a Catholic, Sullivan is stunningly Protestant-minded: all should have access to all truth at their behest (Sullivan). Another example could be seen in the California Proposition 8 campaign, wherein Mormon leaders “undergrounded” – hid from the public eye – the differences in how support for the measure was justified to Church members versus nonmembers and the Church’s piggybacking of political mobilization on ecclesiastical structure (Brooks).

In response to such concerns and increased publicity, LDS leaders have made an unprecedented effort to communicate about the beliefs, practices, history, and activities of the Church through the official Newsroom, publishing clarifications to correct misinterpretations from Broadway to local news reports. The most recent announcement made through the Newsroom, which was almost certainly an effort to project political neutrality after the recent presidential election, was a letter of congratulations to President Barack Obama and an admonition for the American public to pray for the newly-elected government (First Presidency). The response to this announcement from some Mormons, however, reveals an unusual effect of earlier Mormon lack of transparency: having observed that public and private messages from Church headquarters have sometimes differed, some Mormons refuse to see the Newsroom announcements as wholly sincere. To these, the appearance of transparency is important, but only because of political expediency. Can the LDS Church ever satisfy demands for transparency? Would sincere attempts at transparency be welcomed or rejected – even by Mormons themselves? What does this bode for the future of the LDS Church?

Works Cited

Brooks, Joanna. "On the "Underground": What the Mormon Yes on 8 campaign reveals about the future of Mormons in American political life." 21 Feb 2012. YouTube. 7 Nov 2012 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe1MrZK_AuM>.

"First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles Congratulate President on Election Win." 6 Nov 2012. Mormon Newsroom. 6 Nov 2012 <http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/statement-on-election-result>.

Sullivan, Andrew. "When Christianism Bites Back." 29 Oct 2012. The Dish. 7 Nov 2012 <http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/when-christianism-bites-back.html>.

Notes on the Innocence of Mormons

‎"Mormons are better than Muslims because they aren't killing people because of the Book of Mormon musical" is not a good argument.

To begin, the violence committed by a tiny minority of Muslims cannot be extrapolated to encompass all of Islam. Think of how unjust Jon Krakauer's treatment of Mormonism is in "Under the Banner of Heaven" and you can see why such blanket generalizations are wrong.

Besides that: I don't excuse political violence in the face of religious offense. However, the situations are different, in at least these ways:

1. The musical is obnoxious, but not really slanderous. Being called nice-but-stupid is different than being called a lecherous, tyrannical villain.

2. Anti-Mormonism is no longer linked with threats of military force and occupation, whereas Islamophobia is. And when anti-Mormonism WAS linked with threats of military force (mid/late 1800s), what did we get? Small bands of Mormons committing political violence. On the other hand, America has gotten involved in numerous military tangles with Muslim countries in the past two decades (Kuwait, stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, threats against Iran, unquestioning approval of Israel over Palestine, etc.), some of which is fueled by absurd anti-Islamic stereotypes.

3. In America, our laws say that individuals are responsible for their free speech and other individuals have to call them on the carpet for slander. In many other countries, calling out slander is the purview of the government, and inaction seems like approval.

4. Further, if Mormonism were as institutionally variant and disjointed as Islam is, you'd get some crazies doing more radical stuff. But since there's a leadership that doesn't like rocking the boat and which is held in high esteem by the membership, anyone who would go overboard is discouraged from it.

And yes, the title is a pun on the offending film. And yes, I know that the protests in Egypt and Libya were pre-planned and adopted the film as a pretext, which weakens the argument for Mormon moral superiority even further.